Important Positive Universal Conflict · 10:27pm May 18th, 2014
We've all found ourselves staring with glazed eyes at the front page mumbling over and over: "Every story has already been written, and I've read them all." Actors find themselves in a similar situation. Sometimes, we rehearse a scene over and over until we're going through by rote, everything is hammered out, and there aren't surprises anymore. We'd seen that scene a thousand times, and it showed.
One cannot go onstage and give a convincing performance like that. People come to plays to see characters playing a scene naturally, and normal humans experience every scene of their life for the first time. On top of that is the issue that if the actors are bored, the audience will be as well. How then do we breathe life back into a scene? As our director/acting professor griped at us over and over: "I know your motivation, but what are you fighting for!?"
Fight. It's a very important word. Boring stories 'motivate' characters. Motivation is the literary technique of making things happen to characters so the author can then justify whatever they want to do with the plot. Robots have motivations. Living characters FIGHT.
Fighting has three components: you know what you want, there is an obstacle you must overcome, and right now overcoming that obstacle is the most important thing you will ever do. The last one is key for engaging the audience. If your goal is not important to you, then you're never going to seek it. As authors, if we don't care, and we can't write as though the characters care, then the reader won't care either.
The trick is to remember that whatever a character comes into the scene to fight for is the most important thing in that person's entire world right now. If there was anything more important, then they would be fighting for that instead. Living characters don't care about your plot. In fact, they don't even know there's a plot at all (Pinkie notwithstanding). They know what they want and they're going to try their hardest to get what they want whenever the opportunity presents itself. If you don't want them to get their way, you'd better be throwing an obstacle in their way. After all, if a character has the chance to do something but doesn't, then they clearly didn't want it in the first place.
But what about passive situations? Rainbow Dash is too lazy to get the TV remote. Fluttershy is too timid to buy cherries at the market. Well, describing things in terms of failure is quitter talk. Don't think in terms of failure, think in terms of action. If the TV remote is important to Rainbow and it's worth a whole scene to describe her not getting it, then you can't afford to focus on laziness. Instead, find where the fight is: Rainbow must grab the TV remote to turn off MLP: Newborn Cuties, but her hoof feels like lead! Fluttershy needs cherries for the animal shelter bakesale, but the shopkeeper is in a scary bad mood! The story is in the struggle, not in the obstacles or end result. To fight and fail is a tragedy. To not fight at all is filler.
Remember the consequences. How is the reader supposed to know something was important if life goes on unchanged after your character's success? What is failure without its sting? Always remember the victory dance or the walk of shame, even if it's pressed into a one line reaction. It's nice that you've ticked the plot checkbox, Mr. Character, but what does victory taste like? Don't be afraid to blow it all out of proportion, either. We spend our whole lives hopping mad at the person who cut us off or the barrista who gave us only 7/8ths of a frappichino, because getting our way mattered in the moment and we didn't get it. To over-react is human. To under-react is death.
Characters fighting with importance will make any story more engaging, but importance alone is not enough. If everyone is fighting not to lose, they all might as well sit down and order tea. You can't fight for a negative. You're helpless until someone comes in and does something you don't want, and if you don't want anything yourself, you're never going to step out and do anything. Nothing is driving the plot forwards or bringing characters together to interact.
A character's action should always be in pursuit of a positive. Do not think in terms of "I don't want x," but rather "I want y, and x is getting in my way." This guarantees that even when your character has no tangible opposition, you still have a clear idea of what they should be doing. This is especially useful for tying backstory to the current action: if we see a character fighting for what they've been fighting for all their life, you get one unified whole reaching all the way back to before the story. If you don't know what they were fighting for beforehand, then they might as well have been born yesterday.
An added benefit of focusing on the positive is that it prevents tunnel vision. Imagine Filthy Rich is building a Mega Mart on Fluttershy's bunny preserve. Fluttershy could have a valid motivation to prevent the Mega Mart from being built, but if we've framed the story that way, I'm sure you already know the ending. There could be a surprise "Ha! Capitalism wins!" downer ending, but it's either that or Flutters finds some way to stop the construction. Boooooring. Read the description and the last page, and you've seen it all.
However, consider if we put Fluttershy's motivation in a more positive light: Fluttershy wants her fuzzy friends to have a safe and happy home. Now there are compromise solutions in play: why can't we move the bunny preserve? Maybe we could have a rabbit hutch in the Mega Mart? Filthy could even be pro-bunny without giving up his goal of building the Mega Mart because constructing a shop and bunny well-being are not necessarily contradictory, so now you can give more dimensions to his character without jeprodizing the plot. Positive goals invite examination, and examination breeds creativity.
Of course, we can't have a fight with just positive goals. We fight because our important, positive goals are in conflict. Flutters and Filthy agree bunnies should have happy homes. Filthy builds his shop in the empty lot next to be bunny preserve. Someone built a shop, whoop de doo. Or, perhaps the bunny preserve is statistically proven to be the most profitable spot and shareholders are kicking down his door demanding he build there. Now it's on! Knowing what is in the way and how one might get it out of the way is just as important as knowing what everyone wants, because therein lies the shape of the plot. If there's nothing in the way, then off you go. No need to make a fuss. If there's something stopping a character, but the author doesn't know what is is, then how can they write the resolution? What am I fighting for? What am I fighting? Ask yourself these things in every scene for every character.
But there's one more element here: "What are you fighting for?" Yes, you, the author. Actors can use conflict external to the story itself in order to drive their performance. When playing out a scene, sometimes your scene partner doesn't do what you expect them to. You were planning on working yourselves into a frenzy and having a riotous row onstage, but on opening night, your partner is playing really bland and not giving you any subtext to get offended by.
An author would go back and rewrite the scene until the plot goes the way they want it to go. However, actors don't have that luxury. Everything on stage is part of your problem, and the only thing you can do about it is what your character can reasonably be expected to do. Thus, actors not only play off of conflict within the script, but also in the performances of their scene partners. Conflict is you overcoming whatever prevents you from attaining your goal, and the actors have their own goals separate from their characters. Do you still want to have your row? Well, you've got to make it happen with just your lines and your character before the end of the scene. Carpe Diem!
This is not to say you should never revise. Revision is like rehearsal: it's for getting all the kinks worked out before opening night (or publishing). The observation is that if you're writing a scene and it isn't going the way you want, you have an opportunity to fight for what you want in light of the imperfection. Perfection is expected. Perfection is boring. Accepting and struggling with imperfection gives the story a chance to be genuinely surprising. Not even the author knew that was coming!
The process is simple: the author gives themself an essential action: get Rainbow and Applejack so mad at each other that no one would think twice about the romantic undertones. Identify what is keeping that from happening in the scene as you're writing it: you look back and realize you've been making Freudian slips everywhere. Now the crucial step: recognize your authorial mistakes and accept them as canon for now instead of revising them. Finally, swing your pen as though you're defeating the enemy (while keeping everyone in character, of course): Rainbow and Applejack catch each others' slips and think the other is accusing them of being a fillyfooler, both suggesting their advances would be met with disgust and fueling righteous, heartbroken, indignation at the mockery. Success!
By bringing in the idea of meta-conflict, an author can make literally any scene conflict-driven. If you can't find anything in the scene to fight, fight the audience. Zecora is taking a walk through the woods. Why? Perhaps she just wants to enjoy the day. No one would think there's conflict in that. We'd have to send a raiding party of timberwolves with miniguns to get any kind of conflict going. But, of course, that's just silly.
Zecora can enjoy the day on her own. There's no reason to write about it, so why is this scene in here? Therein lies the conflict. What is the author's essential action? To share the sensations of a nice day with the reader through Zecora's eyes. The obstacle? Readers can't feel it, they have no familiarity with how Zecora specifically feels about the day, and most of all, they don't care because the plot is elsewhere. Now, dear author, the choice is yours: cut your scene or fight for it! Dazzle your reader with flowery prose! Board their minds with poignant metaphor! Load your blunderbuss with your sweet passion for the scene stripped straight from your beating heart, cram it down your reader's throat, and pull the trigger!
Or, you know, realize it didn't really contribute to the plot at all and cut it...
Finally, if your story is going to fight, then everyone fights at all times in all places. Fight the reader. Fight yourself. Everyone fights for something that is important to them. Everyone. No exceptions. There are no 'secondary' characters, nor 'extras,' and certainly no main characters idling about the scene. The passive character is a myth authors tell themselves when they don't want to find something for everyone to do. Each of your extras is the center of their own little movie staring themself. The conglomerate of all those little movies is the world in which your story takes place. If you want a living world, your extras must fight just as hard as any main character when their time comes. In the final analysis, 'main character' is the term for the peon whose movie we're following today. It's objectively no more or less significant than all the others.
Every time I read one of these blogs, I find myself thinking back on the story I just published, or the story I'm currently writing. That's a good thing! And it makes me think about that one scene, or that one chapter that maybe didn't work so well in practice that looked better in my head.
I loved the way you wrote this, very action oriented, and very much direct in getting the point across. And actually, this is very inspiring too. I look at what I've got on my screen and I see that I need to do revision. I know what's going on, but I'll leave it as is for now and adjust it later. I have the essential action - the framework, if you will - of the character's motivation. Now I just need to give it context, and then I need to make the fight important to her, personal.
Thanks again, SirTruffles! An enjoyable, enlightening read as always.
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You're very welcome. I'm glad you're finding it useful
This one was fun. Courage Wolf is a fun character to channel:
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It didn't hurt that I actually took the time to write this one out and revise it before posting, either
Probably going to slow down these blogs to once a week. Comments are addicting, but quality over quantity.
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Indeed. I have learned the same lesson with my stories as well. My latest waited until three editors had come back to me. I think it's better for the wait. And my blogs - I think I'm going to be doing one thing a week to post on the site. Whether it's a chapter update or a blog post. It'll give me time to focus on one thing at a time. Or mostly one thing. Work is ongoing in the background on three different fics. But at least now I have a story that doesn't have a serious plot and no ties to any other continuity that I can use as a stress relief valve for... well, this:
It is quite addicting, isn't it?
Oh, sweet Celestia... I'm feeding your addiction!
I did it again! Oh well.
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Haaaaaay, I can quit *hic* anah tim ah wanna-*thud*
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*sigh* Drunk on praise. I never thought I'd see it taken so literally.
Do I smell a quirky comedy? Probably not. But Rainbow Dash getting drunk - or high - off praise would be hilarious, and an interesting take on why she chases adulation.
*feels inspired to go work on story*
Now that's what I call a self-demonstrating article.
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