Is Ted H innocent?

Four daffodils still flower my garden, and soon they too will be gone. They were glorious in the sunshine. My one tulip is still a tight bud. (Every year I swear I will buy more to keep it company, and each year I leave it too late...)

I have one question about Line of Duty. If Ted H is innocent, why is he rushing his computer into a dodgy-looking shop that advertises erasure of pcs? Well, no, there is another question - what is he doing sleeping with the Bigelow creature? She is toxic all the way through.

The writer is doing an excellent even-handed job of making us think Ted is guilty and then thinking Bigelow and the insurance man Moffat are trying to frame him. One has to keep watching to see which will prove correct! If I'm right that two people are trying to frame him, then Ted must be innocent or why would they try?

But what about that computer? He  doesn't want his financial details known? or that he is facing divorce? Realises he is under threat and wants his private family life kept private? If so, he is too late because that man with the accent I can hardly make out has already discovered where his wife lives. John is a man under pressure, and about to crack. I thought he was about to shoot himself, and what a pity he didn't. One thing I notice: Steve Arnott is being sidelined to some extent. Except for saying S**t at regular intervals, Kate isn't doing much with her new promotion.

Conflict in fiction

Snowy slopes in Banff

Conflict is defined as a struggle, often an unconscious one, as a result of opposition or simultaneous functioning of mutually exclusive impulses, desires or tendencies. 
A character may have to decide between right and wrong or  between 2 or more solutions to a problem. 

1. attraction and prejudice (Pride and Prejudice is an example)
2. Opposing desires
3. Mismatches and/or uncertainty
4. incompatible goals
5.  It is about being in a new situation where old attitudes and habits war with and hinder the need to change.

Show conflict by showing character responding to their inner compulsions.
What is your hero's desire?
What is his fear?
In the opening chapters, introduce your hero and heroine and their conflicts, both external and internal. What stops them achieving what they want? Add a killer hook, an inventive and clever inciting incident - sparkly, witty and page turning would be good. By chapter 3  the reader should know why this couple are better together than apart. Are these two going on a journey? Is it clear to the reader? What would happen if they failed to achieve the destination? Who would care?

External conflict forces characters together, but internal conflict forces them apart.

Always start with a moment of change, preferably with dialogue. Reveal secrets and drop bombshells in the middle to keep readers turning the page. There should be a Black Moment at the end of the middle section. Conflict should build tension, show motivation, fore a choice and make the character grow.

(Notes, handwritten many years ago, found tucked into a diary. Possibly taken from category romance instructions, but still good for all that.)

Yet more on conflict

Greenhouses at Chatsworth

Conflict also has to come through plot though it is not divorced from character.  Having a brand new character suffer tragedy on their first appearance in the pages won’t work because the reader is not emotionally involved with the character. Having said that, let me qualify the statement. The only way it will work is if the tragedy is an early event in the life of the hero or heroine and we’re going to find out in the rest of the book exactly why it mattered so much. This sort of event often sits at the front of the book as a prologue, and it has to grip the reader and make them want to find out what happened next.

Personally I’m not in favour of childhood incidents that then resonate through the life of the major character when we pick up the story thirty years later. For me this would be better handled as a mystery thread, making the reader wonder why the hero acts as he does until we find out at a late point in the story what that dreadful childhood incident was. If it’s something in the near past, say a year ago, then it’s OK to treat that differently, for then it adds a different element to the tale, because the reader knows that the hero will react badly to certain stimuli that are certain to arrive sooner or later.

I heard a tale locally of a writer reading her first page to her writing group. It began with graphic sex, which made everyone uncomfortable, not because of the sex, but because they had no point of reference. They didn’t know either character involved and therefore were not “clued in” to the story or the strangers performing such intimate acts.

 It’s a lesson worth remembering!

Conflict ongoing

Satisfaction may be great in real life, but in fiction,  the struggle is the thing. If your character faces troubles in the world around him, why not add to them by giving him inner troubles as well?
My current character is doubtful of his own abilities as a courier-cum-kidnapper, and for every step forward in confidence and ability he falls back two - or that's the way I'm trying to build the plot. He's doubtful of the rightness of what Henry VIII has asked him to do - more internal struggle. If he does what the king asks, he'll have his foot on the first rung of the ladder to success and riches - but at what cost? If he goes through with it, he can afford to take a wife, if he doesn't, he has no way of supporting her. Lots of struggle, I think. The only thing is, the struggle is all in my mind - but have I brought it out onto the page? Will my readers (if I ever have any!!) appreciate  his inner thoughts?)

Chatsworth House, south front

I've done a third draft of Treason, which needs a change of title as the hero, as an Englishman, is not exactly committing treason no matter what he does when he's in Scotland. (I'm thinking of The Hope of Scotland, but may come up with something better) and will now read it through hoping I have cut out all the repetition, glossed up the sentences and upped the tension sufficiently to keep people turning pages.

This morning is the first of a 3-day freebie for Fair Border Bride on Amazon Kindle, so if you fancy a great free read about Harry and Alina's struggles among the Border Reivers, do something about it now!

Tension

Chatsworth House

We’re told tension in creative writing comes from conflict, and depending on the genre, it has different causes. With romance it’s all usually quirks locked away within the characters, only to emerge when one party meets the (potential) love of their life only to discover an opposing habit or quirk that means they cannot be together. Think kleptomaniac meets policewoman – bound to be problems there. Or man with alcohol problem meets Salvation Army woman; addictive personality meets iron-willed volunteer. How do you get those two together in a lasting relationship?

Battlefields, courtrooms, schools and hospitals all provide conflict without the author having to struggle too much, but seeking conflict in suburbia is more difficult. Suburbia is inherently safe, at first glance.  But think of the Bennet women, living under the threat of being turned out of their home once Papa died. Unless one of them married well, they were doomed to a life of drudgery and that sort of conflict rules lives and forces decisions that would otherwise not be taken. Fortunately houses are not usually entailed in suburbia these days, but sometimes it is damned difficult to keep on paying the mortgage. Pile on the agony by having the breadwinner die unexpectedly, and a teenager turn to drugs or run wild, or worse still, run away. The result is almost more tension than the writer can handle.



the drummer

Unfortunately, none of these examples are particularly original, and that’s what everyone’s looking for these days. But the basic idea holds good. The writer needs an original twist to an old problem, more than one plot layer and characters that will live in the mind of the reader after the book closes. How does a writer achieve that? Well, give the characters something difficult to achieve, problems to overcome, make them suffer and live dangerously close to disaster. That’s how – but exactly how is up to each writer. March to the sound of your own particular drummer.

This is just a reminder for me to sail Matho closer and closer to the wind…