Writing Tips - Story Conflict

Jan Fields is a professional writer with publication credits in newspapers, magazines and books. She's also the webeditor for the Institute's Rx for Writers support sections, editor of the Children's Writers eNews and the editor and creator of Kid Magazine Writers eMagazine. She teaches several course for the Institute and in her spare time, she sleeps.

"Grab em, Hold em, Keep em to the End"

by Jan Fields

For a story or novel to work, it must lure the young reader into the reading spell and keep them trapped until the end. Keep in mind that young readers are slippery rascals and quite capable of slipping away if you don’t keep a firm hold on them. These days kids have homework, music lessons, dance lessons, computers, games, and television – none of which can be done at the same time as reading your story or novel. So your story or novel must be more gripping, more interesting, and more appealing that all those other things. It’s not terribly hard to lure kids away from homework, but keeping a child mesmerized when so many other lures are dangling – that takes effort.

What are some sure fire ways to lose the young reader? Create a story without enough suspense or open with suspense but then kill the tension through steaming piles of information dumped on the reader in terms of back-story or exposition of any kind. Or over focus on the trivial – the things not needed to make the plot work. All of those cause the reading ride to stall, and once you stall, the reader can drop off and go do something that is exciting and engaging.

Does that mean you have to have explosions! Aliens! Car crashes! No, it does not. Basically it means you have to create a main character that we care about and then make that person’s life difficult, then let the person show us just what they’re made of as they work their way out of the problem!

The problem might not involve a single car crash. It might not even include anything we (as adults) would consider all that important. What it’s all about is that main character. What is important to him or her? For example, in Mo Willems’ Knuffle Bunny, the problem is a simple one. The small child has lost Knuffle Bunny, a shabby little stuffed rabbit. To an adult, this is a minor matter. The world is full of stuffed animals and Knuffle Bunny was a wreck. To the small child this was catastrophic and nothing was more important than getting the bunny back. And because Mo Willems made us care about the situation, we find ourselves rooting for Knuffle Bunny being reunited with Trixie.

Another interesting thing happens in Knuffle Bunny. Trixie is basically a powerless create – she’s a baby. She can’t do much to force her world to behave the way she needs it to. So what does she do? She acts out! She throws a fit! She goes “boneless.” And every reader on the planet is right there with her, feeling her behavior was completely appropriate. Because we connect with Trixie, we don’t see her as in need of fixing even through she’s “being a brat.” This leads us to the first thing you need to do to make a story work.

MAKE A CONNECTION Reader must connect, admire, respect and even love your main character. This doesn’t mean your main character must do the wonderful perfect things. Trixie in Knuffle Bunny does all the things that drive parents crazy and we still side with Trixie. That’s because Mo Willems knew how to connect with his main character. He knew how to make her real and he knew how to make us fall in love. If we didn’t relate to Trixie, the story would have simply been about a put-upon father with a daughter throwing a tantrum. And that small change in approach would have lost all the readers who have come to love that story. We love it because we care deeply about Trixie and her story problem.

MAKE TROUBLE

The second thing a story must do is make trouble for the main character. Life for your main character, no matter how much you love him or her – cannot be easy. Trouble comes along and quickly becomes unbearable. The trouble might be caused by the main character or it might arise from outside the main character – readers will accept both. The important point is that the main character must do something about it.

A main character who simply bobs along on the trouble hoping for rescue will frustrate and bore a young reader. Sure, little kids are powerless creatures, but they aren’t inanimate objects. If you relate to them as you write – you’ll work within what they can do. Trixie could babble, fuss, and go limp. She could do everything in her power to fix her problem. And the fact that she was willing to do everything she could no matter what the consequences made us admire her – even though her behavior would be seen as “negative” from strictly adult eyes.

So if you want to grab the reader – make trouble for the main character and give the character something to do about it.

MAKE MORE TROUBLE

The road to success must never be too easy for your main character. Then the story or book is dull. If the parent immediately sensed Trixie’s problem, turned around and got the bunny – Knuffle Bunny would not have had the charm and impact that it did. It would have been a “slice of life” piece at best. But the author did not make Trixie’s solution easy. In fact – she reached the point of total despair. She could not make her father’s understand. She could not win. Everything looked horrible. That’s a story that will grab the reader and make him/her hang on.

Most really engaging stories have that moment when “all seems lost.” When it’s clear the main character’s deep need/desire/goal is not going to be met. When life stinks to the millionth degree. But the character must not go limp. We teeter as close to the edge of no return as we can, but we do not fall in.

The reader may save himself as he tries a last solution, comes up with a creative possibility, calls upon the one friend he swore never to speak to again, or gets the attention of a possible rescuer. The main character might not be capable of solving the problem, but the story solution still comes because of the main character. If Trixie had bounced cheerfully home – her Knuffle Bunny would not have been saved. No one would have noticed its loss until bedtime and that would have been too late. It was only Trixie’s total despair and the frazzles wreck she’d driven her father to that drew the attention of rescue – her mother recognized the signs and knew Knuffle Bunny must be saved!

Now, Trixie was a baby. She really couldn’t fix her problem and needed to draw the attention of rescue. A young climber who falls into a deep crevice might also need to survive and struggle until he can draw the attention of rescue. A boy in a burning building with her dog might have to use all his knowledge, courage, and good sense to keep them both alive until he can draw the attention of rescue. Sometimes the problem you create is so big, rescue must come – nothing else can work. That’s fine, but make the main character deserve his rescue by fighting for it!

EYES ON THE PRIZE

Think of this story as a path through the woods. It might have steep parts, rocky parts, spooky parts but ultimately it’s designed completely to get from one place to another. It won’t suddenly toss in a small flowerbed in the middle of the trail just because flowers are so pretty or plunk a bronze sculpture in your path because that will be nice to spend time looking at. We know that would be stupid path management even if it was pretty. We know that successfully going through the woods means staying on the path designed to get you there.

Stories are like that. If you’re writing the story of a group of kids sneaking into a cemetery in order to see a ghost that is said to appear on a certain night and spot, you’ll not suddenly have the kids start playing volleyball with a row of gravestones as a net just because someone once told you that you need more action. If playing volleyball with a row of gravestones as a net isn’t going to impact your plot in a way that clearly alters your direction – then it’s just a bronze statue on a path through the woods. It’s out of place. It’s weird. And it’s frustrating to the reader travelling through the tale.

Equally, if your main character is creeping through the darkness with her flashlight beam low to keep her from tripping over gravestones, she’s not suddenly going to turn the light on her companions and begin cataloging their clothes, hair color, eye color, and personal histories. That’s a flowerbed in the woods. It’s going to slow the plot, kill the tension, and make the reader wonder what the heck you’re doing.

Keep your eyes on the purpose of the story – the plot. We might see a secondary character’s hair for instance as she utters an important piece of dialogue while nervously shoving her long dark hair behind her ears. That wouldn’t stall the plot and would fit smoothly into the flow…like passing by a small stream as you head through your woodland trail. It would enhance and neither slow nor stop the tension. But such things must be given in the tiniest sips.

WHEN YOU’VE NABBED THE PRIZE, YOU’RE DONE

When Trixie is reunited with Knuffle Bunny, she’s done. If we go on to tell the whole next day’s errands, showing how Trixie has learned her lesson about ever letting go of her bunny…then we ask the reader to drag along when we really have run out of things to say. It weakens the whole strength of the story by dragging the reader away from the powerful parts of the story and distracting them with stray pointless fluff. We want the story to stop when the plot stops because that is how to do the best job of leaving the reader thinking.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Always leave them wanting more?” When you end at the point that the plot ends, you’re ending while the excitement of the story is still alive in the reader…and the reader will keep thinking about the story after it’s done. If you hang on and babble (or worse yet, tell the reader what she was supposed to think) then you eliminate that lingering connection. The reader has time to totally decompress from the story and he/she will move on with little or no thought to the book or story. If asked, the reader might say, “Yeah, it was pretty good” but it won’t be the story they think about all day.

Your story is not the time for the long goodbye – instead, stop when the trail ends. Leave them with the last gasp still in the air. And they’ll be thinking about your characters and your story long after the book is closed. And that’s what we want most.

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