Conflict of... Conflicts?

During the creative writing course at university, and while working as a writer in various games something has been rammed into my skull over and over, this is that there needs to be conflict or drama in a story to make it really interesting. Although most people like a happy ending, no-one would read it if that is all that it is. People want to see the characters facing down problems and overcoming them (or not), and this is something I had partially left out in the first rendition of Vinland.

Now that I have completed the character overviews that I had started some time ago (curse you Pendor, for taking up so much time!), I am going through and devising every kind of conflict that I can dream up between the characters. Things are currently going from greed to humiliation, jealous love to lovers being spurned, regicide to mutiny and everything in between. That is not to say that the book with be a cacophony of conflict, as many of these problems will not be introduced. My aim is to take the most interesting and then devise ways in which these problems transpire and see how the characters deal with the situation.

Some authors sell books based on the mantra “whatever can go wrong, should” (with George R. R. Martin being the classic example. Just beginning to like a character? Great, he dies soon). I do not intend to follow this trend, if something is always going badly then it does get a little predictable, it also prevents you from getting too attached to the characters, as the cast is continually changing because they keep dying.

Instead, my plan is to create an overview of each character which lists their personal traits (height, hair colour), general personality (practical joker, warrior, merchant, monk), and what they want to gain out of life (power, happiness, love, money). They are then pitted against a number of problems, the solutions however will devise themselves organically – I can only plan so much, for the characters to really be believable the way that they handle themselves should evolve as the character does. What might be a good solution when first planning the character maybe completely unrealistic in 100 pages when their personality has been bent and twist by other issues.

Once I have the character drama in place, I can create a rough time-line and begin writing once again.

Progress Report : 6th May 2011

It has been a slow week, with ups and downs. It turns out that bank holidays really mess up the schedules of those who work from home as well as our office inhabiting brethren. When everyone is out having a good time it gets very difficult to stay in churning away at the laptop.

The fault for this lies not only with external distractions but also technical issues. I would get sections of the story done only to backtrack realising what I had just put on paper was trash. One part in particular has been causing some real headaches; this was a section in which one of the characters enters Erik’s great hall incognito. It turns out that writing about a character while hiding everything about them (their name, physique and gender) is pretty much impossible. My objective is to create something of a “who dunnit” in the story.