Randomness as a personality factor?

Okay, maybe I'm not "that" random, but it's better than saying I have issues. I tell my kids I'm getting on in years and they laugh while they hand me water and try to get me to lie down. I suspect, like everyone else who comes to know me, they realize I'm not just burning the candle at both ends, but frying it in a skillet.

My doctor says that's not good, and throws in things like losing weight, taking blood pressure medicine, cholesterol medicine, more iron and slowing down. lol, like the day isn't short enough already. I've been busy with business and workshops. Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking when I did the first workshop--it's not that I regret it, more like I love it...way too much. I can "see" this huge structure and it kills me that I might not have the time to get all the words out.

I need to post the end of the Running in the Dark series so I can archive it, but looking back on the workshop content, the last day's misc posting style doesn't work on a blog. Lee, from Ironhorse Formatting gave me a way to break down a power point, and I might do that, because I'm accumulating a lot of powerpoints. But video is calling again, and I think I've come a long way since my first set (and I'm much better at explaining).

Stop snowing already!

Snow is falling. Not that big a deal, really. Just that snow falling in Seattle is a huge event on a line with a major cataclysm because there's never enough de-icer to go around, the snow plows really don't work and everybody running into each other is just brushed off as "many minor accidents." Seriously? Destroying someone's transportation is not minor. *sigh*

It wasn't so bad last night. Fat fluffy flakes drifting downward, making the bridges bad. Nothing (despite the ever present rain) had frozen until I got to the outskirts of town. Sometimes I think there's a wall around this place because the minute I drove over the rumble strips announcing you'd better slow down or risk ticket by speed trap, the roads glittered like diamonds. Beautiful at midnight like nothing else. And slick. Like driving on a sheet of gorgeous glass.

All the gigantic two story high, uber big-wheeled trucks and little beater cars were spinning out like tops. And snow is still coming down, outside my window--falling sideways, which is what snow and rain does here in the Cascade lowlands.

The agency I work for won the P&E poll, not that we do bad work (since of course, I'm prejudiced and think we rock), but it's definitely filling up my schedule. Growing pains I guess. Laura always wanted a company in the same way I wanted to talk craft and we're lucky that we complement each other. Number two for many years, and number one this year. No place else to go since we can't get better than the best, lol.

My workshops are filling up to the point where I'm just starting to black them out. Not in the half serious way I'd black them out before, but in the takes a lot of time kind of way that puts me behind in everything else I'm working on--not that I'd give them up. I've already proven I come down on the side of my workshops before just about anything except my kids. Guess they're my passion.

Damn snow. The flakes are getting bigger and starting to stick. My car looks like a snowball and my scraper is in the trunk. I know nobody cleans the side streets but I'm starting to hearing distressing spinning noises in the distance where the major thoroughfare goes through the middle of town. And we have four more days to go.

A serious case of the warm-fuzzies

Thank you to whoever voted to put me on the P&E poll, and whoever left the comment that I was an undiscovered gem. You made me blush right down to the toenails and gave me a case of the happys--it's not winning, it's just that I'm there.

((hugs))

Running in the Dark: Organic Structure for Character-driven stories Part 3 (creating story events)

GMC is Goal, Motivation and Conflict. There are many books and workshops on variations of GMC and how to use it. What do they want? 2) Why do they want it? 3) And why can't they have it? Dwight Swain did something similar in Techniques of the Selling Writer, but called it motivation-reaction units. 1) What causes something to happen? 2) What happens in reaction to that stimulus? In his ground-breaking structural work, Story, McKee talks about how turning points spin the story and increase momentum.

Each technique is a valid way to look at plot. In a plot-driven story, event B is always caused by event A. So GMC is pretty much A>B>C>A>B>C, Motivation-reaction units are A>B>A>B and Turning Points are A>B>C>XX>A>B>C>XX2. Plots tend to be linear and look a little like algebra.

In other words—most plots are based on purely logical progression and can be separated from character, because the events happen in an easily visible way that make sense to an outside observer.

Now let’s throw some character into that. Character is a process of becoming. It changes according to who is looking at the character, when and why. And changes again--internally and externally--when new core events form over old ones. An emphasis on plot without understanding the way character works produces characters that flow out of plot instead of plots that flow out of character. Which makes it hard to write organically because while the under-structure is logical, that logic is the result of many plot threads coming together that don't always appear logical on the outside, even though they’re true to your character's internal logic.

It's contingent causation. The accumulated effect of many things to produce a desired result.

There are two kinds of causation. Logical and contingent/intuitive.

Let’s take a look at logical progression before we move on to contingent/intuitive.

In a straight-line plot where characters are created to fill the needs of the plot--let’s make up a simple plot to use as an example? A drives B.

Johnny wants a dog.(A) He asks his mother, who says he has to earn money to buy a dog. He does,(B) and she gets him a dog.

This is the kind of plot that would come to you full-formed, or as something you’d like to do. “I want to write a story about a boy who wants a dog, what he does to get the dog, and his HEA.” The plot needs a boy, and whether that boy is the kid next door, or a street kid, what matters overall is that he’s a kid.

Logical progression in an organic plot is also a little like algebra, although instead of the more straight forward, A triggers B triggers C, or A triggers B triggers A triggers B, it’s actually…

…where the two characters in your plot intersect, or the primary character touches a story event they create a combination. K (for kid)+ C (for cat)  = (what happens) or X

If you take out the cat and add a dog or ferret, the plot can change and go differently but still make perfect sense. The elements of the story are interchangeable.

Now let’s give the boy a core event and some contingent causation.

He wanted a dog two years ago and asked his dad. His dad said yes and after saving and scrimping to buy a dog, on the way home from the breeder someone broadsides their car. His father is almost torn in half because of the way the car accordions, the boy is thrown clear and the dog is trapped. The car catches on fire and his father and the dog both die.

Let’s also give the mother, a strong secondary character, a core event. And make it the same event to boost the emotional component.

Two years ago, she was a stay at home mom. She had a nice house, a minivan and had just talked her husband (a really nice guy with a good job) into finishing the garage as a family room. When her husband dies, her son goes into the hospital. Insurance pays for his care and the car. But there’s a funeral and bills don’t stop coming. After her son gets out, there’s no money coming in, but she has a kid, a mortgage, a car payment, utility bills, food and gas. The insurance doesn’t last long. Social security kicks in but the boy is almost fourteen. In two years, her child benefits will end. She’s grieving and hurting, and confused, and now her whole life has changed because she has to be strong, find a job that pays enough to support the two of them and she has no skills.

Her son’s character is a circle with ripples coming out of it that were formed by his core event. His desire for a dog killed his father and the dog. His need did “this” to his mother. He is the cause of all their problems.

After two years, what he wants more than anything is to go back in time and fix things. He wants a dog. This time, he’ll save it, and it’ll live and thrive and things will be alright again.

---He asks his mom for a dog.

His mom’s character resents the dog. It was the dog that killed her husband and changed their life. She’s about to lose the house, they can’t live on what she makes, and it’s all because of this “dog”. Her husband went to get a dog, and he died. She loved him, and now he’s gone. He abandoned her for a dog.

When her son asks for a dog, it touches her on one of the outer ripples of her character. Depending on where--and let’s say the ring spins and the part facing her son right now is “G”, the part of her that’s tired and resentful after a long day at work, knows better, but can’t stop feeling sorry for herself—-it’s going to intersect with what her son is facing her with. And let’s call that part of his ripple, “A”. The part of him that is desperate to fix things through re-living events the way they should have gone.

So the intersection of two characters create a situation where the mom’s tired, resentful, self-pity collides with the kid’s desperation to fix things through making everything right again. Pieces of the core event “near” the intersection also have a bearing on the event in a lesser way. If it's the mom’s anger that her husband left her, it might translate into fear a dog will cause her son to die. If it's the son’s guilt over wanting a dog in the first place, it might translate into anger that his mother is trying to stop him from fixing things.

It’s still recognizable as the original plot. Boy wants dog. But colliding core events have now “created” a story event, AND fleshed it out with emotions and secondary emotions.

The intersection of two characters with core events, creates organic plot.

Next: More on contingent causation and three dimensional thinking

Running in the Dark: Organic Structure for Character-driven stories Part 2 (core events as part of the transformational arc)

I'm always doing a lot of work on core events, the transformational character arc and a bunch of misc. stuff and things that I really think fit into this workshop, and the great thing is that it makes the big puzzle I’m assembling come into focus. If you read my blog, this is part of my post on conscious and subconscious motivation--tweaked for the workshop--which is just another way of describing a layered core event.

As part of retiring this workshop (and putting everything in one spot) I want to keep it with the rest of organic structure so I'm not cutting it out and putting in a link, because I don't see a point to messing up the flow. Core events, like everything that happens in life, have layers and implications. People are people, even if they’re created by someone else—and prefer to think about things that don’t emotionally hurt them. If Mercedes left the front door unlocked, there’s no way she’s going to think, “Oh my God! It’s all my fault,” when there’s a perfectly useful villain around, “It’s all his fault. All the state’s fault. If they hadn’t released the villain from jail…”

Her conscious thoughts and drive would focus on rescuing her sisters because she’s their protector. They love her and she loves them.

Her unconscious motivation would be the sneaking suspicion that she forgot to lock the front door and a huge, horrible load of guilt. She wants to fix things and make them right, something that can also halfway sync into her conscious motivation because she really “does” want to rescue her sisters. The thing is, subconsciously, she’s not just looking for her sisters, she’s looking for redemption because of something “she” did, because of self-hate.

Conscious and Subconscious Motivation in a Core Event

In one of your blog posts you said something about making the character's external goal a symbol of their inner motivation (inner need) In the example you posted, you had a boy fighting for a cat (his external goal) because to him this cat represented the feeling of self-worth he got from his grandmother (who had a cat.)

love this post. One of my favorites.

I love the idea of linking the characters external goal and inner need, and using that need to drive not just the external goal, but all the character's decisions actions. But in some romance novels the character's external goal seems to take them right away from fulfilling their inner need eg the hero's unconscious inner need is for a close loving family, but his external goal is to take a job travelling from place to place and avoiding all emotional entanglements.
I can't work out what is driving the character in a case like this. (apart from fear ) The character's core need is a loving family . (He won't admit it and doesn't even realise it, but this is the only thing that will make him truly happy) but he's acting as if his need is escape.

This is actually two questions, one that deals with layering the transformational arc and another that deals with core events.

What do we know about this guy? (let's call him John)

*John needs a loving family to make him happy.
*But what John really wants and is actively pursuing is a wandering-man kind of job where he can keep all his emotional entanglements shallow.

Lots of people know what’ll make them happy so why does John have this disconnect?

Depending on the sub-genre, and the kind of person John is, it can be all kinds of things so...let’s say this is a straight-up contemporary and give him some background. John grew up with a loving, wonderful family. His mom and dad finally took off last year RVing around the country. He has a brother named Cal, a great sister-in-law and a niece who just turned eight. He's well adjusted, stable and ten years into a job at the hospital where he’s an anesthesiologist--rock-solid, right up until the day he decides to go winter camping with his brother and sister-in-law.

Because of a faulty GPS they end up in a ditch. Cal and his wife die in screaming agony while their little girl and John are trapped—unable to do anything but watch. By the time they’re found, the kid is all but catatonic. John’s parents can’t cope with Cal’s death, and there’s this girl—once the apple of their eye—who just sits there.

John is carrying huge survivor’s guilt—not helped by the fact his mom blames him for Cal’s death. If you’d been the one driving, if you’d pointed out the road, if you’d been able to tear free and get everyone out of the car…Never mind he was trapped in the wreckage.

Flash forward eight months. His mom and dad put the kid in a nursing home, leave for Arizona, and John has issues. His parents can’t stand the sight of him, he’s in serious emotional pain and he’s got crippling guilt. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s that he should have died instead of Cal.

…in some romance novels the character's external goal seems to take them right away from fulfilling their inner need eg the hero's unconscious inner need is for a close loving family, but his external goal is to take a job travelling from place to place and avoiding all emotional entanglements.

John “wants” to run, can you doubt it? His parents hate him, his niece is a visible reminder of his failure, his beloved brother is gone—and it’s all his fault. He’s in pain. And when people are hurting, they try to avoid the source of that pain—which in John’s case is his family.

I can't work out what is driving the character in a case like this. (apart from fear ) The character's core need is a loving family . (He won't admit it and doesn't even realise it, but this is the only thing that will make him truly happy) but he's acting as if his need is escape.

He’s afraid to love, because love got him into this mess. No one can hurt you like a loved one. John loved his brother, but Cal died, he loved his mom and she rejected him. His niece is catatonic and with every passing day, John slips deeper into a downward spiral.

He doesn’t “want” a family, what he really wants is to get the hell out of Dodge.

People are enormously complex and have lots of motivations, many of which go back to a trigger or core event. If Cal hadn’t died, there would be no story—if John’s mom hadn’t done an Ordinary People on him, John wouldn’t be so messed up.

Deep down, John needs someone—a family or just the heroine—to accept him and give him the space to heal. It wasn’t his fault, but when the people who say they love you turn their backs on you, you don’t think logically. Right now John equates love with betrayal. He’s afraid of opening himself up to love because he’s in pain, angry at being betrayed by his parents, angry at himself for not being able to help his brother. Angry because he knows there was nothing he could do and guilty because deep down he knows he should have been able to do something. He’s not just running from the situation, he’s running from himself.

By the end of the story he'll realise what he needs to make him happy, but in planning my story do I make him motivated by escape -- or by family (his true need) ? Or maybe I should have him driven by escape until the midpoint, but then he begins to veer towards his true need (a loving family. )

It’s not that easy, and that’s the trouble with character-driven stories. They’re hard to plot because motivation isn’t always linear. John has issues only he can take care of. So it’s probably better to say his motivations are in a process of push and pull.

Internal conflict. Although the trouble with internal conflict is that it’s often subconscious. The John Cal's death has turned him into versus the John who can accept love and become the person he was meant to be.

Which means this…

…the idea of linking the characters external goal and inner need, and using that need to drive not just the external goal, but all the character's decisions actions.

...needs to be more complex.

The kid and his cat are a fairly simple way to link external goal and inner needs, because the kid has a single motivation and there are only two layers. The kid’s external goal—getting a cat, and his inner need—the self-worth represented by the cat.

Just like the kid, John’s external goal and inner need are in sync. He wants to get away because he wants to stop the pain. Everything he does flows out of that. But he also has stuff going on that he doesn’t know about—a subconscious need for love and family complicated by the fallout of his issues, which is cool because you want your people to be multi-dimensional but the trouble is—how to show it?

By giving him a goal that represents his subconscious need.

Think one layer down. Not something that represents his inner need—which is to stop the pain, but his subconscious need, which is for love and family.

In short, he needs his niece to get better.

Remember her? In a coma, totally unresponsive—locked away by the people who should have loved her? John loves her too, and visits every week. He can’t do anything for her—but he desperately “wants” her to get better.

She’s the symbol of everything he lost and everything he can gain. Her recovery is a visible manifestation of his transformational arc. And that’s what this question was all about—how to show John’s arc.

John was never motivated to actively seek a loving family, because through the entire book his motivation was always to get away. It’s through the process of coming to know and care for that family (or heroine) that he changes enough to start the healing process, accept and return love--and at that point, the end of the book, his motivation finally changes to actively pursuing his subconscious need because it's no longer subconscious.

When pt. A on the character arc is your character’s core event

You already “know” character arcs. You see them all around you—in stories, in movies, in everyday life.

There are upward driving arcs, downward driving arcs and static characters.

• People change through positive steps—on a macro-level, because the nitty-gritty of a story can include negative stuff.
• People change through negative, self-destructive steps.
• Or they don’t change at all for the duration of the story.

Everything more specific is a variation.

When you know the beginning truth of a character and his or her end state, you pretty much know what needs to happen in the story itself. In other words, need dictates shape. You can’t show change if the right story events aren’t there, regardless of whether those events happen in the first half so your person can change in order to do something, or come slowly, so the resolution of that change is the climactic moment.

I know that sounds pretty pat—so what I’d like you to do is think about your protagonist, or the person in your story with the biggest, most visible arc. Let’s call him John.

Back when I first started writing my characters sprang full-blown from my brain and jumped on the page. I’d start writing and little by little, John would start warping—a little this way, a little that. Then everything would go flat, and it’d be me pushing this guy around telling him to do stuff because the story needed him to be a certain way at a certain time.

Every story has a starting point. And for those people who’ve taken my core events workshop, or seen my videos—this next part will sound a little familiar, because Pt. A—for the purposes of a transformational arc is your character’s core event. The psychological reason your character reacts, consciously or subconsciously to story events in a given way. In other words, it’s your character’s truth for that particular story.

The reason John would go flat was because I didn’t know him.

I simply said, “He’s got issues,” without stopping to think what his issues were, where they came from and how they drove his arc. Knowing a core event or your character’s pt. A keeps your protagonist on track.

Suppose I say John has issues, but what I really mean is John is a “dark and dangerous” type. Good for rescuing fair maidens, Special Forces/SEAL stories, and regency rakes.

His arc is to change from being a dark and dangerous type into being a loving open person, capable of connecting with the heroine—which isn’t very specific. Instead of giving John a pt. A, I gave him a type.

Or, maybe I said John’s issue is that he’s closed off and doesn’t trust women. And I want him to open up and become a loving person capable of connecting with the heroine. Which is better, but I still have no particulars. I can “see” John, all dark and dangerous, closed off and untrusting, and I’m guessing his motivation is whatever I need to have happen in the plot.

Maybe it’s a historical regency and John wants to save his ancestral home—the one gambled away by his father. He goes off to India to make his fortune and returns only to find the man who won the property sold it to a woman (the heroine) who wants to use it as an orphanage.

Now I paste in:

His arc is to change from being a dark and dangerous type into being a loving open person, capable of connecting with the heroine.

And add:

he’s closed off and doesn’t trust women

This is what I know about John and assume to be the starting point on his arc—that and the fact that somewhere between what I know and the end of the book John changes from what I know, into a loving, open person capable of connecting with the heroine.

In other words, there’s a big gray foggy area where the arc should be. Percentiles and turning points don’t matter. What really matters is that I have no clue how to get John to the end of the story, although I might have a couple of scenes I want to use—a big scintillating ballroom scene, a John’s dad living with poor relations so John can “rescue” him scene, and a scene where John watches the heroine taking an ill child beggar from the streets back to his old family home where the kid recovers and turns into the requisite cute-kid complete with dog and lisp. 

With the other stuff I know about craft of writing, maybe I want to start with the action and have John find out about the sale of his home (in recent backstory) and have John rush to confront the heroine, only to see her…

…rescue an ill child beggar from the streets and take him back to John’s old family home where the kid recovers and turns into the requisite cute-kid complete with dog and lisp.

That’s good, right?

John’s a closed off jerk. He watches the heroine do something guaranteed to soften him a little because everyone loves little kids. He confronts the heroine, they argue, he feels something for her and starts/wants to change.

Which don’t get me wrong—does work, it’s simply stronger if pt. A drives a strong transformational arc.

Which means once you know what’s going on with John you need to ask “why?” Why is John closed-off and why doesn’t he trust women?

Maybe John’s dad really loved his mother, but she had only married him because he was rich. And one day, after cuckolding her husband for years, she left with a Frenchman.

Which leads to the question; how can this one event drive the entire character arc/story?

Because this one moment in time—the day John’s mom left—was the day John “knew” women weren’t to be trusted and closed himself off.

Like most kids, John loved his mom and got some kind of affection in return. He also got to watch his mom betray his dad, over and over again—which as a kid probably didn’t bother him since it was his norm. It’s only as he grows older that he begins to wonder, and then—his mom leaves with a hot French guy.

As an only child he’s invested in his mom—maybe his dad isn’t the most touchie-feelie man in the world—and when she leaves, it’s a betrayal and rejection. That sense of betrayal, loss and rejection, coupled with the knowledge he has about his mom crystallizes in one white-hot moment and locks into place.

Women “will” betray you. Women aren’t to be trusted. Opening yourself up to someone means opening yourself up to pain.

It’s John’s pt. A

It doesn’t happen in the story (in real-time, although it can in flashbacks because it's backstory)  and he’s probably repressing it big-time, but the fallout from that one particular event still drives him.

There are so many implications, and probabilities, and attitudes surrounding it, it’s like a comet collecting a debris field.

John’s dad really loved his wife and was devastated. He started gambling.

John refuses all the women his dad pushes at him, because women aren’t to be trusted.

The heroine (let’s call her Jane) is half-French, and John hates the French because his mom left with a Frenchman.

John suspects Jane is after his money, because his mom used his dad.

He’s not going to be feeling a whole lot of “something” toward Jane right off the bat because of his issues.

Which means to get from pt. A to pt. B, John has to realize not all women are like his mother, get over his hatred of the French and trust Jane not to use him—a much more John-specific goal for his arc.

Do you see your protagonist’s core event? What is it? Is it layered, or the beginning of a visible arc? Can you see the end of the arc, or the implications flowing from a core event that turn into story drivers?

Running in the Dark: organic structure for character-driven stories

It's been awhile since I wrote this--which, lol, I thought was the hottest thing going since sliced bread. Nowadays, I kind of look at it as old-school, but it's also an important part of organic structure. 

Core events. Point A on the transformational character arc. The lens for exploring and focus in your story, and probably stuff that I haven't thought of yet. I use it for just about everything, including figuring out how people tick, deconstructing stories, and getting things back on track.

---

Some people think “organic writing” is another word for pantsing. Other people think it simply means growing your story. Structure is important, but there are many kinds of structure and one size doesn’t fit all.

Organic writing > writing from inside your characters.

Organic writing > writing from inside your characters > character-driven stories. In organic writing, characters drive stories. Although to be fair, this can also work for purely plot-driven stories too. The needs of a plot drive stories in an organic way, so in some ways, it might also be called “structure for pantsers” or “pantsing for plotters”. And to understand that, let’s talk about what character-driven “isn’t."

In a story driven primarily by plot, characters are interchangeable, and I’m not trying to say plot-driven stories are bad, simply that they’re “different” from character-driven stories because of the focus. Archetypes work well in plot-driven stories because they're a listing of character traits that tend to go together, sort of like if I said, "I'm a mom" rather than, "I'm a chubby middle-aged birdwatcher with a fixation on church steeples and pickled carrots." General versus specific.

Organic writing, and I’m using the term to mean “character-driven organic writing” for this workshop, is specific to your characters. Characters and plot in organic structure can't be taken out and used somewhere else because "those" characters produce "this" plot.

If I take John, my multipurpose example-guy, out of his story, there's no way I can replace him with someone else, because if I do the story changes. A well-thought out, multi-dimensional character in a character-driven story can't be removed without damage.

In a plot-driven story, the story events drive the characters--so if I remove John and insert Rob, a twenty year old with acne and a brand new truck, his "Rob-ness" doesn't matter. What does matter is the "weight" of the plot. To carry Rob, the plot would have to override personal details.

For an example, let’s talk about First Blood and the Rambo series.

First Blood, for those who haven’t seen it, is the first Rambo movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Blood

Loosely based on the David Morrell book of the same name, it’s the psychological study of a Vietnam vet.

In the movie, Rambo is a drifter. Everything that happens in First Blood builds on both his backstory and who he is because of that backstory. When he heads up into the mountains and does his whole poncho-survivalist thing, it's understandable because he was Special Forces.

All actions are based on who he is, what he did, what he became, and what's happening to him because of that. Because he was Special Forces he did "this", which produced that reaction, which was triggered by something in his past. Circles in circles, unlike the more linear structure of a plot.

Organic structure is a bull’s-eye of concentric rings, each spreading out like ripples from a central character. An organic plot happens when the rings of one character hit the rings of another character. brief note here--

this was my first workshop, is still my favorite, and something I'm constantly evolving. For most purposes, this is still a good analogy.

While the first Rambo movie is character-driven, the later "Rambo" movies are plot-driven. Although Rambo is still at the center of each movie, he could easily be replaced by Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal.

…keeping that in mind…

---A little bit about psychology, the environment your characters grew up in and how to use core events to create the people you want, or understand the people you already have.

People live in context, and are a result of the choices they've made, the way they grew up and what they've done with their lives. In other words, people are "me-centric". We have our own point of view and the world exists--for us--through our point of view.

Ie.

The only-child-college-kid in an upper middle class household might view the world as her oyster. Daddy bought her a Miata for high school graduation, she's going to University, has good clothes and great health--her teeth are white and straight, she's got a nice haircut, and for spring break she's touring Greece (taking it as a given she's well-adjusted).

"I love life!” she tells people. “Life has always been good to me. I have no worries and my swim team is going to London this summer."

But if you take that same nineteen year old and put her in different context, the world changes because her focus shifts. 

This kid grew up in a single parent working class household; she shares her room with two sisters. They have bunk beds and she has a twin. Her grades were bad because she worked the night shift at McDonald's to help her mom out, and she's tired all the time. Sometimes she thinks of going to community college, but somehow she fell through the cracks.

"I wish I'd never been born. My mom works all the time, and I'm tired of taking care of my sisters. People laugh at me because my teeth are crooked and I work at McDonald's. The first thing I'm going to do when I win the lottery is get braces."

The same sun rises in the same sky when each kid gets out of bed, but for one kid, each day has unlimited potential. She gets up, thinks about eating and decides against it because she's trying to stay a size 3. The other kid pulls her uniform from the shower rod, makes a face because it smells like mildew and decides against eating because if she does, there won’t be enough for her sisters.

They were both born with the same basic equipment in the same way each character starts out as a blank page, but the girl touring the Greek Islands isn't the girl getting written up for a dirty uniform. The choices you make about "who" your character is influence "how" they act.

Did you think the rich kid buys lottery tickets? A million dollars doesn't buy much. But the kid with one discretionary dollar knows a million dollars isn't “just” a million dollars--it's toys for her sisters, a car for her mom, an end to baby-sitting and a kind of freedom the other kid doesn't know she has.

Knowing your character's social status in relation to the world they inhabit is a necessity.

It's the most important of the character building blocks because from social background you also get physical and emotional building blocks. Each block leans against the other.

The physical appearance of your character is a combination of genetics and life-choices, both of your character and his/her parents. Let's go back to Mercedes. Mercedes is the poor kid who works at McDonalds. 

She grew up poor, which brings us to her appearance--maybe she slouches and gives people angry sidelong looks. Maybe she has acne from a greasy diet and burns from cleaning the fryers. Her hands are rough and her nails are broken. Maybe she wears Medicaid glasses, the big ones with the large plastic frames, and her cousin Stefani’s hand-me-down clothes, too big or too small.

Back before she was born, her parents were poor and I’m not going to get into a far-reaching discussion of genetics, it’s enough to say her mom was a teenager when Mercedes was born and Mercedes’ dad wanted nothing to do with a baby and couldn’t pay child support.

Mercedes could have tried to escape by joining a gang or trying to sleep her way out, but I want “this” Mercedes, the one who works at McDonalds. To get that Mercedes I need to “see” her core events. What made this girl the person she is now?

Something has to hold her at McDonalds and because she’s going to be my heroine, I’m going to make her sisters nine year-old twins. She loves those little girls and because she loves them, she’ll do anything she can to make sure they have enough to eat and things to wear. If she was a secondary and just had a minor role, I might have used an alcoholic mother to point up what a nice person Mercedes is under her worker-drone exterior, but since she’s my heroine, I want to layer in her anger and give her depth.

So I’ll make her mom a good woman, trying to survive in a bad situation. Her skills aren’t valuable, her rent is barely covered by section 8 and she has food stamps which she’ll lose if her income goes over a certain amount.

Mercedes isn’t stupid. She knows her mother is trying. She watches her mom every day, tired and worn-out just like Mercedes. It feels wrong to hate her mother, but Mercedes, like a lot of people, can’t shut down her anger and resentment.

---now let’s flesh her core story event.

And in this instant we can work our story backward or forward. By that I mean, “What do you want Mercedes to do in this particular story?” or “Would you rather create Mercedes first and then figure out what she’s going to do?”

Both are legitimate ways to get to the same point.

Say this story is purely character driven in that I don’t know what’s going to happen. I want to wait and see.

And if there’s one thing I want you to take away from this class, it’s that you can’t create a real person. No one can. Real people are like an Old Masters painting. In our stories, we create Impressionist paintings of people. We draw them in pieces using the important parts, so when you step back, you see the whole. In an Old Master, no matter if you’re close or far, an eye looks like an eye.

In an Impressionist painting, if you get up real close, an eye is a series of small brush-strokes that look like a collage. When you step away and look at it from a distance, it looks like an eye. For some stories or in secondary characters, line drawings work because although not everything is there, the whole is recognizable and we need less of them.

Let’s say in this story I plan on kidnapping Mercedes sisters since that would hurt her most. Mercedes has to have a core event that A) focuses on her sisters and B) will not let her back down short of death.

---quick point?

Core events are backstory. One focal point where everything crystallizes. While you can (if you want) show them in flashback, or refer to them, they’re like the green beans in a casserole. They need to be there for the dish to be “green bean” casserole, but you pretty much just see the fried onions and mushroom soup—the signature of a green bean casserole.

If you spoon into a green bean casserole, you’re going to see green beans. Every spoonful of casserole has green beans and echoes of the core event in it, mixed in with the soup and fried onions in the same way that your character--who they are, what they are, and because of that, what they’ll potentially do--is an integral part of your story. By itself, a green bean is just a green bean, but “together” with other ingredients, it becomes a casserole-person. You don’t need to show a core event for it to be the driving force behind your story. You just need to know it’s there, and it’ll reveal itself as you write.

And you can simply say, “I’m going to kidnap Mercedes sisters and she’s going after them.” And maybe get, “well, she’s also poor” and “I want her to have acne.”

But thinking Mercedes through makes each layer of her character interconnect. She’s poor, she’ll dress like this. She eats a lot of fast food, she’ll have greasy hair. She has acne on her forehead because of her hair, her mother makes her angry, but she can’t do anything about it, so her facial expression is like “this” a little sour. So when you get stuck, say—maybe you have her riding in the car with the hero and he glances over at her, description, conversation and situation are all laid out.

Ie?

He’s driving along, glances over at Mercedes. Her greasy lank hair falls in her eyes, hard to see behind the horrible windshield-style glasses. (Description of her physical person)

 

Her arms are folded and locked across her chest (let’s throw some body language in there) and she’s putting off anger like a perfume. (Emotional state)

Because anger usually responds to anger (and knowing her background) he says, “This isn’t McDonalds and you can’t get your sisters out of dry storage.”

She gives him an angry, sidelong look (because I’ve already established that as one of her mannerisms based on how she feels about her life situation) and says, “I know.”

Because based on her background, method of earning money (a solitary job versus a social job) and decision to be there for her little sisters, she probably has little social life, or skills, so it’s highly unlikely she’s going to go off into a beautiful monologue or engage the hero in idle chit-chat.

So let’s do her core event. The day everything she felt for her sister crystallized in one hot, shining instant.

---when Mercedes was thirteen and her sisters were four, her mom was working. Mercedes was watching her little sisters. Angry because she didn’t “want” little sisters, she hasn’t been a good big sister. She puts them to bed and falls asleep on the living room sofa. BUT, she’s also been experimenting with cigarettes and falls asleep with a lit cigarette. The sofa catches on fire and her sisters wake up at the smell of smoke. They race to wake her up. They get out, but the house burns. They made the conscious decision to wake her up because she was important to them. Unfortunately, their tabby cat, precious stuffed animals and blankies burn.

Her realization that her sisters sacrificed what they loved to save her—who they also loved, changed Mercedes. That one crystal pure instant--visuals, emotions, smells, sounds, everything, all at once, that locks into place is called "flashbulb memory."

Mercedes got a close up, firsthand look at love (when her sisters stumbled through the smoke and fire to save her) and pain (because by then the house was burning and she couldn’t go back in to save their cat and animals) and the consequences of her actions.

Out of this one core event, Mercedes develops the determination to save her little sisters from pain, a hugely developed sense of responsibility and let’s herself admit she loves them in return. To further develop the story, I can also make her terrified of fire and have a hard time sleeping unless she checks the house to make sure there are no fire hazards and everyone is safe. Some core events have more impact because of flashbulb memory. Flashbulb memory creates a stronger impact in a shorter time. 

Does your protagonist have a core event? What is it, and how does it drive your story?

It's been a long while between writing posts

Over the last eight years, as I've been learning to write--not that I hadn't written, just that I wasn't very good at it--and working through personal issues, what really bothers me is coming up against the limits of what I can and can't do. I read this phrase once, "sheer, unsupported will" and it's stuck with me, since it pretty much describes everything I do. I don't sleep, I eat too much, snarf down fatty foods and salt, drink too much caffeine, work too hard, ignore my circadian rhythms, ignore everything I don't want to think about in regards to my health, and usually have a mullet, since I hate wasting the time it takes to get a haircut. I've been a little sick recently--okay, a lot sick. Lingering on and off, coming back when I don't want it to. My doctor wanted to send me to emergency since I have crazy blood pressure--a legacy of growing up in Hawaii and moving to the South.  The thing is--the blood pressure meds I've looked at have side effects and I have this compulsive need to read the warnings. Causes dizziness, impaired motor function, drowsiness, might cause impaired mental functions, will cause tiredness, and the blahs, and...

...don't drive, operate machinery, expect to do anything, or think, lol.

It's a life-long commitment. It's not a one pill will cure everything kind of deal. And I just couldn't deal with it. I don't want to be a tired, rundown, mentally lacking person with impaired motor function and...my God! What would I do?

I never thought I'd get into homeopathic stuff, but yeah--even I'll acknowledge that I'm tighter than a cork in a bottle. I'm walking more, eating less, cutting back (slowly) on the salt and meditating. I like qigong, but it's fighting an even odds battle with my type A personality. Anything to stay away from pills.

I've been on again and off again since August, and recently started getting a grip (fewer headaches). The last workshop probably had a lot to do with it. Maybe why I never noticed until two weeks ago that I've been writing non-fiction like I'm on a deadline, but I haven't archived anything on my blog in months.

I did 35 pages and three powerpoints two weeks ago, and I like to think that's pretty good for five days.

I'm getting ready to retire organic structure and I want to archive it on my blog. An impromptu workshop? lol. If you feel the urge, drop in and out, maybe we can talk about how Mercedes has grown from my earlier posts on organic structure. Do a little bit on core events. Maybe talk about the arc and plot points.