By Heather Weidner
I have taken quite a few aptitude and personality
assessments throughout my work career as team-building exercises, and mine tend
to show a strong aptitude and inclination for traits that relate to harmony,
strong communications, and building relationships. In the day gig in IT, it’s
great. We try to solve problems and provide the best product to meet the
customer’s needs, so my skills fit my work. These traits may not be what you
want when you are writing your mystery. Conflict is a key for good
storytelling. Here’s why you need conflict and lots of it.
Years ago, the wonderful Mary Burton told me never to end a chapter where everything is wrapped up neatly. It’s boring when everything works out seamlessly and your character is too perfect. You need those moments that make everyone’s heartrate tick up a few beats, and you want to keep your reader reading past bedtime.
No one’s life is rainbows and roses all the time, and that goes for your protagonist. Your character should have flaws or circumstances that hinder him or her from time to time. There should be situations that the sleuth needs to overcome. The characters should have personal battles that cause issues and pop up at the worst possible time. There need to be bad decisions with consequences. And sometimes, there are circumstances beyond their control that they must resolve.
Make things personal for your protagonist. Allow your readers to see the depth of your character and his or her struggles and fears. When things are happy and comfortable, pile on the disruptions. Isolate your sleuth and take away what the character needs or wants. You may even have to up the body count.
Conflict creates tension that keeps your readers wondering about what is going to happen next. It also moves your story forward and keeps your readers engaged.
As a writer, what are some of the things you do to add
conflict to your work, and as a reader, what frustrates you about conflict in your
favorite character’s life?
Through the years, Heather Weidner has been a cop’s kid, technical writer, editor, college professor, software tester, and IT manager. She writes the Pearly Girls Mysteries, the Delanie Fitzgerald Mysteries, The Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries, and The Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries.
Her
short stories appear in a variety of anthologies, and she has non-fiction pieces in Promophobia and The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers’
Cookbook.
Originally
from Virginia Beach, Heather has been a mystery fan since Scooby-Doo and Nancy
Drew. She lives in Central Virginia with her husband and a crazy Mini Aussie
Shepherd.
I avoid ending chapters with characters going to bed. That subtly signals the reader that the chapter end is a good place to put the book down, when I'd prefer they read through the night . . . just one more scene at a time.
ReplyDeleteMost of my characters exist in difficult living situations, which adds an automatic sense of conflict. My Jesse Damon is paroled on a murder conviction. My Miss Grayling is an elderly woman trying hard to keep everything exactly-as-it-used-to-be and finds conflicts all around her in the modern world. As I reader, I do stay up past my bedtime to see what happens next, but I get terminally frustrated by the too-dumb-to-live characters (mostly female) who make such idiotic choices that I stop reading the book.
ReplyDeleteFabulous blog, Heather. I love writing conflicts, interpersonal, situational, and self-induced. It’s always fun to see how the characters solve their dilemmas.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the terrific tips, Heather. Keeping your IT lessons learned is valuable and shows in your writing, where you meet the readers expectations.
ReplyDeleteGreat advice!
ReplyDeleteI don’t expect any of the characters to be perfect, If they are reasonably intelligent I don’t want the ‘what could possibly happen’ phrase to pop up in the story. I think it’s just a way of the author indicating to the reader that the protagonist is going to be put in a perilous situation and I feel it spoils the story because it tells you something dangerous is about to occur. It is a cliche that appears too often.
ReplyDeleteIt also would imply that the character, if they are already perceived as logical and sensible, would suddenly completely change the way they think by putting themselves in a potentially dangerous place.
Also a reasonable explanation of why they are even getting involved.
and their knowingly going into a situation by confronting a suspect they have never met and have no legitimate reason to contact and expect the person to welcome them without questioning why they are being interrogated.
There needs to be consistency otherwise the story just doesn’t does
not work for me. I just want a resolution of the who and why by the end of the book.
The main character in my books has a lover, two teenagers, and three dogs. Plenty of ordinary give and take in addition to the plot and subplot.
ReplyDeleteGreat advice. Sometimes I feel bad about the scrapes I get my characters into!
ReplyDeleteDon't know why that posted as Anonymous! Shari
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