Session 6: Wrap-up

This time, we:

• Share insights and questions regarding the Session 5 exercise
• Workshop a short story
• Hear from Jim, who is leading the discussion on beta readers

Examples of Antagonists

We discussed how antagonists don't have to be the Darth Vaders of the story; antagonists can be environmental catastrophes (Twister), war zones (War of the Worlds), cultural attitudes and expectations, illness, corporations ...

Within our group, we are writing about:

• A genetic disorder that shows itself in different ways and the people have different narratives around it and how it affects their mortality and lives;
• Opium addiction;
• The institution that’s doing mostly bad things;
• The man/revenge that is the personal level;
• The incidental side-kick who ends up being a ‘bad person’;
• Societal attitudes about career and motherhood;
• Internal conflict.

Important to remember that a story's man character—sometimes referred to as the hero and usually the most sympathetic character—isn't always all good, just as its villain or antagonist isn't always entirely evil. The best stories have complicated characters with shades of gray. A main character may be doing a good deed (saving the world/the girl or winning the war) for entirely selfish reasons. The antagonist may be an antagonist by pure dint of being the thing or person that stands in the way of our hero achieving his or her mission. A villain can absolutely have good intentions, but those actions/intentions still serve as a block or threat to our protagonist's journey.

Often the "villains" in a story are manifold, which keeps the dramatic tension nuanced and prevents the conflict from constantly being one showdown after another between the same two characters. For example, one story may have a human villain, an "evil" institution (which your human antagonist may be a representative or embodiment of), and then an internal conflict.

The internal conflict is often a battle between what a character wants and what is best for his or her own interests. This inner struggle can be applied to any manner of subjects: addiction, loving the "wrong" person, knowing you have to destroy the One True Ring but also feeling too exhausted and mortal not to succumb to its power ...


Beta Reading

Alpha Feedback is the ‘what do you think of this?’ broad strokes feedback.

Beta Feedback is great for honing the editing skills. Main goal being getting contextual feedback: characters, plot, flow, anything that might feel ‘off’ for readers.

Many beta readers will try to edit. Tell them no.

Personally: get in the right headspace first because it’s not a time for pats on the back, it’s putting yourself out there to get constructive feedback, sometimes rough but fair.

Pick the right readers: 4 minimum suggestion. You want eyes on the pages. Use the numbers to dictate how much of a problem something is. You can’t argue with numbers, so let the math do the work.

Give a deadline: about 4 weeks is good. 2 months is too long.

Who to choose: Allocate an aspect of the feedback to specific readers (you don’t have to make that the main purpose, but if you value someone’s specialised area, then choose them to get that POV). Choose an ‘end user’: the basic reader who reads for the heck of it, just to get a reading on the general appeal of the book.

Format matters: try to give it in a format that people can read.

Give context: what state is the manuscript in at the point the reader is receiving it?


Quote of the week

Accolades go to Jim, and I am paraphrasing here ...

There can be a million ways to fix a problem in your story but the real goal is to solve that problem.

The idea being that a fix is a patch or a shortcut—kind of a ta-daa! moment that comes out of nowhere and isn't necessarily in keeping with the plot or character development. A solve would be in keeping with both.

Session 6: Outline

At our meet-up on April 21, we will:

• Share insights and questions regarding the Session 5 exercise
• Workshop TBD's piece (we are looking for a volunteer!)
• Hear from Jim, who is leading the discussion on beta readers

Session 5: Exercise

Here is an exercise for you to complete in time for Session 6 (April 21):

We've covered main character wants and needs. Now consider those of your villain/antagonist. What does he/she/it* want more than anything? And what is standing in his/her/its way?

Bonus round: As you look at your main character's and villain's desires and motivations, where do they intersect? Are they ever the same? Is you main character the biggest obstacle to your villain, and vice versa?

*If indeed the primary antagonist in your work is an "it" (cancer, a rogue wave, amnesia), think in those terms! What do these things do? And what might interrupt them from completing their natural courses of action?

Session 5: Wrap-up

This session we covered:

• The writing exercise, in which we revisited what the main character wants more than anything and what he/she is willing or compelled to give up in order to secure it. 
• What obstacles still stand in the way of the character achieving this mission or goal.
• Which obstacle could be considered the antagonist/villain, and what manifestations this force or character takes.

Last session's exercise: Revisiting character wants/needs

We discussed the range of character wants and motivations, from subtle to more obvious, and how these can go hand in hand with the genre or style of the story being told. For example, I have been reading the novel A Little Life, a 700-some-page character-driven novel in which the main character's greatest desire is to be normal and safe. Compare such a subjective 'want' (normalcy) to a plot-driven story in which the character motivation is often (not always) going to be more tangible or active (getting the girl, finding a cure, climbing the mountain). 

Often a character will have multiple motivations, but they vary in size and urgency. It is the thing the character cannot carry on without having or doing that carry the story. Those secondary needs/wants will often drive the subplot.

The Antagonist or Villain

So what is preventing our hero from reaching his goal? As with the main character's motivations, the obstacles are likely manifold. These road blocks keep the story moving and raise the stakes for the main character. But just as you determined which of the many your character's primary motivation is, determine a hierarchy for the obstacles preventing the character from getting where he or she is going, from inconvenient all the way up to life-threatening.

These obstacles are not always human, or even living beings. While there will usually be contrarian characters in any story, the biggest issue for the main character could be something non-sentient of either internal (disease, phobia, poverty) or external (geography, a political regime, time) provenance.

We considered our own works with respect to obstacles and antagonists.

In Karl's nonfiction work-in-progress, he won't know yet he scope of the challenges until he starts hiking the trails he's researched and will write about. He and his companions could face treacherous weather, health-, geographical-, or animal-related obstacles, or perhaps they may even encounter some interfering humans, as well. (We hope not.)

Sometimes the biggest thing standing in the character's way isn't a traditionally bad thing. For example, in Jerome's work-in-progress, in the process of seeking revenge, the main character falls in love, and he must choose between this love or his original mission.

We talked about how Jim's hero is himself a bit of a villain, yet he is the villain we root for--the best of the worst.  Anf this main character is confronting the gamut of obstacles: internal (opium addiction, inhabiting a new body), as well as external human adversaries and the incompetence of his colleagues.

For my part, the baddie in my next work on nonfiction is a gene mutation, so... that gives you a nice wide range of villains to consider. (Lions and romance and genes, oh my!)

Think about stories in which a character's wildest dream comes true (insane wealth, power) and how that lottery-winning event is ultimately his/her undoing. What other unconventional iterations of an antagonist can you think of?

Obstacles within, obstacles without

 Instead of workshopping someone's writing this week, we did a check-in on our works-in-progress. In talking about the current status of our projects, we realized that just as there are narrative obstacles for our main characters, so are there narrative obstacles for us as the writers.

For my part, facility with research and medical writing will be a challenge, as well as getting "audience participation" since I'm compiling an oral and written history from members of one side of my family.

For Karl, the white-washing of the geographical and historical records he is researching both motivates his narrative (he's writing an indigenous history of the trails as a counterpoint to the Western explorers' accounts) and complicates his efforts to find information from native sources.

We had a very interesting discussion regarding Jerome's impulse to go back and fix what he has already written before going further. For him, this helps in not making the same writing mistakes again and again. The idea is to correct and carry on better than before.