• Character Art Work
    • Adelina Hoch
    • Alexandria Brenton
    • Andrew
    • Ari
    • Boden Einarsson
    • Bradly Ackerman
    • Christopher Keats
    • Gene
    • James
    • Kaia Skarin
    • Mark Lucas
    • Oliver
    • Phea Celampresian
    • Rosalie
    • Vincent
  • About
  • Recommended Reading
  • Published Works
    • Works In Progress
  • Calls for Submissions

Fill-in-the-blank-ness…

~ Just another day in a Broken World

Fill-in-the-blank-ness…

Tag Archives: Empathy

Writing Tip: Amp It Up. My personal take on conflict.

20 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by alishacostanzo in The Writing Process, writing tips

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

action, Already Boiling, amp it up, big change, blog theme, Causality, Chekhov's Gun, college, concert, conflict, editing, Empathy, Empowerment, ethos, fiasco, fundamentals of fiction, High Stakes, human nature, info-dumps, Insight, interview, Into the Pot, Jesse Lee Kercheval, make promises, man vs God, man vs man, man vs nature, man vs self, man vs society, man vs technology, Mystery, narrator's lens, new job, personal, plot, Progression, prologues, promises, publishing, purpose, slow action, suggestions, Surprise, tension, Transmundane Press, Universality, voice, well-honed tone, writing, writing tips, Yourke's Conflict

Hey, y’all. I’m starting a new blog theme about writing, editing, and publishing based on my role as editor for Transmundane Press, my experiencing teaching, and various other writerly ethos reasons. Let me know if you like them. I’ll know to keep writing them.

Writing Tip: Amp It Up. My personal take on conflict.

Conflict and tension are the fundamentals of fiction. Essentially, this is where the story begins. Traditional tensions are created through internal and/or external forces, usually characterized as man vs. man, man vs. nature or technology, man vs. society, man vs. God, man vs. self.

Here is another checklist:

Yourke’s Conflict

  • Mystery. Explain just enough to tease readers. Never give everything away.
  • Empowerment. Give both sides options.
  • Progression. Keep intensifying the number and type of obstacles the protagonist faces.
  • Causality. Hold fictional characters more accountable than real people. Characters who make mistakes frequently pay, and, at least in fiction, commendable folks often reap rewards.
  • Surprise. Provide sufficient complexity to prevent readers predicting events too far in advance.
  • Empathy. Encourage reader identification with characters and scenarios that pleasantly or (unpleasantly) resonate with their own sweet dreams (or night sweats).
  • Insight. Reveal something about human nature.
  • Universality. Present a struggle that most readers find meaningful, even if the details of that struggle reflect a unique place and time.
  • High Stakes. Convince readers that the outcome matters because someone they care about could lose something precious. Trivial clashes often produce trivial fiction. (Source)

With this background in mind, tension should be present on the first page, hopefully within the first few words of a story, even when background information is needed (some might disagree with me here, but this is my personal preference as a reader, editor, and writer).

So let me lay out a few of my nitty gritty suggestions.

 

One: Every scene should have a clear and important purpose. Don’t show anything that doesn’t advance/complicate the plot or create tension. Don’t have stuff happen just to get to the next interesting part. Make it all interesting.

What does that mean? Well, more importantly, what doesn’t that mean? Don’t mistake slow action for a lack of tension. External and internal tensions should strike some balance. If you’re beating your characters hard, give them a moment to breathe, reflect, plan, and show how and why what’s happened to them before affects them and will affect them in the coming scenes.

This is a cool article that explains this idea a bit more.

 

Two: Into the Pot, Already Boiling, as coined by Jesse Lee Kercheval. This is a classic story opener that I learned about during my years as a graduate student. It’s one of three but always my go-to.

Why? Because you want to intrigue your readers right out of the gate. Doing so all but guarantees that your readers will hold on through the boring stuff…see note one…the slower stuff, the stuff that you need to properly set up the world. Just don’t keep them there for too long.

This also helps you avoid those clunky prologues and info-dumps. A lot can be shown to a reader through the narrator’s lens. What do they show the reader? How? Why? This develops character, scene, and background information without cutting the tension. Besides, a well-honed tone due to a character’s voice can do much more than this.

 

Three: Make promises and keep them. This is another classic bit of advice often referred to as Chekhov’s Gun. So deliver on your promises, but you know, just wait a while before you do.

Because…BAM…tension. That’s what waiting for something inevitable does. It creates anxiety. Think about it.

What happens the night before a big change in your life (starting a new job, going to an interview, attending a concert, etc)? You can hardly sleep because you’re waiting for the event to come. (This happens to me every semester of college, waiting for the first day. Imagining the ways I’ll inappropriately set the mood for my classroom. This semester, I mistook a student saying poor for whore. Fiasco.)

So don’t only make good on your promises. Make them wait for it, too.

 

Those are my suggestions. What are yours?

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

My Stuff

  • #SoCS (11)
  • Book Trailers (4)
  • Breaking Down Satire (7)
  • Broken World Characters (43)
  • bullet journal (15)
  • cover reveal (5)
  • Did You Know…? (58)
  • Interviews (32)
  • Loving Red Saga (8)
  • Mini-Author Interviews (30)
  • NaNoWriMo (21)
  • new release (7)
  • on fire (23)
  • Planning (16)
  • school (2)
  • Sneak Peeks (95)
    • Author Minis (6)
    • Guest Blogs (14)
  • The Faerie Mound (6)
  • The Lily Graves Series (22)
  • The Writing Process (69)
    • editing tips (10)
    • writing tips (10)
  • Top Ten (10)
  • Uncategorized (54)
  • writing challenge (4)

FB

FB

Latest Tweets

  • 5 of 5 stars to A Darkness More Than Night by Michael Connelly goodreads.com/review/show/37…Pressed 16 hours ago
Follow @AlishaCostanzo

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 944 other followers

Blogs I Follow

  • feistyfelineblog
  • Soul Vomit
  • Dana Write Blog
  • letters2lostloves
  • lindaghill.wordpress.com/
  • claudia quint
  • Transmundane Press
  • Ali Abbas
  • Adrik Kemp
  • A Light In The Dark
  • Fill-in-the-blank-ness...
  • The Perks of Being a Werewolf
  • Cohesion Press
  • Write Home Project
  • Cindi Myers Market News's Blog
  • Comfortably Domestic
  • piesandkates
  • I Am Begging My Mother Not To Read This Blog
  • C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m
  • specficromantic

Goodreads

Top Posts & Pages

  • Did You Know...About the Ancient Roman Vampire?
  • Did You Know...About the Japanese Werewolf?
  • Did You Know...About the Types of Angels?
  • Did You Know... About the Phoenix?
  • Hybrid Humanity | Mixing Phoenix and Vampire
  • Did You Know...About the Scandinavian Vampire?
  • Breaking Down Satire: Colloquialism
  • James
  • Bradly Ackerman
  • Did You Know...About the Mexican Vampire?

Archives

Top Posts & Pages

  • Did You Know...About the Ancient Roman Vampire?
  • Did You Know...About the Japanese Werewolf?
  • Did You Know...About the Types of Angels?
  • Did You Know... About the Phoenix?
  • Hybrid Humanity | Mixing Phoenix and Vampire

Tags

alisha costanzo anthology author blood blood phoenix book Broken World character development Death fantasy folklore horror humor interview must read myth mythology paranormal publishing romance Underwater urban fantasy vampire vampires writing

feistyfelineblog

Lively, Determined, and Courageous.

Soul Vomit

A wonderful mistake that needed to be made...

Dana Write Blog

Myth. Magic. Monsters...writing one page at a time.

letters2lostloves

Post Letters to your "Lost Loves"

lindaghill.wordpress.com/

Life in progress

claudia quint

let me detail for you this illimitable love in written words

Transmundane Press

Join the Community

Ali Abbas

The Literary, the Photography and the Joinery

Adrik Kemp

Author | Copywriter | Proofreader

A Light In The Dark

I have seen both angels in the dark, and monsters in the light... Which one are you?

Fill-in-the-blank-ness...

Just another day in a Broken World

The Perks of Being a Werewolf

Cohesion Press

The Battle Has Just Begun

Write Home Project

Empowering Homeless Youth Through Spoken Word Poetry

Cindi Myers Market News's Blog

Comfortably Domestic

Real Food. Real Life.

piesandkates

the food blog of a lazy cook

I Am Begging My Mother Not To Read This Blog

C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

specficromantic

reviews by a speculative fiction romantic

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
%d bloggers like this: