Exercise 2: Your own worst enemy

Your Own Worst Enemy:

My writing exercise for today has to do with internal conflict – specifically, what does your character do to him/herself that keeps the character from getting what he/she wants. What flaws does your character have that keeps him/her exciting to the reader.

For example, Harry Potter’s life would have been much less exciting (which would have been nice for him, even if the books would have been not nearly as fun) if he’d just gone and told Dumbledore what was going on in his life on page 10 of the story, instead of at the end of the story. But Harry is distrustful. He doesn’t always turn to adults or his friends when he has problems. He broods, keeps his mouth shut, breaks rules, and then goes and gets into serious trouble.

In A. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock is supremely confident in his abilities. Normally this is fine (other than the fact he alienates everyone around him but Watson), but occasionally he trips himself up with it. In A Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes is outsmarted by Irene Adler because he underestimates her intelligence. He tricks her, but she tricks him right back and gets away with the photograph he’d been attempting to reclaim from her.

A few more examples of character flaws that drive the plots of many stories:

•Too much curiosity (the babysitter who opens the basement door after hearing a strange sound and AGGHHHGGGGHHHH!!!)

•Inability to commit to what the character wants (characters who can’t quite follow their dreams, or who fall in love but can’t proclaim themselves and drive the object of their love away, like in when Harry freaks out in the movieWhen Harry Met Sally).

•Inability to commit to a course of action (Hamlet is the classic example here)

•Huge blind spots (such as not realizing the one they love is no good for them, or seeing an enemy as a dear, dear friend, or thinking “nah, there’s probably nothing in the basement…)

•Carelessness with own life/friends/happiness (Character who takes unnecessary risks, who take the people who they care about for granted, who can’t keep their mouth shut when it would be better to).

•Thoughtlessness about consequences (characters who think that sleeping with the bridesmaid on the night before their own wedding is an awesome idea). Characters who are late for important appointments (i.e. he’s on the top of the Empire State Building waiting for her, she thought she’d stop off for coffee and then ran into a friend and was two hours late). Characters who let people down.

•Characters who lose faith (The team is assembled. The heist is perfectly planned, then one guy starts to wonder if this is what he wants to do with his life.)

And of course there’s jealousy, low-self esteem, past trauma, anger issues, unrealistic expectations, general ignorance about a situation, desire to be something that one is not, and on and on and on and on and on.

FOR EXTRA CREDIT: Figure out how you (in your real life) are your own worst enemy, resolve your issues, and live happily ever after. Hooray!

Exercise 1: Kill your Darlings for Fun and Profit!

So here in my life in Santa Fe, I've been extremely fortunate to be involved in a writers' group that's been meeting for over ten years (I've only been involved with it for about 5 years, but still, that's a long time). Before that, I was involved in one via the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, which was also awesome, and which I dearly miss.

But as part of my current writing group, I have to come up with some type of writing exercise every few months or so. Initially, I was not at all excited about this. It seemed like a horrible chore that I would suck at (and I hate sucking at things publicly).

However, it turns out that writing writing exercises doesn't actually suck (I may suck at it, but that is for others to decide). Thinking of an interesting writing exercise turns out to be a really valuable way to think about the process of writing in general. Specifically, it makes me think about what I need to think about (if that makes sense).

And because my blog is generally lacking in content (ahem), I thought I would start posting some of mine in an attempt to fill things out.

Exercise One - Kill Your Darlings for Fun and Profit:

The revision process is hard. One could say it involves surgeon-like precision, ninja-like patience, and the complex-reasoning skills of a scientist who reasons with complexity. Or, more simply and less glamorously put, it involves taking out the stuff that isn't working and replacing it with stuff that is.

However, in this writing exercise, we're going to do the opposite. Look at your work in progress. Find something that you either love or feel is working well. Now change it.

The change can be simple. Take a character that is male and make him female (or vice versa). Take an old character and make him/her young. Change a character's job (instead of being a lawyer, the character is now a travel agent). You can also change a basic attribute (make a character beautiful instead of plain, tall instead of short, blonde instead of brunette, overweight instead of skinny, gay instead of straight). Take important scenes that occur outdoors and put them indoors instead. Now, see how these changes affect the entire story.

Or, for bonus points, think about making a more complex change in your story. Change a pivotal decision at a pivotal moment . Change the location of your story (say from NYC to San Francisco). Have two characters that are in love be just good friends instead. Or you can change the character's past to include something that defines him/her (Now your character is divorced or widowed. Now the character was raised in Germany instead of the U.S. Now the character has an identical twin). Make the character reluctant to do something that they were eager to do before. Change the ending of the story to be the opposite of how it ends now.

The point of these exercises is not to make the changes permanent (although if you find something that's really working for you, then by all means go ahead an leave it in). The changes are just a way of shaking us out of the idea that we aren't in control of the universe of our book. Sometimes, we start to see aspects of the world we create as permanent and immutable because they've been part of the story for so long. It gives us a chance to see what parts of the draft are actually vital to the story, and what parts can be changed. It also lets us explore how what we like best about our story might be the very thing that is bogging it down.