Tag: inner issues

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Romancing Your Story

Hole-Hearted to Whole-Hearted and How to Get There

What hole is in his heart? What hole is in her heart? This is where your romance story begins. Both your main male and female characters—the ones that will commit to one another by the end of the book—need to have a hole in their heart they are trying to fill, or are resisting to fill, at the beginning of your romance novel.

Maybe he wants to find a lasting love but comes from a broken home. His parents divorced when he was young after a lot of fighting, and maybe they bounced him back and forth, or maybe one of them completely walked away from him after the divorce. These things cause him to believe that he isn’t lovable or that all marriages are destined for divorce.

Maybe she longs for a lasting love but has been hurt by more than one man she thought was “the one”. Maybe several men who seemed interested, loving, and kind turned into workaholics with no time for her, or verbally, emotionally, or physically abused her. Now she’s afraid to give another man a chance; unsure she could survive another bad relationship, leaving her with a bigger hole in her heart.

These two characters obviously struggle with an internal conflict.

When they are thrown together in your story, in whatever situation you choose, they may feel a physical attraction. They may think “this might be the one”, but their internal conflict is still raw, so an external conflict results. Each of them resist the relationship in some way, trying to protect themselves.

As time progresses and you continue to put them together through the setting or their circumstances, eventually one of them softens and warms up to the idea that this relationship might really work out.

The other one may still resist for a while, but sooner or later, they both soften and their love for one another builds to where they both believe this relationship isn’t like the one his parents had or like the previous relationships she had.

The hole in each of their hearts heals and they commit to one another.

This is one possible basic plot line for a romance story. Every romance novel needs a boy and a girl who want and need love. Maybe the hole in one of their hearts is something that causes them to believe they don’t have time for love and romance. But whatever the hole is will affect the relationship between them.

The romance plot also needs an external struggle because romance stories need conflict. Conflict is the driving force behind a romance story, and maybe the external conflict is the one I mentioned above, or maybe one of the men who hurt your female character comes back seeking another chance just when she thinks she may have some real feelings for the man you’ve recently placed in her life. There are many external conflicts you can use.

But in the end two characters who began hole-hearted, become whole-hearted.

Kelly F. Barr lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She is married and has three sons. She writes historical romance. She has also been a blogger for ten years, and every Friday, you can find her Flash Fiction stories posted for your reading pleasure. She loves her family, including the family dog, books, walks, and chai lattes.

You can find her online at:

Categories
Talking Character

Your Character’s Skewed Worldview

In any good story, the protagonist can only achieve her external story goal by first overcoming a deep inner issue. (Her character arc is her journey to discover, wrestle with, and overcome this issue.)

What is this inner issue?

A belief or fear that gives her a skewed view of the world. In other words, her inner issue is a big fat Lie she believes, a Lie that leads her to act in ways that are unwise—and will ultimately lead to her failure unless she confronts the Lie and discovers a better truth.

Where does this inner issue come from?

Somewhere in your character’s past he encountered a traumatic event, or Wound, which initiated his skewed thinking. This does not mean your character must have been abused or suffered severe trauma. The Wound might be a broken promise, or a word of condemnation, anything that incites the character to believe some lie about himself or how he must survive in his world.

You must know precisely when, and why, your protagonist’s worldview was knocked out of alignment. Lisa Cron in Wired for Story

If you know what initiated your character’s belief in the Lie, you’re halfway to helping him overcome it. K. M. Weiland in Creating Character Arcs.

An Example:

In my current manuscript, a Roman aristocrat named Avitus was badly burned as a youth, and as a result his face, chest and left arm are scarred. Because of this scarring, he was ridiculed and rejected by the peers who had once been his friends.

That rejection is his Wound. It caused him to believe that he was ugly and unlovable (the Lie). To protect himself from further rejection, he became a loner, only trusting others who, like him, have been rejected in some way.

However, a stipulation in his father’s will requires him to marry before he can inherit his share. So long as he remains in his skewed worldview—where he believes he is unlovable—he will remain safely behind his wall of dispassionate self-control.

In order to win the respect of his potential spouse, he must realize that it is the Lie that made him unlovable, not his scars. Only by dropping his mask of indifference and becoming vulnerable can he hope to convince her to marry him.

Further thoughts on your character’s Wound

  • Identifying a specific wounding event helps the writer create a more authentic character.
  • The Wound often lies in the past, long before the story starts, although in some cases the Wound occurs in the early scenes of your story.
  • The more skewed the character’s worldview (the bigger the Lie), the more serious the Wound must be.
  • In some cases, the character’s wound is revealed as the story progresses. In others the readers never learns about the Wound, but it still informs how the character behaves.

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Categories
Talking Character

What Does Your Protagonist Want? (And Why Can’t He Have It?)

A protagonist without a clear goal has nothing to figure out and nowhere to go. Lisa Cron in Wired for Story

All protagonists need a goal—some force that drives them onward no matter what obstacles the story throws at them. And that goal is driven by some deep inner need—the why that motivates all they do to achieve their goal.

Since stories are not about the plot, but about how the plot affects the characters, it is really the why behind the goal that keeps us reading.

If we don’t know what the protagonist’s goal is, or why it matters to him, we can’t anticipate how the plot events affect him, or what he might do about them. Which means we will quickly stop caring, toss that book aside, and watch silly cat videos instead.

Two kinds of goals

First of all, a protagonist needs an external goal—something she wants to achieve by the end of the book. She might want a promotion, she may hope to find the guy of her dreams, or she might be determined to solve the crime and nail the bad guy.

But the external goal isn’t enough to make a great story. Our protagonist needs an internal goal, too—some deep-seated need she believes will be satisfied if she achieves her external goal.  In other words, the inner goal is the why that motivates the external goal.

Two kinds of obstacles

What keeps your protagonist from her external goal? Typically, the kind of  plot-driven obstacles that writers love to make up: Rivals, misinformation, invading warlords, sudden storms, bad luck, traitors, or the kid next door. What keeps the protagonist from her internal goal? Her very own self. Some hang-up, fear, or stubbornly held belief that is part of who she is.

And this is one of the keys of a great story: In order to achieve her external story goal, the protagonist must be forced to come face-to-face with that deep inner issue she would much rather avoid.

The climax of the story hinges on her willingness to face her inner issue. Only then can she have the revelation that will enable her to achieve the goal that will bring her what she really wants (which may or may not be what she thought she wanted this whole time).

If you know what your character wants, why she wants it, and what inner issue might keep her from achieving it, you are on the way to a great story.

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Categories
Talking Character

How Selfish Is Your Protagonist?

We writers love our protagonists. We give them a few flaws and quirks, but we know that underneath their mistakes and faulty thinking beats a heart that is kind and good. The kind of heart that will ultimately lead them to Do The Right Thing.

We want our hero to show his noble heart by getting involved with the local homeless shelter and our heroine to display her fine character by fundraising to provide wells to villagers who need fresh water. Those are excellent goals, so long as you show the reader why your character cares.

Authors must not only figure out what goals our character strives for, but also why those goals matter to that particular character. And the reasons must be specific and selfish.

Yes, selfish. As in, what’s in it for him?

Because your hero does not volunteer at the shelter once a week just because it’s a nice thing to do. He does it because:

  • He can no longer ignore God’s urging to serve in this area (despite the fact he hates talking to strangers.)
  • The cute girl from World History class works there those same days.
  • He thinks it will atone for the hit and run accident he caused.
  • He discovered one of guys he plays pick-up basketball games with spent most of last year living in a shelter.

Each one of these options will lead to a very different story, won’t it?

The specific and selfish reasons you give your character must also serve to deepen his character arc and illustrate the underlying theme of your story. If the story is about stepping out in faith despite our fears then option one or four might make sense, while option three would suit a theme like understanding God’s mercy or learning to own up to our mistakes. And that cute girl from history class? She has all kinds of thematic options, depending on her motivations for working at the shelter.

Because every character needs specific and selfish reasons for their actions. Even cute girls.

So…

If your answer to the question, “Why does your protagonist care about his story goal?” isn’t specific, personal, and driven by some need or desire the character has, maybe it’s time to dig deeper.

You readers will be glad you did.

Categories
Talking Character

Different Temperaments, Different Fears

The heroine of the mystery novel I am working on needs certain qualities to be a good sleuth. Things like nosiness, an outgoing personality, the ability to talk people into helping her, and the willingness to risk dangerous situations in order to get the information she needs.

In other words, her temperament needs to be very different than mine. I am a reserved, logical, non-assertive person who doesn’t like taking risks and stays out of other people’s business. (Most of the time, anyway.)

Therefore, I cannot rely solely on my own instincts to predict how my character will react. No writer can, because we all need a variety of characters who think and act in different ways. That’s where utilizing temperament classifications can be useful. (See below for information on three different temperament classification systems. You can also search for free assessment tools online.)

Temperaments as a writing tool

Understanding temperaments is especially important when writers are considering the deep inner issues that their characters must face, because one person’s worst fear is something another personality type might take in stride. For example, some people hate being in the spotlight while others thrive in it. Some people find their purpose upholding rules, while others consider rules stifling.

Identifying a character’s temperament type can guide us to the issues that would most challenge their personality. (And it might be something very different from what would most challenge you or me.) Alternately, if you know the kind of trauma and embarrassment you have planned for your hero, you might find that a particular temperament’s worst nightmare or most significant fear fits your concept. Voila, you have identified the perfect temperament.

Browsing through some of the other posts on best/worst ___ for each temperament type can give you additional useful insights. For example, I stumbled across the advice that a pet would be the worst kind of gift for my heroine, because her personality doesn’t do well at long-term relationship maintenance, so a pet would end up either being ignored or becoming a hindrance. (Hmm, strike the pet cat.)

WWJD – What Would Jane Do?

If you are like me, all this temperament info is fascinating, but difficult to put into practice when writing. What are we poor writers who never took a Psych class to do?

You might try assigning a person you know as a temperament model for your character. This does not mean you are basing your whole character on this person, only that your model’s temperament fits nicely into one of the standard types, which helps you understand what that kind of personality would do in a given situation. A temperament model can help you avoid inadvertently overlaying your own personality on your character.

How else have you found temperament classifications to be helpful? I’d love to hear your advice.

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Information on three common temperament classification systems:

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator divides temperaments into sixteen types with four-letter designations like INFP or ESTJ.

The Kiersey Temperament Sorter, which basically uses the same sixteen types as the Myers- Briggs but approaches them in a different way that might make more sense to some writers.

The Enneagram System, which takes a different approach to understanding temperaments and divides people into nine personality types. If you feel like you never fit into any of the Myers-Briggs types, the Enneagram system might make more sense.