The Trendsetter

Year 2008 is here and to all writers out there, I wish you all a wonderful and prosperous new year!

Keep the writing going.

My last entry in my blog was about rewriting your first draft. I had to totally rewrite the last five chapters of my novel. And now I put the novel out of sight and will re-read it later.

Since the writing bug has bitten me, I wrote a short story while waiting for my novel to ‘ferment’. I completed the first draft and found it too long for a short story. My mind is still in the novel writing stage and I have difficulties in condensing it. But it is a short story - it needs trimming – real bad.

So if you have written short stories, you know the elements are similar to a novel – you just need to have one big and important plot. There is no space for a subplot to expand. The writing must be very tight and yet have enough flesh to make the story move forward.

Back to my writing – I was so excited to complete my very first short story – in the English language. I can’t contain my excitement as I broke the first rule in editing your fiction – I showed it to my husband.

Here is the conversation between me and DH (Dear Husband):

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The villain in your fiction is one of the important characters driving your plot forward. Their main purpose is to create chaos and make your protagonist’s life miserable. They will do anything they can to stop your hero from achieving their goals. I read many “how to” books about creating your villains. Here is the list of advice I stumble upon most often:

1. Make your villains as charming as possible. Avoid creating your villains as evil and nasty. Make them good looking and very intelligent. However, make sure the villain’s personality doesn’t overshadow your protagonist’s otherwise your reader won’t like it.

2. Give them a comprehensive background so reader can relate to them and understand why they did what they did.

3. Show your reader the villain’s primary motive for doing what it is they want to do by stopping the hero from getting what he wants, but don’t forget to make him three dimensional as well. Readers prefer villains that are realistic, credible and believable.

The advice above is for the human being as a villain for the fiction. But what about the non-humans as villains? Can you still create one? I am sure you can. The hero’s other side can be his own worst enemy. This is what I called as intrapersonal conflict. The protagonist will have a conflict within himself to make a crucial decision about getting what he wants. Of course he will still be influenced by the other characters he comes across with.

In order to create your non-tangible villain, you need to understand the psychological state of your protagonist. You need to find out why he is so afraid to make the decision - even though he wants to achieve the goal so bad. These two extreme sides of conflict that pull him apart will create the tension for the plot and the reader will enjoy it when you, as a writer, are able to surprise them at the end through the decision the hero makes.

The above title is the advice I remember the most while I’m sitting here writing my Work In Progress (WIP) manuscript. The purpose is to not take your reader where he believes he will be taken, but to prolong the suspense and force your reader into a position where he will find it irresistible to know more about what happens next.

This emotional manipulation is one of the best ingredients in plotting your scene to the point where the reader has no choice but to finish reading it. And this reminds me of an interesting topic I learned in my psychological studies called reverse psychology. What does emotional manipulation in fiction have to do with reverse psychology you probably ask? Well, first, let us define reverse psychology. In Wikipedia,

Reverse Psychology is the term that describes the outcome where advocacy of one course of action persuades another person to do the opposite.

For example, reverse psychology occurs in an episode of Seinfeld, when a waitress admonishes Elaine not to touch the hot cup of coffee. Elaine, of course, promptly does.
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In my previous post, I wrote about how to create believable characters. I emphasized the importance of giving personality to your characters. Many details can be found through the use of personality psychology. In my readings, creating personality for your characters makes them credible and believable, since this gives them depth and makes them multi-dimensional. However, to get your reader’s attention so he will persist in reading the story to the end, you will need to give them more than just a personality. You need to create your characters’ personalities in such a way that they are memorable.

How do I do this? I find myself asking this question when I start to bring my characters to life only to see that they are just too ordinary – like most real people who are barely noticeable when they pass by. Through my reading, one way I have found to make your characters memorable is to give them some unique personality quirk - something different to the extent of being almost eccentric.
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When I took the Creative Writing IV course years ago for my Malay Literature Studies, our professor taught us the elements of the novel. He advised us to create realistic plots so that your characters can think and act as credible as people do in real life. Otherwise he advised, you will end up pigeonholing your characters and he/she will be unable to extricate themselves of the situation(s), problem(s) or dilemmas they are confronted and you will end up using deus ex machina to rescue them. He said “if I encounter this in your fiction, I will give you a big fat F!”

In hindsight, I think he probably just want to scare the heck out of us and when I started to write my first novel for the course, as a requirement, he surely did. I learned how difficult it is to craft a story with a believable plot without getting entangled with coincidences. I wanted the story to have a happy ending, but due to my lack of experience in how to twist and turn the plot like a pro, I ended-up creating the plot where the main protagonist walks out without a solution. Thank God, he didn’t give me an F!
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