It’s one thing to endow imaginary characters with hopes and dreams and Dark Moments and Wounds, Lies and Fears. It’s something else all together to go mucking around in my oh-so real hopes and dreams … and hurts.
If we want to write real characters who make our readers laugh out loud or cry as they turn the pages of our books, they we have to delve into our hearts and remember the events and the people who made us laugh out loud and cry behind closed doors — or in public.
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Do you feel like the tension in your story has started to sag?
That you are simply rehashing old plot problems? It can be a challenge in Act 2 to keep the reader caring, the story filled with enough tension to keep the pages turning.
I watched Saving Mr. Banks this weekend. Wanted to love it. But it had a few problems. The main character (Pamela) suffered from a fatal case of unlike ability, even with her backstory – and got redeemed too late. But that’s another topic. Bigger was the issue that, aside from Walt Disney wanting to keep a promise to his daughter (the stakes of the story), we simply stopped caring about the character, mostly due to her obsessive need to get the story right.
Thankfully, the story tension is resuscitated by the backstory, and the fear of young Pamela losing her father.
In other words, Peripheral Plotting saved the day.
If your story seems to be going in circles, or worse, dying…this trick just might give it the life it needs to hang on.
Peripheral Plotting is the technique of pulling in ancillary elements and using them to create more tension in your plot. Ideally, it will push your character along their journey, creating more sympathy for your character – and even motivation for their next choices.
How does Peripheral Plotting work?
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My decision to layer in stronger, deeper emotion into Somebody Like You cost me more than I ever anticipated. Why? Because if I wanted my imaginary characters to express emotions that my readers connected with, I had to tap into very real emotions inside me.
While the story is a contemporary romance, it also examines themes of twins and family, widowhood and grief, loss, estrangement, brokenness … all wrapped around the Story Question: Can a young widow fall in love with her husband’s reflection?
Another question I had to answer? How honest was I going to be as I wove stronger, deeper emotion into my novel?
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At the beginning of a novel, a character starts out in his identity – who he thinks he is. By the end of the story, if you’ve developed the story correctly, he ends up in his essence – who he really is.
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