HOW TO WRITE ROMANCE - Lesson 2: Secrets of the Romance World

It's now been almost a hundred years since the birth of the modern romance novel, when British publisher Mills & Boon realized that their hardcover romantic fiction was outselling most of their other publications. From that small start, the industry has exploded – as you learned in your last reading assignment – until it's now one of the few niches in publishing where an author can make a living solely by writing.

Not all romance authors get rich; in fact, only a few of the best-selling authors do. But many romance writers provide a significant supplement to the family income, and a lot of them are the main breadwinners (if they can write multiple books a year). Compared to what the average author of fiction makes, it's good money.

So let's explore some of the secrets that may help you become a published romance writer.

Love the Books

The majority of romance authors started out as romance readers, enjoying and absorbing love stories. Eventually they began to wonder why a story took certain turns, and then they started to wish that the author had done it just a little (or perhaps a lot) differently, and their own stories began to take form in their minds.

This passion for reading romances is important. It's difficult to write a book at all, but it's nearly impossible to write well in a field you don't enjoy. A book that is written to fit a perceived formula is no more likely to make it to bookstore shelves than a paint-by-number kit is likely to land in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But even within the romance genre, there is a wide range of possibilities - something for everyone. If you especially like reading a particular type of romance, then that's the kind you should be writing.

Today's Romance Nove

The successful writer knows what's being published today, and how it's different from the books that were published last year, or a decade ago. The perception of romance as sweet, sticky, and slightly behind the times was never accurate. Romances have always been on society's cutting edge. And that means the stories editors are interested in buying need to be up to date.
That doesn't rule out using the long-time themes that were discussed in the last reading assignment. Cinderella stories, marriages of convenience, and secret babies will probably always be in style. But the stories must make sense today.

Years ago, Emilie Loring wrote a romance novel in which her hero and heroine were stranded in an isolated cabin for about fifteen minutes. When they were discovered alone together, the fallout from the episode threatened to ruin the hero's political career, so they got married. That worked just fine when Loring wrote it, but it looks pretty quaint in the current climate. Today's marriage of convenience must involve two people who make the choice themselves, not because they're embarrassed by circumstances or because Grandma wants them to marry, but because each of them believes that logically and rationally this is their best course of action.

Even historical romances have changed a good deal in the last few years. For instance, plots of some historical romances published in the early years of the genre involved out-and-out rape. (The term "bodice-ripper," still used as a derogatory description of all romances, originated with the suggestive cover art used on some of those books.) But today's reader finds it much more difficult to believe that a woman could come to love a man who treated her that way, and so even historical romances have acquired some distinctly twenty-first-century touches.

Emotion is the Key

A perky heroine, a sexy and dangerous hero, a "cute meet" (the first encounter of hero and heroine) – yes, those are all good things to have in a romance novel. And we could list a hundred more. But if we simply assembled all those ingredients into a book, what we would end up with is a sort of weird grocery list instead of a romance unless the reader cares about these people and their problems, feels their joys, and suffers their pain.

A wise writer once said, "Show me the pictures in the soldier's pocket before you kill him." Stop and think about that. Any dead soldier on a battlefield is a very sad thing indeed, but it doesn't touch us in the same personal way that it does if we know about his wife waiting at home with the baby boy he's never seen.

Emotion isn't the same as drama, and we're definitely not talking about melodrama here. It's not necessary for every line of the romance to drip tears. But in the words of Howard Ashman, who wrote the book for Disney's Beauty and the Beast, "Every single scene ... should have an umbrella of emotion over it, whether it's warmth or terror or love or drama or even comedy."

In the romance novel, emotion is particularly important. A couple of characters just going through the motions of falling in love might be briefly entertaining, but that story won't stay in the reader's heart. However, when two people risk everything they have and everything they are for the sake of love, the impact of what's happening to them spills over onto the reader. Those are the books that stay on the shelf to be read over and over again.

Romance is Feminist Literature

There's an entire school of thought that condemns romance as degrading to women. The books promote fantasy, these critics say, and they encourage the reader – particularly the very young woman reader – to hover and wring her hands while she waits for a man to rescue her and make her life complete.
But the truth is that romance novels as a literary form are actually feminist in nature. Yes, there is generally a marriage at the end. But it's the heroine who really holds the power in a romance novel. To quote Jayne Ann Krentz (who writes romance under that name and also as Amanda Quick), "... the woman always wins. With courage, intelligence, and gentleness she brings the most dangerous creature on earth, the human male, to his knees." (Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, University of Pennsylvania Press, © 1992, page 5.) The heroine tames the hero, civilizes him, and helps him to embrace his softer and more vulnerable side.

Far from promoting unrealistic fantasies in a young reader, the modern romance novel tells a young woman that she can be successful, useful, and valuable on her own; that there are men in the world who will respect her and treat her well; and that such men are worth waiting for. The wise writer keeps in mind the underlying message of the books: women can be powerful in their own right, and they can use that power to make good things happen.

Writing Requires Practice

The ability to write well is not an inborn talent. Though some writers are more gifted with native ability than others are, even the best have to practice in order to achieve some level of excellence. Writing is a skill, just like playing the violin, hitting a home run, and riding a bicycle are skills. In order to be good at any of those tasks, we must perform them over and over again. The violin student doesn't pick up the bow on the first day and expect to be featured at Carnegie Hall that night. (On the other hand, you don't have to make it to Carnegie Hall or Wrigley Field or the Tour de France to enjoy music, baseball, or sports. These activities can be appreciated at many levels of skill, and so can writing.)

Your first story idea may fizzle halfway through. Your first characters may turn out to be cardboard, your first plot may be a cliche from start to end, and your first reader may look at you blankly and say, "I don't get it." But your second try will be better. Patience, persistence, and practice are the keys to learning to write well, whether you want to be a poet or a songwriter or even a romance novelist.

Discussion

After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the following:

1.   Can you think of any issues that appear in "today's" romance that may not have been acceptable in romance twenty, or even ten, years ago?

2.   Tell us about something you encountered in a romance that struck an emotional chord for you.

3.   Do you agree or disagree that romance novels are feminist literature? Why?

HOW TO WRITE ROMANCE - Lesson 1: The World of Romance

Sometimes it seems that romance novels are on the racks everywhere you look. Airports, drugstores, supermarkets, discount clubs, truck stops... Hey, you can even buy them in book stores – imagine that!

Stores stock what their customers want to buy, and romance novels account for just about half of all mass market paperback books sold in the United States each year. If we count only paperback fiction, the figure is well over fifty percent of sales. Romance is incredibly popular.

Romance is nearly as popular in other countries around the world. The largest publisher of romance, Harlequin/Silhouette, publishes in 25 languages and in 120 countries from Abu Dhabi to Zimbabwe. Readers across Europe, Asia, South America, Australia and Africa avidly read romances, even though the majority of the books are written originally in English and most are set in English-speaking countries.

All those love stories add up to half a billion dollars worth of romance novels sold each year in North America alone, more like a billion world-wide. And that only takes into account the original sale. Nobody even tries to keep track of re-sales in used book stores, at garage sales, at thrift shops and through on-line exchanges – but it's safe to say that, on average, every romance novel that's sold is read three times.

A billion dollars in total sales every year is a big chunk of change – and those sales figures mean that romance writing is one of the few areas in fiction where you can actually make a living as a writer. Writing romance novels isn't easy, but you can develop the skills necessary to write (and perhaps publish) your own book. In our romance classes at Gotham Writers’ Workshop, we help many students do just that.

This series of lessons will point you in the right direction, by showing you how to create your all-important hero and heroine and plunge them into their story. But in order to get started writing, it helps to first know about the form -- how romance novels came into being, how they're different from other sorts of books, and what kinds of romances there are. So that's where we'll start in this lesson and in your reading activity.

Why Romance Is Popular

What is the big draw of romance novels? There are just about as many answers as there are fans.

What makes them just as popular with readers in other cultures as in their country of origin? One reason for the foreign sales is that reading romance is a pleasant way for those who speak English as a second language to practice their skills and/or to learn about another culture. For a while, some romances published in South Korea were presented in double length volumes. Instead of including two different books, however, the volume was made up of the same story twice – in the original English, and in a Korean translation.

But the single biggest reason that women around the world are drawn to romance seems to be the promise of a happy ending. That's not because romance readers are shallow or naive, because they aren't. (The average romance reader is in her thirties, employed outside her home, with a family, a college education, and a household income that's well above average. This woman reads romance to relax – not because she doesn't like other forms of literature, but in addition to them.) And it's not that romance readers want predictable stories they don't have to think about, either. They like to be startled, surprised, and even scared along the way. But they also like knowing that in the end, somehow, everything will work out just fine.

Part of the fascination with a happy ending is that it includes an element of reassurance as well as fantasy. A happy ending makes a promise to you, the reader, that no matter how bleak things look sometimes, in the long run it will all come right. In the midst of difficult times -- whether the trouble is personal, economic, or national -- readers seek comfort. And there's a great deal of comfort to be found in a form of reading material which promises that even very bad situations will end up with very good results, things will always turn out for the best, true love will triumph over problems, and marriages will last forever.

Men, on the other hand (and yes, men do read romances, they just don't talk about it much in public) seem to read the books for different reasons. One man at a romance book signing was asked by the television crew covering the event if he was buying the book for his wife. No, he said. It was for him to read because reading romances kept him in touch with the way his wife liked to be treated.

Most male readers read their first romance because they're curious about what their wives find so fascinating about romance novels. So on a rainy Saturday afternoon when they're bored and there's a book lying on the coffee table, they pick it up to while away a couple of hours. Nine times out of ten, they're amazed to find that: 1) it's not pornographic and 2) it has a plot. And frequently, after they've experienced that first book, they keep right on reading. Occasionally a guy will like the books so much that he subscribes to a romance book club so he won't miss any, but he generally puts down his wife's name instead of his own so the mailman won't think less of him.

Romance Novels Are Not Simple and Predictable

The detractors of romance novels like to think that the stories are simplistic and childish and that they contain no big words and very little plot, just a lot of love scenes separated by filler. The stereotypical view of romance says that there's only one story, so all the authors have to do is change the hair color, eye color, and names, and then they can "crank out" another book.

But as you'll see when you do the activity assignment, there are as many different kinds of romance novels as there are reasons for reading them. Some are set in the present day, some are historical. Some are sweet, some are spicy and sensual. Some are long and complex, some are short and straightforward. Some are dramatic, some are comic. Some are down-to-earth, others feature witches or werewolves or time travel. But each story is unique.

(This lesson's reading assignment covers the various sub-genres of romance, as well as some basic story archetypes commonly found in romances.)

Romance novels are generally small (they're shorter than many other kinds of novels). They're light (they focus on an entertaining story rather than on such things as the evils of modern society). They're easy to read (the story is told in a way which is effortless for the reader to comprehend, to picture, and to understand). But because a story is easy to read doesn't mean it was easy to write. In fact, the more smoothly the story flows, pulling the reader along from scene to scene, the harder the author worked to create it.

The Romance Novel Defined

You will find that all romances have a few things in common – though actually very few – and that fact is what creates the common perception that there's a magic formula for writing them. In fact, the only thing romance novels have in common is a basic structure.

Here it is: A man and a woman, while they're solving a problem, discover that the way they feel about each other is a once-in-a-lifetime love that makes them decide to spend the rest of their lives together.

(Even then, the rule has exceptions: There are gay romances, and there's a new line featuring a younger heroine, which can end with her finding Mr.-Right-for-Now rather than Mr.-Right-for-Always.)

But the most important element common to all romances is that the love story is always kept at the very center of the book. In other kinds of fiction, a romance may be included, but it probably isn't the most important element of the story.

When you pick up a romance novel, however, you expect to experience a love story. The author hopes that you'll enjoy the other action in the book (the mystery, the quarrel, the illness, or the custody battle) and that you'll want these issues to be resolved – but she knows that you want the romance to remain the most important focus of the story.

So, gather up your interest in stories and your fascination with falling in love, and let's start writing romance!

Discussion

After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the following:

1.   Why do you like to read romance novels?

2.   Do you like reading novels other than romance novels? If so, what are some novels you've enjoyed?

3.   If you are a woman, do you know any men who read romance novels? If so, why do they read them? If you are a man, why do you read romance?

4.   Why do you think romance novels are popular with readers around the world? How might the attraction of romances be different because of the reader's ethnic group or nationality?

HOW TO WRITE FICTION - Lesson 8: More Elements of Fiction

In the last lesson, we learned how to set a plot in motion by creating a protagonist who has a strong desire and plenty of conflict. Many other elements of craft go into the making of a good story, all of which revolve around the characters, in one way or another. (Remember, characters are the source.) Let’s take a brief look at just a few of these elements.

Setting

A setting is the place and time in which a story occurs. It's helpful to let the readers know where and when the characters are. The Great Gatsby takes place in Long Island and New York City in the 1920s. But setting zooms in even closer than that. Notice how Fitzgerald evokes the magic of Gatsby's mansion:

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

And here Fitzgerald evokes a much less glamorous setting:

This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

In both instances, we are given a very tangible sense of place. The first example also indicates time, and a little later in the second example, we are told that it's "afternoon." Not only do these settings tell us where and when we are, but they also enhance the emotional landscape of the book, which deals with the effects of money.

Some stories contain numerous settings, others only a few. Generally, longer stories utilize more settings than shorter ones. "Cathedral," for example, all takes place in the narrator's house on a single night. Regardless of how many settings you use, you want to give the readers the sense that they are there. And this can be achieved most effectively through description.

Description

Description happens when the writer discusses something in detail rather than just naming it. Instead of merely writing "Gatsby had music and guests at night," Fitzgerald goes quite a bit further, by summoning the powers of description. Done well, description makes the story spring vividly to life in the minds of the readers.

Look at this description from "Cathedral":

At first glance, his eyes looked like anyone else's eyes. But if you looked close, there was something different about them. Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it. Creepy. As I stared at his face, I saw the left pupil turn in toward his nose while the other made an effort to keep in one place.

One of the keys to effective description is being specific. Notice how specific Carver gets with the motion (or lack of it) in the blind man's eyes. Carver tends to be very sparing with his descriptions but when he needs it, he knows exactly how to bring something to life.

Another key to good description is to appeal to the senses. All of the examples given above employ the sense of sight. But the other senses count, too. In the description of Gatsby's mansion, we can hear for ourselves the "music" and "whisperings" among the night. In Fitzgerald's description of the valley of ashes, we can almost feel, smell, and even taste the ashes and smoke. You desire a shower after reading this passage in the book. It's almost as if we're driving through this desolate area ourselves, which in a sense we are because we're getting the story through Nick's point of view.

Point of View

Point of view, at its most fundamental level, refers to who is narrating the story and what this person knows. Most fictional works are told from either the First Person or the Third Person p.o.v. (p.o.v. is a commonly used abbreviation for point of view.)

In the First Person p.o.v., the story is being told by a character in the story, using the "I" voice. This is true of both The Great Gatsby and "Cathedral."

A First Person narrator is limited to telling about what he or she has thought or observed, just as people are in real life. Here's Nick narrating an encounter with Gatsby:

He looked at me sideways - and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying. He hurried the phrase "educated at Oxford," or swallowed it or choked on it as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces and I wondered if there wasn't something a little sinister about him after all.

Here, we're seeing Gatsby through Nick's eyes. Nick often has trouble knowing if Gatsby is being honest or not because he doesn't have direct access to Gatsby's mind. Since Gatsby is the protagonist of the story, this set-up presents numerous challenges to Fitzgerald. He must find artful ways to sneak in certain information about Gatsby, as when Jordan relates to Nick the story of Gatsby and Daisy's courtship. (It should be noted, though, that the first person narrator usually is the protagonist. Gatsby is unusual in this respect.)

In the Third Person p.o.v., the story is narrated directly by the writer, who is not a character in the story. Never using the "I" voice, the writer refers to the characters as "he" or "she." Such is the case with Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, which opens like so:

He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass.

In this passage, the narrator is seeing through the eyes of the protagonist, Robert Jordan. But in the Third Person p.o.v., the writer has some latitude regarding what knowledge the narrator can and can not have. In some stories, the Third Person narrator will stay confined to the thoughts and observations of a single character, as in the First Person. In other stories, the Third Person narrator will have access to the thoughts and observations of numerous characters, as in For Whom the Bells Toll.

The vast majority of the time, writers will make a choice regarding how they handle p.o.v. and stick with it throughout the story, be it First Person or some variation of Third Person.

How do you know which method will work best for your story? Well, it's not an easy decision. Often, it's a good idea to experiment with p.o.v. and see which method feels most comfortable or enlightening for your story. In "Cathedral," for example, the reader gains much insight by experiencing the story directly through the narrator's curmudgeonly eyes. But this p.o.v. wouldn't work as well in For Whom the Bells Toll because Hemingway needs to move fluidly among the minds of several different characters.

Point of view is a tricky thing to understand, but it's important because it will affect nearly every aspect of your story.

Other Elements

We’ve already spoken a bit about dialogue. Stories without dialogue tend to be flat, boring, and too quiet. Dialogue is a great way to liven up your story and it’s also an effective tool for characterization. At its best, dialogue sounds realistic but is also crafted in such a way that it reveals insight into each of the characters who speak.

Then there is voice. Surely you’ve noticed how the writers we’ve read in these lessons handle their use of language in very different ways. You probably wouldn’t confuse a Raymond Carver sentence with one by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is because these writers have a different voice, meaning there is a different sound to their storytelling. You should strive to develop your own unique voice, which is often best done by just writing in the way that comes to you most naturally. Of course, in the First Person p.o.v., the voice also needs to fit with the character who is narrating.

And, there are still more elements that go into the crafting of a good fictional story. In fact, writing fiction is a bit like cooking a stew. You toss in numerous ingredients then simmer and stir until the story is as good as you can possibly make it. Now it’s just a matter of going to the kitchen and cooking up some wonderful stories.

Discussion

After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the following:

1.   Were you previously aware of point of view?

2.   Does a story need a setting?

3.   Do you prefer description that is lush or spare?

Now that you’re aware of some of the elements that go into a good work of fiction, do you feel better equipped to handle writing your own story? Or are you more intimidated?

HOW TO WRITE FICTION - Lesson 7: A Story is a Quest

Characters are crucial in fiction. Actually, they are the most crucial element. We know that by now. However, fiction does not live by characters alone. Many other elements go into the creation of a story and one of those is a plot. If characters are what make us love a story, plot is what keeps us turning pages.

Plot is an intricate topic, and we could easily devote numerous lessons to it. For now, let's explore how characters may lead us into a good plot. We'll focus on The Great Gatsby in this lecture, while this week's reading assignment offers a detailed breakdown of the plot of "Cathedral."

The Protagonist

Usually a story has a single main character, or protagonist. A single protagonist because it's often most satisfying for readers to identify with one character – to see the world through, and go on a journey with, that one person. Yes, there are exceptions to this single protagonist rule. But it exists in the two stories we've been studying. The unnamed narrator is the protagonist of "Cathedral," and Jay Gatsby is the protagonist of The Great Gatsby (even though Nick is the story's narrator).

The protagonist of a story should be a round character, the rounder the better. Like the best characters, and like real people, the protagonist should be neither all good nor all bad. He or she should be sympathetic; we should be able to relate to the protagonist as a fellow human being. But a protagonist should not be a perfect person, a sure recipe for boredom.

Jay Gatsby and the "Cathedral" narrator both fit this bill nicely. Thought Gatsby is a courteous and decent man, he's full of flaws. He's obsessed with a married woman, Daisy, who really isn't worthy of all the hope and desire he expends on her behalf. He also lies to elevate his social position, and his business dealings do not seem to fall on the right side of the law. The "Cathedral" narrator is even more flawed. He's close-minded, unambitious, slightly mean, and his only hobbies seem to be TV, drink, and drugs. And yet, he's not entirely unsympathetic, as we gradually come to see his hidden desire to climb out of his rut.

Desire

Desire is what drives a protagonist. It’s customary in a story for the protagonist to have one major desire – need, want, whatever you want to call it. In fact, that’s where the plot comes from. Throughout the story the protagonist is trying to get the one thing he or she wants and by the end of the story the person will either get it or not get it. Call it a quest, much like the quests embarked upon by all those heroes and heroines in the ancient myths.

Jay Gatsby has a very clear desire. He wants Daisy Buchanan. He devotes his entire life to this quest and it never wavers throughout the book. He gains money to impress Daisy, he builds a mansion within viewing distance of Daisy's house, so he can keep an eye on her and so she can see his wealth. He befriends Nick, Daisy's cousin, so Nick can arrange a rendezvous for him with Daisy. And so on. Gatsby's desire for Daisy gives the story a clear focus, which, as we learned in the first lesson, is an important aspect of storytelling.

This focus can also make a story easier to write. Once you know your protagonist and his desire, you have a definite road map to follow.

Often, however, there is more to a character's desire than meets the eye. One suspects that Gatsby wants Daisy because she represents "class" and "success." Deep in his heart, Gatsby really wants to be accepted and admired by the elite of the world. Perhaps he wants this more than he actually loves Daisy. In a sense, she is a means to an end. So, often in fiction there is a desire beneath the desire.

Doesn't this make things more complicated than they need to be? Well, no, it can actually make things simpler to write. It's difficult to construct a plot around someone pursuing an abstract desire like "class" or "success." How do you obtain "class" or "success?" These aren't things you can grab in your hand or definitively capture or write scenes about. It's actually easier to make the immediate desire specific and concrete. Plot-wise, Daisy Buchanan works beautifully as an object of desire. She gives Gatsby's deepest desire a human face.

It's a simple formula and one that you can follow yourself. Pick a protagonist, then give him or her one specific, concrete desire. If layers of meaning lie beneath that desire, all the better, but keep the protagonist focused on that one tangible goal. Make sure he or she wants it badly. Then, make it hard as hell for them to get it.

Conflict

Suppose when Gatsby meets up with Daisy at Nick's house for tea, Daisy tells Gatsby that she has never stopped loving him and that she will immediately leave her husband. And suppose that she followed through on the promise, moving in with Gatsby the very next day. This would be glorious news for Jay Gatsby, but it wouldn't make for much of a story. Something big would be missing, and that something is conflict. Without conflict, a story is destined to be either very short or very dull, and probably both. No two ways about it, conflict is essential.

The Great Gatsby contains plenty of conflict. Yes, Daisy does seem to have some affection for Gatsby and she does briefly take up with him. But, she also has a mean and vindictive husband blocking her path. Also, Daisy is elitist enough to recognize that her husband, however uncouth, is "old money" while Gatsby falls into the much less socially desirable class of "new money." Worst of all, Daisy lacks the courage and conviction to break away from her marriage. No matter how far Gatsby goes to win Daisy – and he goes to incredible lengths – he is fighting a difficult battle. This difficulty, this conflict, is part of what makes the story so compelling. We don't know if Gatsby will succeed at his quest or not. We have to keep reading to find out. Furthermore, nothing illuminates a character better than a good struggle.

Though a protagonist should stay focused on a single desire, there is no limit to how much conflict may be interfering with that desire. The more the merrier (at least for the reader). The eternal struggle between desire and conflict is part of what makes a story dramatic and worth reading, no matter if the story is tragic, comical or anything in between.

Finally, just as conflict must occur, that conflict needs to be eventually resolved. In other words, at the end of your story, your protagonist must have achieved the concrete goal, or not. You can’t write a conclusion to your story that leaves your readers scratching their heads, wondering just what happened. After all, when readers begin a story, they do so with the understanding that the writer will finish the tale being told. And that means resolution, for better or worse.

A Test Drive

Though it’s by no means simple to construct the plot of a story, it’s considerably easier, once you learn how to put the protagonist/desire/conflict scheme into motion.

Suppose you wanted to use Maria Rialto as the protagonist of your story. A good way to start figuring out the plot of your story would be to figure out her big desire. Let’s go back to our theory that she wants to make friends and she carries a new book every day hoping someone will start up a conversation with her about the book she is currently reading. Good. She wants to make a friend. That’s an excellent desire. See, this one doesn’t even have layers of meaning beneath it and it’s still excellent.

Now, what is the conflict? First off, she is terribly shy. Her shyness would definitely count as a conflict. It’s a direct, and very strong, obstacle to her goal of making a friend. In fact, very often the strongest conflicts are internal, in that they come from within a character, as opposed to external conflicts, which are obstacles outside of the person, like a car breaking down.

Suppose early in the story Maria does meet someone and they take the first few steps toward a friendship. But this person turns out to be deranged and dangerous and, unfortunately, Maria is so desperate for friendship that she is blind to this person’s flaws. Now you’ve got some external conflict (the deranged and dangerous person) and some more internal conflict (the blindness). None of this is good for Maria, but it’s all good for the story. A compelling plot is beginning to take shape.

From here, the plot could veer in any number of directions. You may have an idea of the development and resolution before you start writing or you may just hit the road and see where things lead. Either way, you’re bound to go somewhere interesting because you’ve created a memorable character then given her the desire and conflict necessary to carry her all the way through a first-rate story.

Don’t you hope things work out for Maria, by the way? It’s entirely possible that you’ve come to care about her!

Discussion

After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the following:

1.   Think of one of your favorite fictional protagonists and tell us what you think this character’s desire is.

2.   Desire is what fuels fictional characters. Is this true of people in real life?

3.   Do you think a story can be interesting without strong conflict?

HOW TO WRITE FICTION - Lesson 6: How to Reveal Through Showing

Last time we discussed telling about characters. As effective a method as telling can be, showing is even better. Showing means presenting the reader with the characters first-hand, up close. It lets the reader "see" (and hear, and sometimes touch and even smell) the characters.

Most showing can be shared with the reader via scenes: word-pictures written in more-or-less "real time." Think of a stage play, on Broadway or at your local high school. The curtain goes up, and presto! Immediately, we begin finding out about the characters portrayed by the actors in the play. Nobody ever describes or explains them to us. We simply look, listen, and learn.

There are four basic methods for showing characters:

·        Action

·        Speech

·        Appearance

·        Thought

A work of fiction should mix and match these methods.

Action

Actions are often the strongest way to reveal characters. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, "We are our deeds."

Actions can be small things, such as the way a character treats a slow-moving cashier in a grocery store. Some people are patient in such a situation, while others become openly hostile. Others will complain, but under their breath. Everyone reacts differently to the ordinary demands made on us by daily life.

In "Cathedral," we learn about Robert’s lust for life by all the things he does that confound the narrator’s expectations regarding blind people. Robert drinks Scotch and fills an ashtray with cigarette butts. He eats "like there was no tomorrow." Robert gets high, then "watches" TV – he’s got not one but two sets at home. In spite of his physical disability, Robert devours the world around him with gusto

Actions can also be big things, such as how characters react in moments of crisis. There's a reason why the Outward Bound program initiates its participants by assigning them a difficult group task, like scaling a high wall without a ladder or even a rope. Such a challenge is actually an artificial crisis, and it illustrates immediately just who is who in the group – who is the Leader, who's the Complainer, who's the Nurse, etc.

The major characters in a story will most likely be tested by difficult situations. That’s where we really learn who they are – by what they do in these times.

The narrator in "Cathedral" seems defensive, even hostile, at the start of the story. It’s unclear whether he has the capacity for generosity, not to mention the inclination. But he goes through what, for him, is a stressful situation – spending an evening with a blind man in the house. By story’s end, the stressful situation has brought about a change in his behavior. When we observe him closing his eyes and moving the blind man’s hand across the paper, we know that he has great reserves of warmth and kindness.

We learn most about characters by watching them act (and interact and react). What do they do, and how do they do it? What don’t they do? Showing action provides the closest thing to objective information about characters. As a result, telling us about these characters is often unnecessary.

Speech

Speech refers to what the characters say, their dialogue. Here is an example of showing through speech from "Cathedral":

"Did you have a good train ride?" I said. "Which side of the train did you sit on, by the way?"

"What a question, which side!" my wife said. "What’s it matter which side?" she said.

"I just asked," I said.

"Right side," the blind man said. "I hadn’t been on a train in nearly forty years. Not since I was a kid. That’s been a long time. I’d nearly forgotten the sensation. I have winter in my beard now," he said. "So I’ve been told, anyway. Do I look distinguished, my dear?" the blind man said to my wife.

"You look distinguished, Robert," she said. "Robert," she said. "Robert, it’s just so good to see you."

We are shown a great deal through this dialogue. The passage shows us that, although the narrator and his wife are extremely nervous about the blind man’s visit to their house, Robert himself is quite relaxed. Also, in the first two lines we glimpse tension between husband and wife. Finally, there’s a touch of poetry in "winter in my beard." The narrator’s wife and Robert are poetic, while the narrator himself isn’t.

Now, Carver could have simply told us this information. But it’s more dynamic if we can find this out for ourselves, in this case via dialogue.

Finally, pay attention to the subtext – the hidden meaning – beneath the dialogue. Again, the line "What a question, which side!" speaks volumes about the tension between husband and wife in "Cathedral" when Robert comes to visit.

Appearance

Appearance relates to any and all physical aspects of the characters. Appearance is often "told" by the narrator and so can fall into the telling category. But appearance also falls into the showing character because appearance literally shows us what a character looks like.

As an example, let's return to the physical description of Robert in "Cathedral":

This blind man was late forties, a heavy-set, balding man with stooped shoulders, as if he carried a great weight there. He wore brown slacks, brown shoes, a light-brown shirt, a tie, a sports coat. Spiffy. He also had this full beard.

Physicality can also extend to gestures and physical actions. For example, Robert is a very friendly guy, and we glimpse this just in the way he shakes hands:

The blind man let go of his suitcase and up came his hand.

I took it. He squeezed hard, held my hand, and then he let go.

However, writers should be careful not to over-rely on physical description. The physical often just gives a surface glimpse of a person, just as a cover only gives a surface glimpse of a book. In "Cathedral," interestingly, we get a very full sense of the narrator and his wife and yet we are given virtually no physical description of either of them.

Thought

In fiction, we are often allowed access to the minds of certain characters. Obviously, one of the best ways to see what someone is like is to catch a glimpse of their innermost thoughts.

The narrator in "Cathedral" is not one to reveal too much of his personal thoughts, but he does reveal bits and pieces of them throughout the story. For example, this man is not self-aware enough to know that he's close-minded. But we, the reader, glean this when we catch him thinking such things as:

A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.

Later, we learn that the narrator isn't completely at peace when we glimpse this thought:

When I did go to sleep, I had these dreams. Sometimes I'd wake up from one of them my heart going crazy.

In thought, characters often reveal things that they would never openly reveal to other characters, and this gives thought a special depth among the categories of showing.

Showing You How To Show

Is this sounding too difficult? Is it a technique that’s fine for a master like Carver but a little over your head? Nonsense! Let’s see how achievable it can be.

Back to our character, Maria Rialto. If you put her at the bus stop, reading a new book every day, you would already be showing Maria through her actions. She waits at the bus stop, she reads books, every day it’s a different book. Those are actions. Actually, each of those actions reveal quite a bit about Maria.

But you can show Maria even more clearly. You can paint a physical picture, giving her glossy black hair, a voluptuous figure, and stylish clothing. Perhaps she dresses on the sexy side but holds herself in a rather prim way. Hmmm, that’s interesting because it’s a contradiction. It seems Maria is turning into a round character on us.

If a character were to greet Maria by saying "hello," you just might get to hear Maria speak. And that would certainly show us more about Maria, no matter what she said. If she says a mere "hello" then goes back to her book, that’s one thing. If she sets the book aside and says, "Well, it’s so nice to see you," that’s something else altogether.

You’ll notice that more actions are seeping out through the physicality and dialogue. The choice to wear sexy clothes is an action, as is the choice to keep reading or, perhaps, set the book aside. If some passing stranger were to make a lewd comment to Maria, we would learn a lot about her by the way she handled it. If the bus were to come down the street, swerve out of the way to miss a cat, and then go toppling onto its side, potentially injuring the passengers, what would Maria do?

You see, it’s really not so difficult to show your characters. And by doing so, you will bring them to life on the page, making three dimensional people out of nothing more than the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.

Discussion

After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the following:

1.   Why do you think actions might be the strongest way to reveal characters?

2.   Do you think it’s important to know what a character looks like? Does this affect who the person is?

3.   Name a fictional character that you "see" very clearly in your mind’s eye. What about this character do you "see?