Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The Storyline: Part One--Using the Mundane



What, no glamour? No adventure? How can you have a proper story without the fluff? That is a great question, and one that every writer has to answer at one point or another in their writing.
In my development of Distant Thunder, I found that placing the character within a world filled with everyday, seemingly mundane activities helped bring to life whatever emotion was being experienced. Yes, the Lightning Chronicles series is a work of Prophetic Fiction, filled with action, renewed terrorism, death, mayhem, and the fulfillment of Biblical Prophecy. But it was in between the action sets that the mundane opened the door to truly understand the character and his/her conflict. For example; Pastor Ty Dempsey will soon be facing the most dramatic event to ever hit the mainland of the United States...although he has no clue. The climax will be an epic moment, but to get there, I had to reveal how Ty's particular conflict was building in him the character to withstand the coming disaster.
How does a writer create 'feel' without using action? I confess, I'm no expert. Rather, I used ordinary moments in my own routine to draw out of Ty his inner conflict. At one point the antagonist, a board member in his church, is being a rather large pain in the.....neck. Ty finds himself working through the feelings of betrayal, manipulation, and hopelessness, all while thumbing through the Church's Child Protection Policy. Let me tell you, there is nothing more mundane and boring than a Child Protection Policy: necessary, but BORING! Yet Ty's emotions flooded the paragraphs of the page without anything adventurous actually happening in the storyline.
You can do it to. In fact, you can practice right now. At the top of the page I posted a picture of garden green beans. Why? Because just last evening I spent an hour picking the little stinkers while sweating out every last ounce of my body fluid in the extreme humidity of Missouri. (I love hyperbole!) Take a moment and place your character, conflict and all, in a garden. Have him or her pick some green beans. Something like this:
Jana tugged at a long, fat bean and lamented. Rust had marred the most tender portion, a little clump of dirt clinging to the end was the culprit. At least half the bean was tainted, ruined, scarred. A tear found its way down her cheek as she saw her own life staring back at her. She'd ignored how the scars had layered themselves upon scars. But now, there was no innocence left to mar. This one, rusted relationship had finished it off.

Pardon me, I got way too in touch with my feminine side there. Okay, maybe something humorous:
Bob knew he'd gone way too far. It was one thing to try to lighten a moment with laughter. It was quite another to act out in unabashed tomfoolery, but here he'd done it again. That one bean, out in the middle of the wet, raised bed had called to him. He couldn't resist. Now, his face was covered in muddy slime and a warty, obese toad had locked him eye to eye. Wait, was that a smile on the toad's face?
I never realized how picking green beans could actually be cathartic. Yes, it's raw. It's unrefined. But it uses something ordinary to create a climate for development of your character. Try it! Let me know what you do with this little green bean patch.
Jimmy Root Jr
Distant Thunder Book One of the Lightning Chronicles
Watch for the Virtual Book Tour coming in August.


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