Guest Blog: Sherry Lewis on Conflict, Part II

Welcome to Week Two with our guest blogger, author Sherry Lewis.

Sherry’s career path toward being an author didn't exactly follow a straight line. Sherry has worked such prestigious jobs as manager of a convenience store, Christmas tree decorator, poinsettia dresser, keyboard player/vocalist in a band, secretary in an insurance office, secretary in a bank, and finally secretary and administrative assistant for an attorney who eventually became a federal judge. In late 1993, Sherry sold her first three books to Berkley Prime Crime. By early 1994, she'd sold her first book to Harlequin Superromance. CALL ME MOM was published in January 1995, with NO PLACE FOR SECRETS following in July. In 1996, Sherry gleefully left the court to pursue a full-time writing career.

Still as much in love with books as ever, Sherry writes for Berkley and Harlequin. She’s a long-time member of Romance Writers of America, where she served for four years on the Board of Directors, including one year as President. She's also a member of Novelists Inc., KOD, and Sisters in Crime, and is a deliriously happy grandmother.
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External conflict should rear its ugly head for the first time at the beginning of your story. Readers want to be in on the trouble from the beginning. If the trouble’s been going on for a while, your readers will probably feel cheated and wonder why you’re bothering them with it.

Maybe you’re writing about a woman who grew up poor. Maybe about a woman who was left at the altar by her fiancé. Maybe you’re writing about a man who found his wife in bed with his best friend. Or about a woman whose best friend was killed in an accident. Maybe your hero went through a particularly bitter divorce. There are infinite possibilities, but readers won’t really care about the past unless there’s some real connection to the present.

Readers really begin to care about the character’s past when they perceive a threat of the past being repeated. Growing up poor doesn’t matter much unless your protagonist suddenly finds herself in desperate need of money or she starts to fall in love with a wealthy man. . . or a poor one. Her financial background isn’t really an issue unless the current conflict makes it one.

Likewise, with internal conflict, timing is everything. Your heroine who has sworn off men completely isn’t likely to spot that hot hero and suddenly start worrying about the fact that he lives in L.A. and she lives in Paris. The idea that they live on opposite sides of the world doesn’t even become an issue until later, after she’s resolved some of her internal conflicts so they can develop some kind of relationship.

As I start planning layers of conflict, I ask myself a couple of questions repeatedly: “What if this conflict were resolved? What would keep my hero and heroine from getting together (or my protagonist from achieving his goal) then?” If my protagonist is searching for the kidnapped scientist and the missing formula for a biological weapon, what will keep my protagonist from saving the day if he finds the professor on page 150? Either I need a new conflict to arise at that point, or I need a twist on the original conflict. And if that conflict is resolved on page 200? Again, I need either a new conflict or another twist.

The more layers of conflict you can find to torment your characters, the less chance you have of running into saggy middle problems or endlessly repeating yourself. Each book will be different, of course. In one book it may work best to introduce the conflicts during the first part of the book and resolve them at the end. In another book, some conflicts may only arise after another is resolved.

Figuring out how and when to introduce, heighten, and then resolve your conflicts is a function of your internal editor—that much maligned, but endlessly useful part of ourselves that we too often try to keep chained up and out of the way.

Your internal editor understands the necessity of logic in a way that your creative self doesn’t, and faulty logic can be the death of an otherwise remarkable piece of fiction. Your characters might be brilliantly drawn, your setting painted beautifully, your voice crisp and unique, and your plot well thought out, but you can kill all of that with illogical actions/reactions, by introducing goals and forgetting to let your characters actually pursue them, or by creating “conflict” that sounds good but never actually creates a problem for the character.

Your logical internal editor is crucial to conflict resolution because the key to believable conflict resolution lies in being able to think through the conflict logically from beginning to end. Once you understand the steps you must take to resolve the conflict successfully, then you can plan in advance how you’ll work those steps into your novel, or you can write your first draft and revise afterward to make sure the conflict has followed those logical steps to eventual resolution.

Remember that in your book:

• There must be at least one problem that must be solved. If the resolution doesn’t matter, none of the conflict you make up for your character will matter, either.
• Your viewpoint character(s) should be the only one(s) who can solve the problem. If someone else can or should do it, readers aren’t likely to care much about your character’s efforts.
• Your viewpoint character(s) must take active steps toward solving the problem as the book progresses and the forces working against them (whether internal or external) must increase in strength and/or urgency.
• Actual conflict is always stronger and more interesting than anticipated conflict or remembered conflict.

There’s no quicker way to kill the tension than to indulge a character’s urge to think endlessly about something that might happen in the future. Even the biggest problem is going to bore your readers to tears if the characters only think about the problem and never actually encounter it. By the same token, the urge to avoid a difficult scene can also deflate tension in the blink of an eye. Some of us take it a step further, by combining the two—a sure way to let the air out of your story’s balloon.

We write scene after scene in which the heroine thinks about what might happen if the hero finds out about her sordid past. The author mistakes these scenes for motivation, believing that all that angst is necessary to explain why the heroine continues to lie to the hero. Finally, just when the reader would rather gouge out her eyes than read another “I can’t tell him or I’ll lose him” monologue, the heroine decides it’s time to come clean.

She squares her shoulders, lifts her chin, and sets off to tell the hero the truth. The scene fades to black, and the next time we see her she’s picking at her Cobb salad over lunch with her best friend. While we struggle to make ourselves care, she regales her friend with the details of her encounter with the hero.

What’s wrong with that you ask? There’s absolutely no tension in the scene. The confrontation is over. The conflict is past. Instead of getting to sit in on the discussion and experiencing the heart-stopping fear when the hero learns the truth, we learn about it after everything’s been decided. Anticipated conflict and remembered conflict are slightly better than no conflict at all, but not by much.

Good conflict is what makes a story worth reading. We need internal and external struggles to create tension and force characters to make choices that matter. If we can provide those, readers will not only keep reading this book, but they’ll come back for more.

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We're having a drawing at Dancing on Coals. Purchase any of our workshop booklets during the month of November and your name will be entered into a drawing for a free copy of "In and Out: Putting Characters in Conflict" coming in December.

Each booklet contains the full text of the Dancing on Coals workshop by the same name. Booklets currently available are:

Mastering Scene and Sequel

Spinning Straw into Gold: The Art and Craft of Revisions

Riding the Emotional Roller-Coaster

Creating Characters with Character

Plotting the Organic Way

Your name will be entered once for each booklet you purchase. For more information, visit us at http://www.dancingoncoals.com/ and click on the "Booklets for Download" button

Guest blog: Sherry Lewis on Conflict

For the next two weeks we have the honor of hosting author Sherry Lewis and the good fortune of having her discuss conflict.

Sherry’s career path toward being an author didn't exactly follow a straight line. Sherry has worked such prestigious jobs as manager of a convenience store, Christmas tree decorator, poinsettia dresser, keyboard player/vocalist in a band, secretary in an insurance office, secretary in a bank, and finally secretary and administrative assistant for an attorney who eventually became a federal judge. In late 1993, Sherry sold her first three books to Berkley Prime Crime. By early 1994, she'd sold her first book to Harlequin Superromance. CALL ME MOM was published in January 1995, with NO PLACE FOR SECRETS following in July. In 1996, Sherry gleefully left the court to pursue a full-time writing career.

Still as much in love with books as ever, Sherry writes for Berkley and Harlequin. She’s a long-time member of Romance Writers of America, where she served for four years on the Board of Directors, including one year as President. She's also a member of Novelists Inc., KOD, and Sisters in Crime, and is a deliriously happy grandmother.

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Thanks for inviting me to visit your blog. I’m excited to be here and to talk about one of the most profound things I’ve learned about writing over the course of my career: Conflict.

Everyone reading this is probably aware that there are two basic types of conflict: internal and external. We hear about them almost from the moment we make the decision to become a writer. In almost every book we write, we’ll probably work with both types of conflict, but getting the mix just right is sometimes tricky.

We all know that internal conflict is a war that takes place within a person, while external conflict is a war that takes place outside the character, on another stage. Both types of conflict should be ongoing, active, and changing as the story progresses.

Every one of us lives through moments of conflict on a daily basis, but they’re rarely interesting enough or strong enough to work in a novel. I might want the prime rib for dinner, but I can really only afford the ground sirloin. Which one to choose? Those shoes are so stinking cute, I’d love to buy them, but if I do that, I can’t pay the water bill. What to do? My daughter and I can’t agree on what to watch on TV or where to go for dinner.

Realistic? Yes. Interesting? Not so much. Compelling enough to keep me glued to the page when the kids are screaming and dinner’s on the stove? Ummm. No.

To craft a strong, compelling novel, we need to carefully select internal and external conflicts that will dovetail as the story progresses and ultimately push the characters to make a choice that’s going to rock their world.

Your romance novel heroine can agonize for 300 pages over whether she’s willing to give her alcoholic mother another chance, but unless she’s facing an external conflict that makes her decision absolutely necessary, nobody’s going to care about your heroine’s angst. Your romance hero might be locked in a competition with his arch-rival for the promotion he wants, but if getting that promotion doesn’t put another area of his life in danger, their competition might just be a big yawn.

Compelling conflict must force the character involved into a decision she really doesn’t want to make. Climb the mountain or risk death in the snow-covered valley. Risk becoming involved in a new relationship or give up forever the dream of having a wife and kids. If the choice won’t change things in a major way, the decision probably isn’t interesting enough to keep readers interested. Go after the promotion that will mean moving to NYC but will also provide the financial stability he’s always longed for, or stay in Portland to be near his daughter.

When you’re making a statement about your character’s internal conflict, make sure you’re forcing them to make a choice:

John wants success in his career and financial stability, but he also wants to stay in Portland to be near Chelsea. Which one will he choose?

Nellie’s fear of heights has paralyzed her for years. Now she’s faced with a choice: climb the mountain or wait at the isolated crash site for someone to find her before she does. Which one will she choose?

David always wanted a traditional family—wife, two kids, and a dog. He even thought the picket fence looked pretty good. But after his fiancée betrayed him, his parents divorced and his older brother cheated on his wife of fifteen years, David’s not sure he believes in marriage anymore. When he falls in love with the pastor’s daughter, David has a choice to make: marry her or lose her.

The choice of the right characters is crucial to making conflict come to life. In David’s case, just meeting a new woman isn’t enough to put him into deep conflict. He must meet and fall in love with a woman for whom it’s marriage or nothing. If David doesn’t have to make the tough choice, his story won’t be nearly compelling enough to keep readers turning the pages.

A common mistake I see is when an author introduces “conflict” that isn’t actually conflict at all. A woman whose ex-husband cheated on her and who has sworn off men is not in conflict—not even when the hot, hunky hero walks into the room. Her distrust of men is simply a statement about her current emotional condition. It’s potentially one-half of a conflict, but it’s not conflict unless there’s something equally strong pulling her in the opposite direction at the same time. Sadly, even the hero’s incredible hunkiness is not sufficiently strong to create a strong, believable conflict for this woman.

Nor is his hotness enough to motivate a woman who’s truly determined to avoid men to seek out the hero and spend time around him.

What would put her in internal conflict? What would motivate her to take a chance?

I’m sure we could come up with countless possibilities, but let’s say this woman is also driven to find the man responsible for destroying her father last year. If she believes that the hero has information that could help her, she’ll seek out the hero and her reasons for doing so will feel realistic and believable to the reader. Once you’ve created a chink in her armor by creating a pull that’s every bit as strong as the push, you can believably motivate the character to take the risk she’d rather avoid.

One of the best places I know of to look for strong conflict is where the character’s childhood teachings are at odds with an adult need. Maybe your heroine longs for children of her own but doesn’t see marriage in her future. Her strong religious beliefs won’t allow her to explore alternative options for conception, so her longing for a baby will compel her to work through her trust issues when the hero moves in next door. Her story isn’t just about the conflict between woman and man it’s also about the conflict between her moral beliefs and her human longing.

Or maybe she has a bit too much to drink one night, has a one-night stand with some guy and finds herself pregnant. Is she in conflict now? In an historical novel, maybe. In a contemporary, not so much ... unless she also has deep-seated beliefs against abortion and adoption and also believes that a child needs both parents to grow up happy and healthy. By itself, the fact that she grew up without a father doesn’t put her in conflict, even after she meets the hero. But if she’s backed into a corner by an unplanned pregnancy, her own needs will be in conflict with the needs of the child.

Maybe your hero chooses to stay in a loveless marriage so his sick wife doesn’t lose her health insurance. His desire for happiness is in conflict with his sense of duty. He can either leave her and find a new love, or he can look himself in the mirror, but he can’t do both.

Or maybe he was taught as a child that compromise is a sign of weakness and now he’s forced to compromise to save someone or something important to him.

Every one of us is carrying beliefs from childhood around with us, and our characters should be no different. Those beliefs are probably a huge part of who you are, whether they’re relatively unimportant like the “right” way to decorate a Christmas tree or something more integral, such as what we believe about religion and spirituality, politics or sex.

Beliefs that come from our childhoods are often so powerfully embedded we continue to believe them even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Even in middle age, the things we were taught as children can hang us up on the paths we’ve chosen as adults.

One of the big mistakes authors make is when we don’t let our characters hold onto their beliefs. We write about people who change life paths because of one conversation with a stranger. About people who abandon the teachings of their youth because of a set of soulful eyes or the touch of a hand. We write about people who throw away everything they believe because their best friend tells them to change things up over chicken salad croissants at lunch.

When you’re creating internal conflicts for your characters, don’t short-change them. Your characters must hold to their belief system just as you cling to your own. It’s the other side of the internal conflict that creates the chink in their armor and allows change to happen—eventually. But even with that chink, they’re going to need something close to an internal earthquake to shake them from their original beliefs. The hero who feels responsible for his wife’s death isn’t likely to go chat up the perky redhead standing by the elevator no matter how green her eyes are—unless he needs something else as badly as he needs to protect himself.

Remember that internal conflict is a two-edged sword. It forces the character to make a difficult choice. We write the story to find out the answers to the questions that arise from those conflicting desires. Readers read the story for the same reasons. Without the questions, there’s no reason for the reader to keep turning pages. Force your characters into a corner and give them a life-changing choice to make—a choice they can’t avoid. If you can do that, your readers will become invested in the character’s journey every time.

Join us next Sunday for Part 2.

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We're having a drawing at Dancing on Coals. Purchase any of our workshop booklets during the month of November and your name will be entered into a drawing for a free copy of "In and Out: Putting Characters in Conflict" coming in December.

Each booklet contains the full text of the Dancing on Coals workshop by the same name. Booklets currently available are:

Mastering Scene and Sequel

Spinning Straw into Gold: The Art and Craft of Revisions

Riding the Emotional Roller-Coaster

Creating Characters with Character

Plotting the Organic Way

Your name will be entered once for each booklet you purchase. For more information, visit us at http://www.dancingoncoals.com/ and click on the "Booklets for Download" button

Are Books Scary?

Years ago, I shared a flat with a non-reader. In fact, Carmen went so far as to say books scared her. She would cast my five sets of bookshelves a wary glower, then retreat from my room to her world of chrome and found objects. One day, I returned from work to find my cookbooks piled in the closet. Carmen knew in her gut that books did not belong anywhere near the kitchen.

She isn't an ignorant person. She can read; she's an artist and an incredibly creative person. But books - and reading - hold no interest for her. And the physical inactivity of reading bores her silly. (And believe me, she is silly enough.) Information and entertainment, for her, comes from televisions, movies and music. Not books.

I, on the other hand, am a reader. My five bookshelves have grown to eight. Books are my crack and my solace and my teachers. Barring an emergency, I cannot make it through a day without 45 minutes (minimum) in the morning, drinking my coffee and reading (or re-reading) a book.

I've spent the last month working on an estate sale in Georgetown, in a house that has been in the same family for 120 years. And there in the entrance hall was the most beautiful 7 x 8 foot set of mahogany and glass bookshelves. Full of the books a family collected between 1890 and 1950. Mostly novels, some books of knowledge, and of course the pre-requisite mid-century Readers Digest condensed volumes.

The vast majority of these books were charming children's novels from the early part of the last century. And tucked amongst the pages were little treasures - postcards, birthday cards, and other mementos. These books were read. Enjoyed. Treasured and saved for nearly a century in that phenomenal glass and mahogany home.

I understand these people. I am still, 10 years later, puzzled by my former flatmate. Non-readers are as foreign to me as, well, seafood on a pizza. It doesn't make sense. People who don't need to read the book because they saw the movie. People who don't read because they had to read too much in school. People who don't read because they just don't have the time. People who don't read because they are too busy writing. People who don't read because books are scary.

It's a fundamental divide. As elemental to me as religion. And though I try to have compassion on these people, I find it a trial because I have no empathy for them. Only pity. It's a puzzle. Maybe there's a book out there that will help me understand them.

To NaNoWriMo or Not? That Is the Question.

This is the first year that I’ve done NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. For those who don’t know what that is (and I’m betting most, if not all of you, know more about it than I do) it means that you sign on at www.NaNoWriMo.org and vow to write 50,000 new words on a new manuscript. You cannot start until November 1 and you must end on November 30.

I almost didn’t do it. I’d just spent a whirlwind Halloween weekend going trick-or-treating twice, being in a Halloween parade and sewing a Saint costume for my child to wear in the All-Saints Day service. So, the last thing I wanted to do as I sat in the recliner at 11 PM on Sunday night, gasping for air and zoning out on the Real Housewives, was add another thing on my to-do list.

But, as I scanned my emails, I thought of NaNoWriMo. I’d been talking to the Rockville 8 about it, what exactly you do for it, etc. at our last meeting. Now, I was feeling guilty. I’d told myself that I’d do it. I’d promised myself I’d widen my horizons this year by trying it. Yet, at the moment, I was sitting in my recliner like an exhausted, used-up lump.

That’s when it hit me. I’m exhausted all the time anyway. I’m always used up. I’m always too busy. So, if I’m going to be all those things I may as well add one on the heap for myself. So, I logged onto the website and joined. As I did it, I questioned my own sanity. But I guess there are others who have questioned theirs as they added their names to the list.

It was also exhilarating. I was finally a part of something I’d heard others talk about. As of Sunday, November 7, I have 7,179 words. I should be at 11,669 words if you figure the 1,667 word a day pace. So, I’ve got some catching up to do. By my own reckoning I need to do 1,947 words each day from here on out to make it. So far, I’ve done an average of 1,026 words each day. This includes the day that I spent all day at my child’s competition. The day I had a deadline at work and dragged myself home. The day the traffic was horrendous on the way home. The day I had a headache and thought my head would explode. I’ve literally done something each day. Even on the hardest days.

Here’s the secret I’ve discovered. I may have started out exhausted when I was writing but many times I forgot my fatigue and stress by the end of my words. My husband has been supportive. My child played nicely with various toys. The dog sleeps on her rug under my desk and warms my feet. They’ve all pitched in and done their part.

And, when it didn’t get easier as I wrote, when it felt like pulling teeth, I still did it. It may not have been pretty but something made it to the page.

Last night, after all day at my child’s event, I felt like I’d been sucked dry. I really, really didn’t feel like it. So, I gave myself a carrot and wrote an exciting scene that I’d brainstormed just that morning. When I looked up, I’d written about 1,400 words. It felt effortless.

There’s another thing whispering in the background. The Rockville 8 goals for 2010. I seem to remember something about having a complete rough draft of a new book by August 2010. Did I really say that? Can I make it at least by the end of 2010 with the help of NaNo?

So, maybe I won’t make 1,947 words per day. Maybe I’ll only get 30,000 words for this month. But, then I say “only 30,000 words” and laugh. That would be a really good thing because it would be 30,000 I might not have had.

Tell me about your NaNo war experiences. What worked? What didn’t? Any advice?

So, this post is 692 words. Can I count this toward my daily NaNo goal?