Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (10 page)

"In the red tent, the truth is known. In the red tent, where days pass like a gentle stream, as the gift of Innana courses through us, cleansing the body of last month's death, preparing the body to receive the new month's life, women give thanks—for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood."

My mother saw my confusion. "You cannot understand all of this yet, Dinah," she said. "But soon you will know, and I will make sure that you are welcomed into the woman's life with ceremony and tenderness. Fear not."

Dinah's passage into maturity indeed involves rituals and care that puts the modern era to shame. The world of women, the culture, and the traditions of the red tent shape and define Dinah. Indeed, the company of women ultimately means more to her than the love of men. Telling their story grows in importance. She wants them to be celebrated for their strength, and, in Anita Diamant's richly imagined novel, they are.

What are your protagonist's personal stakes in your current manuscript, and how do they rise? Why does he care? Why might he care
more?
Without personal stakes, even the highest-voltage thriller is an empty plot exercise. Raise the personal stakes and we will all care what happens in your story no matter whether the plot is boiling or not.

______EXERCISE

Defining Personal Stakes

Step 1: Write down the name of your protagonist.

Step 2: What is her main problem, conflict, goal, need, desire, yearning, or whatever it is driving her through the story? Write that down.

Step 3: What could make this problem matter more? Write down as many new reasons as you can think of. Start writing now.

Step 4: When you run out of reasons, ask yourself what could make this problem matter even more than that? Write down even more reasons.

Step 5:
When you run out of steam, ask yourself what could make this problem matter more than life itself?
Write down still more reasons.

Follow-up work: For all the ways to deepen the personal stakes that you created above, work out how to incorporate each into your novel. Include at least six. Make notes now.

Conclusion:
Every protagonist has a primary motive for doing what he must do. It would not be much of a story without that. Outward motives are easy to devise from plot circumstances, but inner motives most powerfully drive a character forward. Don't just look at all the possibilities, here.
Use
all of them. That is exactly what raising personal stakes is all about. It is extra work, for sure, but the result will be a more gripping novel.

Ultimate Stakes

W
hy do we do what we do? Get up in the morning? Scan the paper?

Struggle through rush hour? Placate the boss? Mow the lawn? Save for vacation? Help the kids with their homework? Send birthday cards? Bring a tuna casserole to the reception after the funeral? "We have our reasons. We may not think about them all the time, but if pressed we could explain what they are.

We care. We feel that what we do matters, however small it may be. We must. No one can live for long feeling that life is futile, without purpose. If we did, at the very least we would stay in bed in the morning. At worst, after living too long without any reason we probably would check out.

When life tests us to the utmost, our motives grow exponentially greater. Our deepest convictions rise close to the surface. We care still more. We become more determined than ever to make a difference, to persist, to overcome all problems and obstacles. At the moment of ultimate testing we summon our deepest beliefs and swear that nothing,
nothing,
will stop us.

The hero of your novel also will be tested to the limit of his convictions— at least, I hope so! (If not, are there enough obstacles in the way of your protagonist?) How does she respond at this supreme moment? The way that you or I would, let's hope, but even more strongly.

The hero of Dennis Lehane's mystery novel
Mystic River
is homicide detective Sean Devine. At the outset
of
the novel, his convictions are at low ebb. He has returned from a suspension following an on-the-job "incident" that put his partner on medical leave. At the scene of the murder of Katie Marcus, nineteen-year-old daughter of Sean's one-time friend Jimmy, Sean's boss, Detective Lieutenant Martin Friel, is wary of Sean. Is he up to the investigation that lies ahead? He searches Sean for motivation:

"Trooper," Friel said, "you know what I like even less than ten-year-old black boys getting shot by bullshit gang-war crossfire?"

Sean knew the answer, but he didn't say anything.

"Nineteen-year-old white girls getting murdered in my parks. People don't say 'Oh, the vagaries of economics' then. They don't feel a wistful sense of the tragic. The feel pissed and they want somebody to be led onto the six o'clock in shackles." Friel nudged Sean. "I mean, right?"

"Right."

"That's what they want, because they're us and that's what we want." Friel grasped Sean's shoulder so he'd look at him.

"Yes, sir," Sean said, because Friel had that weird light in his eyes like he believed what he was saying the way some people believed in God or NASDAQ or the Internet-as-global-village. Friel was Born Again all the way, although what the Again had been Sean couldn't say, just that Fried had found something through his work that Sean could barely recognize, something that gave him solace, maybe even belief, a certainty underfoot. Times, to be truthful, Sean thought his boss was an idiot, spouting bullshit platitudes about life and death and the ways to make it all right, cure the cancers and become one collective heart, if only everyone would listen.

Other times, though, Friel reminded Sean of his father, building his birdhouses in the basement where no birds ever flew, and Sean loved the
idea
of him.

Sean's dedication to the case is, as yet, weak. But he gropes for belief and conviction, and borrows it, albeit abstractly, from Fried.

Later, the murdered girl's father searches Sean, too, for his commitment to the case. In the morgue to identify Katie's body, Jimmy Marcus recalls the crucial childhood event that he and Sean have in common: While planning to steal a car one day on the street with a third tag-along friend, Dave Boyle, two men in a car took Dave, who was missing for four mysterious, presumably horrible, days. Survivor guilt plagues both men, and Sean feels it now: