Good Morning, World, and all who inhabit it! Seeing as it’s been two weeks since my last post, I thought it was about time to speak again.
So, I’ve started writing a new story, and I’m not sure how long it’s going to be, but I’m excited about it. As part of the basic premise, the characters are living in a country where magic is essentially its life-blood, but the city they live in has been taken over by another country (as part of an on-going war) that doesn’t believe in/doesn’t like magic. The main character is a magic user. This is part of the second essential element of Good Writing, Trouble. Good writing is all about trouble.
We all know this one almost instinctively. A story about nothing but good things is boring, and not really a story at all. As Gail Carson Levine (author of Ella Enchanted) said in her book Writing Magic, it’s the author’s cruelty and the reader’s sympathy that keep people reading.
The esteemed J. K. Rowling practically mentions this outright when Harry Potter says, “I don’t go looking for trouble; trouble usually finds me.”
Even as children, when we make up stories, there is always some kind of trouble happening. For example, in one story I made up as a child, there were a king and queen who loved a certain book so much that their kingdom practically ran by it. Then a page ripped. This was the trouble. (Which shows what kind of child I was, doesn’t it?)
So, how do we go about creating trouble for our characters? Remember the formula for desire?
Once upon a time, there was a ________ , and what he/she/it wanted more than anything else in the world was _______ .
Now we’ll add a second part.
But there was a problem. He/she/it couldn’t have what he/she/it wanted because _________.
This is the opportunity to create trouble for characters. For me, trouble is usually not a problem. Trouble is easy. What’s difficult is making it exciting trouble, especially in small moments of a longer book. That’s probably another discussion, though.
Speaking of trouble, I have a question for you. Since I’m a college student, when I’m at home, I often feel like I can’t start my own projects because I might be called on to help my family at any point and be disrupted. How do you motivate yourselves to write? How do you get over the “I can’t write because (whatever)” and write anyway?
