Character Series
Part 08: Conflict Escalation and Resolution
Part 08: Conflict Escalation and Resolution
Higher and Higher
Stakes and conflicts need to
raise through your story. Whatever problem and stakes you start with, need to
get worse and worse, more and more desperate. And you should have a good idea
of how this is going to happen before you begin writing.
One of the ways it will rise is
your character’s own emotional investment. It’s the core of romances, the
stakes raise as the characters fall more and more in love with each other,
their emotional investment rises. Likewise, if your hero is a gruff, uncaring,
world-weary cowboy, he will undoubtedly meet someone weaker and more vulnerable
that he will protect, grudgingly at first, but who will then become a driving
motivation as the story progresses.
Another typical way for the
stakes it rise is that on your characters first (then often second and even
third) effort to solve their problems, they fail. A character who always
effortlessly succeeds is boring. No one can empathise with a flawless character,
because none of us are flawless. Seeing their failure, their reaction to it,
the way they fight to keep going, or maybe give up for a time, allows us to see
who they are. And the higher their highs and the lower their lows, the more of
them we see.
A character who has no emotional
investment, or who doesn’t react to things, internally or externally, is not
interesting to a reader. However if a reader can feel with the character,
empathise as completely as you can manage, then they will remember that story
and want to share it with everyone else.
Conflict Resolution
You have to resolve all the
conflicts in your story in a way that will satisfy the reader. That is not to
say they have to be happy endings, or the ending that the reader wants, but
they do have to be resolved. EG: Let’s say in the middle of the book, the main
character has to abandon his beloved dog
on the roof of a house in flood waters. He promises to go back for her. She’s
barking as he paddles away and he orders her to stay with tears rolling down
her face.
At some point in the book, even
if it is toward the very end, you have to resolve that conflict. Maybe the dog
is rescued by someone else, maybe he goes back for it, maybe he sees fly over
footage of the site and sees the dog is dead. However the reader needs to know
what happened to it, one way or another.
Loose ends leave readers feeling
uncomfortable. If people are uncomfortable, if they leave your book feeling
unsatisfied, they won’t come back and read your next book. So if you are leaving
things unresolved, only do so if you have a really good reason, if that is your
intention that readers feel that way.
Ultimately, you want to resolve
your novel in a way that leaves them with a strong emotion—you decide what that
emotion is, as the writer, but you want it to be intense. You want it to have
as much impact as you can possibly deliver. With happy endings, you may then
end with a mellower scene, something short to show everything has calmed down, or
that adventures are ongoing, or that everything is back to normal, but this palette
cleanser can’t be too long. It’s a reassurance—don’t let it drag on so long
that it weakens your final emotional impact.
NEXT WEEK - Part 9. Characters: Heroes.
The previous parts of the character development blog series can be found here:
5. Characters: Gender and Gender Roles
6. Characters: Conflict, Conflict & More Conflict
7. Characters: Motivation & Stakes
6. Characters: Conflict, Conflict & More Conflict
7. Characters: Motivation & Stakes
No comments:
Post a Comment