Some of the most compelling fiction arises out of the writer’s engagement with a narrow aspect of history. It might be an event with an exciting impact on the people involved or the future of nations. Many authors come to historical fiction because of a personal connection to a distant time and place, and their writing explores the experiences of people who lived in that milieu. My obsession is early technology, and my latest novel was sparked by a footnote.
So how do you transform a passion for history into a compelling narrative?
Begin by framing your concept: the specific niche in history you’d like to write into, and why it excites you. Are you most excited about the setting, the event, the people, or perhaps the transformation around one of those elements? Freewriting about your enthusiasm can hone your focus. Capture this excitement in a brief statement to guide the choices you make as you brainstorm narrative ideas. If you’re developing a counterfactual or supernatural story, be sure to integrate that direction.
I organize my ideas using a spreadsheet for a timeline, characters, specific locations, scene ideas, etc. You may prefer a notebook with dividers, or some other format. The earlier you can settle on a system, the easier it will be to exploit your notes, both historical and fictional.
Now that you know where (and when) to begin, consider how to build a story about that concept. Here are a few questions to guide you.
1. Where is the most striking conflict in this concept?
What is at stake? A battle might be life or death for the soldiers on the field. It might be existential for the future of the region or intensely personal for the groom who tends the warhorses.
Each of these levels can make an engaging narrative, and will suggest the character(s) involved as well as the breadth of the story. A larger, more complicated conflict signals the need for a larger structure to fully reveal it. If you’d like to craft a short story instead, look for a more intimate view into the conflict and explore that impact. Incorporating several layers of conflict adds richness, and shows why this character is invested in this particular conflict. That helps the reader to develop a rooting interest in what happens to them.
2. Who has the most to gain or lose in your concept?
This suggests possible characters. To tell the complete story of the battle, you may need characters who have a top-down view like generals or nobility, as well as participants on the battlefield. These affected characters may not all have a narrative perspective in the work, but the protagonist’s encounters with them will reveal new insights. What additional layers of internal or personal conflict will these characters contribute because of who they are, the roles they play, or their own background? Characters with opposing views illuminate the history in a more three-dimensional way. Creating a cast list of the people most impacted, and how they relate to each other can help you imagine scenes and personal moments to build your plot.
Whose stories dominate the current narrative around the history and whose stories haven’t been told? Are you the right author to reveal lesser-known narratives? If you can respectfully present a new perspective, especially on a familiar or perennial historical moment, that can help to set your work apart.
3. What aspects of the milieu are most critical for readers to understand the concept and story?
How can you reveal those aspects in the most engaging way? Lectures, backstory and summary are the bane of historical narratives. Instead, look for ways to embed historical details and context into scenes, through what characters experience, do, or understand. Deliver information through action or discovery, using sensory details to show the setting. As your reader experiences scenes alongside your characters, they will absorb the historical backdrop those characters inhabit without needing lengthy passages of exposition. My spreadsheet includes a column for brainstorming how to deliver the historical context my reader will need.
In particular, avoid explanatory dialog in which characters simply tell one another the information you want the reader to have. Instead, consider conflicts and opposing characters. Can they withhold, discover or argue about the information instead of simply delivering it?
4. What expectations will readers already have about this concept?
Reader expectations can enhance or distract from your story. For instance, readers of a Titanic novel are aware the ship will sink, and that creates added tension. Which of the characters will survive and how? If your work contradicts reader expectations, either because it’s a counterfactual or fantastical narrative, or because those expectations are flawed, you’ll need to carefully frame the contradictions to draw the reader closer rather than losing their trust because the author appears to have their facts wrong.
As these questions spark ideas for scenes, add those to your notes. Look for ways to increase the conflicts and raise the stakes through arranging those scenes for maximum impact. I use notecards, dealing out possible story and character arcs until I arrive at the most compelling version, or know what I need to brainstorm next. Spinning your historical grist into these narrative elements should deliver plenty of material to weave your concept into a story.
Debilitating fears are a problem for everyone, an unfortunate part of the human experience. Whether they’re a result of learned behavior as a child, are related to a mental illness, or stem from a past wounding event, these fears influence a character’s behaviors, habits, beliefs, and personality traits. The compulsion to avoid what they fear will drive characters away from certain people, events, and situations and hold them back in life.
In your story, this primary fear (or group of fears) will constantly challenge the goal the character is pursuing, tempting them to retreat, settle, and give up on what they want most. Because this fear must be addressed for them to achieve success, balance, and fulfillment, it plays a pivotal part in both character arc and the overall story.
This thesaurus explores the various fears that might be plaguing your character. Use it to understand and utilize fears to fully develop your characters and steer them through their story arc.
Fear of Failure
What It Looks Like Being content with the status quo Taking a follower role; letting others lead The character not doing their best Apathy or laziness Shutting down a co-worker’s new idea before it can be adopted Finding faults in potential love interests Ending a romantic relationship when it starts to get serious Turning down new projects or opportunities Doing something reckless or ill-advised the night before an important test or interview—e.g., staying up all night drinking, then falling asleep and missing the appointment Procrastinating on a school or work assignment Not finishing projects Blaming others when a failure occurs Projecting an image that encourages low expectations from others Preoccupation with minor tasks (instead of focusing on the important ones necessary to succeed) An inability to analyze past failures and learn from them Being perceived as inflexible or lazy Making excuses for underachieving Manipulating others to avoid having to take on certain duties Perfectionism; obsessing so much over making things perfect that the work never gets done and the end product is sabotaged
Common Internal Struggles The character doubting their abilities or intelligence The character being certain of their own failure when they’re entirely capable of winning Worrying that failure will make others think less of the character Worrying about disappointing others Envisioning a desired future but doubting that it will ever come to be Past failures replaying in the character’s head on a loop Struggling with shame Wanting to take on certain projects or opportunities but being too scared to try Creating internal arguments against an appealing but risky opportunity
Hindrances and Disruptions to the Character’s Life Missing out on opportunities that the character would be good at or enjoy Being looked down on by others (for a lack of ambition or ability) Arguing with parents and family members who call the character out for not trying hard enough The character being limited in what they’re able to achieve in life Being unfulfilled Being unable to succeed professionally Being unable to maintain a meaningful and healthy romantic relationship
Scenarios That Might Awaken This Fear Being assigned a high-profile work project The character’s work partner falls ill, leaving the character to handle things on their own Being asked to join a committee or volunteer group Being asked out by someone the character likes A romantic relationship escalating to a new level (the other person saying I love you or suggesting they move in together) A negative influence speaking doubt and failure to the character, echoing their own thoughts Being introduced to a scenario similar to the one that caused the character’s fear of failure Experiencing a failure—real or perceived—that reinforces the character’s fear (their marriage falling apart, their child dropping out of school, etc.) Being pitted against someone who is superior and is sure to win Being rejected by a potential love interest.
Well, Valentine’s Day is in the rearview, so it’s time to move on to a less lovey-dovey topic: killing people. Fictional people, of course!
Let’s face it, some of our characters have to die. Sure, we may have spent hours (days, weeks, decades?) shaping them, planning their backstory, filling their hearts with hopes and dreams. But in the end, it just isn’t their time to shine.
So…
That deer crosses the icy road at the wrong time.
The cable hoisting a plate glass window to the third story breaks.
Or the psycho with the ax chooses your character like he’s Pikachu.
Tragic, right?
But here’s the thing: when it comes to killing, there’s a time and place.
We don’t kill because the scene needs some spice. We don’t kill because we’ve spotted a plot hole, and killing a character seals it off. We don’t kill when it’s the easy way out. (Bring on the suffering!) We don’t randomly kill someone to show readers how bad our baddie is.
And most of all, we don’t kill 1) when the death serves no purpose or 2) if readers aren’t invested in the character. So, make sure the death pushes the story forward in some way and readers have a soft spot for the target (Rue from Hunger Games, for example) before you snuff them out. Emotional currency is king.
I know, I know, you’ve got a sad now, like I smashed your ice cream cone on the ground. So here’s when you can kill:
TO REMOVE YOUR PROTAGONIST’S SUPPORT SYSTEM
Sometimes our characters must hit rock bottom or lose everything before they can find inner strength. Taking away their safety net can trigger devolution or evolution and support their arc’s trajectory.
TO SUPPORT THE STORY’S THEME
Sometimes, there is a cost to holding to a belief or following a certain path, and death may be necessary to fully underscore the weight of the story’s theme. Sometimes, there is no justice. Evil triumphs instead of good. Safety is an illusion. Love means sacrifice, or finding one’s purpose in life may mean surrendering to it. Think about your theme and if this death will support the underlying meaning of the story.
TO SHOW THE COST OF FAILURE
Stakes can be primal, and it needs to be clear to everyone, including readers, when failure means death. If you go this route, invest time into the sacrificial character. Give them goals, needs, and people they would do anything for. Most of all, make readers care about them so their death has impact.
BECAUSE THEY HAD IT COMING
Some people deserve to die. They take risks, fail to heed advice, or are just plain toxic and awful. To show the cause and effect of their actions or provide a satisfying death scene for readers, take the character out in a way that makes sense, is ironic, or rings of poetic justice.
See? Lots of good options for killing. Challenge yourself to make it count so it serves the story in some way.
If you’d like to grab this “When to Kill a Character” checklist to save and print, just go here.
How do you decide when to kill a character? Who was it, and why did you do it?
One of my favorite characters of all time is Star Trek’s lovable android, Data. If you aren’t familiar with The Next Generation, and Data in particular, the most important thing you need to understand is Data is an android with a life mission of becoming more human. He’s the Pinocchio of space, but with better decision-making skills.
While rewatching the series for the tenth time—because of course we need to indoctrinate our oldest patootie into this world—we came across the episode titled “The Measure of a Man.” If you haven’t seen this episode, or if it’s been a while, please take a few minutes to watch this clip.
The crux of the episode is this—what (or who) qualifies as sentient life? And it made me wonder about my own characters. At what point do they become ‘sentient’?
There are tons of character interview questions for authors to get to know their characters. My deep, dark secret? Character interviews have never ever worked for me. At least, they’ve never helped make my characters seem sentient.
But what if we applied Star Fleet’s criteria for sentient life to our characters and judged them under the same microscope that Data was judged in “The Measure of a Man?” Will doing so help us understand the core of our characters better? And if so, do our characters measure up?
Intelligence
The first criteria that sentient life must meet is intelligence. Does the being possess the “ability to learn, to understand, and to cope with new situations?”
I mean, yes, we can force our characters to learn, to understand, and to cope with new situations. We are their creators, after all. But at what point do our characters become organically intelligent? In other words, when do our characters begin to tell us, their creator, if a certain decision or action is within character for them?
In the past, it has taken me a long time to get to this point with my characters. I have to live with them and immerse myself in their world for a while. Korrina, the main character in my Siren’s Call series, took years to develop because I, the creator, had a different idea of who she should be than who she truly was. (And she is nothing if not stubborn.) My idea of who she should be blocked her true self from coming out.
Once I let Korrina be her snarky, acts-now-apologizes-later self, she became organically intelligent. She was able to learn and to understand new, big concepts (such as the existence of mythological beings and that she’s a Siren with a magic object attached to her soul), as well as cope with new situations in ways that were realistic, believable, and unique to her character. It is her intelligence that adds shape to her character, as well as her ability to learn from her mistakes that makes her seem sentient.
Self-awareness
My critique partner, Julie Glover, is an absolute whiz when it comes to crafting characters who appear self-aware. One of her main characters in SHARING HUNTER, Chloe, is so self-aware that she occasionally jumps into conversations Julie and I have with each other.
Dr. Maddox, in the Star Trek episode we’re referencing, claims that self-awareness is achieved when “You are conscious of your existence and your actions. You are aware of yourself and your own ego.”
Are our characters capable of becoming self-aware?
I argue, yes, they are.
When our characters do something surprising or different than we had planned, our characters become self-aware.
When our characters speak in a way that is totally foreign to how we, the author, processes the world, they are self-aware.
When Julie Glover’s main character, Chloe, suggests that she and her best friend Rachel share a boyfriend the last semester of high school, she doesn’t just suggest it. She knows Rachel won’t go for this idea unless she sets the situation up perfectly, orchestrates the slow leak of idea building upon idea, and uses phrases like “that smokin’ hot piece of boy-bacon won’t last long in the high school meat market.”
However, she also realizes that if she comes on too strong, Rachel will balk and the idea will be over before it has a chance, “for Twain’s sake.”
The way Chloe masterminds her sharing-a-boyfriend scheme is just so…Chloe. (And if you haven’t read SHARING HUNTER yet, you really must.)
Consciousness
This one is, I believe, the hardest criteria for our characters to meet. Do our fictional characters experience true consciousness?
Consciousness is defined as “the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself.”
In Data’s example, that is the question that was left unanswered. It was up to the court to decide if Data met the requirement of consciousness in even the smallest measure. Is Data a machine, programmed to answer an infinite number of questions, or does he have consciousness—is he capable of original thought?
So I will follow Star Trek’s example. What do you think?
Are our characters derived from our own subconscious, meaning that the questions they pose and the answers they find are actually from deep inside our own brains? Or do these characters speak for themselves, with thoughts and ideas that belong to them?
It’s an interesting concept to ponder. What is sentient consciousness? What is life?
And do your characters have it?
Our best characters don’t simply occupy the page but come to life—for us and for our readers. They possess intelligence, feel self-aware, and seem to be, or perhaps are, conscious.
Consider these traits as you write characters your readers will connect with, and use these traits to help your readers feel that your characters are almost as real as their own selves.
Fear is an undeniable part of the human experience, for both real and fictional people. At its most basic, it warns our characters of potential danger and encourages them to take actions and make specific choices that will keep them safe. While unpleasant, it’s an important warning system meant to protect them from harm. But the system breaks down when a fear grows to the point of becoming overwhelming and crippling.
Debilitating fears play an important role in story and character arc, so we’ve decided to delve into this topic for our next thesaurus at Writers Helping Writers. Not just any fears, though—the virulent ones that stymie characters and derail them from their goals and dreams. To help you write your character’s greatest fear realistically, we’ll be exploring the following aspects for each entry:
What It Looks Like. Fears look different for each character based on a number of personal factors, so we’ll be providing a variety of manifestations for you to consider. Know your character’s personality, their sensitivities, and their personal boundaries—things they’re not willing to do because it will be triggering. Being intimately familiar with your character will give you a good idea of how their fear will manifest in various areas of life.
Common Internal Struggles. Fear will cause the character to doubt, obsess, and worry—many times, to an unhealthy degree. If they recognize that their preoccupation borders on the irrational or that it’s making certain desirable things impossible, that knowledge will war with their need for safety, generating internal conflict. The way they deal with it (or don’t deal with it) will have consequences that will impact their forward progress, so this is an important aspect of fear to think about.
Flaws That May Emerge. As your character tries to avoid what they fear, they may undergo a personality shift. A fear of commitment may cause the character to become superficial in their relationships and conversations. The character who is afraid of rejection may become abrasive, uncooperative, or dishonest—flaws that will keep people from getting close enough for a possible rejection to sting. Someone who is scared of losing control can become incredibly controlling and fussy. These traits are effective at protecting the character, but they will cause a myriad of other problems that then will have to be addressed.
Hindrances and Disruptions to the Character’s Life. If your character has a debilitating fear, you’ll need to show it clearly to readers through the context of their current story—no expository paragraphs or info dumps. An effective way to do this is by showing how the fear impacts the various areas of the character’s life. In this field, we’ll offer ideas on the minor inconveniences and major disruptions a fear can create.
Scenarios That Might Awaken This Fear. This is another way you can clearly show your character’s fear—by introducing situations that will trigger them. But they’re also helpful for providing opportunities for growth. As your character moves through their story toward their goal, their fear will block them. For them to achieve their objective, at some point, they’ll have to confront their fear and put it in its rightful place. Knowing which scenarios will trigger their fears will allow you to build those important growth opportunities into the story.
Fear is such a vital part of your character’s arc and their story. Our hope for this thesaurus is that it will provide insight and guidance for this important element. The first entry can be found here!
Writing a Hero’s Journey climax isn’t easy. Even when you outline it properly, you might struggle to put the right words on the paper.
If you understand what makes a great Hero’s Journey climax, however, you can defeat this daunting task easier.
In this article, you’ll learn what the Hero’s Journey climax, otherwise known as the Ordeal, is—and why it is so important.
You’ll also learn writing tips that can help you write this well: how to raise the stakes and maintain the action without losing the heroic arc that your protagonist has learned along the way.
Understanding A Strong Hero’s Journey Climax
As a judge of several writing contests, I’ve read many stories filled with action, violence, shouting, and assorted conflict. While a few of these stories pulled off their hero’s journey climaxes, most of them bombarded me with noise, gore, curses, and even sexual activity—all while abandoning their protagonist’s true journey.
When that happens, you can count your reader out.
Here’s how to write your story’s climax and keep your reader excitedly turning pages.
The Hero’s Journey (Recap)
Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is a theory exploring a timeless, mythical story structure. Following a hero as they flee their everyday life, the hero’s central conflict involves a quest for justice and rebirth that must come from defeating an evil force, usually called the Shadow.
This entire journey has been condensed into Christopher Vogler’s 12 Steps of the Hero’s Journey, an outline of story elements and the series of events leading from the beginning to the climactic event (the moment when the hero either achieves their goal or is defeated).
Prior to the climatic event, or the Hero’s Journey Ordeal, there’s an Approach to the Inmost Cave. Here, before the hero performs a big, decisive action, there is a brief pause. During this time the author establishes three key things:
The villain guarding the goal is really, really nasty
The cost of losing (known as stakes) are extremely high
The task that must be completed in order to achieve victory
Once this “calm before the storm” has occured, you are free to send your hero unto the breach so they can face the tests ahead.
Let’s talk about how to do just that!
Hero’s Journey Step 8: The Ordeal (the Climax)
In Hero’s Journey-speak, the climax of the story is known as the Ordeal.
The Ordeal is a complicated and nearly-impossible task that your hero must accomplish in order to achieve their goal. Accomplishing it, however, cannot end the story, but merely reveal that the goal itself does not satisfy your hero’s deepest need. But more on that later.
An easy way to think of the Ordeal is as an action sequence, but this may not always be the case. It could be a test of character, like in The Queen’s Gambit. It could be a test of wit and wisdom, as in WandaVision. And it can be a test of loyalty, as in Pride and Prejudice.
But most often it is, in fact, a test of strength, strategy, and skill.
There is a “storming of the castle,” so to speak, where your hero must face a task that is greater than anything they have encountered so far. It’s also likely your hero comes face to face with the villainous Shadow in this scene.
From 30,000 feet, though, remember that the goal of the Ordeal scene is to have your hero obtain the Goal of the quest.
“ If you want to write a great Hero’s Journey climax, make sure you show how the hero obtains their Goal.
This usually involves rescuing someone, acquiring a treasure or weapon, or fulfilling some other task (like destroying the One Ring of Sauron, à la The Lord of the Rings).
However, the act of doing so much reveal something about the Goal, the world it lives in, and/or the hero themselves that leads to dissatisfaction or fails to resolve the issues facing the story in a complete way.
3 Key Principles in a Hero’s Journey Climax (Ordeal)
The Ordeal is a lengthy scene, filled with many beats, and each beat must be carefully designed to maximize its impact. This is the moment your reader has been waiting for, after all!
How do you write it so it is irresistibly good? “ A Hero’s Journey climax (or Ordeal) includes three key principles. Learn how to write them in this article.
It’s easy to screw this up. When we plan and write a story, we spend a lot of time building up toward the exciting climactic event. So when we get there, it’s easy to overdo it with physical details as we attempt to take the movie playing in our heads and put it down on paper.
Unfortunately, the same movie will never play in your reader’s mind. There might not be a movie playing at all.
Instead, when readers confront pages of physical description and noise (whether they’re depictions of fistfights, gun battles, sexual intimacy, or shouted opinions), they instinctively recoil.
This is especially true if the bombast isn’t earned, but thrust too quickly or emphatically into the story.
This is natural. We avoid conflict, especially conflict that we can’t comprehend or establish ourselves in, even as observers. It is imperative that your reader understands every piece of your story’s action, and that they care about the outcome of each punch, jump, kiss, or insult.
That’s why you need to focus on what got you here: Your protagonist’s desire.
And along with that desire (for their want and need), is their fear. What do they have to lose? Why is success so important to them?
Each moment of action must be filtered through the protagonist’s journey of hope and fear. Each step forward or retreat backward must come with hope, disappointment, terror, anticipation, belief, despair . . . all the emotions that accompany an active protagonist.
A great example can be found in George Lucas’s epic space fantasy, Star Wars.
The final battle between the Rebellion and the Empire is ultimately a loud, bombastic explosion of lasers and engines screaming across the screen. But there are two elements infusing it with incredible emotion: Friendship and the Force.
First, Luke is fighting not just for the Rebellion, but for his friends. Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO are on Yavin-4, the planet about to be obliterated by the Death Star. And his best friend from home, Biggs, gets killed in the fight.
Then to add to it, Luke seems to know that computers and technology alone cannot win the battle for him. After all, they are fighting a massive machine (the Death Star) and a small machine (Darth Vader); clearly the Empire has the upper hand when it comes to dehumanizing control.
The scene, and his character, takes a massive turn when Luke listens to the voice of his master, speaking through the mystical energy field called the Force, instructing him to trust in it and use it.
Luke does, and this is what gives Star Wars’ climactic moment its most powerful punch. Luke doesn’t just desire to beat the Empire; he desires for his life to have meaning. The Force gives him that meaning that he deeply seeks.
2. Use beats of quiet contemplation or conversation
Another mistake authors make with their story climaxes is to load them with nonstop action.
Again, this may be a result of “writing the movie in your head,” as we hope to create a scene of pulse-pounding excitement, and write one blindingly exhausting scene after another.
But this isn’t how the human mind processes things. It also doesn’t allow much room for your hero to process how the stakes (and their dreams) are changing in the moment. Human beings are constantly evaluating and strategizing, and you need little moments of quiet thought or peaceful conversation to punctuate the sound and the fury of your story climax.
More movies do this than you might immediately realize. Rewatch your favorite action movie and you’ll notice throughout the climactic action scenes just how often the story pauses for characters to think, reflect, and reorient themselves.
The Hunger Games excels at this.
Partially, author Suzanne Collins is at an advantage, since the Ordeal could include all of the “Games.” Yet the Games aren’t packed with wall-to-wall violence. Take the relationship between Katniss and Rue.
Neither come from wealth or privilege. District 12 is hardly a paradise, and from what Katniss learns from Rue, neither is District 11. With an ordinary world in common, the two form a friendship which seems based on love and respect for life. It’s these quiet, beautiful moments that make Rue’s death so gut-wrenching. They are also why her death is such a critical moment in both the plot and Katniss’s character development.
So add in a few moment for your characters to catch their breath and connect in the midst of the chaos. Your reader will probably need to do the same, too!
3. Don’t give the hero what they want
One final trick that will make your climax unbelievably thrilling is to withhold the very thing the scene promises to deliver: The Goal.
This isn’t just meant to mess with your reader. It’s to reflect a painful reality of life: That what we want is often deeply unsatisfying, or at least not so easily won.
There are two ways to do this.
First, you can simply have the Goal be taken away. Destroy the MacGuffin. Kill off the character. Have the Shadow, or villain, hide the Goal or protect it in a more ultimate way.
Or secondly, and perhaps more meaningfully, let the hero obtain the Goal, only to feel a deep and hollow disappointment.
So often we orient our lives toward some physical goal, like money, fame, sex, or treasure, only to obtain that goal and find ourselves feeling emptier than ever before. We realize that no matter how much we believe we will be fulfilled by this “thing,” that no thing can ever fulfill as deeply as we’d hope.
“Want to create a gripping climax? Give your hero a win-but-lose ending: there’s some success, but there’s also failure—or even the success itself isn’t as satisfying as expected.
That’s why your hero must have something in addition to their object of desire: your hero must have an internal need.
Internal needs take the form of validation, acceptance, peace with oneself, spiritual harmony, reconciliation, forgiveness, acceptance of death, emotional/spiritual rebirth, and more. These needs are what will ultimately drive your Hero’s Journey forward, because heroic journeys aren’t just about getting prizes like weapons, money, or “peace.”
They’re about peace within, and the peace all human beings long for in a world filled with so much injustice and suffering.
Such a story is the epic saga of Harry Potter.
This series is filled with several MacGuffin goals that J.K. Rowling sends her cast of characters out to find, but all of them point to the deeper problem lurking under the surface: Voldermort.
This is why Harry Potter will begin one of his adventures thinking he wants a magical object, like the Sorcerer’s Stone, but soon learns that such a thing won’t ultimately help him satisfy his deepest needs.
When Harry seeks to acquire the Sorcerer’s Stone in order to prevent Voldemort from regenerating. Yet when he looks in the Mirror of Erised (that’s Desire if you weren’t reading this in a mirror), Harry realizes that he doesn’t want a magic rock. He wants his family back. But because Voldemort destroyed it, he can never have what he truly wants.
What a powerful message to package into a children’s book! Yet this is the reality of life, and great writers use their stories’ climaxes to reflect it.
If you do this too, your story will also ripple with unfathomable power. Readers will gasp, but they won’t give up. They’ll have to keep reading, because what happens to the hero will say something about the readers’ lives as well.
That’s the kind of story we all want to write.
Ordeal/Climax: Action of the Heart
No matter what kind of climactic Ordeal your story requires, never forget that the most important action must occur in your protagonist’s heart.
It can be so easy to compose physical imagery and believe it will thrill our readers. But without the necessary action of the heart—the action of wanting, hoping, fearing, disbelieving, and more—the physical action will fall painfully flat, leaving your reader disappointed.
Don’t fall leave your reader wanting. Deliver an incredible reading experience by nailing your story’s Ordeal.
What are your favorite climax scenes from stories you enjoy? What do you love about those scenes? Let us know in the comments.
Most of us are familiar with the “Show, don’t Tell” rule. In short, it’s more effective to dramatize the story than to simply tell what happened. Nonetheless, almost every story needs at least some telling. It can help keep the pacing tight, relay background information, and enhance tone, among other things. Here’s more on when breaking the rule can work. So how do we tell well? Here are six cheats to help you.
1. Appeal to the Senses
Good showing appeals to the senses. Basically, we have to appeal to the senses to really show a story. There is no reason moments of telling can’t appeal to the senses in a similar way. Appealing to sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch can strengthen your telling just as it does with showing. It’s just that with telling, it’s usually brief, or relayed “in passing.” This example appeals to senses despite it being a telling summary:
We drove through Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, stopping to cool the engine in towns where people moved with arthritic slowness and spoke in thick strangled tongues . . . At night we slept in boggy rooms where headlight beams crawled up and down the walls and mosquitoes sang in our ears, incessant as the tires whining on the highway outside. – This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
2. Use Concrete Metaphors and Similes
Some telling doesn’t lend itself to the senses very easily, because of the subject matter that needs to be told. In cases like that, you can try tying in a concrete comparison to suggest a sense. This example tells about a telepathic and emotional connection using comparisons:
At night awake in bed, he’d remember her presence. How their minds had been connected, ethereal like spider webs. How just her being there brought a sense of comfort, like a childhood blanket he hadn’t realized he’d still had.
3. Sprinkle in Details
Just as you use detail to make your showing great, you can and often should include detail in passages of telling. Mention a red leather jacket here or a specific cologne there. Of course, you won’t be including as much detail as you would with showing, but detail makes telling more realistic. One key to making this work is to pick the right details, as opposed to generic ones.
Their mom had always stressed the importance of eating dinner as a family, of stir fry nights and cloth napkins on laps, of hands held in prayer and laughter pealing off travertine, and even of the occasional green bean food fight.
4. Elevate Your Writing Style
You can also make telling stronger by making it more literary. Elevate the prose with smart word choices and by paying attention to rhythm and sound. Again, you can bring in similes and metaphors, or better yet, extended metaphors. Basically, you are finding a way to make what you are telling particularly pleasing and poetic.
From Crossed by Ally Condie:
In the night, it feels like we’re running fast over the back of some kind of enormous animal, sprinting over its spines and through patches of tall, thin, gold grass that now glimmers like silver fur in the moonlight. The air is desert cold, a sharp, thin cold that tricks you into thinking you aren’t thirsty, because breathing is like drinking in ice.
5. Bump up the Tone and Voice
Unfortunately, the poetic approach won’t work with everything—it likely won’t work in a comedic passage or an angry one. Instead, bump up the tone. Pull in the narrative voice or let the character’s voice bleed into the narrative at the deepest level. Channel the emotion of the narrator or character and write your telling in ways that reinforce that. For help, check out my previous post on WHW.
From The Book Thief by Markus Zusak:
Earlier, kids had been playing hopscotch there, on the street that looked like oil-stained pages. When I arrived, I could still hear the echoes. The feet tapping the road. The children-voices laughing, and the smiles like salt, but decaying fast.
Then, bombs.
This time everything was too late. The sirens. The cuckoo shrieks on the radio. All too late.
Misfortune?
Is that what glued them down like that?
Of course not.
Let’s not be stupid.
It probably had more to do with the hurled bombs, thrown down by humans hiding in the clouds.
6. Create Tension, Even if Only on a Small Scale
Good tension will keep a reader invested, even through telling. See if you can include tension when telling. It can be tension that lasts only for a sentence, or, better yet, promises of conflict yet to come.
From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone:
The Dursleys had everything they ever wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters.
If you want your readers to not just pick up your book, but keep turning the pages, you need to learn how to write a hook that will draw them through the story so they never want to put it down. Try baiting your hooks with the thrill of danger to keep your readers on the line.
Reading are tantalized by the scent of danger in our stories, and we’re able to enjoy it from the safety of our beds or beach chairs.
A good book that pulls us in deep might make us feel like the danger is real, and we often experience it as such, but we can indulge ourselves in it and savor that vicarious thrill because we’re in a protected zone.
Today, we’re going to explore how to use hooks baited with danger to snag and hold reader interest.
Danger Excites Readers with Action
Sometimes the most delectable danger in fiction is subtle and conveyed by covert means, as in psychological suspense. But more often, danger and action go together, the kind of action that carries risk.
For instance, a car moving down the street is action, but there’s no inherent danger attached to the movement, so it does nothing to hook the reader. But with a few adjustments, we can make that moving car into something dangerous indeed.
Put a small child behind the wheel, a four-year-old playing around in the driver’s seat who happened to release the brake. Or maybe the automobile is squealing along with six cop cars in pursuit. Maybe it’s three o’clock in the morning, the streets are deserted, and the car is the only thing that’s moving, pinning the protagonist in its headlights.
It takes more than action to create the danger hook. It must be action that makes you sit up and take notice.
“Reading fiction gives us the thrill of danger without the risk. Give your readers the indulgence of that vicarious thrill.
Most of us can recognize action when we see it on the page, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that sort of danger hook—bullets flying, villains chasing, karate chops raining down.
That type of clear and present danger provides a strong hook to carry the reader forward, but it fades fast, so you need to be ready with another hook.
In this article, I’ll spend time focusing on the more subtle varieties of danger hooks. As always, it’s vital to consider genre and reader expectations when crafting your danger hook. Different types of readers will perceive the hook in different ways. You want to be sure you’re baiting your hook to capture your target audience.
Ask yourself—will my core readers feel danger when they read this sentence? When a reader picks up a suspense or thriller, for instance, they expect to encounter danger. Readers make assumptions based on their expectations, so if I ended a scene like this:
“He knows where to find me.”
Seasoned readers of suspense fiction will attach sinister meaning to the phrase. They will find it dangerous, while readers who don’t normally read taut mysteries and thrillers won’t necessarily process it the same way.
Taken at face value, there’s no danger hook—he knows where to find me. So what?
Use the Right Bait to Reel in Your Reader
As you increase the number of hooks in the passage, the tension builds and the pacing accelerates. Be sure you are using an appropriate amount for your audience (or the appropriate type of tension). Cozy readers aren’t looking for a fast-paced adventure, so scale back. Always think about who you’re writing for, and write to that target.
While most readers will respond favorably to a degree of danger in their story, make sure you dial it up or down to suit your audience. And the focus will change, as well. “ The amount of tension in your story depends on what your readers expect.
For example, readers who prefer a more literary tale will want to focus on the character’s emotional response, while readers who are expecting a light romance or caper will be more interested in getting to what happens next.
Let’s Take a Look at Some Examples
“Decorations had to be set up, food had to be arranged. She wanted the room to be as nice as possible for the two hundred CCCBA members who’d been looking forward to the party for months.” Fast, Jeffery Deaver
Do you see the danger here? No, I didn’t think so. I use this as an interesting example of how the danger hook works in context, depending on reader expectation and information flow. As it stands, there is no danger, and no hook. However, when I show you the hook that opens the story:
“They were just about to see the octopus when she received a text alerting her that two hundred people were going to die in two hours.”
Now you see the danger. It’s not only in the hook contained in this opening sentence, but when Deaver closes the later scene with my first example, the innocuous paragraph turns deadly dangerous—those two hundred people at the party are going to die.
Notice how he weaves in a number of Raising Question hooks, too. Who’s going to die? How are they going to die? What can be done to stop it happening? What’s with the octopus?
Here Are Some More Examples:
“A few miles to the east as the crow flies, in a lost village in the Sabarthes Mountains, a tall, thin man in a pale suit sits alone at a table of dark, highly polished wood.” Labyrinth, Kate Mosse
This example opens the second chapter in the book. Nothing has come before to set it up, as in the last example, but because readers who pick up Labyrinth are expecting a tense story full of peril, they’ll read danger into this sentence, making it a pretty good hook. Note how the author threads in words that impart a somber tone—lost village, pale suit, dark polished wood.
“’You’ve heard of Pavlov’s dogs,’ the man said. He wore a blood-streaked apron and a crooked smile. ‘These fellows put them to shame.’” Furrows, Joslyn Chase
The danger can be inherent, like the runaway car I mentioned earlier, or implied, like in the above example. This paragraph is the opening to a horror story, so when the reader sees the blood-streaked apron and crooked smile and thinks about animals trained to salivate at the ring of a bell, danger alarms go off.
“When I get to the steps of my lakeside home, the door is open. I slowly walk in, my hand reaching for the phantom weapon at my side, everything about me extended and tingling as I enter the strange place that used to be mine.” The Dark Snow, Brendan DuBois
This is the story opener, and though nothing much is actively happening, we feel the danger along with the protagonist. And, again, we have hooks working in tandem with other hooks. The opening raises many questions which the reader will want to have answered, drawing him forward into the next paragraph and beyond.
5 Tips for How to Write a Danger Hook
If you ask, “Will my target reader feel danger when reading this sentence or paragraph?” and can answer in the affirmative, you have a danger hook. But there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure you’ve made it the best it can be.
Use strong verbs and surprising actions.
The danger can be inherent or implied.
Always keep reader expectations and genre considerations in mind.
If you use the same danger/action hook again, later in the story, you’ll have to escalate or innovate or the effect will be diluted.
When using a danger hook for the opening of a story, it has nothing to stand on, no prior context to draw upon, so it must stand on its own merit.
A Case in Point
Let’s examine the ending of a scene from my thriller, Nocturne In Ashes. What if I’d written it like this in my first draft:
A radio call came through, but no one picked up.
Okay, not terrible, but it’s a waste of a good opportunity for a strong danger hook. Let’s see what we can do to shape it up.
In the empty Explorer, the radio squawked, but no one picked up.
Now we’ve got a strong and descriptive verb—squawked. And the Explorer is empty, a word that implies desolation and perhaps something gone horribly wrong, given the context and the genre, which gives us a flavor of the setting. Here’s the published version.
“In the empty Explorer, the two-way radio squawked, demanding attention. No one heard and no one answered.” Nocturne In Ashes, Joslyn Chase
Now, we’ve got the terms “two-way radio” and “demanding attention,” which carry implications to the reader’s brain. One party is urgently attempting to reach another party without success. “No one heard, and no one answered” drives home the possibility that something dire is happening. Danger is in the air.
Look for Opportunity
If you haven’t built hooks into your manuscript, don’t despair. On revision, look for opportunities to create or strengthen hooks. And remember to use hooks in combination with other hooks. So far, we’ve studied the Raising Question hook and the Danger hook, but there are many more.
If you want to learn more about hooks, a great resource is Mary Buckham’s book Writing Active Hooks.
Have fun with this. Remember what it felt like to create a sense of danger in the games we played as children. Go play with some danger hooks and reel in your target readers.
How about you? Do you love stories with a flavor of danger? Do you see how the Danger Hook might strengthen your writing? Tell us about it in the comments.
Successful stories are driven by authentic and interesting characters, so it’s important to craft them carefully. But characters don’t usually exist in a vacuum; throughout the course of your story, they’ll live, work, play, and fight with other cast members. Some of those relationships are positive and supportive, pushing the protagonist to positive growth and helping them achieve their goals. Other relationships do exactly the opposite—derailing your character’s confidence and self-worth—or they cause friction and conflict that leads to fallout and disruption. Many relationships hover somewhere in the middle. A balanced story will require a mix of these dynamics.
The purpose of this thesaurus is to encourage you to explore the kinds of relationships that might be good for your story and figure out what each might look like. Think about what a character needs (good and bad), and build a network of connections for him or her that will challenge them, showcase their innermost qualities, and bind readers to their relationship trials and triumphs.
Description: In this codependent relationship, each party gets something that they need, but in an unhealthy manner. The giver goes to great lengths to please and help the taker, often sacrificing their own needs, desires, health, and mental well-being to serve the other person. This can result in the giver being abused, neglected, taken advantage of, or otherwise mistreated by the taker. In the end, they both benefit, albeit dysfunctionally: the taker gets someone to care for them while the giver gets what they need (gaining the taker’s approval, finding purpose in serving them, etc.).
This dynamic can be found in any pairing—between spouses, friends, a parent and child, coach and athlete, boss and employee, etc.
RelationshipDynamics: Below are a wide range of dynamics that may accompany this relationship. Use the ideas that suit your story and work best for your characters to bring about and/or resolve the necessary conflict.
The giver struggling to say no to the taker, no matter how selfish the request The giver making excuses for the other party, even taking the on the blame for the taker’s actions The giver finding their identity as a caregiver or in relationship to the other person (instead of having their own individual identity) The giver sacrificing their own needs in favor of the taker’s The giver being unaware of their own needs or being unable/unwilling to communicate them The giver experiencing frequent stress or anxiety due to never knowing where they stand with the taker The giver playing the peacemaker—doing whatever it takes to mend the relationship after an argument The giver taking personal responsibility for the taker’s happiness The giver believing that no one can care for the taker like they can The taker guilting, bullying, or manipulating the giver into doing something for them The taker mistreating the giver, then attempting to make up for it with through gifts or gestures The taker expressing dissatisfaction with how a giver is doing things The taker controlling every aspect of the giver’s life The taker becoming jealous if the giver gives their time or attention to anyone else (including their child, parent, sibling, etc.) The taker showing little or no interest in the giver’s true needs or desires The taker refusing to negotiate or compromise with the giver (my way or the highway thinking)
Conflicting Desires that Can Impair the Relationship The giver wanting to be treated as an equal while the taker wants to be in charge One party wanting out of the relationship The taker demanding something the giver is uncomfortable doing The giver wanting to care for someone else (a child, for instance) while the taker wants all of the giver’s attention The giver wanting to believe or embrace something the taker doesn’t agree with The giver needing a mental break from caregiving, but the taker refusing to comply The giver wanting a level of autonomy that the taker is unwilling to allow
Clashing Personality Trait Combinations: Controlling and Rebellious, Perfectionist and Flaky, Extravagant and Thrifty, Cruel and Oversensitive, Manipulative and Weak-Willed, Pushy and Independent, Needy and Apathetic
Negative Outcomes of Friction Physical abuse Emotional abuse The taker’s self-esteem plummeting Fear of losing the relationship keeping the two together in an unhealthy relationship Children seeing the dysfunction and continuing it in their own relationships The giver feeling isolated, having no one to confide in Either party turning to substance abuse as a coping mechanism (or increased use, if it’s already part of the equation)
FictionalScenarios That Could Turn These Characters into Allies A “rock bottom” scenario in the relationship that requires changes be made if they are to stay together Working together to help a mutual friend, the taker’s boss, or someone who needs help A medical emergency that requires the taker to adopt the caregiving role and the giver to accept the taker’s help to return to health A spiritual awakening that causes a change in one or both parties, causing them to want to heal the relationship
Ways This Relationship May Lead to Positive Change Either party seeing an example of a healthy relationship and wanting it personally Regaining a healthy relationship through self-revelation and therapy Either party leaving so they can focus on their own health and well-being Children seeing the dysfunction and vowing to do things differently in their own relationships
Themes and Symbols That Can Be Explored through This Relationship Beginnings, Deception, Depression, Enslavement, Family, Freedom, Friendship, Health, Hope, Instability, Isolation, Journeys, Love, Obstacles, Perseverance, Sacrifice, Suffering, Transformation
A few years ago, I told a friend that I’d nearly finished writing a memoir. She knew that it focused on the period my husband and I—both in our mid-to-late forties—were laid off simultaneously and struggling to get our careers and marriage back on track. Yet that didn’t stop her from suggesting “a surprise pregnancy cliffhanger ending.”
That’s when it occurred to me that not everyone knows that memoir, derived from the French mémoire, meaning “memory,” is a work of nonfiction. Even when people are aware that this genre is rooted in fact, they often think it is interchangeable with autobiography.
While these first-person narratives have plenty in common, they’re also quite different. Where do they overlap and how are they dissimilar? Let’s take a look.
Both Tell the Story of the Author’s Life
Autobiographies usually unfold in chronological order, beginning from early childhood and continuing through present day. They can certainly include flashbacks as the story evolves, but most follow a linear path.
Memoir, on the other hand, typically focuses on a snapshot in time or a life-defining period rather than spanning the author’s entire life. They shine a spotlight on an aspect, such as an illness, an unusual childhood or career, and include reflections on how those circumstances shaped them, often culminating in a lesson learned or a message that leaves readers feeling their time investment was worthwhile.
Memoir can be a collection of essays unified by a common theme or occurring within a set window of time, like Annabelle Gurwitch’s You’re Leaving When? Adventures in Downward Mobility, which centers around the author’s living situation after her marriage ends and her child leaves for college. Memoir can also told through verse as Jacqueline Woodson does in her National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming.
Both Seek to Enlighten
Autobiographies are crafted to illuminate the early beginnings, education, and career of a famous person, such as an historical figure. Examples include The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, which details the author and lecturer’s challenges and journey to overcome them, or The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which showcases the inventor and founding father’s wit and irreverent wisdom as he lays out his life story.
Memoirs can be written by anyone who believes they have a tale to tell. Consider The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs, an American poet who shares her final months as a mother facing terminal cancer, or The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, chronicling the author’s far-from-ordinary childhood which fosters a lifelong resilience.
Autobiographies Focus on Facts While Memoirs Focus on Feeling
While many autobiographies showcase the author’s character and personality through the tone and events described, they may have a more journalistic feel, covering all the facts readers would hope to learn about the subject.
Memoirs embody a more voice-driven approach, engaging the reader on a personal level. They’re not as date-time-and-place driven, but rather explore scenes and memories that hang together to support a larger message or theme that offers readers insight into their lives.
How Do You Decide?
If you’d like to share your life story and are wondering which genre—autobiography or memoir—better serves your purpose, there are a few ways to determine the right option.
Is there a single incident that set others in motion that molded you into the person you are today? Do you have a theme or message you wish to impart through a collection of vignettes? If your answer is yes, memoir would work well.
Memoir requires that the author dig deep emotionally so readers can relate and empathize. Writing a memoir can serve as a catharsis or a way to come to terms with a difficult time or situation, which can be healing. Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela’s Ashes Frank McCourttold NPR’s Terry Gross how writing his beloved memoir shifted his perspective.
“I’ve gone back [to Ireland] a number of times, but always with a chip on my shoulder, a sense of anger. I got a lot of the stuff out of my system by writing the book, and I feel much more comfortable…” McCourt explained.
If you’re more interested in preserving your history in an orderly timeline with an array of anecdotes at various ages and stages and enjoy research and fact-checking dates, try autobiography.
You can also ask yourself: “What’s my goal?” Do you hope to publish this story or share it only with friends and family? Considering your target audience may help you decide the better vehicle for your story.
Whether you choose to write an autobiography or a memoir, it will likely require a great deal of time and effort, so starting out with a clear idea of which style best suits your narrative can help serve as a roadmap. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t change course once you begin.
Either way, capturing your life story is a way to preserve your legacy and enlighten readers at the same time.
First Edition Design Publishing - a hybrid publisher 