Writer's Nook - Writings and Reflections

Chapter 4 & 5

When you are writing and things are working all is good, but when things run into trouble what do you do? Cleaver sets out the plan or toolkit to help get you back on track.

Go to want, obstacle, action first - always.

First: Ask 'Who wants want?'

Next Ask 'What's the obstacle?'

Then Ask 'What's the character doing (action) to overcome the obstacle and fulfill the want?'

Keep things dramatic.

"Your greatest weapon is understanding the story form and the story elements - mastering the plan."

"Identification is a deep social need. It is the heart of all meaningful social interactions." The biggest punishment is social isolation. "The purpose of stories, of identification, is to put us (and keep us) in touch with ourselves." "Connecting with others is in connecting with ourselves" Stories allow us to make this connection. "Identification is is how we experience characters, how we feel what they feel, how we become then and , in doing so, experience more of ourselves." To do that character must be revealed.

REVEALING CHARACTER IS YOUR ONGOING PURPOSE AT ALL TIMES. All story choices are based on this rule. Ask yourself 'which ways reveal more character?' Action is character.

CONFLICT, ACTION, RESOLUTION

"Conflict is what use to make the character act, to use himself, to reveal himself. Revealing character must happen before identification can occur."

** "Writing compelling stories goes against the grain of all our socialized, civilized training." 'make trouble every chance you get.'

DRAMATIC PARADOX - what's bad in life is good on the page. The worse you make it for thee characters the better it is for the reader.

SADISTIC LICENSE - trouble is dramatic, fiction is the downside, the gory details, the worse-case senario - always." [this is a challenge for me]

All conflict is trouble, but not all trouble is conflict.

Wants and obstacles must be dramatic - a matter of life and death, they can't stand not acting. Characters must be determined, driven and desperate to change things. The obstacle needs to be equally determined to block the want. The character can not ignore the obstacle without suffering consequence of being seriously harmed or destroyed - emotionally, physically, socially, financially ruined.

Action must also be dramatic - direct attack upon the problem or a defense against it. The character must assert himself in a major way.
Thinking can be an action - but it must be wrestling with the problem and planning an attack or defensive action.

Resolution - the rule is: the end is the beginning. The end, in essence, the resolution of the conflict is either a victory or a defeat. There must be all out struggle.

Things must get worse and worse - things must be worse at the end of every scene or chapter. Drama builds.

So want, obstacle, action and resolution are the story elements that fit together to make the story form. Two other critical ingredients are emotion and the technique of showing.

Emotion is the ultimate connection. Ask a character: what are her worries, fears and hopes. "Stories are about crisis. In a crisis we worry, we fear the worst while hoping we can do something to prevent it."

Showing captures the experience on the page. "We make it happen right before our eyes"

For my exercise - I wrote part one of the infidelity story, but I wrote it by hand so it is off line.

Chapter 5 - deals with self-editing using these questions outlined above.

For the exercise - I wrote part two of the infidelity story.



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