Are you in a Creative Rut? Try this.
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You’ve seen it in movies, stories, novels, and memoirs not to mention all of Shakespeare’s plays, and I’m sure you’ve experienced it in your own life too: tension. It’s also the guts of myths and legends. Viktor Frankl believed that tension gives life meaning, and as you’ll see I believe that too.
Stories are tools that teach us meaning. Therefore, drawing out the conflict and building the tension make up the main body of the story. It’s the vast territory where readers really bond with your characters, and it includes all the characters’ obstacles. But the first rule of bonding is that you’ve got to dig down and get vulnerable. In other words, you’ve got to explicitly show your characters’ struggles: what they have to learn the hard way.
Therefore, we’re now entering a universe where problems not only make you stronger, but conflict makes you more creative. That’s right, in this universe conflict is not only destructive, it’s creative. And guess what, this crazy universe I’m referring to is our own universe. The one we’ve always lived in. The only one we’ve ever known.
Take the big bang for example—the birth of the universe and the root of all creativity. For the first 380,000 years, the universe was a hot mess of negative and positive charges, protons and electrons crashing into each other and trying to form atoms. Then after literally forever, the universe cooled down enough to allow atoms to stabilize.
So, if you ever get impatient with your own creative process, remember that 380,000 years and stop whining.
Just kidding.
People often ask, “Why is it so important for a story to have a conflict?”
And teachers usually answer something like, “It’s the driving force behind the plot!”
But conflict is so much more than that. Ever since the beginning of the universe, all of existence has been throwing itself out of balance and into conflict in order to form higher, more complex, and I would say, more beautiful forms of organization.
Therefore thank God for conflict and thank God that we’re here to write stories about it. I don’t say this to make light of the serious civil and international conflicts, environmental imbalance, or economic injustice, I say this because by writing stories we honor and understand all of it.
Where the untrained eye sees conflict, a writer sees a story that will lead us to a resolution.
That said, it’s time to put your own big bang in your book. Keying into the fears and desires will allow you to develop your voice and say what needs to be said. The thing that only you can say. Conflict pushes it out of you.
In fact the more you engage with the conflict, the more original your writing will become. Problems, global and individual, sustain themselves because we haven’t come up with responses. Or at least we haven’t adequately communicated those responses in a way that moves the masses. By developing your voice, you play your part. Say what you need to say. Use the conflict.
These are two exercises I use to develop my voice.
Study: Choose 5 Books
Choose 5 books that grab your attention and are similar to the one you want to write. Some of these books will become your companions throughout this process.
If you feel even the slightest intimidation about other books in this space, apply a little business sense. When an entrepreneur wants to start a business and they see other similar businesses, they take it as a good sign that there will be an audience for what they have to offer. They learn the conventions of that space and then distinguish themselves.
Take the 5 books and read the beginnings. You can do this by hanging out at a bookstore or just downloading free samples from Amazon. As soon as you think you’ve found the big bang or inciting incident, stop, and answer the following questions:
A. What’s the conflict, problem, or imbalance the story will address?
B. Identify the fear and the desire of the characters or readers in the case of personal development books.
C. Which book are you most eager to read? Put your 10 books in order from most to least compelling.
D. Why is your first choice so interesting? Do a little analysis on each book. What turns you on and what turns you off.
Then use conflict to propel you. Distinguish yourself. How will your book be different? You don’t need to write it down, just keep that question alive in your mind. Remember, no one else has written your story, you still have to write it.
Sketch: Explore Your Opposing Forces
To understand what drives a book, we want to get to the core fears and desires. If you’re writing fiction or narrative memoir, this is the driving force behind your main character. If you’re writing self-help, this is the reason that readers buy your book. It’s all wrapped up in what we want more than anything, and what we want to get away from more than anything.
For fiction start with the main character and write a paragraph (or more) about his or her strongest desires, then do another paragraph about his or her worst fears. Remember, that character could be yourself or someone close to you. Don’t stay at the surface, go deep. That’s the real key to the scene. Try asking, “What does this character want?” at least three times in a row. Repeat this part of the exercise with any of the major characters you think are relevant. This will give you plenty of fodder to work with.
With nonfiction, the same principle is at play. If you’re writing self-help, this is the reason that readers buy your book. It’s all wrapped up in what we want more than anything, and what we want to get away from more than anything. The more you make this clear right from the beginning, the more you’ll engage the attention of your reader. Just look at the self-help title “Think and Grow Rich.” It immediately connects to the desire for wealth, and then in the introduction, we find everyone’s greatest fear, being swallowed up by the great depression. Of course, it’s not necessary for the title to state the fear and desire (but it doesn’t hurt either) it’s only necessary that you connect with what the reader wants and worries about.