Hi writing friends,
You know the feeling you get when you’ve been looking for your glasses and they’ve been perched on top of your head the whole time? That kind of happened to me this week as I’ve been preparing for the two workshops I’ll be leading at the Southern California Writers Conference (if you’re in that neck of the woods, come see me!). I had that a-ha moment when I realized that all of my workshop notes on characterization zeroed in on three categories—the types of struggles that all characters experience.
Whenever I’m teaching or writing editorial notes, I always mention character goals and needs, and that is helpful. But what if we look at characters through the lens of their struggles? By framing your characters—protagonist, antagonist, and major supporting characters—this way, it can help you get a solid beat on their motivations, which can then help you develop plot and action. Let me dive in and then tell me if you have anything you’d add.
1. External Pressure
There are things pressing on your character from the outside world, and they can range from global to personal issues. A devastating tornado. Food shortage. Child daycare. Work deadlines.
External conflicts create curiosity for your reader, leading them to wonder what happens next. How will this be a hurdle for the character? How will it pressure the character to act or move them out of their comfort zone?
This is where our characters can show us what they’re capable of. Will they be able to overcome this hurdle? Can they find a solution to this issue?
I think there can be one main external conflict that leads to many smaller but equally important external conflicts. In the novel The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah, the characters are dealing with the Dust Bowl that gripped the middle US during the 1930s. The drought creates conflict after conflict—foreclosure, starvation, disease.
What external conflicts do your characters face? NB: some of the external conflicts may become apparent as you write your draft, and that’s okay!
2. Internal Dilemma
Anyone over the age of five has “baggage,” and your characters are no exception. They’re laboring under some misbelief or misunderstanding about themselves or their situation. Those misbeliefs are probably impacting their ability to address the external conflicts.
Often when I ask students about their characters’ misbeliefs, they aren’t sure. It’s a big question, and it can be a difficult one to answer, especially during a first or even second draft, because it can lead to existential questions about identity, self-worth, and~gulp~purpose. You may not know your characters well enough yet, so let’s take a look at this from a different angle.
Consider what your characters need to learn. What lesson do they need to understand? What new awareness do they need to have?
In Normal People by Sally Rooney, Connell needs to learn that it’s okay to ask for help, and doing so doesn’t make him weak or less-than. Framing his struggle in this way also allows you to see his misbelief more clearly, i.e. Connell believes that asking for help is a sign of weakness.
What lesson do your characters need to learn?
3. Relationship Trouble
Readers come to most stories to learn how a character grows and changes (internal) as a result of the story events (external), but there’s another component—connections with other characters. Unless your story is about someone stranded on a desert island and they only have a volleyball for company, your characters will be navigating their relationships with others. What are those relationships like? Fraught? Supportive? Inspirational? But I really want you to zero in on power. Who has the power in a relationship? How is that power shifting?
The type of interactions your characters have can impact how they respond to external pressure and affect how they address their own (mis)beliefs. It can also impact if the reader responds with empathy or irritation or dislike.
In You, Again by Kate Goldbeck, Ari and Josh’s relationship moves through phases from co-dependent to estrangement to acceptance.
Think about the relationship dynamics at play in your story. Is your protagonist trying to distance themselves from someone or becoming closer to someone?
Have you identified these three types of struggles in your main characters? Questions and comments are open to all.
Community Write-Ins
Our nearly daily writing meet ups are a wonderful way to help you meet your writing goals. The Write-In is a Zoom get-together for paying subscribers. We say hello and have a brief chat, then write together in companionable silence for fifty minutes. It’s a small act of writerly solidarity, an opportunity to get to know other writers, and a lovely way to fuel your creative life. I’ve added new dates to our calendar here. Hope to see you soon!
Upcoming Classes
Pitch Perfect: Write a Query Letter That Gets Noticed
February 28, 7-8:30p.m. Eastern (Zoom)
If you’ve written your novel or memoir and now you're ready to wow a literary agent, you know you need to write a killer query letter. But how do you do that?
Writing a great query letter can be challenging and frustrating because it has one purpose, and one purpose only: to get an agent to request your manuscript. This requires you to think about your book in a different way. My workshop will demystify the process of writing a query letter.
In my 90-minute workshop, I'll share...
the five essential elements every query letter should have
the secret to the all-important pitch paragraph
how to distill your 300-page manuscript into 400 words
dos and don'ts for finding comp titles
how to reduce overwhelm and build confidence as you send your work into the world
Best of all, you'll have the opportunity to send me a draft of your query letter for direct one-on-one feedback.
The Art of Backstory
Saturday, March 23, 10:30am - 1:30pm Eastern (Zoom)
Backstory has gotten a bad reputation for good reason: by definition backstory takes your story backward in time, potentially stalling momentum and tension. But your characters have a past and that past affects who they are and what they want.
This workshop will offer tools designed to help you incorporate backstory subtly and effectively, including in-class writing prompts, and will help you learn more about your protagonist’s relationships with other characters and how they inform backstory. By the end, writers will be able to use their characters’ past to provide context to their present, understand their protagonist's internal and external motivation, and increase suspense by using past events to create expectations of future developments.