Do Your Readers Feel the Crisis? a Post by R. Clint Peters

In Bring Your Characters to Life, previously posted on The Author’s Club blog, the focus was on character development —- developing your characters to make them friends with your readers.

Why was The Hunt For Red October a hit?  In my case, because Jack Ryan was a carefully developed character.  And, I wanted Captain Ramius to get out of Russia intact.

Which leads us to the subject of today’s post:  Do your readers feel the crisis?

The second key to a good book is the crisis.  If there’s no compelling reason for the hero to exist, the book is simply a technical manual.  Yes, there are historical books without much conflict, but try writing a biography of George Washington without including the America Revolution and Valley Forge.  Or a biography of George Patton without the Battle of the Bulge.

In lesson two of Creative Writing Ideas, the focus is on the conflict.  Why do you need a conflict?  Without a conflict, where will the story go?  Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy and girl get married, boy and girl live happily ever after.   Not much excitement in that story.  Slip in a few conflicts, and you have a best seller.

What makes readers care about your hero?  First, they are concerned about what’s happening to the character.  The reader wants to know how the hero gets out of the barrel that is plunging over the falls.  They need to identify with the character and feel emotionally attached to the solution to the conflict.

Here are some suggestions from Creative Writing Now, Lesson 2, Conflict Ideas: (http://www.creative-writing-now.com):

1) What is something your character deeply desires?  Imagine a situation in which your character has the chance to obtain this desire… but there is a terrible obstacle in the way.  (What obstacle?  You decide.)

2) What is one of your character’s greatest fears?  Imagine a situation which forces your character to face this fear in order to achieve an important goal.

3) Who is someone your character hates?  Imagine a situation which forces your character into a major struggle with this person.

4) Who is someone your character loves?  Imagine a situation which threatens to cut your character off from this person.  How does your character react?

5) What is one of your character’s greatest weaknesses?  Imagine a situation in which your character must overcome this weakness or risk losing something s/he cares about deeply.

6) Imagine a situation in which something your character doesn’t know about himself or herself is about to ruin his or her life, unless the character is capable of making drastic changes.

7) Who are the people your character cares about most?  Imagine a situation in which your character must choose between two of them.

I neglected to include the homework assigned from lesson 1, which was to develop three characters using the ideas suggested in lesson 1.

The homework for this lesson is to introduce a conflict to each of the characters created in the last lesson, using two of the above techniques.

I have not yet attempted to dive into Writing 101x.  I’ll be reporting how things go in future blog posts.

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