My Best Friend’s Wedding Neglecting to create dynamic secondary characters. Definition: Secondary characters are the protagonist, and the author’s best friend. A great story telling tool. They widen the stage, round out the story, spotlight the protagonist. They help tell the story. They add depth. They add conflict. They add humor. They reveal truth. It’s so easy to get caught up in creating our protagonist(s) we often forget to layer and deepen other characters. The end up being placeholders or sound bit machines. Secondary characters need to have a goal. A purpose. A hint at a problem. They can be a bit shallower than the main characters, and a bit two-dimensional, a bit more flippant, a bit more of a hyperbole. Use secondary characters to show the heart and depth […]
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How to Craft the Motivation for a Noble Quest
How do you build a powerful Noble Quest for your character, launching him off into his Second Act Journey with enough motivation, yet enough reward waiting at the end? This section of your story is pivotal because you must have built enough Want for your character to propel him through all the obstacles and disappointments of Act 2, all the way to the Black Moment. Often, when we don’t believe in a character, if they seem “too stupid to live,” it’s because we haven’t built enough WANT. This can be solved by using the Push-Pull Technique. I’ve heard them called MRU – Motivation, Reaction Units. This technique is more about building a solid motivation to convince us of the Reaction and can easily be added to the MRU technique. Again, […]
Read the RestHow do you build strong motivation for your character? Chapter 3: The Start of the Noble Quest
How do you structure your novel? How many words in a scene, or pages in a chapter? I get that question a lot, because the truth is there is no “rule” and the answer seems to vary with author. Here’s my formula, and why. I write many different length books for different genres: Contemporary Romance, Long Historical, Short Romantic Suspense, Novellas… but they all have the same story structure. (Or, if you follow MBT teaching the same LINDYHOP. Life, Inciting Incident, Noble Quest, Disappointments, Help!, Overhaul, Perfect Ending). This means, on average, the First Act (LIN) is 15% of the story, and the Third Act (HOP) is 15-20% of the story. Poor D, or the Second Act takes up 60-70% of the story. Which is why, of course, you want […]
Read the RestBook Two Starring… Book One’s Secondary Character!
We all love the sequel don’t we? Rocky 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… Oceans 11, 12 and 13. Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum. Personal favorites of mine. Jason Bourne just rocks. But I love Back to the Future 1 and 3. Two, not so much. Yet all of these sequels star the same recurring characters. What would happen if Rocky 7 became Son of Rocky and Sylvester Stallone played a secondary role, if any role at all, and some new guy, say Jesse Metcalf, played Rocky’s son. For all practical purposes you have a brand new story and it must be treated as such. You can’t rely on the old Rocky standards of hit movie making. You can’t just promote Rocky’s son into his father’s place. He […]
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