Before the post–just letting you know–I\u2019ll be reading with other poets at 3:00 pm on April 14th at Byrd\u2019s Books at 126 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel, Connecticut. These won\u2019t be poems for kids, but I\u2019d love to see you there, and there will be time to chat.<\/p>\n
After my post called \u201cMaking It Personal,\u201d on December 21, 2017, Melissa Mead wrote, I\u2019m having the opposite problem. Plenty of personal conflicts, not enough large-scale dramatic action.<\/em><\/p>\n I asked her to explain the problem a little more, and she wrote back, Well, it\u2019s those books I\u2019ve mentioned about Malak, who\u2019s half serpent-demon and half \u201cangel,\u201d basically. The first book\u2019s mostly about his culture shock, and I think it works. But as the story goes on, it really ought to be less in Malak\u2019s head and more about the larger ramifications of a half-demon living in the house of a Ward Minister (kind of like a senator), when the Ward Ministers are the ones who hire demon-hunters to protect humans from the serpent-demons.<\/em><\/p>\n I love getting deep into characters\u2019 heads and writing from there, but I really should have more stuff happening out there in the wide world, too. More \u201cfabulously difficult journey,\u201d as Carley Anne said.<\/em><\/p>\n (Another reason why I love the comments on this blog\u2013that the help we give each other lingers as ongoing support.)<\/p>\n Melissa Mead added, If anybody had ideas on how to work through consequences of having \u201cthe enemy\u201d in your house, and how to balance Big Picture and Little Picture thinking, I\u2019d appreciate it. I\u2019m used to writing short-shorts, with a small cast + small scale.<\/em><\/p>\n The ever-helpful (I mean it!) Christie V Powell offered this: It might help to look at plot types: I like to refer to Christopher Booker\u2019s Seven Basic Plots when I need help with the big picture plot. Overcoming the Monster (defeating a villain) and Quest (seeking and earning a goal) are most focused on big picture. The others are Rags to Riches (small person overcomes obstacles), Voyage and Return (wandering into a strange new world and seeking to get home), Comedy (relationships become tangled until one bit of clarity rights all wrongs), Tragedy (Overcoming the Monster from the monster\u2019s point of view), and Rebirth (the Monster descends into darkness, but turns and is able to become light).<\/em><\/p>\n My WIP right now is being tricky because it\u2019s got three POVs, so technically the big picture is the plot and all three of my main characters are actually subplots. Their families are seeking refuge from persecution, which is the overall story, and their character struggles are second.<\/em><\/p>\n Melissa Mead answered: Hm. I think this falls under Rebirth. At least the first book did\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Back to Christie V Powell: If the first one is rebirth, it seems like now he\u2019s already become good and he needs a new plot. What conflict is he up against? Prejudice\/bigotry (and if so, which character represents it)? Is he turning against his former snake-demon allies and stopping their schemes? Or coming to the rescue of other former friends who might be able to change?<\/em><\/p>\n Melissa Mead: Yes on the first two, There\u2019s an overall arc that I don\u2019t know how to explain without spoilers, except to say that I recently realized that all my books have been about outcasts finding home.<\/em><\/p>\n Jim weighed in: If the first book was a rebirth tale and the MC has been established as a \u201cgood guy\u201d but there is still a lot of personal conflict and mistrusting characters \u201covershadowing\u201d the MC then it seems to me that you\u2019re set up for a \u201crags-to-riches\u201d plot next. How can the MC prove his worth to the larger society? Usually it happens in two stages: first with help (e.g. Aladdin gets the princess with the help of the djinn), and then with the help removed (e.g. The lamp is stolen and Aladdin has to outsmart the magician on his own to get his princess back).<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m more in Melissa Mead\u2019s camp. For me, it\u2019s cozy in my characters\u2019 heads! The pesky, unpredictable world out there is scary! So, sometimes I have to force myself.<\/p>\n In The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre<\/em>, for the first time in any of my books, I had to deal with enormous forces acting against each other: Lakti armies against Kyngoll armies, with a Bamarre rebellion in the mix. I didn\u2019t\u2013and still don\u2019t\u2013know how to write at this scale, at least not through a first-person narrator, and it would probably be the same from a third-person limited POV. I might be able to do it with an omniscient third-person POV. (So there’s a strategy I haven’t used: Write in omniscient third.)<\/p>\n Since I was stuck in first person and didn\u2019t know how to do anything else, I kept the action within the range of my MC, Perry. She views the legions arrayed against her from a tower, but only for a few minutes, and that\u2019s the farthest out I zoom my author\u2019s telescope. There are two battle scenes. In the first one, she\u2019s helping the field doctor. In the second, she\u2019s doing something humanitarian, though I won\u2019t say what and have to issue a spoiler alert.<\/p>\n In the second instance, though, the commander of the Lakti force is right where she is, and her actions ripple through the war and set off outsized consequences.<\/p>\n I do this again and again in the book. Small actions have big effects. So, I\u2019d recommend as an approach to stories that play out on an enormous and daunting scale to keep the focus narrow but influential. When we do this, we can bring to bear our skill at the interpersonal stuff, which doesn\u2019t go away just because the fate of the universe is at stake. Our characters are still themselves, still hampered by their limitations and empowered by their strengths.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the follow-up problem with the narrow focus: how does our MC keep track of what\u2019s going on? In Lost Kingdom<\/em>, Perry has a magical aid that helps her travel quickly, so she can see some of the effects and maintain the momentum. But there are other possibilities, like newspaper or gazettes, messengers, letters. A magic one that crops up sometimes in fairy tales is talking birds. There are other magical or occult possibilities as well, like flying dragons or teleportation or ESP. We just want to make sure that our magical devices don\u2019t make matters too easy for our MC.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take as an example Christy V Powell\u2019s plot archetype of turning against former allies and apply the principle of small actions leading to large consequences. If Malak can prevail over even one snake demon, he\u2019ll come up with methods that can be applied universally to snake-demons. Or this particular snake-demon is an important one, who\u2019s critical to the survival of all the others.<\/p>\n We can start by LISTing the advantages and drawbacks Malak has in this struggle. On the plus side, he knows the way snake-demons plan and operate. He understands better than anyone how ruthless they are. On the down side, they\u2019re individuals to him, with personalities, and he\u2019s recently absorbed empathy. Will he be able to hurt them? If he does, will his new good side be destroyed? If he doesn\u2019t, they will certainly kill him!<\/p>\n The stakes are high.<\/p>\n The setting can be small-scale, too, say the home of a Ward Minister, which will give Malak another advantage if he knows the layout better than his opponent. And a disadvantage, if the Ward Minister\u2019s family, including the adorable three-year-old twins, are present and at risk.<\/p>\n Naturally, this leads to a prompt:<\/p>\n \u2219 Write a battle scene between a half-ogre-half-elf and a whole ogre in the mansion of a knight. The knight and his family can be there, or not. Think about the qualities of each character and the floor plan of the house. Include thoughts and emotions along with the action, but keep dialogue to a minimum. The results of this battle will reverberate through the worlds of elves and ogres.<\/p>\n And here are two more:<\/p>\n \u2219 Your ogre-elf is wounded but on the point of victory when the full ogre gets away from her. Write the pursuit. Think again about the setting and the qualities of your characters, and work in thoughts and feelings.<\/p>\n \u2219 Turn the tables. The full ogre appears unexpectedly, and now he has some new advantage. Your ogre-elf MC has gone from hunter to quarry. Write the chase.<\/p>\n Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before the post–just letting you know–I\u2019ll be reading with other poets at 3:00 pm on April 14th at Byrd\u2019s Books at 126 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel, Connecticut. These won\u2019t be poems for kids, but I\u2019d love to see you there, and there will be time to chat. After my post called \u201cMaking It Personal,\u201d on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[291],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":947,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions\/947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}