Getting uncomfortable

Don't fret. It's a good kind of uncomfortable.

THE INSPIRATION: Discomfort

“Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.”

—Susan David, Ph.D.

I heard this as a quote on a podcast, can’t remember which one, but the quote stayed with me.

One of the things you’re supposed to do as a writer is torture your characters; make everything as difficult and challenging as you can. This can be hard for some writers. A lot of writers early in their career go to storytelling to get away from the hard things that life serves up. They make things too easy for their protagonist, they solve too many problems.

But the reality is that life is uncomfortable, and when it’s uncomfortable enough, we change things. That’s what fiction is about; change. And it’s from that change that we derive meaning.

And meaning, as y’all know, is the whole damn game.

THE FAT ORANGE CAT: Too something

In your writing today, make something just a little too something for your character. A little too hot; a little too cold. A little too honest; a little too dishonest. A little too loud; a little too quiet.

Turn up the dial on some element in your character’s experience so it’s just enough to be uncomfortable, but not so much that it overwhelms the scene. What happens? How does that affect the overall tone of the scene? And how does it reveal your character’s limitations?

THE TROPE: Subverting Chekhov’s Gun

In a letter written to a friend, the famed playwright Anton Chekhov wrote, “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep."

I agree with Chekhov, but some writers feel that following the Chekhov’s gun principle to the letter means showing your hand before you’ve played it. After all, if you use everything you introduce, then won’t your reader already know what you’re going to do before you do it, because they see the gun lying there?

Well, sure. And also… not necessarily. What’s important is that you put the gun to use. How you put that gun to use is really up to you.

Can you have someone shoot someone else? Sure. But what if that gun was sitting there the whole time, and your reader presumed someone was going to get shot, but instead, someone takes it apart and finds etchings inside that carry the answer to a mystery you’ve set up?

I don’t think the gun has to necessarily “go off.” It just needs to play a role in the story. What role it plays is entirely your call, and you can pull off some amazing sleight of hand by subverting the reader’s expectation of how the gun is going to be used narratively.

THE QUESTION: Planning structure

“I'm definitely not a "pantser" and need help (methods, tactics) planning the anchor scenes. I have only ever written short stories, and I "pants" these. However, with this book-length story I'm attempting, I know I won't be able to get away with that. I need to get the narrative arc and the anchor scenes planned or the whole thing will devolve into a squishy, boring mess. I'd love to learn a strategy/method for planning this book. Whiteboard? Sticky notes? I'm open to anything you suggest—and thank you!!!”

—Former Panster

Dear FP,

This is such a fun question for me. I love delving into strategies for planning out a story… although I myself can’t do it. I have to pants my way through everything and then fix it on the back end. Your way of planning up front looks so much easier to me!

But that’s the thing; you have to know what works for you, and what works for other people might not work for you. So I’m gonna give you some frogs to kiss, and then you can kiss them and decide how you want to do it.

If you respond to controlled chaos: Grab a few packets of post-it notes and clear off a section of wall. Designate one color for each act, and then a separate color entirely for your anchor scenes. Write down a brief description of what happens in the scene, and stick it on the wall where you want it to go. You can move things around and rearrange and get a big picture of how everything is going to work out. For your anchor scenes—these are the big moments that significantly escalate the central narrative conflict—use the alternate color, no matter what act those fall into. That will give you a visual sense of the pacing.

(For more on structure and anchor scenes, grab a copy of How Story Works.)

Another visual way to go, if you don’t have free wall space, is to set up a string and use clothes pins to attach colored index cards to represent your scenes.

If you respond to digital playgrounds: Scrivener has a cork board feature that’s very similar to this strategy, but you keep everything inside the program so it’s not all over your wall. You can rearrange the order of the scenes and make notes for the future and also add in all kinds of notes about your characters and setting and etc. If you like to write scenes out of chronological order and just assemble everything later, Scrivener is also well worth the money.

If you respond to daily goals: My good friend C.J. Barry used to plan her entire novel, scene by scene, in a spreadsheet, and then start knocking out the scenes one by one. She’s a computer science person, and her organized mind responded really well to that kind of thing. You could break out an Excel sheet into separate worksheets for each act, and then color-code your anchor scenes to keep track of them in there, and then just knock a scene out per day until you’re done.

There are many methods to the madness of planning; kiss your frogs and let us know how it went!

THE PRACTICAL: If nothing we do matters…

This weekend, Ian ran his bi-weekly Buffy/Angel discussion for his Patreon supporters (who can participate; anyone can watch). The episode up for discussion? Only probably the most important episode of the entire series, “Epiphany.” This episode is so powerful because it encapsulates the core philosophy of the show, and my core philosophy of life, in this simple line: If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

And who showed up to talk about it? A bunch of Ian’s supporters… and the writer of the episode and that line, Tim Minear, who is also one of Ian’s supporters.

Tim says a lot of really smart things, I definitely recommend watching the discussion even if you’re not an Angel fan, but the thing that’s been rumbling around in my brain is the way Tim is so lovingly dismissive of what he did, commonly referring to his life’s work as “bubblegum.”

Afterward, Ian and I discussed how funny it was that we both dedicated a good chunk of our professional lives to talk about work that the writer of that work viewed as basically inconsequential. But it makes sense.

If you don’t view your work as basically inconsequential, creating that work becomes a weight that is just too heavy to lift. And if, once you’ve created something, you view it as a Staggering Work of Genius, you’re just getting… as Ian likes to put it… high off your own farts. It’s done, it’s created. It may be great, but it is also over.

The only concern a writer needs to have is what’s next? Make the thing, drop the thing, move on to the next thing. That kind of assembly-line writing is what I aspire to do as I shift away from giving most of my productive hours to a day job and toward giving them to my life’s work.

Yeah, it’s my life’s work, but I can’t think about it as being too important, or I won’t be able to do it.

Just another one of life’s little ironies.

So… what’s next for you?