GMC deconstructed

The most important part of writing is giving characters goals, motivation and conflict. That's what attracts the readers. Susie wants X. What motivates her to get it? What gets in her way?

Except it isn't as simple as that.

Quite often, when I start out a new novel, I set my characters GMC. It's perfectly clear to me, I mean we all have goals in our lives, right?  And motivation? For a lot of us, the motivation is a mortgage payment, or mouths to feed. But is that enough for a storybook character?

At my very first writing conference, I went to a session with a conflict grid, but I only saw that as conflict (silly me) and while I found it very thought provoking and helpful, I missed the more important aspects. I got it, I understood it, but did I really?

The thing the character wants is best presented as diametrically opposed to the way it works out. Something stands in her way, and here's the important question that often gets overlooked.

Susie wants X. What happens if she doesn't get it? The audience needs a reason to get behind Susie's goals, to root her on. This goes to her motivation. She HAS to succeed, or else. I mean, we all want to succeed, right? But what are the stakes?

Conflict? Add a few speed bumps. Anything that can go wrong will. Just when she thinks she's succeeded, something gets in her way. Trouble is interesting. People don't talk about all the things that are going right in their lives, they talk about what's going wrong.

Here's a classic example of GMC. Merida wants her mother to change, for her mother to understand who Merida is without forcing her into who they want her to be. She's being forced into a marriage she doesn't want, so she seeks out a witch's help. The witch offers her a spell, and her mother does change - into A BEAR! While that's bad enough, the one thing her father HATES is bears. So when Mom comes home all furry and growly, Dad is going to shoot that bear dead! Wait! This isn't what Merida had in mind! She can't tell anyone what she's done, and she can't let her father shoot her mother, thinking she's actually a bear. How does she fix this? Sound familiar? I thought it was the perfect example of GMC and conflict.

With that in mind, I'm off to think about the next book while I wait for my editor on the current one.

What stands between you and your goal?

Brave - an illustration of conflict

When I saw Disney's Brave, throughout the movie I marveled at the brilliant illustration of conflict. The rules of fiction writing were perfectly conveyed in the shape of a bear.

Merida's (the heroine) father has an aversion to bears after they threaten his family, and later in the movie, his wife becomes a bear when Merida has a moment of teenage angst. So how can Merida protect her mother, the bear, from her father, who seeks to protect his family from the bears?

As I write the third in the Kundigerin trilogy, stories that embody spirit beasts, I knew one of the conflicts in this story would be between the heroine and Max's spirit beast. As I delve further in, the characters are telling me secrets about themselves, some of which I knew going in, and more that I didn't see coming. Since my stories are mainly romance with added extras (mystery, paranormal influences), I already know that Max's family secret is going to be a source of conflict, although attraction is a heady thing, and it might be easy to pretend his secret doesn't exist until the heroine actually witnesses it. Add in the "Brave" factor - and I'm grateful for such an excellent example to draw from.

No, I don't want to give too much away, but if you've read Gathering Mist, you know there's more to Max than meets the eye. Making that "more" something that invokes fear into my heroine's soul on an elemental level is what makes writing this story exciting. How can she overcome her fear/repulsion in order to have her happily ever after? I've never had such a clear picture of the "black moment" in a story, and it has fueled my excitement to keep writing the final installment in this trilogy (a black moment is that point in a romance where you can't see how the hero and the heroine can overcome the obstacles to their happily ever after).

And so, I'm writing. The story is pouring out as I grab whatever free moments I have until I finish the last spring deadline at the day job, and after that the real work begins. Making everything I'm spewing out readable.