Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (17 page)

"Look at me, Callie," he commanded.

Callie tried to jerk free, but Trace tightened his hold. She raised her chin and glared at him. "Whatever we had between us is over and done."

"Not quite," he said.

She eyed him warily, her heart thumping crazily. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"I haven't had my fill of you."

She snorted derisively. "You make me sound like a bottle of beer you haven't finished swilling."

His voice was low and seductive. "I was thinking of something utterly soft and incredibly sweet I haven't finished sampling."

Men: Do not try this at home. These are trained romance protagonists. Seriously, Callie does resist Trace, fiercely, though it must be noted that thereafter she does spend a terrific amount of time with the man she hates.

Meanwhile, what about Three Oaks? Things go from bad to worse to horrible. First, Callie's parents are shot out on the range. Her mother is hospitalized, and lack of insurance sets the family back twenty thousand dollars in cash. Her father dies. Callie and her brother Sam, now a wheelchair-bound alcoholic, inherit Three Oaks. Unfortunately, inheritance taxes (a genuine problem for farming and ranching families) make their financial predicament many magnitudes worse. Callie hopes to sell their cattle, but some of the herd comes down with a disease, and the cows are quarantined.

Blackjack presses his offer to buy Three Oaks, but Callie is resolved to hang on. But how can she do that with no money, not enough help, and mouths to feed? To make matters even worse still, Sam poisons himself with alcohol and winds up in the hospital, too.

The only answer seems to be accepting a loan from Trace. The payback? Callie must train his cutting horses. And give him sex:

"That makes me a pretty expensive whore."

"If that's the way you want to look at it."

"There isn't any other way of looking at it," Callie said bluntly. "You're asking me to have sex with you for money."

His expression hardened as he waited for her answer.

"How much will I be paid for my services? How many times—?"

"Till I'm tired of you," he said brusquely.

Those Blackthorne men have a way with women, don't they? Callie accepts his offer. Can her problems get any worse? Certainly. Johnston continues to raise the stakes. Just when Callie has every reason to scrub Trace from her heart for good, he reveals himself as a good man. He turns around Sam's life and wins the love of Callie's two children. He helps Callie in every imaginable way—and isn't too bad in bed, either. For a while it looks like Callie must capitulate.

At the last minute, a final bit of apparent treachery by the Blackthornes almost saves Callie from Trace. Blackjack's foreman is apprehended by Owen and charged with stealing Callie's horses and murdering her father. Blackjack must have been behind the crimes, Callie reasons. But then the ultimate culprit is revealed to be Trace's mother, long jealous of Callie's mother and her hold on Blackjack.

Rats! There's less and less reason for Callie to reject Trace, either on his own terms or because he is a Blackthorne. Finally, Trace rescues Callie's daughter in a mesquite brushfire and lands in the hospital himself. This is too much. Callie must admit defeat: She loves him. Three Oaks is saved with Trace's money, and the feud comes to an end—
or does it?
Only Johnston's two sequels will say for sure.

In a strict sense, how things turn out for Callie Creed doesn't make any difference to the world at large. But Johnston makes Callie's story everybody's story by relentlessly raising the stakes. The worse things get, the more Callie is determined to save her family from disaster, and her ranch from those who would take advantage of their misfortune. In a way, isn't that story universal? Doesn't its outcome matter to us all?

Let's look at another example of public stakes and their escalation in a story that has no immediately obvious public consequences. In Mary Alice

Monroe's
Skyward,
Ella Majors is a burned-out ER nurse from Vermont. She accepts a position as live-in nanny to a South Carolina preschooler, Marion Henderson, whose single dad, Harris, is overwhelmed and unable to cope with Marion's childhood diabetes.

Quickly, plain-looking Ella falls in love with tall and visionary Harris, the head of a rescue clinic for birds of prey. More slowly, she brings discipline, order, and compassion to both the Henderson household and, later, the clinic itself. Harris gradually discovers the wonder of Ella and falls in love with her, too.

This happiness cannot last, right? Right. Just as the inner obstacles and past hurts that each carries have been overcome, outside obstacles crash down upon them. Ella learns that Harris is married. Marion's mother, Fannie, beautiful and younger than Harris by ten years, is a drug user who has walked out on her family several times for extended periods. Harris has not sought a divorce, however:

"I've known her since she was a kid, Ella. I've always looked out for her and she's done a lot for me. And for my mother. It's been hard but I'm no saint. I've asked myself, what if she was injured in some accident. Left paralyzed or in a coma. Would I divorce her then? Or what if she was schizophrenic and in a mental institution? Would I leave her then? The answer is always no. The vow says for better or worse."

Ella's newfound happiness is dashed. Still, there is hope. Harris might change his mind about Fannie. Shortly thereafter, Fannie indeed returns.

How would you handle this? It would be easy to show Fannie as a bad mother and drug user. That is what a category romance writer in a rush to meet a deadline might do, perhaps, letting Harris's exaggerated sense of duty drag out a modicum of suspense over the outcome of the marriage. Monroe, however, uses this moment to raise the stakes; that is, to make Ella's problem still worse.

Fannie turns out to be on the wagon and hoping to change her life and regain her family, as she has every right to do. Marion, her child, clings to her. Fannie, however, doesn't know how to manage Marion's diabetes and makes a dangerous mistake with candy, angering Ella, but leading to a turnabout:

"You know something?" Fannie asked, stopping once more in front of Ella. "I'm mad, too. Not at you, but at me. Because I screwed up. Screwed up good. I hurt the two people I love most in the world. And I hurt myself, too. I've done some pretty horrible things. Things I'm not proud of. But I want to change."

"I've heard that before."

"I do," she repeated. "That's why I came back, see? I haven't used in months. I'm clean. Really I am. And I want a chance to

make it up to Marion. I don't know about Harris. He may never forgive me. But Marion . . . she has so much room for me." . . .

"I want to be a good mother," Fannie said to her, shouting to be heard over the storm.

"Then be one."

"The fact is, I can't do it alone." She released Ella's arm, crossing her own. "I ... I need to learn to take care of her. I need to learn about this diabetes stuff, her diet and her shots. There's so much I don't know. I've seen you with her. You're good at it. So sure of yourself. Look, I know I'm the last person you want to help, but I have to ask. If not for me, for Marion. Please, Ella, teach me how to take care of my child."

Now Ella is
really
in trouble. Fannie's appeal for help and a second chance, for the sake of her child, is simply too good. Morally, Ella has no choice but to help her.

Can this situation get any worse? Yes, as it turns out, Fannie learns well and turns into a model mother, caring for Marion and conscientiously managing her tests and shots. Now Ella faces the unthinkable—failure, losing out to Fannie. When Fannie appeals to Harris, Ella overhears the result:

She leaned forward to take his hand and hold it tight while her eyes pleaded. "Harris, honey, I'm still your wife. I still love you. And I want to make it up to you. I may not deserve much, but I deserve a chance. It's my place to be here. To care for our child. This is my home," she blurted out before succumbing to tears....

"Sorry," she said when she brought herself back under control. "I've been holding that in for so long I guess it was like the dam just broke." She sniffed and wiped her nose and eyes with the handkerchief. "I'll give this back after I launder it," she said with an attempt at a laugh.

"Mama!"

It was Marion, looking for Fannie.

Fannie laughed, more brightly than before. "That child does flash about. She's going to wear me down. And I love it," she added quickly. She looked up at Harris expectantly, waiting for some answer. "She's our child."

"Marion comes first," he said to her, moving toward an inescapable decision.

"Of course," she replied, her eyes opening wide with anticipation.

"I'll give you this one last chance, Fannie. For Marion's sake."

Defeated, Ella realizes that she must leave Harris and Marion—and she does, taking a new job at an emergency room in Charleston. Monroe raises the stakes—that is, deepens Ella's problems—so far that Ella actually fails.
What? Is that it?
you ask.
Ella loses out. The end?

Well, let me ask you: How would you pull an ending out of this bleak situation? What resolution would you find for Ella? Is there any hope for her happiness? Of course, though it may not be exactly the form of happiness that we would like her to have.

How does Monroe handle it? Read
Skyward,
and see for yourself. Meanwhile, I think you will agree that Monroe's tale of love, change, forgiveness, and loss is one that anyone can identify with. The birds of prey that are rescued and rehabilitated at Harris's clinic might seem to lend the novel an environmental theme. I would argue that they are, rather, a metaphor for Monroe's injured human beings.

What gives
Skyward
its public stakes? First, as with Johnston's
The Cowboy,
the problems that are imposed on protagonist Ella Majors are from the
outside:
conflicts not inward and circumstances not of her own making. Second, these problems deepen to a degree that finally makes them so big that they attain a universal scale.

Everyday problems presented in an ordinary way, problems that anyone might have on any given day, do not have the power to become universal; that is, to resonate within us and remind us of all humanity and its eternal struggles. But when stakes rise to a high enough order of magnitude, a protagonist's problems will become the problems that we all have. What was personal becomes public.

What about the outward, or public, stakes in your current novel? How far do they rise? How deep do they cut? How bad do they get? Take them higher and deeper. Make them worse;
much
worse. Your novel can only get better.

_______________EXERCISE

Raising Public Stakes

Step 1: As briefly as possible, write down your novel's overt and outward central conflict or problem.

Step 2: What would make this problem worse? Write down as many reasons as you can. Start writing now.