To Never Give Up

Writing is brutal. As someone who has edited hundreds of novels, I can’t count how many times I’ve worked with clients who believe that their first novel will immediately have tremendous success. People know how hard it is now to become a paid writer (See my rant on National Novel Writing Month), and yet, everyone invariably thinks that they will be the exception. There are a wide variety of reasons that they believe this.

They think they are better writers than most people, but to take into account that agents and publishing companies are often too busy to even look at their work.

They think they already have the connections they need, fail to realize that people in positions of power get FAR too many requests of a similar nature to give theirs the proper attention.

They think they are rich enough to begin their careers on money alone, but fail to take into account the wide variety of distribution problems they will run into.

Whatever the situation, writers very very rarely receive instant success… I certainly didn’t.

This blog post is designed to show you how much stuff you might have to go through before your career takes off - but it is also designed to show you that, if you never ever give up, despite an incredible amount of rejection, you might finally get the writing career you long for.

The following are very real things that happened to me before my writing career took off--

I Got An Agent... Sort Of

About five years ago, I got a top 10 literary agent to say that he wanted to work with me. He said he was very impressed with my writing style, and wanted to sign me. Unfortunately, we never reached the signing. He was too busy to take another client, though he wanted to. He sent my name to several of his colleagues. They were either too busy or weren’t as passionate about me as he was. Eventually, it faded into nothing.

Phantom Producer

A producer on American Pie and The Butterfly Effect read and loved my scripts. Despite trying to stay in contact, it faded away in much the same manner as the agent.

Kevin Costner

Through a good friend of mine, I managed to get Kevin Costner, a Santa Barbara resident like myself, to read and consider doing one of my scripts. Soon after, he was cast to play Chris Berman, the lead in Draft Day. He got incredibly busy. I never heard anything about my script again.

I Edited A Screenplay For A Hollywood Film

Through a combination of luck and connections, I produced the second draft of a script for a New York Times Best Selling series. The director left at the last second, and after a while, it was costing the production company too much money to keep the project going. The movie was never made, and I never received a credit.

The moral here is not a sad or depressing one. It is simply this: stuff happens. If you plan on giving up over failed opportunities, then don’t try to be a writer in the first place! Writing is not an easy career. It is not something you can do instead of “real” or “hard” work. It is something that requires an incredible amount of dedication on your part – but if you never give up, it WILL eventually happen for you.

After initial failure, Jack Canfield, the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, bought enough copies of his own book for it qualify as a “best seller”. He had quite literally an entire house full of his own books. In the following months, he managed to unload every last one.

JK Rowling was an unemployed single mother living off of welfare. The Sorcerer's Stone was written in 1991. It wasn’t published until 1997, and then, only after an incredible amount of rejection and failed promises, much like the ones listed above. Strangely enough, it was only published after the eight-year-old daughter of a Bloomsbury editor demanded to read the rest of the series.

Ayn Rand received some of the most famous words of rejection ever recorded from the Bobbs-Merrill Publishing Company. The house called her novel, The Fountainhead, “unsaleable and unpublishable.” It was published by Random House, the largest publisher in America. To date, 8 million copies have been sold.

On Character Arcs: Part 2, Be A Sadist

“Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”

-Kurt Vonnegut
 

As I said in my last post, On Character Arcs: Part 1, The Psychology of Character Arcs, when a character changes in response to an event, it is incredibly important because, very often, it is the change that shows the importance of an event in the first place. What I didn’t say is that, if your character’s arc is a direct result of the events alone, it is going to be incredibly weak - even if the events themselves are strong.

Here are other important points to consider when creating your character--

An Active Arc Is Better Than a Reactive Arc

A character arc that is based solely on reactions is a generic arc because it is one that any character would have in that given situation. If you, personally, were running from assassins for the course of 300 pages, you too would be wary and mistrusting of those around you… it’s what’s expected! When a character is directly shaped by events, he is part of a reactive character arc. That’s not what you want. You want to show off your character’s most interesting traits and remind your audience why he or she is worth writing about in the first place. An active character arc does exactly that. It shows a way of being different from the way most people live their lives - and it is difference in writing that stands out.

Your Character Is Driven By Motivation

To quote Kurt Vonnegut a second time, “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” Ask questions before you begin writing a story. What does my character want? How will their motivations change as the story progresses? Your motivation drives your character into the obstacles that change him. Frodo’s desire to protect the shire is what causes him to volunteer to destroy the ring. It is what drives him to say ultimately, “We set out to save the shire, Sam, and it has been saved - but not for me.”

This is an important distinction because it means that motivation is the best tool for bringing about character change! If my character wants to get that water really badly, he will go through some pretty nasty things to get it - and that can cause him to question the value of life in the first place.

JUST REMEMBER: Motivation can only drag your character through these obstacles. How they adapt to these obstacles is what makes them unique.

Personal Growth Isn’t Always One-Sided

Too often characters finish a story by rising to the top by overcoming all adversity and becoming the best version of themselves. That’s fine, but the best fiction emulates life. Very rarely do people become simply “better”. A person’s growth is a multi-faceted thing. A nerd might become good with women by caring less about them than he did before. Uplifting stories are great, but not every story is a story of victory. It’s more important to write something genuine than something peppy.

Your Character’s Personality Should Shape Their World

The strongest of stories intertwine story and character. As I talked about briefly in my post What Could Go Wrong, characters are the driving force of tragic plays. It is Hamlet’s inability to take action is what keeps him spiralling to his doom. Had he taken arms against his sea of troubles and killed his uncle/stepfather, Claudius, as he knelt in prayer, the play would have simply ended. If Hamlet were replaced with John McClane from Die Hard, the play would have ended very differently.

Your Characters Are Made for Their Stories

A character arc should reflect the essence of the story. Take The Godfather for instance. One of the key points of the story is, “You can’t turn your back on family”. The irony is that, in Michael’s attempts to protect his family, he hardens his heart to the point that his wife becomes afraid of him and leaves. Not everyone would become as cold as Michael does throughout the story, but his transformation is perfect for adding a touch of irony into the film.

Guide your characters toward the conclusion that resonates the most profoundly with your readers. Do it elegantly and in a way that shows off your character’s unique personality, and your work might stand the test of time!

On Character Arcs, Part 1: The Psychology of Character Arcs

"'There are rules for artificials, but there are no rules for humans - not for things that matter. We just go around wishing and hoping, putting our love in the wrong places, forming ideas based on other people's ideas and sticking with them regardless of what happens or what we learn. I don’t know why you’d want to be a part of that.'"

-Alan Turner, Tiny Instruments

Note: This is a short, but extremely complicated post that ties in my two favorite fields of study, philosophy and psychology. Please re-read as needed to fully grasp the importance of what is being said.

Good characters go through cycles. People have been analyzing these cycles since the beginning of fiction, but they aren’t as complex as most books would have you believe. Of course character arcs exist! If characters aren’t changed by the events around them, the events obviously aren’t important are they? If, for instance, a monk blessed by inner peace finds himself involved in a series of incredible events, but is never EMOTIONALLY involved in those events, we, the readers, will care just as little as he does… but why?

Before I get into that, let’s ask an even greater question: what is the goal of all fiction, everything from novels and poems to film and theatre? What is its purpose? Simply put, it is to trigger emotions in people who would not otherwise experience them. The only way to do this is through allowing your audience to identify with the fictional people the world has dubbed, “characters”.

So, from a psychological standpoint, in order for me, as a writer, to make you feel an emotion - let’s say, anger - I have to trigger your own natural sense of anger. I need to hijack your own natural response. If I write a story about a good man who worked and bled for his family, but still, despite countless sacrifices and endless loving devotion, his wife carried on a heartless affair behind his back - that might make you angry. The reason is because, through writing this character, I am offering you to step inside him and see for yourself how unjust his world is. Would you be angry if you gave everything you were to someone and they betrayed your trust? If the answer is “Yes”, you’ll get angry reading about it. If it’s “No”, you don’t. As with the monk, the importance of an event is seen through the eyes of our characters.

Most authors will give you this basic “formula” to explain your character’s arc--

Base Character

Your character is a person shaped by their past lives. They start out with a unique perspective on life.

Character in Turmoil

Many if not most of your character’s beliefs are called into question. They try to use their various perspectives to confront their various problems.

Changed Character

Your character, having found that many of his beliefs were either wrong, or were simply not ideal for survival in the world, has now changed.

I often see this model peddled as the quintessential piece of information needed to create a successful character arc… but the people who peddle it are wrong. Maybe some of them are good writers (I really have no idea), but they lack a fundamental knowledge of how character arcs work.

Change, the thing that defines a character arc, is important because it is a representation of emotional trauma. Again, from a psychological standpoint, we don’t change our perspectives unless we have reason to believe that what we’re doing isn’t working. It is something that we can relate to at a deep subconscious level. Growing up, you might have thought it was okay to steal until you realized that your actions might harm others. The truth is, you believed a great many things that changed as you had the experiences that made you who you are.

Change, therefore, is not some necessary part of a magic formula - it is what separates a character from a person. The “character arc” that your creation conforms to is actually what gives them life. With each change, you are inviting your readers deeper into the subconscious of a living being - which is what allows you to incite their emotions in the first place. It is an endless circle that you would do well to familiarize yourself with.

For similar posts, see creating characters and on adding dimensions to your characters.