by Amy Lane
Writing is easy.
Writing is hard.
The stories just come to me!
The stories are laborious, and every word is torture!
My characters won’t shut up in my head!
I have no idea who these people are.
Ugh!
Every writer has experienced these contradictions, sometimes in the same heartbeat. How do writers tame the wil-o-wisp like inspiration and turn it into a consistent enough playmate to make a living?
There are a lot of answers—but after writing for twenty years I’ve got to admit, my go-to techniques boil down to the things I used to teach my high school students. The elements of literature have never steered me wrong.
The basic building blocks of storytelling—plot, character, setting, conflict, mood and theme—are the things we’re trained to look at when discerning the meaning of a work. As writers, though, we all-to-often focus on the first one to serve as inspiration: plot. What we don’t realize is that plot is the result of those other elements interacting, and not the driving force of the book itself. Many writers sit down to write and ask themselves “What happens next?” That’s a plot question—and the kind of writing prompt that can lead a writer to stare at the screen until their eyes dry out.
Instead of “What happens next?” here are some alternative questions that might stir up the voices in our heads—and make writing easier for the long haul:
- How are my people doing? If they’re unhappy, what do they have to do to fix that and achieve equilibrium? If they’re happy, and the book isn’t done yet, what’s going to happen to screw that up? (Character and conflict)
- What are my people doing, and how are they doing it? Are they making dinner? Are they stomping around throwing crap in a pot? Are they having a conversation? Lovingly caressing a cucumber before slicing it up for salad? (Character and mood)
- What are my external conflicts? Giants? Tornadoes? Evil bosses? Knife wielding serial killers? Exactly where is that conflict going to fall and what are my people going to be doing when it does? (Character and conflict)
- What’s my soundtrack? Seriously—what music do I hear when I sit down to write? Are my people kicking ass? Are they having a heartfelt discussion? Musical comedy? What? (Character and mood)
- Where are my people? Have I adequately described it? If we’re in a cornfield running from tornadoes have I conveyed vastness and terror? If we’re in a deserted farmhouse running away from serial killers have I described spookiness and pointy objects? Has my setting done its duty to move my characters forward? (Setting, mood, and character)
And these are just a start. Every writer develops their own questions to move their story forward—what’s important—and what keeps us from freezing up when facing that blinking cursor—is that we don’t stop with “What happens next?”
Also—and this is important! You may notice that every set of questions there involves character. The what happens question dies because we don’t care what happens if we’re not invested in who it happens to. Remember, when you sit down to write, that the people talking in our heads are the reason we sat down in the first place. Check on them. Make sure they’re doing okay—and if not, find out why.
Your characters’ road to becoming “okay” at the end is the road that will take you from the beginning of a book to the end. “What happens next?” is a reader’s question. All those other questions are what should prompt us to write!