Advanced Brilliant Writing: Make Your Plots Wider and Your Characters Deeper (Go! Write Something Brilliant) (17 page)

Sadly, or perhaps comfortingly, I see so much of myself in her. So, I know, someday, this too shall pass. (Or not, according to my husband.)

So, the point is, we all have two sides to ourselves: a
Voice of Reason
and a
Voice of Passion.

Your character does too. As you develop your character, try asking: What, at the time of crisis, would your Voice of Reason tell you to do? And what would your Voice of Passion dictate you do? Knowing this allows you to apply these moments to their character change.

However, when dealing with Secondary Characters giving them their own particular
Voice
is a great way to illustrate the
Theme
of the story.

Let’s say our theme is forgiveness, as in
Happily Ever After.
Joe is grappling with forgiveness, and doesn’t know how to forgive someone for something that happened to him. Gabe, his brother, acts as the layer, illustrating what forgiveness looks like. Gabe also acts as a Voice of Reason, the voice that has perspective and grace and has found the right answer.

Also in the story is a villain, someone who is out to sabotage the heroine, Mona. The villain is acting out of
unforgiveness
, and his anger is causing him to lose his morals, and eventually his freedom. The villain is the Voice of Passion—unforgiveness out of control.

Another example is
The Hunt for Red October
. Of course, the central character in the theme is Jack Ryan and the theme is loyalty and trust. Of course, our Voice of Reason is the Russian sub commander Marko Ramius, who has looked at his life and this silent war and decided to aim for the US Eastern Seaboard. In the end, he decides to trust someone he’s never met. The Voice of Passion is the
other
Russian sub commander, who decides
not
to trust his own countrymen, and, in fact, kills them. But it’s two sides to the same theme: How much should you trust someone?

The Voice of Reason and the Voice of Passion are great ways to utilize your Secondary Characters. The key is to look for ways you can accentuate the theme, to give it different points of view, and then apply them to your Secondary Characters.

Ask: What is my theme?

Then ask: What would the Voice of Reason do with my theme?

Look around your cast of characters. Is there anyone who can act as the Voice of Reason?

Likewise ask: How would the Voice of Passion react to my theme? Is there a character who could act as the Voice of Passion? Perhaps in a moment of fear or a moment of darkness? It could be friend of the hero who makes a poor decision. Or a villain who takes the theme the other way?

The answers to these questions work to widen your plot as they surface new scenes to insert into your story.

The key isn’t to have the Voice of Reason have a “Reason Conversation” with your hero or heroine. It’s to illustrate for the
reader
the two sides of the theme with key scenes.

You may want to insert a scene of Reason or Passion at the beginning of the story (e.g. the roommate in
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
is the Voice of Passion, and is inserted as the Inciting Incident at the beginning of the movie.)

Or, you can insert a Voice of Passion/Reason scene in the middle, during a moment of contemplation by the hero. It can even be in memory. (e.g. in
P.S. I Love You,
the heroine remembers how her husband dared her to sing karaoke, and out of anger (passion) she took the bet, and fell and broke her nose. She never forgave him. Until the Voice of Reason allows her to sing again, this time with a right heart, and she was able to heal the memory of hurting her husband).

Or perhaps a scene at the end, during the climatic moments (e.g. during the fight scene between the submarines in
The Hunt for Red October
, the Russian sub commander who is hunting the Red October plays it safe (Reason) and doesn’t arm his missiles in time to destroy the Red October. The Voice of Passion then takes over, he arms his missiles, and ultimately . . . blows up his own sub.)

When you apply the Voice of Reason and Passion to your story, suddenly your Secondary Characters aren’t simply placeholders, but important players on the storytelling team.

Widen your Plot:

• What is your story theme?
  
• What would the Voice of Reason do with your theme?
  
• How would the Voice of Passion react to your theme?
  
• Pick two Secondary Characters in your cast.
  
• What does the Voice of Reason Character do to show . . . Reason?
  
• What does the Voice of Passion Character do to show . . . Passion?
  
• What two new scenes can you write into your plot to widen it with these Voices?
  

The One Key Scene Every Book Should Have!

Every book needs the
one thing your character would never do
scene.

Think back to the layering section of our Character Deepening section. In Layer Four’s reveal, your character begins to have
out of character behavior
.
In this phase of layering, you are putting him into situations that confront his fears, and forcing him to reveal his dreams, to the heroine, or to the reader, almost like turning the crank on a vice to make him open himself up.

In the last part of that section,
he then reveals himself
through the
Sacrificial Act.
The Sacrificial Act is found by asking:
What would your character never do? And then follow up with the question: What would make him do it?

You must put this scene into your plot.

You know your character well enough by now to understand what he’d never do. The scene that must be included in your story, and your plot, is when he does it.

Rafe (
Taming Rafe
) would never turn his back on bull riding and his accomplishments. Not when it is the only thing he believes gives him value.
Unless
he believes that it doesn’t matter how much he’s worked for, it’s all gone. In that moment, he might even despise his past, and all that he worked for that netted him nothing.

So, in a scene that exemplifies this, Rafe burns everything he’s worked so hard for.

Frodo would
never
put on the ring. Never dare to keep it. Unless he was forced to choose between his beloved ring and destroying it. The ring had quietly wooed him by making him unique and powerful, and the adventurer he had always wondered if he could be. So, in a powerful, heart-wrenching scene, Frodo does what he would never do and must have the ring wrestled from him by Gollum.

What would your character never do, and what happens when he does it?
This scene completes the character journey, and makes for a powerful moment when the reader realizes just how far the hero has come, and how much he’s changed.

The key element of this scene is Sacrifice. We touched on it in the Character Layer section, but ultimately, the character needs to sacrifice that which is holding him back from a final change, even sacrifice that which is holding him back from love.
Ask: What can you character sacrifice in that One Thing Moment?

The Sacrifice is that element in the scene that will make your plot stick with your reader.

Make your Plot Wider:

• What is the one thing that your character would never do?
  
• What would make him do it?
  
• What can your character sacrifice in the One Thing Moment?
  
• Can you see the scene? Brainstorm it out.
  

Villains

Any talk of plot widening has to include a great villain. I believe a villain is anyone or anything that seeks to destroy another person’s confidence, goals—even their hope. A villain chews at a person’s competence, raining upon them doubt, stirring up their fears and leaves them helpless.

A villain, really, can be anything—a past nightmare coming to life, a physical limitation, a natural disaster, an animal (remember Cujo?) and, most importantly, a personal attack from someone intent on hurting you. It can be circumstances, or even . . . yourself. Yes, I am so often my own worst enemy, my own personal villain. I set up goals for myself, and when I don’t reach them (thanks to all the other goals I set up) I rain down doubt, frustration and disappointment on myself. I set my own traps to failure when I schedule in too many things, or set my bar so high it’s unreachable. I even sharpen my tongue against myself. Yes, you know what I’m talking about.

All these elements can be used as villains in your story. Think of the tornados in
Twister
, and the ocean in
The Perfect Storm
. Powerful villains.

How about a physical limitation? Remember
Seabiscuit?
That movie about a winning horse and jockey during the Great Depression? Both of them are injured—their physical limitations serve as the villain in the story.

Perhaps the villain is someone loveable and unintentional—like Marley the dog in
Marley and Me
. Or even your own issues, like the character in
Click,
who didn’t like stress and fast-forwarded through his life.

For me, the scariest villain I’ve ever encountered would have to be, hands down, Alan Rickman, all the way across the board. Remember him?
Die Hard
– Hans Gruber (the mastermind thief),
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
– the Sheriff of Nottingham (Ewww!), the Harry Potter series – Severus Snape. I know he’s played a few good guys but the guy embodies
bad
so well, I just love to watch him. Why? Because he makes you believe he’s bad. We know he’s out of his mind and crazy, and we don’t know what to expect except . . .
badness.

But it’s not just his badness that makes him, um, bad. Alan Rickman’s characters embody the four key elements to building the kind of villain, whether human or otherwise, that will contribute to widening the plot of your book.

The first component to creating a villain is Believability.
We, as the reader (and the hero) have to believe that the Villain is truly . . . villainous. We have to believe in our hearts that what he threatens will occur.

The storm will sink the ship. The tornado will destroy the house. The dog will swallow the priceless necklace. A person’s inabilities will keep him from accomplishing his goals. A killer will find your heroine and kill her.

We need to believe the threat of the villain.

But wait, you say, what about a suspense or mystery where we don’t know who the villain even
is
until the end? How can we believe the threats of someone we haven’t met?

Believing a villain is not about looking at the villain and measuring him up.
It’s about the damage it/he/she leaves behind. Think:
Results.
A villain isn’t a villain based on what he says about himself . . . but what he
does
.

If you want to create believability for your villain, make him/her/it do something villainous in the beginning to drive that belief home. Show him in action, or show us his handiwork.

In the movie
Dante’s Peak
, the villain is the volcano. To prove the believability of this threat, the movie opens with our hero trying to outrun another volcano—only to have his sweetheart, in the car next to him, die from a lava ball. We know, then, when our hero encounters another volcano awakening, it means business and can kill.

In
Twister,
the movie opens with . . . a twister. And the death of the heroine’s father.

In
Marley and Me
, the voice of the narrator opens the story with his memory of the perfect dog, and the ominous prediction that Marley isn’t it.

When the hero is his own worst enemy, begin the novel with a glimpse at how he self-sabotages. We want to see his foibles.

And of course, with an in-the-flesh villain, we need to see just how bad he is. Hence, the dead bodies at the beginning of thrillers and suspense books.

Ask: What scene can you insert at the beginning of your book to prove to the reader that your villain’s threat is believable?

Believability = Alan Rickman = Please leave the lights on. (I’ll be up all night reading anyway.)

I had a grade school villain. Her name was Karla, and she, like most bullies, had been held back a year in school and seemed as if she came out of the womb fully grown. She had a gang—her little brother and a few other cling-ons who were fed by her power. She and her gang owned the swings.

I love to swing. Especially the old kind of swings that hang from chains. In our playground, we could tie one of the set of three to the side, and then play a game with the other two. The “swinger” in the middle would swing in a circle, gathering momentum. At the exact right moment, the other “swinger” would position themselves in the middle and the two swings would join and knot together, twirling both gleeful playground swingers in a tight circle. I loved it, and I was good at it.