The Bedtime Story Model by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

The Bedtime Story Model

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

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There are two common ways people organize ideas—the top-down method and the bottom-up method.

The top-down method starts with just one simple idea and expands it out in stages, adding more and more detail until the whole story is fleshed out. Fans of my Snowflake Method will see instantly that the Snowflake is a classic top-down approach to developing a story. But it’s not the only way.

The bottom-up method starts with the whole story, or at least a big chunk of it. But to sell this to an editor or an agent or a reader, you’ve got to be able to explain in just a few words what the story’s about. So the bottom-up approach keeps summarizing and summarizing the story into smaller and smaller chunks until at last, you’ve got a one-sentence summary or a logline or a pitch sentence that you can use to sell your story.

That bottom-up process of summarizing and resummarizing is hard. You have to figure out what’s important and what to leave out. But it feels like it’s all important!

So how do you decide what to leave out?

I’ve found it helpful to use a clever tool created by Pilar Allesandra, the “Bedtime Story” template, which helps you summarize the Three-Act Structure of your story in just a few paragraphs. The template was originally described in her book The Coffee Break Screenwriter. This book is packed full of good ideas and templates for making progress on your screenplay, 10 minutes at a time.

I originally found the “Bedtime Story” template online at the StoryFix blog, in a post by Art Holcomb from years ago.

The entire template appears in Art's blog post, and I then bought the book The Coffee Break Screenwriter by Pilar Allesandra, because it has dozens and dozens of other useful templates for organizing your story.

Let’s review the Three-Act Structure and then see the Bedtime Story model in action. The Three-Act Structure breaks your story up into four parts of roughly equal length. Yes, four parts, not three. We’ll see how that works shortly

Act 1

The first Act of your story introduces your character and their life situation, reveals some problem in their life, and ends with a First Disaster that impels the character to commit to the story.

An example I’ve used many times is the original Star Wars movie (now numbered Episode 4. In Act 1, we meet Luke Skywalker, a young farm boy who dreams of joining the rebel alliance, but is tied down to a dull job working for his uncle. When his uncle buys two droids that escape, Luke goes after them and meets Obi-wan Kenobi, who invites him to go help rescue Princess Leia. Luke initially says no, but then he discovers that his aunt and uncle have been murdered by storm troopers searching for the droids. So Luke agrees to join Obi-wan Kenobi on a trip to Princess Leia’s home planet.

Here’s the Bedtime Story template for the first act. As a homework exercise, you can fill in the blanks with the storyline from Star Wars or for some other favorite movie that you know better:

Once upon a time there was a ____________________( main character) who was ____________________ (character flaw). When ____________________ (obstacle) happened, she ____________________ (flaw-driven strategy). Unfortunately ____________________ (screw up). So she decided ____________________ (goal) and had to ____________________ (action that begins a new journey).

Act 2A

Act 2 has two parts, roughly equal in length. In Act 2A, your lead character pursues a defective strategy, runs into obstacles, meets some allies, and ultimately hits a Second Disaster that forces the story lead to rethink their strategy.

Continuing the example of Star Wars, in Act 2A, Luke and Obi-wan Kenobi hire Han Solo and Chewbacca to transport them on the Millennium Falcon to Princess Leia’s home planet, Alderaan. On the journey, Kenobi tries to teach Luke to use The Force, but Luke is having trouble giving up rational control to some spooky unseen Force. When they reach Alderaan, they find the planet has been obliterated by a giant Death Star. A tractor beam sucks the Millennium Falcon into the Death Star. Kenobi sets out alone to cut power to the tractor beam. Luke and Han go on a crazy mission to rescue the Princess. But Darth Vader intercepts Kenobi and they have a light-saber duel, which ends with Vader killing Kenobi.

Here’s the Bedtime Story template for Act 2A. As a homework exercise, you can again fill in the blanks:

In order to take this action, she decided to ____________________ (strategy). Unfortunately ____________________ (obstacle) happened, which caused ____________________ (complication)! Now she had to ____________________ (new task) or risk ____________________ (personal stake)

Act 2B

In Act 2B, your lead character makes a new and better strategy, which they then pursue for the rest of the story. However, the obstacles only get bigger, and the Act ends with a Third Disaster that now forces the lead character to commit to one last desperate attempt to end the story.

In Act 2B of Star Wars, Luke and his friends escape from the Death Star. Darth Vader sends out Imperial ships to pursue them, but our heroes fight bravely and defeat their enemies and escape. Princess Leia insists that they must go to the secret rebel planet, where she intends to hand over the droid R2-D2 with the complete plans for the Death Star. She hopes that the rebels will then find a weakness that they can exploit to destroy the Death Star. They reach the rebel planet safely, and only then do they discover that they’ve been tricked. Vader’s men had planted a tracking device on the Millennium Falcon, and now the Death Star has followed them to the home solar system of the rebel planet. It’s only a matter of hours before the Death Star will destroy the rebel planet, and with it the Rebellion.

Here’s the Bedtime Story template for Act 2B. As a homework exercise, you can again fill in the blanks:

Where she once wanted to ____________________ (old desire) she now wanted ____________________ (new desire). But how could that happen when ____________________ (obstacle)? Filled with ____________________ (emotion) she____________________ (new action). But this only resulted in ____________________ (low point).

Act 3

In Act 3, your lead character commits to a decision to end the story. The stakes are high, but your lead character is now a stronger person than they were at the start of the story, and they have a chance to win. It’s only a slim chance, but they accept the odds and risk everything to win or lose.

In Act 3 of Star Wars, the rebels know that the Death Star will destroy their planet shortly, unless they can destroy it first. They could scatter to the far corners of the galaxy, but this would end the Rebellion, because without a home base and communication, they would have no way to continue fighting the Empire. They decide to stand and fight the Death Star. Using the plans supplied by R2-D2, they detect a small weakness in the Death Star’s defenses, and send out every possible fighter ship to attack it. After a wild battle, with many rebels killed, Luke Skywalker finds enough of the Force inside himself to launch a photon torpedo that destroys the Death Star.

Here’s the Bedtime Story template for Act 3. As a homework exercise, you can again fill in the blanks:

Fortunately, this helped her to realize ____________________ (the solution)! All she had to do was____________________ (action using new lesson)! Using ____________________ (other characters), ____________________ (skills) and ____________________ (tools from the journey) she was able to ____________________ (victorious action). Unfortunately, ____________________ (final hurdle). But this time, she ____________________ (clever strategy)! This resulted in ____________________ (change of situation)

A Template is a Guide, Not a Master

I hope it’s obvious that the Bedtime Story template is just a guide to help you in focusing your ideas into a sound Three-Act Structure. It will tell you what to remove from your summary, and it will suggest what to leave in, but you may need to change the wording to fit your story.

The template is not something to follow slavishly. Your story is your story and it has its own inner logic. The Bedtime Story model is just a way to help you summarize your story in a couple of hundred words that reflect the classic Three-Act Structure.

Once you’ve done that, it shouldn’t be hard to trim it further, to a one-paragraph summary and then ultimately to a one-sentence summary that will serve you forever as your selling tool.

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About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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The Edit-As-You-Go Method by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

The Edit-As-You-Go Method

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Finishing your first draft is an essential milestone on the way to publishing your novel. If you don’t finish that first draft, you probably won’t finish the second, or third, and you probably won’t ever get a polished final draft.

And how do you write your first draft? There’s no one right answer. Different writers are different, and what works for one writer doesn’t work for another. Here are four options that have worked for large numbers of writers:

• Writing by the seat of your pants—you just start typing with no planning.
• Writing to an outline—you create a detailed outline and use it to write your first draft.
• The Snowflake Method—the 10-step method I invented to plan your novel’s plot and characters, starting simple and expanding out the details bit by bit.
• Editing as you go—you type the first scene as if you were writing by the seat of your pants, but then you polish it until it’s perfect before moving on to the next scene. You repeat this until you’re done.

And of course many writers mix and match elements from these methods. The right way for you is the one that works.

I created the Snowflake Method, so naturally I’ve talked about it a lot in this e-zine over the years.

In this article, I’d like to focus on the Edit-As-You-Go approach, because I think it hasn’t gotten as much airtime as it deserves. My understanding is that Dean Koontz uses the Edit-As-You-Go method, and that gives it all the credibility it needs.

Why Edit As You Go?

Why might you decide to give the EAYG method a try?

One very good reason to try it is that you resonate with the idea. If you’ve read the short descriptions of the methods above and EAYG has emotional appeal for you, then your instincts are telling you something. I think it’s always smart to listen to your instincts. They might be wrong, but very often, they’re right.

Another good reason to try EAYG is that you’ve tried the other methods, and none of them have clicked for you. That doesn’t make you a bad writer or a defective human. It just means you tried things that didn’t click for you. That’s all it means. If you try EAYG, it’ll either click for you or it won’t. If it doesn’t click, then you’re no worse off than before. But if it does click, then that’s a win. A big win. There’s just no downside to experimenting.

A third reason to try EAYG is when your story and characters are only partly formed in your mind, and you need a lab for trying out different ideas to get them to gel. The novel I’m currently writing is a historical novel in which history records a number of disconnected events, but we don’t know the exact order of the events, and we don’t know the character motivations. The story is unclear, and my job is to find the story. So I’ve found EAYG useful as a lab. I can write a scene in which I audition characters and plot ideas. If they don’t seem to be right, I can edit them again and again and again, until they ooze into focus. Then I can move on. This is not my preferred way to write, but I’ll do what it takes to find my story.

This is Not Complicated

Unlike outlining or the Snowflake Method, the EAYG approach has very few moving parts. You type a scene. Then you edit it once or many times, until you’re happy with it. Then you repeat until done.

So there’s not a lot to say here. Either you like the idea or you don’t. If you hate it, then move on; life is short. But if you love it, give it a whirl and see if you like it as much in practice as you do in theory.

The acid test of any kind of writing is this question: Are you having fun? This matters, because we novelists spend thousands of hours writing fiction. For most novelists, the writing is not super profitable. So it had better be fun, or what’s the point?

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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Epistemic Conflict by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Epistemic Conflict

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

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Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that tries to explain what it means to know things, and how we know that we know what we know.

If that seems dull or weird or spacey to you, then I refer you to your favorite search engine to run a search on the term “fake news.” Fake news is false information packaged up to look like true news. And that’s a hot topic right now. Fake news is a failure in epistemology.

So I claim that epistemology matters in real life. If so, then it also matters in fiction.

I won’t be looking at fake news in this column. I have bigger fish to fry. Instead, I’ll be looking at something I call “epistemic conflict.” This will take some effort to unpack. Work with me for the next thousand words, and I think you’ll find it worth the trouble. You can use this technique forever in your fiction, and you’ll never run out of ideas.

Why Conflict Matters

Every novelist cares about conflict, because conflict is the gasoline in the engine of fiction. Conflict makes your story go. You need conflict, and one powerful way to create conflict is through a misunderstanding between your characters.

And that’s where “epistemic conflict” comes into play. “Epistemic conflict” is one very basic way to create a deep misunderstanding that will get your characters fighting like rabid dogs.

But before I explain “epistemic conflict,” I need another term, which is “epistemic status.” And what is that?

Epistemic Status

People say stuff all the time. Some of it’s true; some is false; some is neither. But it would be naive to think that all statements can be classified as either a “fact” or a “lie.” Because a lot depends on what people believe about the truth or falsity of the things they say.

So when I talk about the “epistemic status” of a statement, I’m thinking of two questions:

• Does the person who made the statement believe it’s true, or false, or neither?
• How certain are they in that belief?

Both of these matter. These two issues raise all sorts of interesting complications. Here are some examples of the many kinds of epistemic status that a statement can have:

• Facts are things you believe because you have first-hand evidence, and therefore you can know them with high certainty. For example, it’s a fact that the sky was blue outside my house yesterday at noon. I saw the sky. It was blue. The only way this fact could be wrong is if my eyes weren’t functioning correctly.
• Mathematical theorems are things you believe because you can prove them using logic, and therefore you can know them with high certainty. For example, I know the Pythagorean Theorem is true, because I have worked through the proof. The only way this theorem could be wrong is if my brain isn’t functioning correctly.
• Scientific findings summarize the results of experiments. A scientist considers a scientific finding to be provisionally true, based on the current data. A scientific experiment should always estimate the certainty of the result. Note that scientific findings sometimes change when more data comes in.
• Mathematical conjectures are guesses about potentially true theorems. Mathematicians consider them “not proven,” but they often have reason to think they might be true or might be false. Math happens when a mathematician tries to prove or disprove a conjecture. For a famous example of a conjecture, do a search on the term “Goldbach’s conjecture.”
• Scientific hypotheses are guesses about potential scientific findings. Scientists may suspect a hypothesis is true, or suspect it’s false, but they don’t know, and they know that they don’t know. As a very famous example, when I was a graduate student in physics, the Higgs boson was widely hypothesized to explain major parts of physics. But nobody had ever seen one in the lab. The Higgs boson was a hypothesis for 48 years, until it finally was detected in the lab. Then it became a scientific finding.
• Faith statements are statements that people of faith make about their religious beliefs, even when they know that no proof is possible. Generally, they don’t assign a level of certainty, because faith is not about certainty. As an example, one of the Thirteen Principles of Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, was, “I believe with perfect faith in the resurrection of the dead.” Believing this is an act of faith, not a claim of certainty. If anyone knew it with certainty, it would not be a faith statement, it would be a fact or a theorem.
• Opinions are things you believe to be more likely true than not. In some cases, the opinion holder may be very certain their opinion is correct, but the reality is that the correctness of opinions usually can’t be known with high certainty.
• Allegations are claims that somebody has made without providing evidence to back them up. Allegations are an interesting case because the person making the allegation usually claims a high level of certainty. But the person hearing the allegation can’t have that same level of certainty until they see the evidence. One thing they can know with high certainty is that the allegation was made. That makes allegations newsworthy, even when they can't be checked. Responsible journalists make it clear that they are allegations, NOT facts. They also look for ways to check them.
• Lies are statements that you don’t believe and you know to be false. The point of a lie is to convince other people that a false statement is true. Fake news is an example of a lie.
• April Fool’s jokes are a special case. They’re not the truth, but they’re also not a lie. When you tell an April Fool’s joke, you believe with certainty it’s false, but truth or falsehood is not the point. The point of an April Fool’s joke is to say something obviously false in a way that’s funny because it’s absurd.
• Satire is another special case. Satire is not intended to be either the truth or a lie. It’s intended to make people think by saying something you don’t believe in a way that highlights some important truth. A famous example is the essay, “A Modest Proposal,” by Jonathan Swift, published in 1729. Swift proposed that poor Irish families could sell their children to be eaten by the rich. This was not a real policy proposal, and probably few people ever thought it was. But it was not a lie, either, nor was it a joke. It was satire, and it made people think about their assumptions.

That’s not a complete list of all possible epistemic statuses. You can probably think of several more. But these are enough to now explain what “epistemic conflict” is.

The Payoff—Epistemic Conflict

So what do I mean by “epistemic conflict?”

“Epistemic conflict” is the special kind of conflict that happens between characters when they assign different epistemic statuses to a statement.

In the real-life case of a “fake news” story, some people claim that the story has the epistemic status of a “Fact,” while others claim that it has the epistemic status of a “Lie.”

But there are many ways to have epistemic conflict. Let’s look at a few possible examples that could arise in your fiction:

Example 1: Your character writes an April Fool’s Day blog post that they think is hilariously funny. But then they discover that hundreds or thousands of people mistook it for a fact, and now there’s trouble.

Example 2: Your character posts a tweet that is intended to be satire. But satire requires context, and people who don’t know the context think your character’s tweet sounds racist. It goes viral and now millions of people are angry at your character, because they mistook satire for an actual opinion.

Example 3: Two characters express conflicting political opinions, but each of them mistakes their own opinions as facts, and mistakes the other’s opinion as a lie.

Example 4: Two scientists publish their scientific findings, but they get opposite results. The scientists know that all scientific knowledge is provisional, and they see the conflict in their findings as something interesting to pursue. But a journalist mistakes these findings as facts, and writes a story claiming there is a “crisis” in the scientists’ field of study.

Homework:

• Here’s a challenge for you. Spend one whole day figuring out the epistemic status of everything you say or hear. You’ll probably have to define some new epistemic statuses, because the list of 11 that I gave isn’t the whole alligator. I suspect you’ll find this exercise exhausting but enlightening. At the end of the day, your reward is that you get to think about how to use all this in your fiction.

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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The Five Tools for Showing by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

The Five Tools for Showing

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Your job as a novelist is very simple: to create a movie inside your reader’s head.

Not a picture. Not a sound bite. Not a word salad.

A movie. Inside your reader’s head.

Do that, and you win.

When editors tell you to “show, don’t tell,” what they really mean is to create that movie in your reader’s head.

You have five tools for showing that movie. That’s all. Just five. Master those five tools, and you’re far along the road to novelist nirvana. Here they are:

• Action
• Dialogue
• Interior Monologue
• Interior Emotion
• Sensory Description

Action

Action is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being doing something. Some examples:

• Hermione jumped on her broomstick and raced after Malfoy.
• Michael Corleone pointed his gun at the head of the police captain and squeezed the trigger.
• C3PO pressed its fingers into the wall socket, tripping the circuit breaker and plunging the room into darkness.

Dialogue

Dialogue is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being saying something. Some examples:

• “You are the last man I could ever be prevailed upon to marry,” said Elizabeth Bennet.
• “Hasta la vista, baby,” said the Terminator.
• “These are not the droids you’re looking for,” said Obi-wan Kenobi.

Interior Monologue

Interior monologue is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being thinking something. Some examples:

• I’ve got to catch that bottle of nitro before it hits the floor.
• Bad news. He loves me and he loves me not.
• It’s not enough to win this fight just for today. I need to win the fight for all time.

Interior Emotion

Interior emotion is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being feeling emotion.

This is more complicated than the other tools, so we need to clarify a few points before giving an example. You don’t need to name the emotion. If you name the emotion, you aren’t showing it, you’re telling it. If you want to show the emotion, you show the character’s physiological response to the emotion, and the reader figures out the emotion and may well feel it right along with the characters.

Note that physiological responses are ambiguous. They are usually not enough to pin down the exact emotion. The reader also needs context. But once you’ve given them the right context, showing them the character’s physiological response will make them feel the emotion.

I’ll give just one example. You can easily imagine different contexts in which this physiological response might signal anger, fear, horror, or possibly other emotions:

• Luke’s face burned, but the inside of his stomach was icy cold.

Sensory Description

Sensory description is showing the environment in a way that appeals to the senses. Some examples:

• The dorm room smelled of peanut butter and dirty socks.
• Neon lights flashed red and blue and green.
• Thunder smashed outside the house. Rain pounded on the roof.

Mix and Match

You have five tools for showing your reader your story. You can mix and match them any way you like. Any paragraph you write can use any combination of these five tools. That gives you endless variety for showing your story.

There are other tools for telling your story—narrative summary and exposition are the most common. You may be asking if it’s okay to use these tools.

Of course it is! These can be powerful tools, used in the right way, at the right time in your story. It’s not possible to spend 100% of your story showing, with no telling at all. Telling gets your reader quickly and efficiently through the boring parts of the story. Showing takes your reader slowly and immersively through the exciting parts of the story.

As a novelist, you get to decide what percentage of your story to show and what percentage to tell. A modern high-octane thriller might spend 98% of the story in showing and only 2% in telling. A slower-paced, more reflective novel might spend only 60% showing and 40% telling.

Just don’t fool yourself. If you intended to show your reader mostly movie, but you wound up breaking into the movie in every paragraph to tell your reader interesting footnotes, then you didn’t do what you intended. You should at least know you’re doing that.

Homework

Look at the most recent scene you wrote for your novel. Highlight every word in the scene that is not action, dialogue, interior monologue, interior emotion, or sensory description. The parts that are not highlighted are the movie you’re creating in your reader’s head. The parts that are highlighted are the interruptions to the movie. Are you surprised how many interruptions you’ve got in your movie? Or is the proportion about right?

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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Actions and Subtexting by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Actions and Subtexting

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

In the last article, I showed an
extended example of subtexting in dialogue, taken from
Robert Ludlum's novel THE MATARESE CIRCLE. When I wrote
that column, I reread the entire 500+ page novel
looking for the best example of subtexting I could find.

While reading it, I also found a terrific example of
using actions to add a subtext to dialogue. This month,
I want to show you that example.

Most of us have heard the cliche that "actions speak
louder than words." Usually, it's understood that the
actions are subconscious giveaways that undermine the
speaker's words.

In the example I'll show, the actions are very
consciously chosen to negate the speaker's words. Why
would Robert Ludlum want to do that? You'll see...

Some background on the scene is in order. KGB agent
Vasili Taleniekov is a man on the run. He's searching
for information on a shadowy international organization
called the "Matarese" which is trying to destabilize
the world using terrorists as pawns.

Taleniekov is on his way to visit an old girlfriend in
Leningrad on a brutally cold winter day. He hasn't seen
her in years, and he knows that if he's being followed,
he'll endanger her, but he must take that risk. Her
name is Lodzia Kronescha and she can help him find the
truth. He expects that she'll be asleep when he
arrives. It doesn't occur to him that the Matarese
might already know about  her.

Here's the passage we'll analyze:


He knocked on her door. Within seconds he heard the
footsteps beyond, the sound of leather heels against
hard wood. Oddly, she had not been in bed. The door
opened halfway and Lodzia Kronescha stood there fully
clothed -- strangely clothed -- in a bright-colored
cotton dress, a summer dress, her light-brown hair
falling over her shoulders, her sharp aquiline face set
in a rigid expression, her hazel-green eyes staring at
him -- staring at him -- as if his sudden appearance
after so long were not so much unexpected as it was an
intrusion.

"How nice of you to drop by, old friend," she said
without a trace of an inflection.

She was telling him something. There was someone inside
with her. Someone waiting for him.

"It's good to see you again, old friend," said
Taleniekov, nodding in acknowledgment, studying the
crack between the door and the frame. He could see the
cloth of a jacket, the brown fabric of a pair of
trousers. There was only one man, she was telling him
that, too. He pulled out his Graz-Burya, holding up his
left hand, three fingers extended, gesturing to his
left. On the third nod of his head, she was to drive to
her right; her eyes told him she understood. "It's been
many months," he continued casually. "I was in the
district, so I thought I would..."

He gave the third nod; she lunged to her right. Vasili
crashed his shoulder into the door -- into the left
panel, so the arc would be clean, the impact total --
then battered it again, crushing the figure behind it
into the wall.


Randy sez: Let's separate out the dialogue first and
see what it's saying on the surface:


"How nice of you to drop by, old friend," she said.

"It's good to see you again, old friend," said
Taleniekov. "It's been many months. I was in the
district, so I thought I would..."


Randy sez: This dialogue is so banal, it hurts to look
at it. This is the sort of dialogue your high school
creative writing teacher told you NEVER to write. But
the actions that come with the dialogue completely
subvert the words. And both Lodzia and Taleniekov
intend them to do exactly that.

We need a little backstory here. Lodzia has been
visited by an agent of the Matarese and questioned
about Taleniekov. The agent expects that Taleniekov may
come visit her, and if so, he tells her that she should
welcome him without revealing that she's not alone. The
agent intends to kill Taleniekov. So Lodzia has
consciously prepared herself to tip off Taleniekov with
actions -- actions that the Matarese agent won't know
are abnormal.

Let's spell out those actions in detail and see what
makes them work.

* Lodzia is wearing leather shoes at an hour when she
should be asleep in bed. Even before she opens the
door, she is communicating by her heel-clacking to
Taleniekov that something is wrong. The message that
she communicates to the Matarese agent is different --
he assumes that she has put on her shoes because she's
EXPECTING Taleniekov.

* Lodzia has put on a dress, even though it's bedtime.
And it's a summer dress, even though it's winter. The
visual message she is sending to Taleniekov is that
"something is wrong." Once again, the Matarese agent
gets a different message. The fact that she puts on a
dress tells him that she is planning on receiving a
guest. The fact that it's a summer dress, rather than
appropriate winter wear, escapes him, as it would
escape most men. (Lodzia tells Taleniekov this after
the big fight.)

* When Lodzia put on her dress, the Matarese agent
insisted on watching. She put up no protest, sending
him the message that she's a floozy sort of woman who
is planning on entertaining her gentleman friend.
(Lodzia explains all this to Taleniekov a bit later in
the scene.)

* When Lodzia opens the door for Taleniekov, she shows
no surprise at seeing him for the first time in five
years. Instead, her face is set in a rigid expression
and her eyes stare at him. This tells Taleniekov, once
again, that something is horribly wrong. The Matarese
agent, hidden behind the door, probably can't see her
face and eyes, but even if he could, they would tell
him only that she's expecting Taleniekov.

* When Lodzia speaks, her voice is flat and
expressionless, belying her words, which would normally
be spoken in a warm greeting. In technical terms,
Lodzia is using "paralanguage" to transmit a different
message than the words convey. The Matarese agent, as
it happens, is an Englishman with poor Russian, and
it's possible that he's not able to detect this
disconnect. But Taleniekov, a native Russian and a
long-time friend of Lodzia, picks it up instantly.
Lodzia is communicating with numerous actions that
something is very wrong. Yet her words themselves don't
communicate that. The only possible conclusion is that
a stranger is in the room who can hear Lodzia's words
but who can't decipher her strange actions as well as
Taleniekov can.

Taleniekov is the best agent in the KGB, and he
instantly reads this message and spots the stranger
through the crack in the door. He deduces that there is
only one man in the room with Lodzia. Ludlum doesn't
explain this deduction. He simply asserts that she is
telling him this. I'm not entirely sure how she's doing
so.

Taleniekov then does a bit of non-verbal communication
of his own, entirely at odds with his words, which are
just a repetition of Lodzia's own very prosaic words.
He pulls out a gun, which communicates to Lodzia that
he intends to fight. He shows her three fingers and
nods his head to his left to communicate what actions
she should take. These are pretty vague actions, but
Lodzia communicates back through her eyes that she gets
it. Ludlum doesn't quite explain how this works,
relying on the fact that Lodzia knows Taleniekov pretty
well and she's a KGB agent herself, so she should just
know what to do. 

In my view, the scene works pretty well. There are a
couple of unexplained points that are just glossed
over, but overall, the reader buys into it. 

Robert Ludlum specialized in superclever agents who
could read great significance into the smallest details
and instantly respond to the gravest danger. In this
case, he gave us a nice example of using actions to add
subtext to a lethally boring dialogue.

 

---

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

More Advanced Fiction Writing

Subtexting in Dialogue by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Subtexting in Dialogue

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Broadly speaking, "subtexting" refers to that part of
dialogue which is left unsaid. You can write a dialogue
that is completely "on the nose" in which the
characters say exactly what they are thinking. But in
real life, people often leave a lot unsaid, either
because they can't say it, won't say it, don't know how
to say it, or don't think it's necessary to say it.

For your further reading on subtexting, check out the
book GETTING INTO CHARACTER by Brandilyn Collins.

This month, we'll look at an example of subtexting in
THE MATARESE CIRCLE, by Robert Ludlum. Ludlum is best
known for his Jason Bourne trilogy, but I like

THE MATARESE CIRCLE, better.

A little background on the book: THE MATARESE CIRCLE is
a conspiracy novel, written in the late 70s at the
height of the Cold War. At that time, spy novels
pitting a "good guy" CIA agent against a "bad guy" KGB
agent were common. (In some cases, the CIA guy was
"bad" and the KGB guy was "good.") But generally, both
the "good guy" and the "bad guy" were Xtremely
competent -- they were matched opponents in a battle to
the death.

THE MATARESE CIRCLE flipped those conventions around by
forcing an ultra-competent CIA man to work with his
sworn enemy, an equally talented KGB officer. The two
men had a shared backstory: The KGB man had once killed
the wife of the CIA man, who retaliated by killing the
brother of the KGB guy. But now, a worldwide conspiracy
is set to take over both the US and Russia, and both of
our uber-agents are marked for death by the
conspirators. Only by working together can the two
arch-enemies save the world. A good solid high-concept
story.

The following example features the KGB man, Vasili
Taleniekov. His task is to go back into Russia to smoke
out some information on the conspiracy. This is a tough
job, because he's a wanted man and his picture is
posted in every KGB office in Russia. The KGB is
claiming that Taleniekov has defected to the US and
should be shot on sight. In truth, he is a loyal
Russian intent on saving the Motherland from the
conspiracy.

Taleniekov enters Russia from Finland, using a Finnish
agent who believes he is American, and who has
therefore "helped" him by setting up a driver -- an
incompetent KGB agent who is currently an informer for
the Americans. The driver's name is Maletkin. Our man
Taleniekov must prevent Maletkin from panicking, must
persuade him to help gather the information, and must
find a way to get him hanged as a traitor.

Here then is the scene. I'll show it complete and then
analyze the subtexting. Taleniekov has approached
Maletkin's car while shielding his face, so Maletkin
has not yet recognized him. The scene begins with
Taleniekov leaning down into view and shoving his gun
in Maletkin's face.


"Good morning, Comrade Maletkin. It is Maletkin, isn't
it?"

"My God! You!"

With his left hand, Taleniekov reached in and held the
flashlight, turning it slowly away, no urgency in the
act. "Don't upset yourself," he said. "We have
something in common now, haven't we? Why don't you give
me the keys?"

What . . . what?" Maletkin was paralyzed; he could not
speak.

"Let me have the keys, please," continued Vasili. "I'll
give them back to you as soon as I'm inside. You're
nervous, comrade, and nervous people do nervous things.
I don't want you driving away without me. The keys,
please."

The ominous barrel of the Graz-Burya was inches from
Maletkin's face, his eyes shifting nervously between
the gun and Taleniekov, he fumbled for the ignition
switch and removed the keys. "Here," he whispered.

"Thank you, comrade. And we are comrades, you know
that, don't you? There'd be no point in either of us
trying to take advantage of the other's predicament.
We'd both lose."

Taleniekov walked around the hood of the car, stepped
through the snowbank, and climbed in the front seat
beside the morose traitor.

"Come now, Colonel Maletkin -- it is colonel, by now,
isn't it? -- there's no reason for this hostility. I
want to hear all the news."


Randy sez: In this short section, Vasili Taleniekov
accomplishes the first of his objectives -- he prevents
Maletkin from panicking.

Both men are in a very tight spot. Each is certain that
the other is a traitor to Mother Russia. Each distrusts
the other. Each would be better off with the other man
dead.

Yet Taleniekov is in complete control of the situation,
whereas Maletkin is sweating his socks off. What makes
the difference?

Two things. First, Taleniekov was first to recognize
the other man, so he's had the advantage of a few
minutes of preparation before their meeting. Second,
Taleniekov is a skilled agent, whereas Maletkin is a
plodding incompetent who has risen to second-in-command
at an obscure KGB outpost by reason of seniority.

These differences show up in their first exchange of
dialogue:


Line 1: "Good morning, Comrade Maletkin. It is
Maletkin, isn't it?"

Line 2: "My God! You!"


Randy sez: In Line 1, Taleniekov speaks calmly,
matter-of-factly, greeting Maletkin by name. The
subtext here is that "everything is normal." Taleniekov
knows full well that Maletkin is dangerous. The man
might try to ram him with the door, or pull a gun, or
try to drive off, or radio for help, or any number of
other obnoxious things. Taleniekov would then be forced
to shoot Maletkin, but he'd rather not. By speaking
calmly as if there is no danger, he actually REDUCES
the danger.

In Line 2, Maletkin says exactly what he's thinking. He
had believed he was picking up an American infiltrator.
Instead, he's picking up the famous Vasili Taleniekov,
who now knows that he, Maletkin, is a traitor. Rumors
say that Taleniekov is also a traitor, but . . . is he?
Maletkin can't know and he's terrified. His dialogue
carries no subtext.

In the next exchange, Taleniekov moves from words to
actions. Again, he moves calmly and deliberately, in
full control of the weak-minded Maletkin:


Line 3: With his left hand, Taleniekov reached in and
held the flashlight, turning it slowly away, no urgency
in the act. "Don't upset yourself," he said. "We have
something in common now, haven't we? Why don't you give
me the keys?"

Line 4: What ... what?" Maletkin was paralyzed; he
could not speak.


Randy sez: In Line 3, Taleniekov moves the flashlight
out of his eyes and then assures Maletkin that they are
both traitors. This reduces Maletkin's biggest fear --
that Taleniekov will expose him to the KGB. Then,
Taleniekov calmly asks for the keys. The subtext is
that Maletkin is in no danger.

In Line 4, Maletkin's jabbering makes it clear that he
is still out of control, but he is paralyzed into
inaction. Again, Maletkin's lines carry no subtext. He
is too much of a dullard to use subtexting.


Line 5: "Let me have the keys, please," continued
Vasili. "I'll give them back to you as soon as I'm
inside. You're nervous, comrade, and nervous people do
nervous things. I don't want you driving away without
me. The keys, please."

Line 6: The ominous barrel of the Graz-Burya was inches
from Maletkin's face, his eyes shifting nervously
between the gun and Taleniekov, he fumbled for the
ignition switch and removed the keys. "Here," he
whispered.


Randy sez: In Line 5, Taleniekov tells Maletkin exactly
what he's thinking -- that he doesn't trust him. But he
does it in a nice way: "You're nervous, comrade" -- and
again, his voice is calm and sure. The subtext is clear
-- "I am in control, even if you are just about to wet
your pants."

In Line 6, the gun provides Maletkin with all the
persuasion he needs. His fumbling actions make it clear
that while he is not in control of the situation, he is
also not going to do anything stupid. He's going to do
whatever Taleniekov tells him. This paragraph is so
nicely done that most readers will ignore the run-on
first sentence, which really should have been fixed by
the editor.


Line 7: "Thank you, comrade. And we are comrades, you
know that, don't you? There'd be no point in either of
us trying to take advantage of the other's predicament.
We'd both lose."

Line 8: Taleniekov walked around the hood of the car,
stepped through the snowbank, and climbed in the front
seat beside the morose traitor.

Line 9: "Come now, Colonel Maletkin -- it is colonel,
by now, isn't it? -- there's no reason for this
hostility. I want to hear all the news."


Randy sez: In Line 7, Taleniekov assures Maletkin that
they are on the same side and that it would make no
sense for either of them to try to take advantage. This
is a flat lie. Taleniekov intends to force Maletkin to
drive him to Leningrad, which will mean an awkward
all-day absence from his real job at local KGB
headquarters. Furthermore, Taleniekov intends to find a
way to get Maletkin executed.

In Line 9, Taleniekov picks up the dialogue in a
mock-friendly bantering tone that leaves no doubt that
he is in charge and Maletkin had better do whatever he
tells him.

I don't have space to show you how Taleniekov bullies
Maletkin into driving him to Leningrad. However, I
think it's worth showing a couple of lines a bit
further down, in which Taleniekov sets a trap for
Maletkin. They've been discussing the past few years,
and Taleniekov idly mentions that he once heard
Maletkin's name during a counter-intelligence
investigation. Maletkin responds fearfully:


Line 10: "Me? I was brought up?"

Line 11: "Don't worry. I threw them off and protected
you. You and the other man in Vyborg."


Randy sez: In Line 10, Maletkin reacts once again with
no subtexting, saying exactly what he thinks. He's
terrified that KGB has ever entertained the idea that
he, Maletkin, might be a traitor.

In Line 11, Taleniekov responds with a series of lies.
He implies that he, too, has been a traitor for some
years. He says explicitly that he protected Maletkin
from suspicion. Then he drops the bomb in an apparently
off-the-cuff comment: he claims that there is a second
traitor in KGB Vyborg, (where Maletkin works). 

Maletkin immediately reads the subtext of this claim --
knowing the name of another traitor would give him a
lot of power over that man. Maletkin will do anything
to get the name of that traitor. Taleniekov promises to
give him the name when they've finished their excursion.

In reality, there is no other traitor, and Taleniekov's
goal here is to get Maletkin to cooperate fully for
this mission and then to incriminate himself when he
returns to work. 

In the above example, we've seen an example of
one-sided subtexting. Maletkin's half of the dialogue
has no subtext. Taleniekov's half is packed full of
subtext. There's no question which half is more fun to
read.

 

---

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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Picturing Your Storyworld by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Picturing Your Storyworld

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Maps bring a storyworld to life. If you’re a fan of The Lord of the Rings, you’ve probably spent a fair bit of time poring over the map of Middle Earth that J.R.R. Tolkien created. The map helps you make sense out of the very complicated story.

I’ve always wished I could draw like that, but I just haven’t ever developed my drawing skills, so it’s not possible right now.

The novel I’m currently trying to finish up is set in the world of first-century Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. I’ve been to modern Israel several times and I’ve spent many days on-site in various locations where my story is set. I have more than 10,000 pictures of my storyworld, and I know the geography pretty well.

But it’s very hard to put that geography into words. Very hard.

A Picture Really Is Worth 1000 Words

It’s a worn-out cliche, but in the case of geography, it’s absolutely true. A map is worth a whole lot more than 1000 words.

Several months ago, I decided to hire a graphic designer to draw some maps for me.

Then I realized how hard that was going to be. None of the maps I’ve found in books is anything close to what I want. So I can’t just hand a graphic artist a map and say, “Draw me something a bit like this, only different.”

The horrible truth dawned on me that trying to tell an artist how to draw my maps would end up taking a lot of words. To really explain what I wanted, I’d need to draw them a picture. But if I had the skills to draw them a picture, I wouldn’t need a graphic artist in the first place.

I did a little research online and found some cool map-drawing tools. Some of them are web-based. Some are Windows-only. One is Mac-only.

They all have different features, and I finally settled on the Mac-based tool, a fairly pricey program named Ortelius. Fortunately, Ortelius lets you download a trial version to test.

A Learning Curve

Ortelius is amazingly powerful. But like most powerful tools, the learning curve is steep. I thought it was important, so I took a week and worked through the entire tuturial for Ortelius.

At the end of that week, I felt confident enough to start drawing my maps. And it’s going very well. I had a list of 7 maps I wanted drawn. I’ve now got 4 of them done, and they came out much better than I would have expected.

Now that I’m well into this project, I wish I’d tackled it years ago. I’ve always known that geography matters a lot to a story. Drawing my own maps forced me to make many hard decisions to get rid of all ambiguity. (When you have 20 different maps and they all disagree in one way or another, you have a lot of ambiguity.)

How Maps Affect Your Story

Already, I can see that a good map helps you think out your story.

In my storyworld, people walk everywhere. Walking takes time, so you need to be able to estimate how long it takes to get between any two places.

But you can’t walk where there aren’t roads, so you also need to work out where the roads are. That puts constraints on your story, which helps in two ways:

• It tells you when your characters don’t have a choice, which is useful to know. Sometimes, they’re forced to go through some particular town. When you know that, it suggests ideas for what must happen along the way.
• And it tells you when they do have a choice, which can help generate conflict. Sometimes, all choices have downsides. When you know that, you have a meaningful dilemma, and that’s good for your story.

Visualizing Your Action

Action is a crucial part of any scene. If you want to visualize the action in your scene, it’s crucially important that you know what the stage is like.

A fair bit of my story happens in the small village of Nazareth. The archaeology of Nazareth is poorly understood, which means that there aren’t any good maps of the village. Without a map, it’s easy to write a very generic scene with very generic action.

What I discovered when I made my own map of Nazareth was that the act of making a map forced me to remove all the fuzziness from my mental picture of the place. It brought everything into focus for me. And once I had it in focus in my own mind, it was vastly easier to put it into focus on the page.

So after drawing my map of Nazareth, I went through my entire novel and checked every scene. I found that a handful of scenes could be put into sharper focus, now that I had a map. So I tweaked those scenes. It would have been smarter to do that before I wrote the novel. But now that I’ve got good map-making software, I’ll do better in the future.

Homework

• How well can you visualize your storyworld?
• Are there fuzzy parts of your mental image of your world?
• Would it bring things into focus if you drew a map on paper? (Even a rough sketch.)
• How long would it take to sketch out a quick map?
• How much value would that have for your project?

 

---

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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The Elements of Surprise by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

The Elements of Surprise

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

Picture this scene from the movie STAR WARS:

 

Luke Skywalker is approaching the thermal exhaust port of the Death Star. He's got a proton torpedo ready to go, and the only problem is that Darth Vader is right behind him in a Tie Fighter, locked on his tail and almost close enough to take a shot.

 

Luke can't fire yet. He's not close enough. Darth Vader is gaining on him rapidly. Luke is going to lose this race. Darth Vader is ready to fire. He's closer. Closer ...

 

Wham! Darth Vader's ship is hit by a blast from Harry Potter's wand. Vader spins away crazily out of control. Luke is free to launch his proton torpedo. And the Death Star goes up in smoke.

 

Does that sound about right? Great surprise, wasn't it? 

 

No and no.

 

Sure, this plot twist is a surprise, but it's a stupid one. Harry Potter came out of nowhere. He's not part of the movie. We've got no foundation for Harry entering this movie.

 

In a word, Harry's appearance at the crucial moment is IMPLAUSIBLE. 
 

Injecting him into the story to save Luke is a terrible, ridiculous surprise.

 

Okay, fine, so let's backtrack a bit and try that again. 

 

We still see Luke zooming toward his target, armed with the proton torpedo. And we still see Vader on his tail, ready to knock him out. And this time we also see Han Solo on Vader's tail, closing in on Vader even faster than Vader is converging on Luke.

 

We watch as Solo closes in and fires his laser cannons. 

 

Wham! Darth Vader's ship is hit by a blast. Vader spins away crazily out of control. Luke is free to launch his proton torpedo. And the Death Star goes up in smoke.

 

Better this time? A somewhat more plausible surprise, right?

 

No and no.

 

Sure, this plot twist is more plausible. But there's no surprise at all. We saw it coming. We watched Han Solo all the way in. When the WHAM came, we were expecting it. 

 

Surprises are good in your fiction, but a surprise needs to be two things to be a true surprise:

• Plausible
• Unforeseen

When you fail to provide any sort of foundation in your story for a surprise, then it's implausible.

 

When you telegraph what's going to happen, then when it actually does happen, it's foreseen.

 

Here's how the surprise actually plays out in the movie:

 

Before the final battle, Han Solo and his trusty Wookiee friend Chewbacca leave with enough money to pay off Jabba the Hutt. Han has a price on his head, and he won't rest easy until his debt is paid. Luke calls him a coward, but Han just laughs him off and leaves. Because he values his life, and he knows he won't live long if he doesn't pay off Jabba.

 

But we also know that Han Solo is no coward. He thinks of himself as a cowboy. He does crazy things for his friends. We've seen him do so the whole movie. So if he were to come back and join Luke for the battle, that would be plausible. 

 

We just don't expect him to do that, because we saw the man leave. Then we saw a long, brutal battle, in which several of Luke's comrades are blown to bits. We've seen Darth Vader arm for battle. We've seen Luke make his first attempt with the proton torpedo and fail. We've seen Vader close in on him.

 

It's a long battle scene, an exciting one. It's long enough that we've forgotten about Han Solo.

 

And the story focus now zooms in tightly on Luke and Vader. It's a race to the death. One of them will win and one will lose. These two fill our entire attention. Nobody else exists.

 

So when the WHAM! hits Vader's ship, we've forgotten about Han Solo. But an instant later, we realize that we should have seen it coming.
 

Solo's reentry into the fight is plausible, AND it's unforeseen.

 

It's a surprise.

 

Surprise is good in fiction, but it's like perfume. A little goes a long way. A few great surprises in your story are probably better than a thousand small ones that become so regular that your reader starts expecting them. 

 

Now let's look at the current story you're working on right now. Is there a major surprise somewhere in your novel? How well is it working for you? Is it both plausible and unforeseen?

 

If it's not plausible or if it’s too foreseeable, then you have a problem.
 

How do you fix it?

 

You make your plot twists more plausible by putting in all the key facts earlier in the story. Preferably, a LOT earlier. 

 

J.K. Rowling is a master at seeding in the key facts for her big surprises very early in her stories. In her novel HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, she gives you all the crucial facts about Sirius Black, Severus Snape, and Peter Pettigrew early in the story. Yet at the end, she gives you a massive surprise by combining all those facts in a way you don't foresee.

 

That's quite a trick, because readers are smart and if you highlight those facts too much, some readers are going to put things together and see exactly where you're going. 

 

So you make your surprise unforeseen by using misdirection. You throw in a ton of other facts. You focus your reader's attention on those. You don't lie to your reader, but you give her facts that she will put together to make a wrong prediction about what's going to happen next.

 

If you cheat here, then your reader gets angry. Cheating means that you hide crucial information. Or you give wrong information. 

 

When you put all the information in plain sight but misdirect the reader's attention and then hit her with your surprise, she likes that. Because you fooled her. And when you do that in a way the reader can respect, she thinks you're a genius.

 

And maybe you are.

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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Good Versus Good by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Good Versus Good

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

Many stories have as their main plot a conflict between “the good guys” and “the bad guys.”

You can think of any number of examples. The Harry Potter series. The Hunger Games series. Just about any mystery or suspense novel. And on and on.

“Good guys” against “bad guys” makes a good story, no doubt about it. But there’s a way to make it better without much effort. Throw in a bit of dissension among the good guys.

So a secondary plot of the story is “good guys” against the other “good guys.”

This makes your story stronger for a couple of reasons:

• Now your “good guys” have an even tougher problem. They not only have to defeat the “bad guys,” but they’ve first got to also settle the differences among themselves.
• It introduces the possibility of a genuine moral dilemma in your story. Because the competing groups of “good guys” may have different values that drive them. And now you have to wrestle with which of those competing values is most important.

Just as an example, consider the case of the Harry Potter series. This is definitely a “good guys” versus “bad guys” series.

The “bad guys” are Lord Voldemort and his gang of thugs who want to take over the world and oppress the Muggles.

The “good guys” are the decent witches and wizards who want to leave the Muggles alone.

In book 1 of the series, our hero, Harry Potter, goes off to school at Hogwarts and begins to learn about the magical world he belongs to.

Harry has no idea about the massive battle looming with Voldemort and his minions. Instead, he’s surrounded on all sides by different factions of “good guys.”

For starters, there are four competing houses within the school. Three of these are “good guys”—Harry’s own Gryffindor, along with Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.

Harry quickly becomes best friends with Ron Weasley, another first-year student, who’s a bit of a goof-off. Ron and Harry find themselves at odds with another first-year, Hermione Granger, who comes off as a stuck-up know-it-all. Eventually, the three become friends, but it takes a troll to bring them together.

There are many cliques within Gryffindor. There are the cool kids, Fred and George Weasley and their friend Lee Jordan.

Then there is Neville Longbottom, nerdy and klutzy and generally a bit weird.

Ron and Fred and George have an unbearably prissy older brother named Percy, who happens to be the prefect of Gryffindor this year, and who makes life miserable for his brothers.

Not to mention Ron Weasley’s very cool older brothers, Bill and Charlie, who’ve already graduated and left behind excellent reputations that Ron can’t hope to match.

Then there’s Oliver Wood, captain of the Quidditch team, who really gets upset when Harry gets himself in trouble and can’t perform up to snuff on the Quidditch field.

And let’s not forget Hagrid, the affable half-giant who loves strange creatures and is secretly raising a baby dragon.

There are a lot of “good guys” here, all competing in different ways. They don’t mean to be making the battle againt the “bad guys” harder.

But that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Near the end of the story, Harry and Hermione sneak out one night to help Hagrid get rid of a baby dragon that’s getting much too big to hide any longer. They succeed in getting the dragon safely rehomed—but then get caught before they can sneak back in to Gryffindor. And caught with them is the bumbling Neville, who sneaked out to try to find them and warn them to get back where they belong. This gets them detention and causes Gryffindor to lose 150 points.

As a result, Harry and Hermione feel the rage of the entire Gryffindor student body. They’re instant pariahs and the whole house treats them with contempt for weeks.

As final exams loom, Harry and Ron and Hermione learn that Lord Voldemort is about to do something terrible. They’ve got to stop him, so they decide to sneak out again late at night.

But first, they’ve got to get past Neville Longbottom, who insists that he’ll fight them before he lets them break the rules yet again.

All of this conflict is “good guys” against “other good guys.” And it makes the story stronger. It makes the battle against the “bad guys” that much harder.

After the dust has settled, the school headmaster, Albus Dumbledore awards points to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, for their courage and wits in battling Voldemort.

And he also awards points to Neville Longbottom. Why? Neville didn’t do anything to fight Voldemort. But as Dumbledore points out, it’s just as hard to stand up to your friends as your enemies. (In my own experience, it’s sometimes harder to stand up to your friends. Peer pressure and all that.) It’s the first courageous thing Neville has ever done, but it won’t be the last. In standing up to his friends, Neville has become a better person. So have Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

The main story in the Harry Potter series is consistently the “good guys” against the “bad guys.” That’s the way it should be in this series. But the story is made so much better by the many, many ways in which the “good guys” are infighting with the other “good guys.”

Homework

• Is your story a “good guys” versus “bad guys” kind of story?
• How many conflicts do you have between “good guys” and other “good guys?”
• Can you add more?
• Will that make it a better story?

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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