"Conflict on every page" is a truism of writing. Tension is what makes a book gripping.
You do need tension between your characters to make the story compelling, but I think it's also nice to create tension between the story and the reader. One way to do this is to have a mystery--have the reader be aware there is something happening in the story they don't understand yet.
Another way is to make your characters who are in conflict also both be sympathetic to the reader. In other words, make your antagonists three-dimensional people who the reader can also empathize with. This way, the reader isn't totally sure they want the protagonist to win--or at least, they don't want the protagonist to win too completely--because the reader doesn't want the antagonist burned too badly. The book's climax then becomes an ironic victory, no matter who "wins", because at least one sympathetic character got hurt by it.
When I rewrote my novel, I had two characters who needed depth because they were a little too blandly evil. I started digging deeper and trying to add layers to their personalities. I finessed their motivations, trying to make them more human and understandable.
I'm really glad I did it. I think the story is much more potent now; the stakes are higher and the tension is more acute, both for the reader and for the protagonist.
How many layers of tension do you have in your current WIP? Are the characters in conflict with themselves? Each other? Their world?
Is there a mystery to create tension between the reader and the story? Do you use other methods to create tension between the reader and the story? (If you do, I would love to hear about them! Please leave a comment.)
Are your villains sympathetic, or do you prefer to keep the story's struggle cleanly between good and evil? (Some consider that a crucial trait of high fantasy; the bad guys are supposed to be pure bad so that pure good can triumph.)
11 comments:
I'm writing non-fiction, of course, but even in that I do a lot of om...foreshadowing...I guess you'd call it.
And about that good and evil stuff -- if people take anything away from Practical Vampire Slaying, I hope it will be compassion for the vampires "within them and and without them," (to paraphrase ye olde Beatles, there) -- since I myself have never tangled with a vampire that I haven't, in the end, felt some affection for. I guess I'm not too big on pure evil or pure good...
And Jen, now I REALLY want to read your book. How's that query letter coming?
lc
Normally, in my reading fare, I prefer a villain with layers. It makes them more realistic if there's a reason to their nastiness - as my mother always says, "No one wakes up in the morning saying, 'I'm gonna be a son of a bitch today'" They feel justified in their nastiness...
In my current wip, the evil is evil... though my mc's real struggle is with himself - the big baddie is pure bad. If I were writing adult fiction, I don't think I would have gone that route, but it works in the context of this one because it's middle grade and because the real key conflict is internal... it's coming of age, so there's also a bit of struggle with the world and his place in it...
And reading all of that I'm cringing at trying to encompass the whole thing in one little query. Care to be a query beta reader in a few months?
Claud:
How's that query letter coming?
I've settled on what I'm going to use, at least. I've also stayed away from the ms for almost a month now. Next weekend, I'll do my last read-through, then (hopefully) my last edit.
And then, I start querying. *bites nails*
Merry:
Care to be a query beta reader in a few months?
Absolutely! I'd be honoured to--but keep in mind, I'm no expert at this! :-D I'll certainly do my best to help, however.
I'm very excited for you, Jen...in fact, I think I'm going to see if I have your email address and write you about it...
Not sure if this is what you're asking, but one way to add dimensions to an "evil" character is to provide opinions from other characters who might interpret his/her actions in a different light.
I am breaking mnay of the so called rules in writing my current WIP. I have the first person narrator openly address the reader as if they were sitting beside him and he was telling the story orally.
This novel is a comedy and the narrator is a likeable guy(I hope) but a bit slow. Much of the tension comes from his naivity (of that is a word) and the challenge is to write it in a way that the readers smells trouble without the narrator realizing his ship has a large hole in it and is sinking fast.
Bernita:
I do that too, although I also do it with my "good" characters. I agree that it adds a nice bit of tension in that the reader has to really think to figure out which character's opinion they ascribe to.
Travis:
Ooh, yes; unreliable narrators are another great way to increase tension between the reader and the story! I almost never write in first person, so I hadn't thought of that one.
My most recently completed novel, which I'm just beginning to query, is very grey when it comes to good/evil. All the characters are bad people, but only one is truly rotten. The protagonist has a murderous past and you might think he's the bad guy, and the antagonist is actually more like what you'd expect your good guy to be. In fact, they kind of move in opposite arcs. While one finds his humanity, the other loses his, so the murderer becomes the hero, and the guy trying to stop him becomes a villain of sorts. There's a female character who seems decent on the surface, but she has some dark undercurrents. In fact, the only 'good' character is a child.
I like my waters murky! :)
Sexual tension, fer sher.
Most of my characters are grey, except for one primary villain who's a demon. And whoever heard of a sympathetic demon?
Oh, except I have some of those, too.
And whoever heard of a sympathetic demon?
Oh, except I have some of those, too.
Cool! And weirdly coincidental, given that just today I was considering putting a sympathetic demon in my next novel.
All characters need to be well rounded. I agree with Merry--it's the layers that make the character jump off the page and into our hearts.
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