Day 9: workshop a scene w/ me
Daily goal: 4,140 words/day.
Today: 6,120 words
155 Pages Edited so Far
Draft 2 Goal: Increase Conflict and Suspense
Every scene, needs three elements to add conflict :
- An objective
- Obstacles
- An outcome
It sounds intuitive and simple, but the middle of my book (commonly called the Messy Middle for a reason) lacks a lot of this.
Like right now, I'm going over a scene. At the beginning of the scene, she's dancing with Ryan, a mysterious guy who's been flirting with her but who might be bad news, and at the end of the scene, she's connecting romantically with her best guy friend, Oliver (who we want her to be with).
So what's the Objective: To find the objective, I can start with the outcome, which is her connecting with Oliver. So to add more conflict, we will make Ryan an obstacle. He needs to distract her from Oliver. And that brings us to our objective. Maybe Lily is mad at Oliver. They haven't talked lately, she's getting mixed signals from him, and she's hurt. So she wants to forget him for the night.
This is a decent option because good scenes are like this +/- or -/+. Which means, they're best when they start with one sentiment and end with the opposite sentiment. So if she starts off unsure of Oliver's intentions and dancing with some other man to forget him, then she can end connecting with Oliver and feeling good about it, which is the opposite.
So with that in mind, this is what the scene's opener looked like 5 minutes ago:
A particularly sultry song starts to play and I find myself swaying, forgetting the embarrassment of my wardrobe malfunction and completely ruining it with Vanessa Vincent, and for this moment I embrace that place between the light and the dark of this club, and I close my eyes and forget to smile, forget to stand straighter, forget to present myself in whichever way for whatever person, forget to walk on my hands so everyone can clap, forget to bow when the host does.
A hand takes mine and pulls me fully into the dark.
Ryan.
(then I describe them dancing)
And here's what it looks like now:
A particularly sultry song starts to play.. (scene continues)
A hand takes mine and pulls me fully into the dark.
Ryan.
For a moment, I resist. What about Ollie? But Ollie didn’t invite me tonight. I don't even think he's here. Where are you, Oliver Adams?
Ryan’s hand goes lower on my dress, and I hear a chuckle. “You really do like to break things, don’t you?”
“I felt dangerous tonight.” His hand pauses, then goes up to the space between my shoulder blades.
“I never took you for a gentleman.”
“Oh Lilith, even the devil has manners.”
It still needs work, but now there's banter! Adding in her resistance means Ryan needs to give her a reason to let go. There's chemistry now!
This is what it looks like to edit. It's a bunch of problem solving and stumbling around and trying things and seeing if they work and ripping them out and trying again and studying craft and applying it and struggling some more until some of it, maybe, looks better than before.
Every day I fix something new only to break something else in the process.
Today, it's all about internal vs external conflict.
internal conflict: emotional/spiritual conflict
- ex: family disputes, boss/employee butting heads, love triangles, secrets that are revealed, etc.
external conflict: things that are happening in the outside world that affect the character
- ex: a war that might kill the character or someone they love, a monster loose in the town, a fatal disease, an enemy of some sort that is always drawing nearer and getting more dangerous
The ratio of internal/external conflict varies based on genre, and it's a delicate balance to strike the right chord within the genre you choose.
I've done a good job of upping the internal conflict of the book so far, but now it's starting to read more like a soap opera than a sci-fi book. I need to add in a lot more external conflict to balance it out.
In my book, I've been waiting to introduce a key piece of external conflict. I have good reasons for this, but it's seriously harming my story. There's a right time to introduce plot points and I don't have it down yet.