The Big C - Change!

The Big C is the single most important element in writing and I can't believe I haven't written a blog post about it before.  I believe that one of the reasons we read is to hear how other people handle change in their lives - change of circumstances, change of location, change of relationships, change of lifestyle, change of knowledge.  It doesn't matter what is happening in the story, so long as there is CHANGE.  

In one of the comments a few days ago, womagwriter wrote of an exercise that she'd been set in class.  The class wrote about their characters sitting round a table having a meal, then after 10 minutes of writing the teacher said that the phone had rung/a letter had arrived with bad news, and they had to continue writing the scene.  

In other words, there was a status quo, a change, followed by a period of adjustment, then a new status quo.  

Readers want to read about the period of change.  If a character works for 40 years at the same company then retires, we would choose to read about the character's adjustment from a world of work to a world of leisure.  We wouldn't want to read about the 40 years of working.

Alternatively, if the character was sacked after 30 years of working at the same company, we'd want to read about the dismissal and how the character reacted.  The preceding years of work would be of little interest.  

The reason is, we want to know how the character reacts to that moment of change.  In real life we have to deal with change, although we don't like it much - look at people like me, who are being dragged into the C21st by changes in the technology squeaking feebly that it's all happening too fast.  Think of the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times".  As human beings we don't like change - we want our relationships to stay the same, our children to go steadily through school without too many visits to see the head teacher, our jobs to remain secure.  

When you're writing, at the back of your mind you need to be thinking about change.  A short story is usually about one moment of change, a novel will be about many.  But it's change that fuels the story telling and as writers we must find the change for our characters.

Problem Scenes

I've been struggling with a scene recently.  Writing it was awful; I sighed and huffed and puffed and thought about other careers I could do and was it too late to train as a brain surgeon or something.  In the end I followed my own advice and jumped to the next scene.

Oh, what a difference.  Suddenly the little birds sang in the trees and the sun shone through the window and my fingers flew across the keyboard.  Writing was easy!  Writing was the best job in the world!  Yippee!

Afterwards I thought about it.  Why had there been such a difference?  

My problem was, there wasn't a problem.  By which I mean, the viewpoint character didn't have a problem to solve.  Scenes normally flow between action and reaction scenes, and this was a reaction scene, but there was nothing else.  All the viewpoint character was doing was thinking about what had happened in the past.  There was nothing that moved the scene on.  

So, what should I have added?  The magic word here is change.  Something had to change.  It doesn't have to be big.  The character could have been given a piece of information and had to change as a result - whether it was her global world view or what she was doing on Saturday night was irrelevant.  Without change we don't move forwards, and writing is about moving forwards.  

NEW!!! I've finally got round to organising some course dates....

How to WRITE a Novel: London 3rd May/Birmingham 7th May/

Exeter 21st May

How to SELL a Novel: London 24th May/Exeter 4th June/

Bath 3rd July Details are on my website

Perfect Days...2

We can go all technical about change and write it down like this.

Character is in an emotional state or a particular situation (the status quo)

They go through some story development ie a period of transition

There is a moment of realisation (James Joyce called this moment Epiphany)

The character is now in a new emotional state or situation (a new status quo)

This process of change drives story telling. In a short story you'd probably only have one 'change'; in a novel you would have many. But the basic mechanism is the same.

So, the perfect day I described yesterday is stuck in transition and never moves on. Which was good for me in real life, but would have made a very dull short story.

Perfect Days...1

Recently I was telling a friend about a wonderful day I had. Everything fell into place - an exhibition was wonderful, a parking space emerged just at the right moment, the film was great, a table was free at the restaurant we wanted because someone who'd booked hadn't turned up. It was a perfect day. 'You ought to write it up as a short story,' the friend said.

Which of course explains why I'm a writer and my friend isn't.

Because who in the world wants to read about someone else's great day? We want to read about a great day that goes wrong. Or a bad day that turns out to have been perfect because something so marvellous happens at the end, it makes all the bad stuff worth while.

It's about change. You start out in one state - happy, sad, jealous, anxious, whatever - and end up in a different place. It's a perfect day so it has to go wrong. It's a bad day, so it has to end up perfect. You go from A to B. The non-stop perfect day is like going from A to A.

But that's fiction, of course. In real life, my perfect day was A all the way, and very enjoyable it was too.

The Saggy Middle

After Writer's Bottom, one's thoughts lead inexorably to the saggy middle, although this time I'm referring to the novel.  Most people have an energy and impetus that propels them through beginning a novel.  Their characters intermingle, act and react.  All is well.  Scene follows scene, but gradually it all starts to slow down.  Writing becomes harder, and The End seems a very long way away.  The dreaded saggy middle has arrived.  

The doyen of scriptwriting analysis, Syd Field, called the solution to saggy middle 'the pinch'.  It was a scene which turned the story into a new direction.  Terry Pratchett once suggested that all a writer had to do was bring on a naked woman brandishing a flaming sword (which would certainly send my novels into a completely new direction).  Basically, something BIG needs to happen.

But when I say BIG the incident may, in itself, be quite a small action.  It's the repercussions which are large.  For example, half way through the film Gladiator Maximus is told that if he gets to Rome and wins the crowd over, he'll meet the emperor.  Since he'd like to kill the emperor, this gives him the will to survive - and his desire for revenge drives the second half of the film.

Halfway through, Cinderella dances with the prince and they fall in love, without which none of the clock striking or shoe losing would be important.  In many detective stories, it looks as if the mystery is solved when - da dah! half way through something happens that points the finger elsewhere (there's another murder which the No 1 suspect couldn't have done, possibly because the victim is the no 1 suspect).

I can remember laughing aloud when I read the mid-point event in Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler, it was so simple - just a line of dialogue, but it turned everything before up on its head by making the main character realise he'd been looking at life from the wrong angle. So, the solution for a saggy middle is an event which changes direction, and not 100 sit-ups.

Fancy a holiday in France with me? I'm teaching a week long course on Writing Mainstream Fiction at a fab chateau in the South of France in September. More details? Contact Chateau Ventenac.