Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (18 page)

Step 3:
When you have run out of ideas, ask yourself, "What would make this problem even worse than that?"
Write down still more reasons.

Step 4:
When you have run out of steam, ask, "What are the circumstances under which my protagonist(s) would actually fail to solve the problem?"
Write those down.

Step 5: Have your novel conclude with your protagonist's failure. Can you pull some measure of happiness from this ending? Make notes.

Follow-up work: Incorporate into your story four raisings of the outward (plot) stakes. Make notes for revision.

Conclusion:
A common failure in novels is that we can see the ending coming. The author signals his preferred outcome, and guess what? That is how things turn out. The only way to keep an ending in doubt is to make failure possible. Even better is to make failure happen. Maybe what's actually at stake isn't what you thought at all.

Complications

E
very protagonist has a goal. That means that every protagonist has problems, because no goal is achieved without overcoming obstacles. (If a goal is easily achieved, then it isn't much of a goal, is it?) Those obstacles to a goal are important; indeed, they are the essence of plot.

To put it another way, what is plot if not an account of the many complications thrown in the way of your hero? What kinds of complications might serve? That depends on your story. Complications can be inner, psychological, and private, or they can be external, unprovoked, and public. Or they can be both. It doesn't matter. What matters is that wherever your hero may be going, it isn't easy to get there.

Whether internal or external in origin, it is important that obstacles be believable. If your reader is thinking,
"Oh, come on!"
then your complication isn't going to help your story. Is your hero afraid? Why? Does he face an antagonist? Who? And what makes that antagonist formidable?

Have another look at your favorite novels. You probably will find that a significant number of pages are filled by the business of making the opposition, who or whatever it may be, real and credible. That's as it should be; that is good storytelling.

The simplest-looking way to provide opposition to your protagonist is to create an antagonist; that is, a villain. Actually, villains are the hardest kind of opposition to put across. I know, because most villains I encounter in manuscripts are cardboard cutouts that do not frighten me for a minute.

Why? I suspect it is because most authors are not evil at heart. They are not familiar with the compelling reasons that real-life villains do what they do. Criminals rationalize their crimes. They feel justified. The same goes for anyone who deliberately hurts someone else, whether committing a crime or not: They always have good reasons. Thus, motivating the villain is an essential breakout skill.

Erica Spindler's
Cause for Alarm
is a women's thriller with not one, but two villains. The obvious villain is a deranged CIA hit man, John Powers, who stalks all four of the novel's main players: adoptive New Orleans parents Kate

and Richard Ryan, their baby's birth mother, Julianna Starr, and the friend the couple turns to for help, author Luke Dallas.

The less obvious villain—and the more interesting one, to my eye—is the birth mother. Julianna, you see, becomes obsessed with adoptive father Richard, seeing in him the caring man she needs in her life. Indeed, for fulfilling Kate's wish to have a baby, Julianna thinks it is a reasonable trade-off for her to get Richard. So far so good, or bad I suppose, but how does Spindler go about making this obstacle active in a way that is real and believable?

First, Spindler removes potential guilt that might inhibit Julianna from stealing another woman's husband. Riding a streetcar, pregnant Julianna daydreams about how things will fall out with the adoptive parents that she already has picked for her baby:

Julianna turned to the window and gazed out at the waning afternoon, trying to ignore the greasy smear on the glass. This wasn't forever, she reminded herself. Soon she would have all the things she loved and needed. Soon, she would feel like her old self again.

Richard.

And Julianna.

She closed her eyes and pictured her future, imagined her days, how she would spend them, what her life would be like. Her life with Richard.

It would be perfect, everything she ever longed for.

She smiled to herself. Last night Richard had come to her in her dreams. He had whispered in her ear. That
she
was his everything. His lover and partner. His best friend.

He told her he couldn't live without her.

And they had been together. Sexually. Spiritually. Two souls made one, bodies entwined in an act of love so pure, so perfect, it defied the physical plane of existence.

Kate had come to her as well. She had been smiling. Holding a baby in her arms. Completely content.

This young woman is delusional, obviously, but by reinforcing her delusions Julianna is making them more and more real for herself. At the adoption agency, Julianna sneaks a look at Kate and Richard's address. She watches them, realizing that to win Richard she will have to become like Kate. She visits Kate's coffee cafe and practices speaking like Kate. After delivering her baby she befriends a lonely secretary in Richard's law office and learns through her of an opening as Richard's assistant. She then gets the job, goes to work on Richard, seeds doubt in his mind about Kate's fidelity, becomes his confidant and, finally, his lover.

Julianna is not a deep psychological study. The sources of her sickness are as obvious as can be: an inadequate mother and her mother's sexually abusive boyfriend (John, the CIA assassin). But what Julianna lacks in subtlety, Spin-

dler makes up for in deliberate, determined, step-by-step seduction. Julianna knows what she wants and goes after it with enough cunning to become a CIA operative herself. As a villain, she becomes formidable by her actions— and Spindler spins a formidable number of scenes making this opposition credible.

What happens after that? Suffice it to say that Richard's problems are only beginning. Julianna's sick abuser, John Powers, is after her and everyone whom he believes is corrupting her. He is a professional killer, too—and sets about proving it. Spindler's complications keep coming.

Is there an antagonist in your current novel? Or is your protagonist her own worst enemy? It does not matter who complicates your protagonist's life, so long as
someone
does it—and does it actively, deliberately, and for solid reasons. Put your people into play, and let them mess things up. Have a ball. The better the complications, the better your story.

______________________EXERCISE

Making Complications Active

Step 1: What is your novel's main conflict? Write that down.

Step 2: What are the main complications that deepen that conflict? (This list should have gotten longer in the last exercise.) Write those down.

Step 3: To each complication, assign the name of the character who primarily will enact it. How will he do so? Make notes, starting now.