Denver Harrington

In the really shit 1996 film, Twister (a guilty pleasure that I actually enjoy), the situation is this: We have the protagonists, storm chaser Bill Harding (played by Bill Paxton) and meteorologist Jo, played by Helen Hunt, both aim to test out some new technology, Dorothy, which will map a large tornado. Who’s the antagonist here, in this adventure/disaster flick? The tornado! Mother nature itself, an unstoppable and inevitable force that one can only outwit through cunning and knowledge and technology, but will in fact leave ruin in its wake.

Alright, intro aside, lets get into the meat of this. The modern day defining antagonist of our time is arguably Heath Ledger’s Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Batman The Dark Knight. This character is an archetypal antagonist in that he not only hits the defining points, but he redefines them for contemporary age. The film sets out to ask a question – what would it take to taint the image of a hero like Batman? What’s interesting here is there’s nothing very new about what the Joker sets out to achieve. The Joker has a desire to show that, beneath the superfluous, everyday image of ordered society exists a lie we tell ourselves. Joker wishes to expose that lie and reveal us all to be truly hypocritical, mad, criminal and so on, in order to have the last laugh, showing everyone that nothing matters and that heroes are built on lies. This has very Platonic, Kantian origins, and story tellers have paved out some general rules for great antagonists over the centuries from Greek tragedies to Shakespearean dramas and so on. To use the words of Morpheus who, while explaining the Matrix to Neo, said; “Some rules can be bent, others can be broken.” Our canvas as writers in this example would be The Matrix – or your word document if you insist. And our tools are the imagination, yet it is all based on limits – where we can push and test those limits comes down to how we re-imagine them. I want to try and get you to rethink your approach to the antagonist character.

8 Points to Writing a Good Antagonist

In Alex Garland’s stunning 2018 science fiction film, Annihilation, (incidentally – if you haven’t seen it, go watch it because, spoilers ahead…) you’d be forgiven for believing the antagonist of the story is the mutated bear or the alien species that appears at the end. Indeed, the alien is a force of conflict, but what the alien demonstrates is that we humans are the ones standing in our own way – we’re self-destructive, or at least we’re a species of destruction, and somewhat conscious of it, (knowledge that turns out to be redemptive once the protagonist catches on.) The enemy here is not the alien, but us, ourselves, as demonstrated in this masterful scene that looks a lot like contemporary dance. In order to survive the alien, the protagonist must understand and confront her own intentions. (Sounds a bit Jungian, right?) The antagonist can be a psychological tour-de-force. It can be a specter, or an idea – or someone able to manipulate technology to achieve both, as in Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933).

Good antagonists must subvert the protagonist’s impetus. Like cat and mouse, Sherlock Holmes must be forced to demonstrate his skills to uncover his greatest foe, the illusive and cunning Moriarty, who plays-off these traits. So, here’s some tips to consider when venturing out on the fun and exploratory journey of writing good enemies.

Is this the right villain for the story?

Would The Joker fit well in another film of Christopher Nolan’s, Interstellar? Imagine – the earth is dust and the Joker has been sent to space to find astronauts who have landed on the new home-worlds. The situation here is already bleak as nature is destroying humanity – leaving nothing for the character to do but agree with the already nihilistic perspective humanity is facing. The Joker can’t flourish here – he himself has to survive. We need an antagonist like Dr. Mann, a great mind left on a planet in deep space who truly believed his planet would be the next home world – only to be fundamentally mistaken. Such a blow has brought him to a deep, fragile, place, something he probably hasn’t felt since being a child – as such, Dr. Mann tries to reassert his authority in desperate situations that unintentionally lead to disaster. Dr. Mann is perfect here – he isn’t an intentional antagonist – he’s a rational antagonist. A man on a mission. Someone who doesn’t see his own hypocrisies yet asserts his authority due to some misplaced experience or knowledge over his other peers.

Ask yourself this: Is your antagonist fit for the situation your novel or script sets out to answer? Is this the right person? Why? What kind of person can you imagine being unleashed to answer the main premise your novel sets out to answer? What can they bring to this journey?

In the Rick and Morty episode The Vindicators 3, season 3, our “heroes” get a call to adventure to try and stop a mortal enemy, an evil alien overlord called World Ender. The foe is presented as an unstoppable threat – this is quickly undermined when somebody has killed World Ender, giving us a more terrifying enemy. Drunk Rick. This is completely within this character’s spectrum, we believe Rick would be able to achieve this – and that he’s such a complex character, acting as a foil to Morty’s own ambitions as well as an antagonist, we are invested and believe this to be typically Rick. Which leads us to character consistency.

I don’t believe it! Consistency

When we see Agent Smith dodging bullets and thousand-chain-punch Neo to the ribs, we believe it. Not because what he does is believable or realistic – we believe it because we know the stakes, the limits of the Matrix, and who those few characters are that can manipulate the rules. Always ensure your antagonist is visionary and powerful – BUT, within reason. Rick is a dangerous power since, when drunk (which he often is) he is so deeply self-destructive and nihilistic he waives all life as pointless – Rick is his own worst enemy, he has made his own rivals along the way.

Agent Smith can bend the rules but he can never be free like Neo to understand those rules and fundamentally alter them. Give your antagonist blind-spots. You must know your antagonist well enough to understand their limits and weaknesses, even if the protagonists never discovers these weaknesses, as a writer, you must now them. Just like nobody wants a “Mary Sue or a Marty Stu” protagonist, nobody wants a Super Man antagonist either. Even super villains like Thanos must exit with scars – even when they win. We can only be invested in those we understand to be flawed in some way.

Immovable Object

In the 1989 horror sci-fi classic, Alien, I used to believe that the real antagonist was The Alien itself. In more recent years, I’ve come to understand that it’s not the creature on the USCSS Nostromo that was the antagonist – it was the android, Ash. He was Ripley’s immovable object. Just like the alien, he worked in the shadows. He used his intellect to gain her trust, psychologically manipulating her, gas-lighting her, second guessing her authoritative decisions along the way. He was the force that brought her up against her nightmares. If Ripley was the safety engineer, the alien was the infestation, but it was Ash who kept lifting the controls on situations Ripley was able to manage. It was Ash who was cultivating and guiding this force towards Ripley despite her best efforts to contain it. And in their final confrontation, Ash was at one point in the film, quite literally going to kill Ripley himself. The alien is their drive, their goal; Ash wishes to contain it, Ripley wishes to destroy it.

Going the Distance, Small Victories

The antagonist doesn’t have to be around in the whole story – (so long as you don’t do something stupid like build up your antagonist as a great and immovable object only for a short reveal before cutting them down while leaving absolutely no future influence left to ripple through the story other than a whimpering word of a name.) The antagonist needn’t be there from start to finish, poking the protagonist along the way. But they must propel them, they must set things in motion that keep going, even if they should prematurely exit stage. They must give your hero the greatest of challenges, and in some way, they must succeed. Antagonists have their own agenda, but once they find their opposite (protagonist), they must set an example of them and put their ideas to the test – for whatever reason, this should be the case, necessity, ideology, embryonic-test-subject, desperation to reassert one’s values, understanding a species…be imaginative!

Nuances – Evolution and Alignment

This kind of antagonist is normally found in series that are seasonal, such as Breaking Bad. As an audience, we understand the character’s changing history. We see the journey, start to end. We witness their evolution. Often they surprise us. But we can also understand different types of antagonists – if they’re lawful, like Darth Vader. If they’re Chaotic, like Joker, if they’re a Natural evil, like Alien. It’s always worth getting a fix on your character’s Moral Alignment and adjusting it to the particular story you wish to tell. This takes thought and planning, so, think first about what you want to say and who you’re saying it to. (More on that next time.)

Evil Power: What Works

As mentioned earlier, you don’t want to overpower your character. They must climb their own ladders, overcome their own challenges, and in each step it must resolve their reason. If their power is cunning, they might, for instance, be unsuspecting of the worst deeds – they may still have some surprises in store. They may still surprise even themselves. Stepping outside of character in order to reposition their morals and philosophy is fine, so long as it doesn’t contradict their aims and natures too much – it can even be where their hidden power resides.

Their decisions must make sense and relate to these advantages. Does it make sense that the antagonist suddenly reveals they have psychic abilities when this was never expressed earlier? Don’t shape your character to fix your story – let your story reveal and resolve your character.

The Villain’s Journey

In much the same way as you’d approach a protagonist, the enemy should also have a journey that has strong beginnings and concludes in a way that is befitting of the character. Get through their whole history – and consider where is it best to begin the antagonist’s story? Where will they enter stage? What will it say about them? At the end of Batman Begins, The Joker is presented on a playing card, foreshadowing what’s to come in the next movie before exploring the philosophy of this character.

The Joker appears as a force to counter Batman – almost out of nowhere. His origins are mysterious. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth the antagonist is also in fact the lead role – his lies catch up with him, his crimes reveal his true intentions, his origins start with temptation. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Sauron is a warrior of legend, we see aspects of his scattered over the world, haunting them even after his defeat. In Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Miss Havisham is an antagonist of tragic origins that have twisted her into bitterness and hatred. What is the face of your antagonist? How much will you reveal about them? The Joker lies about his background – further demonstrating his unreliable history to state firmly it doesn’t matter. Yet it’s the lie itself that is important as this tells us enough about the character. What will you reveal about your antagonist? What will it say about their history? Their philosophy?

The Big Lie – Leaving Room

Often, the lies uncover the truth. The lie in Dark Knight is the hot potato being passed around so society can continue to function – who is The Batman? The lie in Macbeth is the initial murder of the king at Macbeth’s own hands – where is the real killer? In Great Expectations, Pip is not privy to Havisham’s cruel intentions, his story encompasses the lies of other characters slowly unraveling. In this way, our lies function to maintain the order, something often true about society. What happens when a truth is discovered? What hinges on a lie and how does your antagonist wield this power to their benefit?

Follow these tips and you can’t fail to flesh out a basic antagonist. As a further note, writing your story fully develops your character and resolves their destiny. Leave room for change. As your antagonist works to expose the faults in your other characters and challenges their beliefs and proclivities, they too must be able to change in some regard (unless you’re writing a sit-com; in which case the characters never develop and mostly always reset to original conditions upon the conclusion of each showing.) A good story can challenge your antagonist too and leave room for development and challenge. We don’t have to sympathize – the challenge might be an assassin failing to kill their target due to oversights. Remember what you’re setting out to achieve and ensure your antagonist fits the bill.

Have fun tip-tapping, writers!

It should come as no surprise to learn that writers keep a ton of notes. I no longer have a desk – lifestyle choices – but when I did – oh boy! Was it messy. I had books left open on pages, tabbed and highlighted. I had postits dashed about, coloured, pinned, I had drawings and scribblings littered around, stacks of books towering my laptop which seemed to be malfunctioning with glitches due to the tremendous amounts of tabs left open. Obviously – not a refined working practice but a busy one to say the least.

MAKING NOTES A HABIT

The best work and ideas come to us when we least expect it. So, it goes without saying you should carry a means of jotting them down. I keep a pen and note book handy – hey, I’m old school (shrugs). I have spent (and am fated to spend) enough time at the screen, taking a bus journey with a pen and paper is my way of breaking from that, but each to their own. I understand there’s some nifty apps to get your ideas down. Equally, a voice recorder! I do use my phone while walking in the street and talking ideas to myself. (This is handy because I can walk past people ostensibly talking to somebody else on my phone while actually just nattering out ideas to the recorder) – this is a good way to avoid being tossed in the padded cell, especially if you look as disheveled as I often do on my morning walks.

Some good tips for keeping up to date with ideas is to put things in your diary, keep things updated, maybe look at a receipt and try and recall the day – even if it isn’t accurate, it’s a good exercise for your imagination to fill in the blanks with some story or fictional character. I sometimes, (although, admittedly not as often as I should these days) keep a dream diary. I am a prolific dreamer. I’m very grateful for that. I don’t always remember my dreams but I do dream almost every night. There’s not always content in it. But sometimes, it’s gold. Keeping a dream diary is a wonderful way of keeping track and looking back, but also to keep your memory healthy.

IN THE PRESENT

In Wild Mind, Natalie Goldberg claims that writing in cafés is a good way to keep your notebook warm. In my own experience, cafés have been great for planning and being creative. There’s so much in them – the atmosphere is nice and comfortable, you’re in a place where there’s people and you see a natural environment that gets you out the house. (I’m in a café writing this now).

Natalie Goldberg believes that when you write empirically and get the raw details of a moment or place, you can work outwardly from there and refine your note-taking skills as well as garner an ability to recreate certain environments when writing a scene. This keeps your mind active and aware of consciously being grounded in a moment and can help you to recognise and grasp certain details.

There are two tall glass salt-and-pepper shakers on my wooden table, a pottery bowl full of white packages of sugar. Three pats of butter in a white dish, and my favourite pen, that one that Pueblo Runner Printing hangs out freely and generously, is lying on the table pointing to the big white plate with only one slice of French bread and a slice of tomato lying on a piece of lettuce. There are the original details. This is what is on the table. Now if you learn this deeply, what is in the present moment, you can transport it.

Natalie Goldberg (Wild Mind, p204)

Joseph Heller, author of satirical novel Catch 22, once said: ‘I don’t get my best ideas while actually writing.’ Sometimes, they come in conversations. Other times, they’ll be sparked by something you read, heard or saw.As a side task, try this: Take a walk – when you get back, try to remember what people were wearing after you passed them, what they were doing in the streets, who had dogs, what sort of cars you saw, etc.)It’s helpful if you imagine yourself as a sort of detective, get into the habit of living in the moment and then recalling as much as possible in a notebook.

THE JOY OF JOTTERS

You’ve probably heard about the beat-generation’s Jack Kerouac, and his legendary 120 foot long parchment of single paper, the original manuscript of his book On The Road. (No?! Pff – and you call yourself a writer!) Well, Number 1. on Jack’s personal list of attitudes and practices necessary for being a writer was “Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy.’

So, my writing community, I challenge you to get a notebook (I like clear, unlined paper, as I am free to let my writing curl and spiral around images I sketch.) Make yourself a writing den. (As I said earlier, I don’t have a desk – I have a space, comfortable, sometimes in cafés, sometimes in my home – but this is specifically somewhere I can allow my creativity to flourish.) Keep the notebook for pleasure – nothing may come of it or maybe it will spark something later. Begin your messages to the future. Your secret cache. Your Batcave. Your literature bank account from which you can later make a withdrawal.

ATTENTION TO DETAIL – (Being on the Lookout)

Think of a character – say, Dr. House. For me, Dr. house reminds me of Sherlock Holmes in the 21st Century. It may come as no surprise that Author Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes based on a real person – a Scottish surgeon and lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, Joseph Bell, who he’d met and had been fascinated by. And you often see these templates passed down from character to character. Try a quick tast. Think of a generic character trope (strong, independent woman / super hero / James Bond villain / leader / sports protagonist / comedy character etc.) and see if you can poinpoint and trace the origins. Maybe you’ll find inspiration from an earlier work. Maybe it will take you to some legend or mythology, where you’ll uncover other character tropes that were inspired by other templates.

When we’re not stealing character tropes that have somehow inspired us, we’re using real characters – people in actual life. Life is truly stranger than fiction and people, real people, are so unbelievable that sometimes, you just have to tell the world. Especially when it’s been your experience. They are our inspirations. People are multiform personalities, they are typified to change a situation. Imagine the worst person you know and you are stuck on a train with them. Imagine how that day would be changed if you were stuck with the most amazing person you know. Would your opinion of them in both cases alter over that duration as you’re forced to discuss things? What you know of people will inform you on what you know about demonstrating character – they are all too often larger than life. Capture them and let them free for your readers to witness. They come to you when you least expect it. Here, you must be the journalist and talk about this story.

Where There’s A Will, there’s A WAY

It was late in the evening on a Saturday. We’d just gotten back to Warsaw from a long trip and my partner and I were lugging bags. We headed topside, up a small maz of stairways, having a general chin wag about our weekend. At one of the tram stops, we looked around the crossroads and realised we’d surfaced at the wrong end. We were just about to head back when a young man shouted for our attention. he must have been between sixteen and eighteen, skinny, carrying a bag far larger than himself in readiness for a long trip. He asked us which road would take him North and we stood abashed. He was a funny little fellow, had a strange shuffle to his feet that was very unusual, like somebody had put two skinny legs on a ticking metronome.

“I am going to France,” he told us.

“France!?” I exclaimed with a huff, looking around and wondering where to start.

“But wait,” said my partner, Sysh. “You’re going by train, or-?”

“I hitchhike!” he said “from Russia!”

“Bloody hell!” I exclaimed.

“Are you not scared?” Asked Sysh.

“No, I am in tent and I hitchhike.”

“I know but it’s a long way,” I said. “Are you alone?”

“I go to see my friends,” he said merrily.

He had a smile to him that seemed genuinely happy to be out and lost in Warsaw. He gated beside us in shuffling strides and wobbled with his hands tucked into his backpack straps, a nonchalant can-do attitude and a goofy smile. We directed him best we could, Sysh finding North on her compass app and us guiding him to which road he would be best hitchhiking from out of Warsaw. We asked him again if he was ok and if he wouldn’t feel safer asking a tourist information desk how best to reach France.

“No thank you! I go now! Thank you very much.”

And off he wobbled, tick-tocking his way down the metro stairway to the other side of the main road like some Charlie Chaplain throwback dressed in a travel jacket.

*

A simple example of a character larger than life. Where he was going, who he was meeting, where he came from, all a mystery. But he was a comical little guy that seemed very unrealistic – yet here he was, a real character. There are countless examples of this in life. Sometimes, people amaze and astonish, sometimes they humour and amuse, sometimes they disappoint and hurt. All are noteworthy, so pay close attention.

RELAYING DETAIL

It’s good to do some research and heed advice here; Natalie Goldberg’s rules of writing practice puts precision in the top 3 important writing practices. Compare the two statements: 1.) I came home and saw that they had ordered pizza again. – 2) I came home and immediately smelled the familiar scent of grilled cheese, seeing finally that they’d ordered that large, three-cheese, bacon-pepperoni and black olive pizza again.

Detail helps to solidify a scene. Give it emotion! Give it anchorage – if it’s a chance to pick on a person’s senses, get them active. Detail gives life – makes a scene more memorable.

BUILDING A SCENE

Taking notes on daily activities is one thing, but giving yourself strong incentive to do so comes with going on an adventure. One thing me and my sisters like to do is break into abandoned properties. Buildings are characters in and of themselves

. These pictures of an abandoned fair ground in Lancashire are haunting. The unstable, skeletal frame of a roller coaster, the unlocked cage that once housed a model dragon – now looted, the hollowed out castle and gates that once held so much promise and excitement. It’s all here left to decay, its character still alive, its exploration locked off and exclusive to those with a curious nature. Abandoned buildings are amazing places (and sometimes dangerous so, explore carefully you venturing buccaneers!) Images like this are great resources for your notebook and for jotting out ideas for stories.

People

As an English teacher presently living in Warsaw, I get to meet some very interesting people with rich backgrounds. I get them to tell me stories, I get them to express ideas in English and to explain situations that tell me about who they are and help them to express this. Meeting people is important – keep the subject about them, learn what you can and enrich your notes.

People are a great way to conduct your research. Get curious about somebody – tell them they have an interesting life and you’d like the chance to make some notes on them as a means of research and improving your craft. In most cases, people are glad to oblige.

Unlikely Places

As I already mentioned, interesting characters emerge in unlikely places. I’m from the small, proud, Northern town of Wigan, Lancs. This post-industrial lacklustre is a place of character and home to unlikely characters, many of which are very talented artists. The Wigan music scene, for instance, was huge in the late 90’s up to the early 00’s. I was among this privileged crowd and part of a sudden and unexpected movement of wannabees and pros, mingling and shaking things up musically, making for a really interesting and divergent experience of artistic personalities. The stories here are countless – some of which made it into locally legendary songs and poetry. Artists feeding off society, while feeding a reciprocating society and influencing it to feed more art. A synthesis performance to which writers are inundated always. Find that crowd, keep your jotter handy.

TO SUM UP

A quick rundown of the habits you want to keep as a writer, regarding notations:

• Eavesdropping – It’s cheeky, but sometimes unavoidable. Writers are nosy bastards. Be nosy.
• Vocabulary – that word you just read that you’re sure is a French borrowing – or maybe it’s English it’s just so strange you’ve never come across it before. Write it down – define it!
• Dream book – keep a collection of those crazy, wonderful, sometimes scary dreams you have.
• Capture feelings – thoughts – impressions – reflections. Get deep. Get meta-fictional. Get under the skin of the observation.
• Be a detective – use your memory, exercise it. Try to recall your day. Studies show most people remember the beginning and end of their days but not the middle. Work on those illusive details – fill in the abstract using your imagination.
• Sketch and templates – doodle, draw, keep your mind busy – use real people as templates for fictional characters – or learn to add something from real people to fictional characters you already know. Experiment
• Draw in your books!!!

This last one is considered a cardinal sin by some literature folk. Books are sacred, (especially older texts) – they are sacrosanct. It’s true, there are some things I would never scribble on. I would never, for example write something in a book that was over 300 years old, or write something on Jack Kerouac’s original manuscript or accidentally mistake it for toilet roll. Nevertheless, I would write in a new print of Beowulf I just bought from Waterstones, or something I picked out of a store randomly out of curiosity. These are books you should, nay, ought to write in! Build you vocabulary, underline new words, underline nice, prosaic meters, highlight and draw things, make connections, get busy in those things. Make them yours!

 

So, you’re a writer – and certainly, you’re going to have to read. Lots! Read daily – as much as you can, if you’re not already in the habit. If you’re a young person reading this then reading is going to be a lot easier, since the luxury of time ought to be more available to you. For me, reading was a pleasure I did daily. I used to read at night before bed and on the bus going to college. Am I still in the habit? Of course – but how I budget time today is very different.

What we find when we read is that we are informed on our writing. We consult great voices who share with us their humour, their outlook, their wit. What we have collected is perspectives!

When American novelist Jonathan Franzen interviewed Professor of English and Linguistics Shirley Brice Heath at Stanford University, it was made clear that a reader (an isolated person in this particular conversation, who as a child believed they were different and thus sought inclusion in imaginary worlds) can form a dialogue with authors.

What happens is you take that sense of being different into an imaginary world, but that world, then, is a world you can’t share with the people around you – because it’s imaginary. And so the important dialogue in your life is with the authors of the books you read. Though they aren’t present, they become your community.

Steven King says this even more imaginatively. In his chapter On Writing, titled: What Writing Is, Stephen King says:

Telepathy, of course…All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree… (After elaborating examples on description and visually relative variations, he goes on to say) This is what we’re looking at and we all see it. I didn’t tell you. You didn’t ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room…except we are together. We’re close. – We’re having a meeting of the minds.

Other writers are your community. Their voice is with you and instructs you. Reading is part of the dialogue or opening your mind to their work, their voice and their dreams.

Those lonely and pained and often isolated people, those who have felt different and never really fit in, they are speaking with you if you feel the same. (Like mine-craft is a digital community, reading is the mind-craft community. We expand our dreams through the inspiration of others, we read – we’re guided, and improve our imaginative vision).

If you want to be a healthy writer – you’re going to need nutrition!

How much of what I write am I ripping off?

When I was younger – I wanted to be truly unique and original. I wanted to deliver something totally unheard of before, create something totally weird. Alas, that’s impossible, of course I didn’t know it then. There are limits to how we are informed. Sure, a heavy dose of LSD might blow your mind into a new dimension but putting that into words might be difficult since language is a limited and time-consuming process, not to mention the workings of human imagination are simply not always categorised by words – so we move slowly as language changes and evolves with us. Evolution is necessarily slow. We are influenced by our environment and what we know. What we do about those elements is all down to how we play with them (bending, blending and breaking!)

American novelist John Updike famously stated: “My purpose in reading has ever secretly been not to come and judge but to come and steal.”

This is the nature of consumption, contemplation and reproduction. Artists take ideas – sometimes counter ideas and to use the Hegelian term, synthesise them. Hegel’s philosophical idea was that when an idea is lying around, a thesis, then its very nature calls into existence its opposite, the antithesis, so those two conflicting ideas merge and forge a synthesis. The birth of this new idea (or synthesis) itself becomes the new thesis and calls into action its counterpart and so on.

So, how much of what I create is me? Probably not a lot. Even to the very small minimal you’ll find that your inspirations and your guides are leaking through.

John Gardener argues:

All great writing is in a sense imitation of great writing. Writing a novel, however innovative that novel may be, the writer struggles to achieve one specific large effect, what can only be called the effect we are used to getting from good novels.

Look at your most beloved books and synthesise ideas! What is it you love about them? What compels you to keep coming back and reading them?

Making Sense of Lit

A student of literature is trained in critical vocabulary necessary for analysing texts and taught to interpret and seek out themes and tropes and stereotypes and meaning for a deeper understanding to literary theory. It is of course possible to do this without being a student of literature. Generic texts such as horror and science-fiction will have some underlying thematic topics such as mystery or dystopian and they normally explore ideas using nature as description or life and consciousness and so on. What we as writing readers need to learn to do is to discover the sub-text, the hidden meaning, the metaphorical picture, the cryptic problem the writer struggles with and expresses in their prose. Once you have learned to decode the writer, you have found the proverbial easter-egg of their problem.

Sometimes, writers aren’t looking for challenges, sometimes they’re looking to plug a generic market gap and are writing simply to cash-in. Christmas is coming, or maybe it’s romance time? (Actually, we’re close to halloween at the moment and if you want a creepy, Lovecraftian horror novel, check out The Crawling – Promotional Offer starts 26th of Oct and runs until the end of the month.) But not all literature has a double meaning, but one could argue even the commercial and surface literature is telling as to what popular and cultural attitudes and tastes are in swing during a certain time and season. (Often the phrase sex-sells is always true no matter the season…I’m looking at you E. L. James!)

The timeless literature is something you know how to look for as a broad reader, remember, experience informs intuition!

Novelist Joyce Carol Oates believes that:

Our reading is a part of our preparation for writing…Every book, every sentence we read is a part of our preparation for our own writing.

Reading and analysing literature is in this way a part of a writer’s apprenticeship!

 

Included in this article is a resource pack for vocabulary useful for analysing text. (From the Ilfracombe Academy English Department. I wouldn’t worry about getting academic about this. Actually, this is worth reading simply so that you are familiar with terms and themes writers often unconsciously employ, and the vocabulary literary critics employ to break it down.)

When it comes to your work as a writer, and lets say you didn’t study creative writing or literature – don’t worry about it. Get on with it. This is not outside your realm of understanding. This is your world, and you can make it any way you like. How you show it, is down to what you want to say – and what you learn not to say. Sometimes, a silent key brings depth to a piece of music – and in writing, less is more. But more on that one another time. To conclude today, I would like you to consider some elements of craft:

• The (Philosopher’s) Stone (Your issue – the subject you’re taking on and how it will evolve throughout the trans-formative process of your story’s arc)
• Plot
• Setting, scene, pacing
• Characterization and dialogue
• Plants & Pay-offs (everything mentioned has its purpose, no holes or gaps, no strings untied)
• Transitions (the art of segue)
• Voice (defining your craft)

A good writer can capture emotive words at appropriate times. If you haven’t come across the pathetic fallacy yet then I’ll discuss this further in later articles. Essentially, you want to attribute emotions accordingly, target emotive words and get used to seeing them and feeling them and being with them. The next time you’re comfortable with a cup of tea in a warm place, find all the sysnonyms you can to colour that situation and sit with them floating in your mind. Having a grasp of emotive words will keep your reader interested, but more than that – it will help you to reach your reader’s telepathic state and relay to them the moments you’re talking about.

Quick exercise: We’re going to look at how dialogue maintains tension. Open Youtube and checkout a great channel called Screen Lab (there’s also Script To Screen and they’re both worth subscribing to for case study scenes). Perhaps you know this extract, perhaps not: This is the coin toss scene from  No Country For Old Men; AKA  -“call it!” (Click the hyperlink text – also the script is included in the resources at the end of this article.)

This is a script extract and the actors largely carry the tension, however, if you follow without audio you can sense where the writer was going. I’m going to assume we’re all an audience who knows that Chigurgh is a psychopath, we know he’s ruthless and industriously resourceful in his killing methods. We know that the poor proprietor is in trouble. But now – put all that information aside and read the script again. This manner of speaking is aggressive and predatorial on one side. It builds tension! Coming into this dialogue blind to any previous information, we don’t know what trouble the proprietor is in, which isolated, makes it a curious case-study. We have a confused and defenceless man at a cash register now faced off with the devil, trying to worm his way out of a conversation that is taking a direction now completely out of his control.

The subversion here is the dialogue itself. There’s no brutal murder. There’s no horrible blood and guts, shotguns blazing and heroic face-off. But the tension is compelling. The communication between these characters expresses a power-dynamic. One is insulting because he knows he holds all the cards. You can almost sense the antagonistic character’s resolve here: I can kill you – you didn’t know it before, but I’m going to make you know it now. That mouth of yours, you’ve been so loquaciously flapping all these years – I’m going to get it talking for a purpose now!

The tension comes from what’s at stake. There’s a coin toss – (uncertainty – a 50/50 result that brings the bar right up to its equalizer – one half is death!) The stakes are high! There is nothing this man can say to escape this fate because he is a target – and it came so innocently as a nosy bored old man daring to observe where Chigurgh had driven from.

(I use movies because visual media is much faster to convey larger concepts. The same ideas works very well in novels, and there’s many great examples there too, of which I’ll be discussing in later features)

So, your writing task? – Build tension! Consider timing, consider circumstances. What’s at stake? A future? A person’s history? Reputation? Life or death? Think about characters – what type of person would suit each situation? (it’s not exactly fitting that a librarian should be bothered about loosing a javelin throwing contest).

Finally, think! What is your favourite moment of tension in a movie or on theater or in a book?

Get to it writers and enjoy!

Call it! The coin toss

Critical-Vocabulary

 

 

(References)

Joyce Carol Oates, Telling Stories (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997) P. xv.

Stephen King, On Writing (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 2000), p. 117

The Script Lab, 2017, Nov. 17. No Country For old Man / Coin Toss. Retrieved from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYNgFU30pUk]

 

Creativity and The Writer’s Habits

Do you find that you suddenly can’t write? You sit at the screen – glaring, sweating, picking your nails and waiting for inspiration to suddenly spit itself forth in a rapacious finger-flapping fury? Don’t do that to yourself!

Writer’s block is the inability to express yourself in writing and get your ideas flowing – (I’ve been a little prickly about this subject in the past, in fact my initial status in this post was writer’s block is bullshit’ – and after some consideration I realised that I can’t sustain this position.) It is something writers experience – myself included. Some days, writing just doesn’t happen and it sucks. But there are ways to avoid this and to simply not suffer it. (From my personal experience, I would encourage writers suffering from the dreaded block to walk away from it for now. There are other things to be doing). There is always something else to write, even very minor and small things – whether it’s planning some plot-arc, scribbling a character detail you noticed in a friend that you think would suit your protagonist, or just scribbling a new word you came across. But for the sake of your life and health – DON’T FORCE IT!

Sitting and glaring at the screen will get you no closer to where you want to be. Your stream-of-consciousness exercise discussed in the last part will not bring you a structured craft (though it might present ideas to work with and is a great way to warm up the digits and the mind). But if your story isn’t moving forward and you find you’re simply not writing an easy flow – it’s time to pull away and take a walk. Do something. Dedicate your unconscious to do what it does and chew around the story – meantime you can get on with whatever it is you need to get on with. Come back to it when you are ready – trust me, you’ll know and it will flow!

 

PART 2 –The Conscious Activity –Tips

Largely, society and education demands our conscious attention. Whether it’s completing logical puzzles, homework assignments, filling in forms for safety regulations, bureaucracy etc. Our conscious mind is required for daily tasks. This is where we live – it’s the language that buzzes around our head – the floating memories and images that get imposed in our visual cortex, the thought of what we’re doing for lunch, who do we need to contact next and for what reason, where did I put the keys, has the dog been walked? yadda-yadda.

The is the part of us that is overwhelmingly at work, and since it’s the part we’re so used to operating in, we might be very adept at using our conscious mind. There’s an idea that this is what leads to writer’s block, since we haven’t properly learned to utilise our unconscious mind we end up staring at a blank screen, unable to shift those immediate, conscious thoughts. It’s a helluva clutter up there sometimes – so what do we do? How do we utilise this for writing?

Balance!

Try a thought exercise. I want you to think of the most rational person you know. The most square, everything in order, everything by the book, edging on annoyance, rigidly conformist and dutifully regulative individual you can think of. Put that person in the left seat of your brain, the rational and realistic hemisphere. Now we’re going to think of another stereotype, this time, the opposite. The most relaxed, spiritual, down-to-earth, empathic, loving, creative and energetic person you know, someone fearless and colourful, someone with laughter and optimism. This person will sit in the seat at the right hemisphere of your brain. Put them back there side by side.

Allow these characters to talk. What conversations might they have? What are their opinions? Pass them topic cards. (Ideas = what would you do if you see a robbery? Is the sky really blue or is colour an illusion? What is freedom?)

Think about what triggers you, emotionally. What gets you clicking and sharing social media? Think about why that happens, how are these news outlets finding you and turning you into their temporary puppet? Understanding this will allow you to see how you too can be provocative with your writing, how you can utilise emotional language and equally catch attention by writing about things you are passionate about and believe you can get others passionate about as well. This is of course a little bit of marketing theory, but what you’re aiming to do is connect those conscious and unconscious parts of your mind by getting your rational and emotional brain’s sides talking.

If the unconscious mind is allowed to flow, the conscious mind can later correct, grammar, spelling, prose, all those things come later. So, get your brain active, take a walk, make notes, come back and write something – anything. A sentence is fine. What I find really helps is reading a chapter from your favourite author and saying to yourself – How do they do that? So cool – love those words, that collection, the timing and delivery here – how they juxtapose those statements, those paragraphs working together. I’m stealing that sentence there and paraphrasing it to my way!

Puzzles are also a great way to get the conscious mind and unconscious mind talking. The conscious mind is always at the task while the unconscious mind it chewing the puzzle over, later, trying to solve it. I quite like geometric puzzles like Rubik cubes or murder mystery puzzles and word games.

If you don’t play an instrument and you want to be a writer, now’s a great time to get to it. I play guitar when nothing comes to mind and it greatly helps to solidify ideas. Turns out this is not unusual practice for people thinking over difficult problems. When Einstein struggled over equations, he would go play his violin and later return to the problem and solve it. Learning music is a great way to aid your creativity. Not necessary – but a damn good idea!

So, to recap:

1. Create some distance – take a walk, don’t stare at screens!
2. Return and get your hemispheres talking (rational/emotional stereotypes)
3. Builds a small questionnaire for your stereotypes (questions that bother you – find two different answers to them. What triggers you emotionally? What bothers you rationally?) – Use argumentative vocabulary!
4. Read a chapter from your favourite author. (Take notes.)
5. Try puzzles!
6. Learn and instrument (or take time to learn a new skill if you already play)
7. Free-flow, write something. Lose control –structure comes later!

To finish up this two-part intro to creative writing habits, I’d like to include for you a questionnaire for your rational and emotional stereotype characters. I’m also including an extract of writing from a book I wrote. Your task will be to highlight the mistakes and underline and take note of the problems. Note what you like / dislike about it. This will be a practice paper to get you used to reading unfamiliar texts by different writers and adapt to the process of critical analysis.

Happy writing future authors! Ciao for now!

 

questionnaire for character stereotypes

questionnaire for character stereotypes

Critical analysis practice

EXTRACT FOR REVIEW

EXTRACT FOR REVIEW