Fiction Fire and Emotion

Emotional Mastery 1: Effective Showing

Select a moment in your story when your protagonist is moved, unsettled, or disturbed. This might occur when he’s facing a difficult choice, needing something badly, suffering a setback or surprise, having a self-realization, learning something shocking, or feeling in any way overwhelmed. Write down all the emotions inherent in this moment, both obvious and hidden.

Next, considering what he is feeling, write down how your protagonist can act out. What is the biggest thing your protagonist can do? What would be explosive, out of bounds, or offensive? What would be symbolic? What can your protagonist say that would cut right to the heart of the matter or unite others in understanding? Go sideways, underneath, or ahead. How can your protagonist show us a feeling that we don’t expect to see?

Add a detail of the setting that only your protagonist would notice, or that everyone notices but your protagonist sees in a unique way.

Finally, go back and delete all the emotions you wrote down at the beginning of this exercise. Let actions and spoken words do the work. Do they feel too big, dangerous, or over-the-top? Use them anyway. Others will tell you if you’ve gone too far, but more likely, you haven’t gone far enough.

Emotional Mastery 2: Third-Level Emotions

Select any moment in your story when your protagonist feels something strongly. Identify the feeling. Next, ask your protagonist, “What else are you feeling at this moment?” Write that down, too. Then ask, “Okay, what else are you feeling now?” Write that down.

Now begin to work with that third, lower-layer emotion. Examine it in four ways. 1) Objectify it by creating an analogy: What does it feel like to have this feeling? 2) Make a moral judgment about it: Is it good or bad to feel this? Why? 3) Create an alternative: What would a better person feel instead? 4) Justify this feeling: It’s the only possible thing to feel at this moment and here is why.

Look around the scene, too. What is your protagonist seeing that others don’t? Add one detail that only your protagonist would see, and see it in his own unique way.

Write a new passage for this moment in the story, one in which your character feels deeply (and in detail) this third-level emotion.

Emotional Mastery 3: Me-Centered Narration

Pick any scene in the middle of your novel, one in which your protagonist is the POV character.

Write an exploratory version of the scene that is about what’s happening-—not in the plot per se, but about what’s happening with “me.” What does your protagonist feel about this place, each scene participant, what’s happening, and herself?

How do your protagonist’s feelings about any of the above shift in this scene? What has your protagonist overlooked? About what or whom was your protagonist wrong, or dead right?

What new feeling about the scene’s action does your protagonist discover? What new feeling about himself does your protagonist also find?

Use your protagonist’s feelings to mislead the reader about something, or instead to convey the honest truth. Use “I am” to create uneasiness. Use “I am not” to create doubt.

How much of what you’ve written in this version of the scene could be folded into your manuscript? Use it.

Emotional Mastery 4: Small Details Equal Big Emotions

Pick a point in your manuscript in which the predominant feeling is large and primary. If you’re unsure, choose the moment in which your protagonist feels the greatest fear.

What are small signs that indicate something large is happening? What details, hints, indirect clues, or visible effects have you used?

What repercussions of what’s happening can the reader immediately see?

What does your protagonist or POV character feel that is not immediate? How will she change, do something differently from now on, or see another person, or anything at all, in a way that’s forever altered?

What can your protagonist or POV character say or think that’s not obvious but insightful, unusually compassionate, brutally cutting, or prescient? What can he quip or point out ironically?

What is a way of looking at what’s happening that scales it down to manageable size? In what way is this outrageous event actually unsurprising? How does it illustrate a truth or apply in all cases? In what way is it unique?

Craft a passage in which you convey not the primary emotion that your protagonist or POV character is feeling but the experience that she is going through. Use details, unusual feelings, non-obvious observations, calm detachment, and wise compassion.

Emotional Mastery 5: Small Emotions Equal Large Experience

Choose a small but meaningful moment in your story. From whose POV are you writing this moment? What does he feel about what is happening?

Discard that. Instead write down a contrasting feeling that your POV character also has. Make the contrast sharp, ironic, forceful, principled, passionate, or in any other way a challenge to the reader’s own feelings.

Considering the moment, what’s one implication of what’s happening? What will your POV character have to do differently now? What must your POV character do that is hard, against the grain, or in any other way unwelcome?

What’s one way in which this character must question herself at this moment? Go beyond self-doubt. Render a self-judgment. Is this character condemned? How? Is this character exonerated? How?

At this moment are we in heaven or hell? Why? What is wonderful? What is unbearable? How does your POV character reconcile to this moment and what it means? What’s the outrage? What’s the wisdom?

Craft a passage in which the big meaning of this small moment is processed by your POV character, a processing that’s unique to this character and contrary to your reader’s own feelings—maybe even to yours.

Emotional Mastery 6: Good Deeds

Think about your protagonist. What is one good thing your protagonist finds exceptionally hard to do?

Work backward to make that virtuous act even more difficult. Later on, perhaps following a catharsis, find a way for your protagonist to do, at last, that good deed.

Build a secondary character that is selfish, self-absorbed, self-pitying, put upon, wounded, or treated unjustly. What is the selfless act this character would never be expected or called upon to do? Make it happen.

Which character has a low opinion of another? Reverse it later in the novel, showing that the judgmental character has hidden compassion and insight.

Which character has a justified grudge against another? Build the reasons for it, then enact forgiveness.

Which character is miserly? Choose a moment of celebration or ceremony for that character to give an unexpected gift.

In what way can your protagonist self-sacrifice, giving up something (or someone) dear?

Emotional Mastery 7: Moral Stakes

Identify a higher emotion you’d like your readers to feel: self-control, courage, perseverance, truthfulness, fairness, respect, generosity, forgiveness, service, sacrifice, discernment, integrity, humility, readiness, or wisdom.

Choose a character whose nature is, or whom you can make, the opposite of this quality. Who most needs to learn this lesson, see a truth, adopt this virtue, and change?

Prepare the groundwork for change. Give this character every reason to be the opposite of what he will become. Reinforce that that opposite way of being works and is the right way to be. Find a way to show that at the start.

Create three events that both build the necessity of change and necessary reasons to resist it. These events are the anticipation phase.

Finally, create the event that will bring home to your character the better way of being. How can this character show us her better self? This is the moment when you will stir higher emotion in your readers.

Emotional Mastery 8: The Meaning of Everything

Choose any small thing that happens somewhere in the middle of your manuscript. When you find it, write down your answers to the following questions: This small event is symbolic, but symbolic of what? What does it mean to your POV character personally? What meaning might anyone see if they bothered to look? How is your POV character’s understanding of himself changed in this moment, even in a small way?

Choose some dry information that must be imparted for your story to make sense. Who has this knowledge? How does that character see these facts as no one else does? What standard of judgment is used? What is good, bad, worrisome, reassuring, or in some other way revealing about these facts? What does your character love or hate about what these facts are saying? What would she change about this information if possible? What would he change about himself?

If the span of your story is long and it covers one character’s experience, stop at four points along the way and at each ask: Right now, what is your protagonist seeking for herself? What does your protagonist need to find? Why is that newly important now? Is this character closer to, or farther away from, what he needs? What is the measure of progress? What is encouraging? What says give up? Has this character yet become who she needs to become? Is that a problem, or is that okay for now?

Turn those notes into a paragraph or passage to add at this point in your manuscript. Don’t be afraid of slowing the pace. When you deepen the meaning of things, no one will complain.

naval adventure upon which she embarks.

Emotional Mastery 9: Connecting the Inner and Outer Journey

Pick any plot event, large or small. What does it mean to your protagonist? What does it stir inside? What worry, hope, question, or wonder? What does it feel like to feel this feeling? Create a metaphor for it. Make notes. Write it up in a paragraph.

Or ...

Pick any emotionally significant moment in your story, a time when your protagonist feels himself changing. Shut off inner monologue. Find a way for your protagonist to show or speak the unfolding inner change in a way that we can’t miss. What is your character compelled to do? Do it.

Emotional Mastery 10: Shifting from Tension to Energy

Write down your answers to the following:

Choose a moment when your protagonist sees or hears something unjust. A braver person would get involved. How?

Your protagonist is good at something. A more commanding person would turn that into a show of strength. How?

Your protagonist is helpful. A bolder person would be reckless. In what way?

Your protagonist has insight into someone else. A more compassionate person would show that person kindness. How?

Your protagonist is peaceful. A true leader would maintain peace by exerting power. In terms of your story, how?

Your protagonist is a misfit, doesn’t conform, and feels like an outsider. A more independent person would be a nonconformist, even break the law. When?

There is something or someone who makes your protagonist impatient. A more headstrong person would be wholly intolerant. How would we see that?

There is someone to whom your protagonist feels attached. A more engaged person would get deeply involved. How?

Pick a time when your protagonist is withdrawn or distant. A more passionate person would completely detach and not care. How would we recognize that?

Your protagonist is self-focused, even self-important. A stronger (weaker?) personality would be simply vain. What, in particular, is your protagonist self-focused on?

Your protagonist has a logical way of looking at a problem. A more intuitive person would not think about it but instead do something unexpected and ingenious. What?

Your protagonist is attracted to someone. A more uninhibited person would lean in for the kiss or send an unmistakable kiss-me signal. What?

Your protagonist can do magic. A greater mage can work miracles. What’s the biggest?

Your protagonist is wise. A truly transcendent human being brings about the impossible. What in your story is impossible?

Do your answers suggest ways to make your protagonist more active, vibrant, surprising, and memorable? If so, use them.

Emotional Mastery 11: Shifting From Energy to Tension

Write down your answers to the following and elaborate each:

Your protagonist has a way of life. What is her view of life?

Your protagonist has a strong sense of purpose but also a strong unfulfilled need. What is that need, and how does your protagonist regard it?

Choose a time when your protagonist shows courage. At the same time, in what does he also gain faith?

Find a point at which your protagonist is in control. What does she come to understand—or not?

In one realm your protagonist is assertive. In what other realm does your protagonist yield, and why?

Your protagonist relishes adventure. When does that come into conflict with romantic love? How does your protagonist measure the two against each other?

When does your protagonist show the strongest leadership? What must he teach?

Your protagonist is good. What is something that she finds beautiful and why?

Your protagonist is audacious, but about what is he perfectly sincere?

Your protagonist rebels. How does she realize that she has also committed heresy?

Your protagonist is a loner or finds himself alone. How does this also seem to your protagonist a form of poverty?

Your protagonist enacts justice. How does she realize that she must also show mercy?

If your answers to any of the above give you ways to open up the inner life of your protagonist in interesting ways, use them.

Emotional Mastery 12: The Emotional Hook

As your novel opens, find something warm and human that your main character cares about. If your story is exotic, choose something we would care about in the here and now. If your story has an ordinary setting, find something about which your protagonist is passionate. Open with this feeling.

Now find in your opening situation something different, odd, curious, puzzling, weird, contradictory, paradoxical, or hard to explain. Highlight it. Don’t pile on more or explain too much too soon. Let the mystery posed or question raised work on your reader for a bit. There’s tension in the unknown.

It’s funny that something that sounds so simple is lacking in so many manuscripts. I think that’s because intrigue gets all the attention. Involvement is just as important, though, and the best beginning is one that delivers both.

Emotional Mastery 13: Bonding Readers to Your Protagonist

The method: Mentally go to your opening moment, or what seems to you a good place to start your story. It’s in your mind for a reason.

Write down the plot event, however small, happening at this moment, the event that will bring about change and set your protagonist into motion.

Great. Now cross that out. We’re not going to work with that, not necessarily.

Consider this moment in time and in your protagonist’s life. What is something that your protagonist has strong feelings about right now? About whom does your protagonist care? What is something that your protagonist feels matters urgently, or that she doesn’t understand? Why? Detail the reasons. Write down what we need to know.

Your protagonist doesn’t just care about this person, situation, or thing; he worries about it. It has implications, not for everyone (though it may) but for your protagonist personally. Write down what your protagonist is afraid will happen to him. Add an aspect of this worry that other people wouldn’t know or see. Why is your protagonist able, or unable, to do anything about it?

Alternately, pick something, or someone, that your protagonist is happy about. What brings her joy? What is she looking forward to? Why is this a good day? Detail why. Add a reason that others wouldn’t know or see. Why is your protagonist deserving, or not, of this happiness?

Whatever passion you are working with, an apprehension or a joy, detail it. Add specifics. What makes this longing unique? Why is it different now than at any other time? Also, what is the experience of this moment like? Create a metaphor. To be in this moment is analogous to … what?

Is this a perishing moment or a permanent fixture in your protagonist’s life? Is it good or bad? How does your protagonist know this is a different experience for him than it would be for anyone else?

Now take your notes and craft a paragraph or passage that takes us inside your protagonist or shows us what is going on there. Capture not what is happening in the plot, but rather your protagonist’s inner yearning.

There are no universal characters but there are universal human desires. Heart. Care. Hope. Dreams. Yearning. From Odysseus to Meursault (The Stranger) to Scarlett O’Hara to Carrie, heroes and heroines capture the idea of human longings that we all feel.

Emotional Mastery 14: The Emotional Midpoint

What’s the moment of no going back, of despair, of who-am-I-and-what-have-I-become? Note the following: one detail of place, one ache of regret, one brand-new fear, one impossible hope.

At the midpoint, write down your protagonist’s view of herself prior to this time. What about that view is no longer true? Who must your protagonist now become? What is she lacking—and utterly unable to achieve?

At midpoint, what can your protagonist see (however far off) that was not visible before? What can he no longer see in the distance behind? What is coming? What is never again to be?

At midpoint, is your protagonist lost or seeing a way forward? Is either condition welcome or unwelcome? What does it feel like to be suspended, lifted out of time, in a moment of pure being? Is this moment sublime or hellish—or both?

Weave any or all of the above into a paragraph that describes crossing the apex or nadir of the journey.

Emotional Mastery 15: Failure and Defeat

Go to the middle of your manuscript. Look at your protagonist. Pick a moment of challenge, reckoning, betrayal, setback, or coming up short.

For your protagonist, what’s the worst part of this situation? What makes it excruciating? What makes it a personal failure?

Work backward in the story to set up the moment and why this particular kind of failure should hurt so much. Who is counting on your protagonist? Who is let down? What is the most painful way in which we can see that disappointment?

What depends on your protagonist succeeding? What is slipping out of reach? What does it feel like to let that go? (Create an analogy.)

At this moment, what does your protagonist wish she could do instead? What does your protagonist wish she could say, but can’t?

As your protagonist fails in the moment you’ve chosen, involve others. When the floor falls away, let it fall away in a public place.

Oh, one more thing: Small failures can deliver little deaths, but they can also deliver little triumphs, too. That Sunday at Penn Station, we made it to the hockey game after all. Dad pretty quickly recovered his cool. Mom happened to be carrying an ATM card, too. The moment was handled. But, oh! For a minute there, it was the worst. I was about to fail as a dad. But I didn’t.

Emotional Mastery 16: Catalyst and Catharsis

What frustrates your protagonist? What inner need is constantly thwarted? Find three new ways to increase the need and one way in which to punish your protagonist for having that need.

When you hammer, defeat, deny, or humiliate your protagonist, what about that so enrages your protagonist that he would pick up a gun, heedless of the cost or consequences?

What’s the biggest way in which your protagonist can act out? What can she destroy? Whom can she attack? What’s the most hateful or most truthful thing she can say? What will shock others in the story?

Having spent himself, what can your protagonist—or someone else—now do that he could not do before? What is now permissible to say? Show that.

Emotional Mastery 17: What’s Happening When Nothing Is Happening

Identify your protagonist’s greatest inner need, the one that would preoccupy your protagonist even if your novel’s plot were never to come about. Craft a sentence or short paragraph that succinctly expresses that need.

Pick out a scene from the middle of your WIP. Try to make this a minimally dramatic scene. Open a new document on your computer screen. Paste in the sentence or paragraph you created. This is the opening of a new version of the scene you’ve selected.

With the underlying need just below the surface of your protagonist’s awareness, rewrite the scene. Do not look back at the version in your WIP!

The purpose of this rewrite is to get your reader to feel the underlying need in your protagonist. Work until you’re sure we will sense that need even though you don’t mention it or make it plain.

Finally, go back and delete the paragraph you pasted in at the scene’s start. How does the scene feel now? Is the underlying need coming through even without being spelled out?

Emotional Mastery 18: Emotional Goals in Scenes

Look at the scene you’re writing right now. Who is the point-of-view character? At this moment in the story what does that character have to do, get, seek, or avoid? This is commonly called the scene goal.

Shift focus. What does your POV character need inside? What does she hope to feel? That’s the emotional goal.

What in this scene is pulling this character closer to or farther away from the emotional goal? What is making that emotional goal impossible to achieve? How does this character attempt to reach the emotional goal in spite of what’s happening?

Add to that. Why is this character afraid of his emotional goal? What can he do to subvert or avoid it? Conversely, why does the emotional goal greatly matter? What can make it matter more?

In this scene, how does this character reconcile to the loss of the emotional goal, or to gaining it? What replaces it? What comes next? How is the scene’s outcome more satisfying, or less acceptable, than what was originally hoped for?

Finally, take the raw material you’ve created and fashion a passage that tells, and/or action that shows, your character’s inner state in this scene. Make the point of the scene to capture the dynamic inner “me” as much as to shift the outer circumstances of the story.

Emotional Mastery 19: Get Real!

Stop at any point in your manuscript. Who is the POV character? Address this character like a New York City cop: Stop right there! Whadda ya think you’re doin’? What’s really goin’ on here? C’mon, talk!

Stop at another point in your manuscript. Who is the POV character? Become Mother Teresa: My child, you are suffering. Our Father in Heaven understands and forgives all. Tell me what’s troubling you. What do you need? What do you wish to confess?

Stop at another point in your manuscript. Who is the POV character? Become Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker. Slam this character with a withering truth, a devastating irony, a shot straight to the psychological solar plexus.

Stop at another point in your manuscript. Who is the POV character? Become the Oracle of Delphi: You wish to know your destiny? I will tell it to you, but be warned: If it pleases you, beware, and if it displeases you, be overjoyed. Ready? Your future is …

How can you use any of the results above to pierce through the fog, crack the artifice, and suddenly get real?

Emotional Mastery 20: Plotting the Non-Plot-Driven Novel

Considering your protagonist’s overall experience in the time frame you intend for your novel, ask the four big questions:

What big thing could my protagonist do to get what he wants?

What big thing has to happen before underlying conflict can be talked out?

Who (not what) is actively holding back my protagonist?

My character can change, but before that she must go through what?

Work with your answers. Of the things your protagonist could do, what is holding her back? Whether it’s a test, trial, or experience to go through, what is the biggest obstacle? Which is the hardest? Which will demand the most? Which stirs up the most issues inside?

Focus on that one element. Distill it. Make it bigger, more colorful, more unusual, more singular. Twist it. Turn it upside down so that it’s in some way different from, or even the opposite of, what we expect.

How can that element become the core of your protagonist’s experience? State it as a problem, a conflict, or a journey—toward what? Your novel may be about many things, but, simply put, this one element—expressed in this way—is your premise.

For each scene in your manuscript, ask the four big questions:

What could my protagonist do—right now—to get what he wants?

What’s getting in the way—right now—of talking things out?

Who—right now—is holding back my protagonist and how?

My character is avoiding herself for what reason—right now?

What your protagonist could do right now is this scene’s objective. What’s getting in the way is this scene’s conflict. Who is holding your protagonist back is this scene’s antagonist. The reason for avoiding self is this scene’s inner conflict.

Make the objective intentional. Make the conflict more complex. Make the antagonist determined, clever, and more powerful, righteous, and resourceful than your protagonist. Make the inner struggle impossible to settle. Make it altogether more difficult for your protagonist to get through the scene.

With those things in place, you have a goal, obstacles, an antagonist, and inner conflict, the basic structure of a scene.

We like to think or imagine that non-plot-driven novels can be successful because of their beautiful writing. We want to believe that their authors have found, or have been born with, a certain magic—the magic of conjuring novels out of nothing.

Emotional Mastery 21: The Reader’s Map

At your story’s end, what is the destination that your protagonist will reach, and who is already there? Work backward. At the beginning, send a message from that person.

At your story’s end, what will your protagonist get? Work backward. At the beginning, give your protagonist a taste of that prize.

At the story’s end, ask your protagonist what was surprising about the journey. Work backward. At the beginning, make your protagonist’s world one in which such things do not happen.

At the story’s end, ask your protagonist what hurt the most along the way. Work backward. At the beginning, hint that your protagonist is especially vulnerable in this way.

At your story’s end, who will your protagonist become? Work backward. At the beginning, set a different and misleading desire as the goal.

In your current scene, what’s a tiny detail of the setting that has big meaning for your POV character? Pause to examine it.

Pick a random spot in the story. What’s your protagonist’s inner condition? Experience it like a place. Get it down in words.

Along the journey, at what point does the map run out? Pinpoint the moment and work until there are no options, no detours, and no help. At that moment your protagonist should be well and truly lost.

There is a compass for every journey. What is the inner compass that your protagonist needs to reach her destination? Make the compass impossible for her to find, and yet right in her pocket.

The journey is more than the map and more than the trail. It’s both. Your characters have much to experience, but it’s also important how they experience their story. What is the map inside your main character? Progress along the inner path is measured not by how close or far away your protagonist may be from an external goal, but by delving deeply into each step of the journey. Slow down to dwell in each moment and readers will paradoxically sense the story’s urgency speeding up.

Emotional Mastery 22: Pushing High Moments Higher

Does your protagonist (or someone else) need to be forgiven? What did he do? Look at the one who must forgive. Work to make that a person for whom this particular act of wrongdoing is unforgivable.

Keep working with the person who must forgive. In what way is that person someone who needs to change more than anyone else? In what way? Why is that change impossible? What would make that person relent?

Who is someone in your story who can make a sacrifice, big or small? Work not with that character, but with the other person for whom the sacrifice will be made. Make that someone whose need is tremendous.

Keep working with the need. Build it up. Tear down other avenues of help. When things are at their worst, the time is ripe for the sacrifice.

Will your protagonist be betrayed? Work the most with the one who will do the betraying. Make that someone important to your protagonist. What is the worst way for the betrayal itself to come to light? Make the pain acute.

Find a choice that your protagonist must make. Build the choices until each is so necessary that there is no way to choose, no way to win. Keep working until the choice is impossible.

Who in your novel will die? Cause us to love that character more. Does death pervade your novel? Make living beautiful. Fill the story with joy, and love.

Emotional Mastery 23: Symbols

What’s a place in the story with heart significance? Burn it down, then build it again.

What’s a relationship that matters to your protagonist? Damage it, then repair it.

What’s an object that holds memories for your protagonist? Lose it, then find it again.

What’s a word with special meaning for your protagonist? In how many ways can you use it in the story?

Go to your climactic scene. Where is that set? What’s an object in that place that only your protagonist would notice? Plant that same object or others like it earlier in the manuscript, building up its symbolic value.

In your story, will your protagonist (or anyone else) forgive or be forgiven? What’s the most visible and meaningful way in which that can happen? Earlier, enhance the meaningfulness of that gesture, that place or those words. Take away, in some fashion, what later will be given back.

For your protagonist, what’s the most significant demonstration of love? What’s the keenest sign of loss? What’s the warmest welcome? What’s the ugliest gesture of contempt? What’s the biggest signal of celebration? Set up the symbolic whatever-it-is earlier in the story.

What’s an idea or belief that’s the opposite of what your protagonist thinks or believes? Pick or create a character who will embody that opposite. How? Overdo it. Don’t worry about being obvious. It’s unlikely you’ll be told to scale it back

Emotional Mastery 24: Story Worlds We Don’t Want to Leave

Think about the world of your story. Now think about how your protagonist feels about that world. Is the world basically good and governed by right principles, or is it basically hostile and a place from which you can expect only pain?

If the former, what or whom is your protagonist’s bedrock of goodness? If the latter, how does your protagonist find humor, comfort, or refuge in this hostile place? In a paragraph, write how your protagonist experiences the element of goodness, or write a passage where we see goodness in progress.

Who is on your protagonist’s side? Create a moment in which that care, understanding, and support are shown. How close to the opening of your novel can you place this moment? Page two?

Whom does your protagonist love? How quickly can you bring this in? If that love is returned, show it. If that love is unrequited, how does your protagonist keep it alive?

Apart from people, what in your story world is something that your protagonist loves? What warms your protagonist inside? Find a way for us, your readers, to hold, smell, taste, or feel that pleasure, comfort, security, or delight right away.

Setting aside the plot problem or goal, what does your protagonist hope for? What is human, specific, real, and achievable—something we can visualize? How will we know this drives your protagonist? What’s the biggest clue?

Enriching a story world is less a matter of sensory details and more a matter of creating an emotional experience. Drenching your world in chocolate doesn’t by itself make it sweet. Rather, it’s the spirit of the chocolatier and the way the chocolate affects people that make your place delicious.

Emotional Mastery 25: Emotional Language

Go anywhere in your manuscript. Pick any piece of description. Use the arrangement of words, not imagery, to mimic what is being described.

Pick any single piece of dialogue that is long. Make it eloquent, a speech to the nation, a sermon from a mountaintop, folk wisdom, a rant without pause, a whispered confession, a poem.

Pick any piece of action. Convey the action not through the action itself but through its effects: wreckage, reactions, instant changes, long-term implications. String them together in a montage about everything around it.

Fill a memory box, one character’s memories of another. Use only images and short-burst sentences. Surprise us with pictures that suggest stories, but don’t tell them. Run the memories backward through time, mix them up, or show an evolution. Organize them around a theme like a father’s many hats and the occasions on which they were worn. Say everything there is to be said in capsule form, images only.

Pick anything your protagonist cares about. Write out everything your protagonist does not feel about that thing. Make the list long enough to fill a paragraph. In one simple sentence at the end, reverse it all: Tell us what your protagonist actually does feel about that thing.

For a character, create a list that conveys everything that “I am”; e.g., a mom, a nurse, worn knitting needles, nobody’s fool, the first line of defense, the court of last resort, a baker’s convection oven, a retired seductress, a quick-dry hairstylist, a connoisseur of sweatpants, a Julia Child of the lunchbox.

So, how much poetry do you need in your prose? Let me ask you this: How often do you want readers to feel something significant when they read your novel? Maybe once or twice? I hope not. Why not do more?

Emotional Mastery 26: Making Change

Think about your protagonist. What is the big change he must go through? Whom will he become? Describe that new self.

Now work backward. Define the old self, the one we’ll meet at the story’s beginning. What key behavior will we see? How will we know that your protagonist is happy with her old self? Who validates and encourages that old self? What’s good about being stuck?

What’s the first glimmer of the need to change? Find that moment. If it is an observation, that’s fine. If possible, turn it into an event. How does the old self fail? What tells your protagonist that there must be a better way?

Add a mentor character, one who sees the new self in your protagonist before your protagonist does. What can this character do to open a door, point the way, walk the path for a while with your protagonist?

Add a devil, a character who draws your protagonist back toward her old self. How? How can your protagonist backslide?

What would show your protagonist that staying the same is insupportable, that change must happen? What does your protagonist lose that he cannot get back? What joy remains out of reach?

What is the most dramatic way in which your protagonist can become his new self? What’s the least expected moment, an occasion when the old self ought to reign supreme? When is your protagonist most tempted to go backward? Whom would that slip backward please?

What triggers the commitment to change? What has become more important to your protagonist than sticking to the old ways? How will we see that? Enact the change symbolically.

Emotional Mastery 27: Seasons of the Self

What have been the periods, to date, of your protagonist’s life? What events began and ended each one? What were the highlight and the low moment of each? What did your protagonist learn (or fail to learn) in each era? Give each era a name.

How does your protagonist measure time? Create a system. Watch the clock as the novel’s events unfold. What hour is it now? And now?

As your story opens, what phase is your protagonist leaving behind? Detail it. What phase is your protagonist heading toward? List the worrisome questions in his mind.

At any point in the middle, stop. A change in self is being forced upon your protagonist right now. What makes your protagonist aware of that? What is good about changing? Why does your protagonist want to stay the same?

At the end, define the new self that your protagonist has become. Detail it. What is familiar about this new self? What is entirely new? What’s one thing in your protagonist’s world that this new self sees differently? What’s one thing that will never change?

Emotional Mastery 28: Cascading Change

Look at your current scene. Who are the two principle actors, and how are they at odds? Who wins, who loses? Go deeper. Win or lose, how is your POV character changed inside in this scene? Get that down in words.

Create a chart. Who are the many characters with whom your protagonist interacts? On the chart, detail how each of those characters affects your protagonist’s view of self, the other, problems in the plot, people in general, anything at all, from how to live to something as simple as strategies for Monopoly.

Pick three of those other characters. Write down how each one is changed, in turn, by encountering your protagonist. Work out a consequence for each. What will each character do differently because of knowing your protagonist?

What is one unexpected result of your protagonist’s overall journey? How does it ripple outward in the pond, affecting many? Show that.

Emotional Mastery 29: Feelings Without Names

Find a point in your story at which your protagonist is stuck, stymied, undecided, overwhelmed, or in some other way suffused with inner need without having a means to move ahead.

Now find something in the vicinity for your protagonist to obsess about. This obsession may be positive or negative or hopefully both. Detail your protagonist’s gripes and delights in whatever it is. Observe what is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, meaningful and empty. Be specific. Keep the focus off your protagonist and on this whatever-it-is.

Finally, be sure that in this moment nothing changes. Leave discord unresolved, messes untidy, beauty overlooked, grumbles unheard, truths ignored, and your protagonist helpless to do anything but notice what others do not. Whatever is, simply is.

Emotional Mastery 30: Positivity on the Page

Pick a low point for your protagonist. What is happening? How is it a setback? Why does it devastate? What makes this misery different from any other? Describe it. Detail it. Find in it what is unique.

Add perspective: Why is it good to feel this bad? What can be seen or grasped clearly now that was previously hidden? Whose experience can now be understood? What truth is affirmed?

What better day can your protagonist see in the distance? In what way does your protagonist express this: “A better day is coming, but that is not this day.”

Add action: What can your protagonist do in response to what has happened? What would be comforting, creative, generous, or large? Do it.

What kind of mood are you in today? Are you down, discouraged, afraid, anxious, tired, envious, stuck, or lacking confidence? Turn your mood around. Breathe. Meditate. Drink green tea. Go for a run. Use affirmations. Shake it off and become excited, empowered, brave, singular, happy, grateful, curious, and creative.

Write not just at a safe fifty-five miles per hour but blast off. Break the box. In the scene you’re working on, surprise the hell out of yourself.

In the scene you’re working on, what kind of mood is your protagonist in? Does he feel helpless, set upon, oppressed, avoidant, incapable, or trapped? Turn it around. Show through action or speech that he is capable, challenged, has a plan, has options, can stand strong and affect the outcome.

In this scene, pause and allow your protagonist to appreciate something cool, neat, beautiful, human, or different.

In this scene, allow your protagonist to feel that what’s happening is good.

In this scene, find a way for your protagonist to change something.

If in this scene things go against your protagonist, find a way for your protagonist to suck it up, shrug it off, look ahead, and feel ready.

If in this scene things go well for your protagonist, find a way for your protagonist to not take it for granted, resolve to do better, reach out to another, and give back.

Emotional Mastery 31: The Emotional Mirror

After you have written at least some portion of your novel, imagine that you are alone with your protagonist in a quiet, windowless room. You sit facing each other in comfortable chairs. There’s plenty of time. The mood is relaxed. You are not defensive. You are thrilled to have this chance to talk with your protagonist, and your protagonist is grateful to talk with you.

Ask your protagonist to tell you something about yourself that’s true. What does she say?

Ask your protagonist: If you could do anything you wanted to in this story, what would it be? What are you dying to do that I’m not letting you? What’s your most wicked impulse? What’s your best idea? What would make you happy?

Ask your protagonist: What are you most afraid that I am going to put you through? How are you afraid you will suffer? What are you afraid you will lose? Are you afraid I will humiliate you? How? What’s your worst nightmare? What’s the worst way to fail? Whom are you most afraid to let down?

Ask your protagonist: What am I not seeing about someone else in this story? Who has a secret? Whose motives and objectives aren’t what I think? Who is secretly working against you? Who, by contrast, is better than they appear? What does any other character want to do that they’re not getting a chance to do now?

Ask your protagonist: What do you want to say out loud that you haven’t said? Whom do you want to tell off? To whom do you want to confess, I love you? Whom do you want to hurt? Whom do you want to seduce, or be seduced by? Whom do you want to help and cannot help now? Whom do you want to forgive?

Ask your protagonist: What’s this story really about—to you? What am I not seeing? What message have I missed?

Fiction is an emotional mirror, a mirror that reflects you. There’s much you can learn about yourself through writing, and even more that your characters can reveal to you. Their freedom to speak is your freedom to grow. Characters can help you see what you’ve been avoiding and reveal to you the unused potential in your story. Nice of them, isn’t it?

Emotional Mastery 32: Decency and Goodness

What’s the nicest thing about people in the time and place you’re writing about? Find a way for us to experience that early in your story.

Who in your cast is generous, bighearted, empathetic, insightful, or wise? Make sure we meet that character early.

Toward the beginning of your story, let someone reach out to help someone else. If possible, involve food.

In the world of your story, what’s the equivalent of a Sunday picnic, backyard barbeque, school dance, country fair, town meeting, Fourth of July parade, old-time diner, or corner bar? Set a scene there.

What are the highest values in the world of your story? What’s the most dramatic way in which they can be enacted? Go ahead, you know what to do.

Once in a great while I read a manuscript where everyone is too nice. Far more commonly I slog through stories in which I meet hardly anyone nice at all. Warming up your story’s world is not dangerous. The worst that will happen is that it will seem more real. Why? Because it captures the inherent goodness of human beings.

Add some light and your readers will be less afraid of the dark. Even better, they’ll be glad they came.

Emotional Mastery 33: Magnanimous Writing

Stop at any point in the story. What’s funny here? What’s ironic? What’s peculiar, crazy, wrong, and out of bounds? Why is that somehow just perfect right now?

Stop at a point of pain. What’s beautiful despite the darkness? For what can your POV character be grateful? If this had to happen, what’s the saving grace?

Think about your story world. What’s wonderful about it? What’s the greatest good? What should be shared? What would we love about it even more if we knew?

Think about your protagonist. Find one way to set this character free. What’s a gift you can give your protagonist? In what unexpected way can he be fulfilled? What dream experience could come true?

Think about a time of pressure. What is excellent about this challenge? What’s cool, awesome, and exciting about being in this situation? How can your protagonist be creative? How can your protagonist exceed her own expectations, and even your own?

Pick a secondary character. What potential does your protagonist see in this person that others miss? What façade can your protagonist see through? What flaw is forgivable? What strength can be admired?

Who in the story can rise above a situation? Who can forgive when forgiveness isn’t earned? Who is high who can show humility? Who is low who can muster dignity? Who can open their home? Who can impose tough love? Who can sacrifice? Who can inspire? Who can admit wrong? Who can show love when damnation is deserved?

Pick any page in your manuscript. What’s happening? Who in this scene can act more noble, strong, just, fine, generous, loyal, or principled?

Pick another page. What is unseen, surprising, symbolic? What demonstrates a principle or proves a point? Who gets that?

Pick another page. What do you enjoy about anyone on this page or anything that’s happening? Find a way for your feeling to shine through. How would you sum it up? Who on the page can think, say, or show what’s in your own mind?

Emotional Mastery 34: Infusing Hope

Is your story meant to evoke fear? In addition to making circumstances worse, find three ways to raise the hope that the worst won’t happen, then an additional three ways to make survival matter more. Make those reasons personal.

Is your story meant to be romantic? In addition to erecting obstacles to keep two people apart, find three ways to make it matter even more that they join together. Make those reasons personal.

Is your story meant to uphold a principle, such as justice? What does your protagonist hope for that cannot be obtained by any means available to him? Find three ways to elevate that hope over the plot goal.

Is your story one of journey, healing, or seeking wholeness? Find three new ways to manifest the warmth that remains in a wounded heart.

Whatever your type of story, find people in your story who can do the following: deliver a gift, provide insight into someone else, turn a corner, forgive the unforgivable, humble themselves, see ahead, know the exact right thing to say, back off, be overjoyed, do a favor, change a life, alter a destiny, find the humor, see the irony, grasp the greater meaning, or die with grace. Whatever you find, add it.

When fiction feels effortless it is in part because tremendous talent and skill have been brought to bear. It is perhaps also because of multiple drafts, beta readers, and editorial assistance. It might be that a certain security comes with writing a series, or with experience. Word craft helps, too, but none of that is the same thing as giving a novel heart.

Heart is a quality inherent not in a manuscript but in its author. It is not a skill but a spirit. Spirit may seem mystical, but it’s not an accident. It can be cultivated and practiced. Every day it can seep into the story choices you make. The spirit you bring is the spirit we’ll feel as we read, and of all the feelings you can excite in your readers the most gripping and beautiful is the spirit of hope.

Fire in Ficction

Finding a Protagonist's Strength

Step 1: Is your protagonist an ordinary person? Find in him any kind of strength.

Step 2: Work out a way for that strength to be demonstrated within your protagonist's first five pages.

Step 3: Revise your character's introduction to your readers.

Discussion: Without a quality of strength on display, your readers will not bond with your protagonist. Why should they? No one wants to spend four minutes, let alone four hundred pages, with a miserable excuse for a human being or even a plain old average Joe. So, what is strength? It can be as simple as caring about someone, self-awareness, a longing for change, or hope. Any small positive quality will signal to your readers that your ordinary protagonist is worth their time.

Finding a Hero's Flaws

Step 1: Is your protagonist a hero — that is, someone who is already strong? Find in him something conflicted, fallible, humbling, or human.

Step 2: Work out a way for that flaw to be demonstrated within your protagonist's first five pages.

Step 3: Revise your character's introduction to your readers. Be sure to soften the flaw with self-awareness or self-deprecating humor.

Discussion: Heroes who are nothing but good, noble, unswerving, honest, courageous, and kind to their mothers will make your readers want to gag. To make heroes real enough to be likable, it's necessary to make them a little bit flawed. What is a flaw that will not also prove fatal? A personal problem, a bad habit, a hot button, a blind spot, or anything that makes your hero a real human being will work. However, this flaw cannot be overwhelming. That is the reason for adding wise self-awareness or a rueful sense of humor.

The Impact of Greatness

Step 1: Does your story have a character who is supposed to be great? Choose a character (your protagonist or another) who is, has been, or will be affected by that great character.

Step 2: Note the impact on your point-of-view character. In what ways is she changed by the great character? How specifically is her self-regard or actual life different? Is destiny involved? Detail the effect.

Step 3: Write out that impact in a paragraph. It can be backward looking (a flashback frame) or a present moment of exposition.

Step 4: Add that paragraph to your manuscript.

Discussion: Greatness is not always about esteem. Those affected by great people may be ambivalent. Whatever the case in your story, see if you can shade the effect of your great character to make it specific and capture nuances. The effect of one character upon another is as particular as the characters themselves.

Creating Special Characters

Step 1: Look at the special character through the eyes of your protagonist. List three ways in which they are exactly alike. Find one way in which they are exactly the opposite.

Step 2: Write down what most fascinates your protagonist about this special character. Also note one thing about the special character that your protagonist will never understand.

Step 3: Create the defining moment in their relationship. Write down specific details of the place, the time, the action, and their dialogue during this event. What single detail does, or will, your protagonist remember best? What detail does she most want to forget?

Step 4: At the end of your story, in what way has this special character most changed your protagonist? At the story's outset, in what way does your protagonist most resist this special character?

Step 5: Incorporate the above into your manuscript.

Discussion: Special-ness comes not from a character but from their impact on the protagonist. What are the details that measure their impact? How specific can you make them? The steps above are just a start. Whether for femmes fatales or any other character, it is those details that will bring their special-ness alive.

Making Ordinary Characters Extraordinary

Step 1: How is your ordinary character identified or defined? A friend? A teacher? A cop? Write down five stereotypes attached to such a type. Find one way in which this character is the opposite of that.

Step 2: Find one way in which this character is inwardly conflicted. How strong can you make this conflict? Make it impossible to reconcile. Create a story event in which we will see this conflict enacted.

Step 3: If this character is meant to be eccentric, push his eccentricity to an extreme. What is one common thing this character does in a completely uncommon way? What is the most outrageous thing this character can do or say? How does he look at things in a way that is peculiar or bizarre? Write a passage in which this character explains his unique habits and outlook. Make it so logical and convincing that anyone would agree.

Discussion: Secondary characters often do not stand out. Giving them the qualities that make them memorable involves violating our expectations, making them deeply human and pushing boundaries. Some authors worry about overshadowing their protagonists or creating cartoon characters. In truth, the problem in most manuscripts is that secondary characters are too tame.

Empowering Antagonists

Step 1: Find five ways and times at which your antagonist will directly engage your protagonist.

Step 2: Write out your antagonist's opinion of your protagonist. What does your antagonist like about your protagonist? How does your antagonist want to help your protagonist? What advice does your antagonist have?

Step 3: How can your antagonist be summarized or defined? A boss? A senator? A mother-in-law? List five stereotypes associated with such a type. Find one way in which your antagonist is exactly the opposite.

Step 4: Create four actions that will make your antagonist warm and sympathetic.

Step 5: Assume that your antagonist is justified and right. Make her case in writing. Find times in history when things ran her way and were good. Find a passage from theology, philosophy, or folk wisdom that supports your antagonist's outlook. Choose one character whom your antagonist will win over. In what way does your protagonist agree with your antagonist?

Discussion: Cardboard villains don't scare us. Stereotypical antagonists lack teeth. By contrast, an antagonist who is human, understandable, justified, and even right will stir in your readers the maximum unease. In creating antagonists, reject the idea of evil. Make them good. Make them active. Bring them on stage and into your protagonist's face. An antagonist who merely lurks isn't doing much for your story.

Outer & Inner Turning Points

Step 1: Pick a scene. Identify its outer turning point, the exact minute when things change for your protagonist or point-of-view character.

Step 2: Wind the clock back ten minutes. Write a paragraph saying how your protagonist or point-of-view character sees herself at this moment, before the turning point.

Step 3: Wind the clock ten minutes beyond the outer turning point. Write a paragraph saying how your protagonist or point–of-view character sees herself at this moment.

Step 4: Note three visible or audible details of the turning point in Step 1. Make one an oblique detail; i.e., something that would only be noticed upon a close look or a replay of the tape.

Step 5: Combine the results of Steps 2, 3, and 4 into a passage in which you delineate and detail your protagonist or point-of-view character's inner turning point.

Discussion: Have you ever changed in a moment, such as when, say, shattering news came via telephone? At such a moment you realize that your life will never be the same. But if we readers are observing you from outside, how would we know that? We wouldn't. An inner turning point can only be captured by going inside to detail the nuances of the change.

Stripping Down Dialogue

Step 1: From your manuscript, pick any two-character passage of dialogue. Choose an exchange that is a page or so in length.

Step 2: Strip out any attributives (he said, she said) and any incidental action.

Step 3: Rewrite this dialogue entirely as an exchange of insults.

Step 4: Rewrite this dialogue as a rapid-fire exchange of lines that are a maximum of 1–5 words.

Step 5: Rewrite this dialogue as an exchange in which one character speaks only once and the other character responds with a non-verbal gesture (say, an eloquent shrug).

Step 6: Without referring to your original version, rewrite this dialogue incorporating the best of the results from the above steps.

Discussion: In reconstructing the passage, do you notice the dialogue itself getting tighter? Are you using fewer attributives? Are you cutting incidental action that chokes up the passage? Good. It is the spoken words that give dialogue its punch. Everything else gets in the way.

Setting Goal & Setting Back

Step 1: Write down what it is in this scene that your protagonist or point-of-view character wants.

Step 2: Create three hints in this scene that your protagonist or point-of-view character will get what he wants. Also, build three reasons to believe that he won't get what he wants.

Step 3: Write the passages that express the results of Steps 1 and 2. In rewriting the scene in the next exercise, incorporate those passages. Eliminate as much else as possible.

Discussion: Just as stripping down dialogue helps punch up a scene, reducing a scene to a few strong steps toward or away from a goal also lends force and shape. Many authors wander through scene drafts, groping for the point. You can do it differently. Instead, start with the point and enhance from there.

Scenes That Can't Be Cut

Step 1: Pick any scene and work through the three exercises above.

Step 2: Close the original draft of the scene on your computer, or turn over your manuscript. Do not refer to your original draft.

Step 3: Write a new first line for the scene. Write a new last line, too.

Step 4: Write down five details of the setting. Go for details not normally noticed, such as:

boundaries (walls, fences, horizon)

quality of light

temperature

smell

prominent objects in this place

Step 5: Without referring to your original version, rewrite the scene. Start with your new first line, and end with your new last line. Use the oblique setting details you just noted. Incorporate the inner and outer turning points, leaner dialogue, and steps toward or away from the goal that you created earlier.

Discussion: Is this rewritten version of your scene better than the original? I'm not surprised. Scenes that are written in the normal flow of accumulating pages may be fine but often will lack force. Constructing the key elements first can, by contrast, give a scene shape, tautness, and power.

The Tornado Effect

Step 1: Choose a major plot event.

Step 2: For each point-or-view or major character in your novel, write a passage that details the effect of this event. How does it change each character? How do they see themselves or others differently afterward?

Step 3: Write the event not from one point of view, but from all. In each passage, incorporate the results of Step 2.

Discussion: The Tornado Effect is a powerful tool that can magnify the significance of already large plot events. For it to work, though, there must be an actual, transforming effect on each character who experiences it.

Connecting Character to Place

Step 1: Select a setting in your novel. Note details that are particular to it. Include what is obvious but also include details that tourists would miss and only natives would see.

Step 2: How does your protagonist feel about this place? Go beyond the obvious emotions of nostalgia, bitterness, and a sense of “connection.” Explore specific emotions tied to special times and personal corners of this place.

Step 3: Weave details and emotions together into a passage about this place. Add this to your manuscript.

Discussion: It is impossible to powerfully capture a place via objective description — at least, to capture it in a way that readers will not skim. Only through the eyes and heart of a character does place come truly alive. Who in your novel has the strongest feelings about his setting? That character will be a good vehicle for bringing this place alive.

Changing the Landscape

Step 1: Pick an important setting in your story. Choose a moment when your protagonist or another point-of-view character is there. Using specific details and emotions, create that character's sense of this place following the steps above.

Step 2: Bring that character back to this place one week, or one year, later. Again, follow the steps above.

Discussion: Are the two passages that you created in this exercise different? They should be. Measuring the minute differences in a character's perception of a place over time is another way to bring that place alive. Remember, places generally don't much change, but people do.

Time and Sentiment

Step 1: What is your novel's era? If it is our own, give it a label.

Step 2: Write out your protagonist's opinion of her times. What does she like about them? What does she think is wrong about them?

Step 3: Note three details that are particular to this time. Go beyond the obvious details of news events, popular music, clothing, and hairstyles. Find details that your protagonist would notice.

Step 4: Weave the above results into a passage that captures your protagonist's sense of the times.

Discussion: How do you view our times? Are you optimistic? Pessimistic? One thing's for sure: you have an opinion. The same is true of your characters. The times live in the brightly hued sentiments of your cast. For a strong sense of how people saw historical eras in which they lived, check out contemporaneous essays, editorials, and speeches. (For instance, find online Malcolm X's speech “The Ballot or the Bullet” mentioned in this chapter. It captures a highly specific moment and mood in Black American history.) For a multidimensional sense of the times, examine an era from several characters' points of view using the steps above.

Conjuring a Milieu

Step 1: What is your novel's milieu? Give it a label.

Step 2: Write out your protagonist's outlook on this milieu. What does he feel is best about it? What does he believe is the worst about it? What makes it magical? What makes it hell?

Step 3: Note three observable details that are particular to this milieu, things that only an insider would see.

Step 4: Weave the above results into a passage that captures your protagonist's view of this milieu.

Discussion: Do you know your novel's milieu with an expert's depth of experience? If so, great. If not, there is research. Experts often are glad to share their knowledge and insights. Books, articles and Web sites can be helpful too. It doesn't take many details to conjure a milieu, but a milieu will spring to life most effectively when those details are not known to most people.

Setting as Character

Step 1: In the world of your novel, select a place of significance, or that you wish to make significant.

Step 2: What has already happened here? Note one or more past events associated with this place that people remember.

Step 3: In what way is this place mysterious or magical? Or, possibly, what makes it completely ordinary?

Step 4: What is your protagonist's personal connection to this place? Write it out. Make it specific. How was this place seminal in her personal history? What does she love about this place? Why is she afraid of this place? What stands out about this place? What makes it different from any other place like it?

Step 5: Does an important plot event occur at this place? Find a second event that can occur here too.

Step 6: Sorry if this sounds obvious but … incorporate the above results into your manuscript — right now.

Discussion: A place is just a place. It isn't alive. It doesn't do anything. Only people do things. In other words, making setting a character isn't really about animating that locale. It is a matter of you building a history for it, making big things happen there, giving characters strong feelings about it, and, in their minds, making it a place that is magical. That, in turn, brings it to life in the readers' minds.

Giving Characters Voice

Step 1: Find something in your story about which your protagonist has a strong opinion. Sharpen that opinion. Magnify it. Let your protagonist rant, sneer, demur, avoid, laugh at, feel deeply, care less about, or in any way feel even more strongly about whatever it is.

Step 2: What are outward, external, observable details of the world in general that only your protagonist finds interesting?

Step 3: Find a passage of exposition in your novel; that is, a passage in which we are privy to the thoughts and feelings of a character. Whether you are working in the first person or third person, rewrite this passage so that it is more like how your protagonist or point-of-view character talks.

Step 4: Take the same passage from step 3 and rewrite it in a way that is the exact opposite of how your protagonist or point-of-view character would speak.

Discussion: Opinions expressed in a natural way, details coupled with a characteristic syntax … it doesn't matter which approach you choose, only that you choose an approach. Developing a voice as a novelist in part means giving your characters voices that are uniquely theirs.

Narrative Voice

Step 1: Pick any page in your manuscript.

Step 2: Rewrite the page. Strip out all opinions, remove all conflict. Choose generic nouns and common verbs. Delete all color and description. Eschew slang. Make the characters bland. Make the action mild. Have as little as possible happen on this page.

Step 3: Rewrite this page again. This time write it like Cole Porter, all upper crust formality, understatement, and wit.

Step 4: Rewrite this page again. This time write it like Joe Palooka, all slang and dumbfound disbelief. Make sure that your narrator or point-of-view character takes everything that happens or is said personally. Make him easily offended.

Step 5: This time write it like a politician, all generalities and evasion while at the same time emphasizing popular principles and sentiment.

Step 6: This time write it like a foreign tourist, all awe and bewilderment.

Step 7: This time write it like a banker, all caution, thoughtful consideration, and weighing of options.

Step 8: This time write it like an old-timer full of wisdom.

Step 9: Now rewrite this page as it will appear in print.

Discussion: As you can see, there are many ways to create a narrative voice. It is a matter of choosing it and then using the associated vocabulary, attitude, outlook, and diction. Is neutral your flavor? Objective narration is fine, but first experiment with alternate approaches. You may find that a different voice will better serve your story.

Alternate Narrative Perspectives

Step 1: Choose any page from your manuscript.

Step 2: Rewrite this page in any of these voices and tenses:

Second person, future tense (you will go, you will see)

Collective past tense (we went, we saw)

Objectified present tense (it goes, it sees)

Step 3: Rewrite this page from different points of view:

Someone who doesn't speak, but who reacts strongly to everything

A person with a disability; e.g., color blindness

A person with a super power

An object in the room; e.g., the ceiling or the carpet

Step 4: Rewrite this page in reverse chronological order, then as a journal, finally from a great distance.

Discussion: The object of this exercise is not to make your novel experimental, but to raise your awareness of the choices you make in telling your story. What if you told it from the point of view of a murdered girl in heaven or the point of view of a dog? Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones (2002) and Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain (2008) took those approaches and sold big. Frame-and-flashback timelines and unreliable narrators are nice but all too common. How can you tell your story in a way that's never been done before? It takes courage to violate expectations, but sometimes the reward is a new level of success.

Effect vs. Cause

Step 1: Identify the most improbable event in your novel.

Step 2: What about this event makes your protagonist the most afraid? What does your protagonist do in response?

Step 3: Escalate and add steps to your protagonist's response. What is the most extreme length to which your protagonist can go?

Step 4: What is a level of response beyond that? Take your protagonist to that level.

Discussion: In many manuscripts the protagonist's motivation is shallow. We do not believe that protagonist is driven to action, and often the action to which the protagonist is driven is less than it could be. Pump up the motivation. Pump up the response. You may feel afraid of going too far. In fact, in most manuscripts the protagonist does not do enough.

The Highly Motivated Villain

Step 1: Who is your novel's principle antagonist?

Step 2: What is the biggest wrong that your antagonist must do?

Step 3: List twelve reasons why someone in real life would not do that, or would be prevented by others from doing that.

Step 4: Work out twelve reasons why, in this case, your antagonist is motivated to do the worst, and also why others are unable to prevent it.

Step 5: Incorporate the above results into your manuscript. Do not cheat. Add the extra pages. Put it all in.

Discussion: It takes extra effort, not to mention pages, to fully motivate an antagonist. It also requires the author to go to the uncomfortable place where the antagonist can be understood. But it is worth the journey. Similarly, in manuscripts there often is little to get in the antagonist's way. That produces weak tension. Knocking down real obstacles step by step raises tension and makes improbable actions increasingly plausible.

Building Believability

Step 1: What is the most improbable event in your novel?

Step 2: List twenty reasons why in the real world this event would not occur. What prevents it? Who stops it?

Step 3: Did you really list twenty reasons? Come on now. Dig deeper. Assume that this improbable event can and will fail to occur. List every last reason why that will be so.

Step 4: For each point, work out why and how in this case each obstacle fails to prevent the improbable event.

Step 5: Incorporate the above results in your manuscript.

Discussion: Even when thrillers are not based on speculative elements, the terrible disaster that looms often fails to frighten. We know it won't really happen. If it could, then in the real world it would happen. But it doesn't. The effect of removing obstacles to the event is to lower readers' resistance to the idea of this awful calamity. The farther you go in removing obstacles, the more your readers will believe. How far is required? Much farther than most authors go.

Note: This principle applies to novels other than suspense. Every story involves something unlikely. Making it believable is an essential technique of mastery.

Scary Monsters

Step 1: Is there a monster in your novel?

Step 2: Create three ways in which your monster is very human.

Step 3: Motivate your monster. Find six good reasons for your monster to act. (“Evil” is not a motivation.)

Step 4: Find three reasons why your monster does not want to act. Make them strong reasons. Include, then overcome, each one.

Discussion: It's rare in manuscripts to meet a scary monster. Mostly they are evil, powerful, and unstoppable. That's fine, but if that evil isn't motivated, that power isn't earned, and the monster's obstacles aren't real, then evil will feel thin and the monster won't panic anyone. That's as true of human monsters as it is of the supernatural kind.

Hyperbole

Step 1: Choose anything that a character says or thinks.

Step 2: Hyperbolize it. Exaggerate. Wildly. Go over the top, out of bounds. Make it crazy-wild.

Step 3: Substitute the hyperbole. Watch your readers smile. Okay, you're right, you usually can't see them. Just imagine it.

Step 4: Do a hyperbole draft. In your manuscript, find twenty places to hyperbolize.

Discussion: Using hyperbole is not always about getting a laugh. It is a method of useful heightening in any work of fiction. Whether it's a character or it's you, exaggeration both makes a point and scores a point.

Social Ironies and Literary Parody

Step 1: Ask your protagonist or another character to take a look around at the world. Go on. They don't have anything else to do right now.

Step 2: What seems to this character ironic, weird, stupid, or crazy? Note it.

Step 3: Somewhere in your manuscript, let your character riff on this subject. Counsel her not to hold back. It's okay. No one's listening yet. For now it's just you and her.

Step 4: Is there a literary form that can be parodied in your manuscript? Come to that, is there a business form that can be sent up? A tax form? The key is to play it straight and deadpan. Let just one element provide ridiculous contrast.

Discussion: Your novel may not be comic in intent, but a sideways glance at what is ironic or ridiculous rarely goes amiss. Parody is a little more difficult to insert in an otherwise serious novel. First try creating the parodied element without humor. For instance, realistically lay out an IRS tax form. Make it dry and tedious. Only later need you title it “1040K-9, Individual Canine Return,” a form for reporting doggie income and deductions.

Funny Voices, Funny Events

Step 1: Whether using first-person or third-person narration, select a page.

Step 2: Make the narration here wry, dry, snarky, acid, offhand, loopy, easily distracted, befuddled, paranoid, panic-stricken or whack-o in any other way that comes naturally to you.

Step 3: In your story, pick a small-or medium-sized event.

Step 4: If it's an ordinary event, make the response to it disproportionately huge. If the event is a little unusual or colorful, underplay the response.

Step 5: If the above steps add something positive to your novel, find nine more places to do something similar. If you are going for outright satire, find 150 places to do things similar.

Discussion: Finding a comic narrative tone is easier when you put yourself in the right frame of mind. Get crazy. Become obsessed. Freak out. Oh, you're paying a therapist to help you stop that? Sorry. At any rate, even a novel as serious as a thriller can at times use a little levity. Think of James Bond. Every novel should, somewhere, at least make us crack a smile.

Tension in Dialogue

Step 1: Find any passage of dialogue in your manuscript.

Step 2: Create antipathy between the speakers. Set them against each other. Use simple disagreement, a clash of personalities, a struggle over status, competing egos, plain loathing, or any other conflict.

Step 3: Without looking at your original draft, rewrite the dialogue so the conflict between the speakers themselves is impossible to miss.

Discussion: Conflict in dialogue can be as polite as poison, or as messy as hatchets. The approach is up to you. The important thing is to get away from ambling chit-chat and get right to the desire of two speakers to defeat each other. If it's strong on the page, it hardly will matter what they're talking about. Even innocuous chatter can become deadly. For instance, “Would you like sugar for your tea?” is sweet and bland. Try stirring in some acid: “I suppose you'd like sugar for your tea? Never mind. Of course you do. Your type always does.”

Tension in Action

Step 1: Find any action in your manuscript. It can be incidental, small, or high action.

Step 2: From whose point of view do we experience this action? What is he feeling at this moment? Find a conflicting emotion.

Step 3: Note visual details of this action which are oblique; that is, details that would be noticed only on second look.

Step 4: Without referring to your original draft, and using the results from the steps above, rewrite the action.

Discussion: High action immediately benefits from having torn emotions folded in. What about small and incidental action? Is it too much to add feelings to crossing a room? Maybe. But consider the difference. He crossed the room. Not bad. But how about … He drifted across the room. Was he dreaming? Was he dead? A bit different, isn't it? Small actions can be overloaded, certainly, but on the other hand there is little tension in plain, everyday action. True tension lies inside.

Tension in Exposition

Step 1: Find any passage of exposition in your manuscript. Sometimes called interior monologue, this is any passage in which we experience a character's inner thoughts and feelings.

Step 2: Identify the primary emotion in this passage, then write down its opposite.

Step 3: Look at what this character is thinking. Summarize the main idea in her mind. Now find a conflicting idea.

Step 4: If the passage involves mulling over something that has happened earlier, identify something about the prior occurrence that your character failed to realize or notice. Raise a hitherto unasked question. What new reasons does your character have to feel uneasy, anxious, or in danger?

Step 5: Without looking at your original draft, rewrite the exposition incorporating the conflicting emotions or warring ideas. Make the contrast strong. Add fresh questions and worries.

Discussion: Many authors feel it is important to portray what is going on in their characters' heads, but they forget that much of that material has already been felt and thought by the readers. Rehashing what is already obvious does not heighten it. It merely saps tension. Exposition is a time for what is new: extra questions, fresh anxiety, unforeseen angles. Think of exposition as plot turns. It's just plot that plays out in the mind.

Avoiding Low-Tension Traps

Step 1: Find any passage in your manuscript that is a weather or landscape opening, backstory, aftermath, travel, description, or foreshadowing.

Step 2: Determine what your point-of-view character feels most strongly here. Write down the opposite of that.

Step 3: Without looking at your original draft, rewrite this passage and fold in the conflicting emotions you've identified.

Step 4: Find twenty places in your manuscript to repeat the above steps.

Discussion: Tension traps occur in every manuscript. I know because I skim those passages. You don't want that. Generally speaking, it is best to start with action, cut backstory, avoid aftermath, limit description, and use foreshadowing rarely. But why not learn how to transform this material with tension? The range of tools in your story kit will be greater.

Writing Violence

Step 1: Find a violent action in your novel.

Step 2: Deconstruct this violent action into its three, four, or five most distinct visual pictures, the stills that freeze-frame the sequence.

Step 3: Look closely at each still picture. For each, write down something in the image that we would not immediately notice.

Step 4: For each picture, put your point-of-view character in a psychiatrist's chair. Ask, what do you feel at this precise moment?

Note: Discard the obvious emotions: shock, horror, fear. For each step of the action, write down a secondary emotion.

Step 5: Without looking at your original draft, rewrite this passage of violence using the results of the steps above. Pick and choose, of course, but draw heavily if not exclusively from your lists.

Discussion: Film directors take a lot of time to storyboard violent action. Each shot is carefully planned, then the shots are edited together to make the sequence. Novelists rarely spend as much time planning their violence. Violence in many manuscripts is rushed. Essential visual action is dry and objective, or sometimes buried and hard to follow. Focusing on less obvious visual details and unexpected emotions can make violence visceral and fresh. Breaking it down into steps, meanwhile, makes the action easy to follow.

Writing Sex

Step 1: Find a sex scene (or potential sex scene) in your novel.

Step 2: Deconstruct this sex sequence into its four, five, or six most interesting visual pictures, the stills that freeze-frame the sequence.

Step 3: Look around each still picture. For each, write down a visual detail that is oblique, that is not obvious.

Step 4: For each picture, put your point-of-view character in a psychiatrist's chair. Ask, what do you feel at this precise moment?

Note: Discard obvious feelings of desire, longing, lust. Capture secondary emotions.

Step 5: Without looking at your original draft, rewrite this sex scene using the material created in the steps above. Pick and choose, of course, but draw heavily if not exclusively from your lists.

Discussion: Sex scenes in many manuscripts throw off little heat. Some authors feel it is better to draw the curtain. In some stories that may be true. Still, why not practice ways to make the act itself fresh and surprising? Oblique details and secondary emotions can create a sequence that is sensual, exciting, and explicit without being pornographic.

Tension From Nothing

Step 1: Find in your story a moment when nothing at all is happening.

Step 2: Identify the point-of-view character. Write down whatever emotion he is feeling at this moment. Also write down its opposite.

Step 3: Note three or more details of the time and place of this dead moment. What objects are around? What exact kind of light, or darkness? At what pace is time moving? What mood is in the air? What is different now than a day ago?

Step 4: How would your character describe the state of his being at this moment?

Step 5: Create a passage in which this moment of action is filled with everything you created in the steps above, especially the contrasting emotions.

Discussion: Some experience is intangible, yet that which is not outwardly active can still be dynamic. Every minute has a mood. Every moment has meaning. Mood is built from environmental details, and meaning proceeds from emotions. Tension springs from the weaving of these elements into a passage that precisely captures small visual details and surgically dissects the enormous feelings that fill a silence.

The Uncommon in Common Experience

Step 1: Is your story realistic? Are your characters ordinary people?

Step 2: What in the world of your story makes you angry? What are we not seeing? What is the most important question? What puzzle has no answer? What is dangerous in this world? What causes pain?

Step 3: Where in the world of your story is there unexpected grace? What is beautiful? Who is an unrecognized hero? What needs to be saved?

Step 4: Give your feelings to a character. Who can stand for something? Who can turn the main problem into a cause?

Step 5: Create a situation in which this character must defend, explain, or justify his actions. How is the problem larger than it looks? Why does it matter to us all?

Discussion: Passion is expansive. It sweeps us up, carries us away. What is your passion? Get it into your story, especially through your characters. What angers you can anger them. What lifts them up will inspire us in turn. Ordinary people don't need to be bland. They can be poets, prophets, and saints. Their world is a microcosm. Why else are you writing about it?

The Common in Uncommon Experience

Step 1: Is your story about uncommon events? Are your characters out of the ordinary? Is your novel an historical?

Step 2: Find for your hero a failing that is human, a universal frustration, a humbling setback, or any experience that everyone has had. Add this early in the manuscript.

Step 3: What in the world of the story is timelessly true? What cannot be changed? How is basic human nature exhibited? What is the same today as a hundred years ago, and will be the same a hundred years ahead?

Step 4: What does your protagonist do the same way as everyone? What is her lucky charm? Give this character a motto. What did she learn from her mom or dad?

Step 5: Create a situation in which your exceptional protagonist is in over her head, feels unprepared, is simply lost, or in any other way must admit to herself that she's not perfect.

Discussion: While racing to save the world, it's nice to know that your Herculean hero is human after all. Even the most rarefied or ancient milieu is, in some way, just like the world in which you and I toil. Including those details and moments makes your extraordinary story one to which all readers can relate.

The Moral of the Story

Step 1: Is there a moral or a lesson in your story?

Step 2: When does your protagonist realize that he got something wrong?

Step 3: Who in the story can, at the end, see things in a completely different way?

Step 4: At the end, how is your hero better off?

Step 5: At the end, what does your hero regret?

Step 6: Who, in the midst of the story, is certain that there is no solution nor is there any way to fully comprehend the problem?

Step 7: Why is the problem positive, timely, universal, or fated?

Discussion: Providing something for the readers to take away doesn't require lecturing or teaching a lesson. Your story's main problem is itself the lesson. The students are your characters. Make your points through them — simply. The more you hammer your readers with your moral, the less likely they are to acknowledge your point.

The Fire in Fiction — A Master Technique

Step 1: Choose any scene in your manuscript that seems to you weak. Who is the point-of-view character?

Step 2: Identify whatever this character feels most strongly in this scene. Fury? Futility? Betrayal? Hope? Joy? Arousal? Shame? Grief? Pride? Self-loathing? Security?

Step 3: Recall your own life. What was the time when you most strongly felt that emotion which you identified in Step 3?

Step 4: Detail your own experience: When precisely did this happen? Who was there? What was around you? What do you remember best about the moment? What would you most like to forget? What was the quality of the light? What exactly was said? What were the smallest — and largest — things that were done?

Step 5: Did this real life experience twist the knife, or put the icing on the cake? It would have stirred this feeling anyway, but what really provoked it was … what?

Step 6: What did you think to yourself as the importance of this experience struck you?

Step 7: Give the details of your experience to your character, right now, in this very scene.

Discussion: Steal from life. That's what it's for, isn't it? How often, when something bad happened to you, did you think to yourself, at least this will be good material for a story some day! Well, now's your chance. What has happened to you, its details and specifics, are a tool to make this scene personal and strong. They are what make any story feel real. Use this method whenever you are stuck or if inspiration is low. It is the way to put fire in your fiction every day.

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