Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach.
There’s something it took me years as an editor to figure out: many of the most common problems novelists face with their stories appear to be issues with plot but in fact are issues with character.
Openings that don’t quite work are a good example.
The conventional wisdom on the opening of a novel tells us that it must have:
- A clear point of view
- A compelling voice
- Compelling characters
- Specific details
- Tension of some type
That’s all excellent advice. The only problem is, when writers think of “tension of some type,” they tend to think of external trouble—say, a car crash, or the protagonist being fired from her job.
This type of conflict might compel the reader’s attention for a few pages, but what really sucks us in—and what really makes agents and acquisitions editors sit up and take notice—is internal trouble, because it’s trouble of this type that signals the beginning of a character arc.
Some story gurus refer to this sort of trouble as the protagonist’s wound, or shadow. More commonly, it’s known as the protagonist’s internal issue: Some problem on the inside that, by the end of the story, they’re going to overcome—or, perhaps, tragically fail to.
As readers, we’re generally not aware that we’re even on the lookout for this element of a story. But if we’re three chapters in and the protagonist just appears to be a 100% happy, well-adjusted person—or even just a perfect person facing imperfect circumstances—where’s the story in that? (The exception to this rule is mysteries and thrillers—genres in which character arc isn’t a requirement.)
And here’s where it gets tricky, in terms of craft. Because at the beginning of the story, the protagonist herself can’t see what her internal problem is—she doesn’t even know she has one. (That’s what the story is going to force her to see.)
So how do you make sure the reader gets it, in those all-important opening pages, even if your protagonist doesn’t?
Here are three effective strategies.
1. Nagging doubts or misgivings
Say you open with a new venture—a business deal of some type, or even a marriage. In this sort of scenario, nothing so clearly signals the presence of internal trouble as mixed feelings.
Maybe the protagonist has chosen the wrong business partner, or life partner. Or maybe they’re entering into this partnership with the right person but for the wrong reasons.
Either way, misgivings on the part of the protagonist—even if they immediately tamp down, rationalize, and dismiss them—send a clear signal to the reader that something isn’t quite right with this character. Because if they have misgivings about this venture, why are they going through with it anyway?
2. Self-generated trouble
Earlier, I mentioned two examples of external trouble: a car crash, or being fired from a job. Neither of those scenarios necessarily signal the presence of an internal issue for the protagonist—but they could.
The car crash that resulted from a drunk driver T-boning your protagonist? That’s external.
The car crash that resulted from them fuming over being passed over for a promotion? That’s self-generated.
Being fired from a job because their boss is a generally horrible person? That’s external.
Being fired from a job because the protagonist herself was always late? That’s self-generated.
Self-generated trouble indicates some way that the protagonist is getting in their own way. It tells us that there’s some issue on the inside this character isn’t dealing with, and now it’s come to the point where that issue is starting to have a negative impact on their life.
3. The voice of dissent
Maybe your protagonist doesn’t have mixed feelings about what’s happening at the beginning. Maybe they’re headed into that business deal with stars in their eyes, and every expectation of success; maybe they’re walking up to the altar in full confidence that they’ve made the right choice.
Even so, if there’s someone else who expresses doubts about that new venture, your reader will wonder if those doubts might be valid—if there might be something the protagonist isn’t seeing, because of some internal block or blind spot.
And this is true of virtually any ground situation where the protagonist thinks everything in their life is perfectly fine: if someone else shows up to tell them that it isn’t, that they need to get their act together and change, the reader will have a clear sense that the story to come will in fact chronicle that change.
Now I’d love to hear from you.
What is your protagonist’s internal issue in your story? And what is it, in the first few chapters of your novel, that indicates the “trouble on the inside” to your reader?
Drop a reply in the comments.
Susan DeFreitas is the author of the novel Hot Season, which won a Gold IPPY Award, and the editor of Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin, a finalist for the Foreword INDIES. An independent editor and book coach, she specializes in helping writers from historically marginalized backgrounds, and those writing socially engaged fiction, break through into publishing.
To me, vagabonding is the way I want to travel forever. Until I am 80, I want to backpack solo for long periods of time, stay in hostels or the cheapest hotel I can find, eat bread and cheese for every meal. This is what I did at age 23 and I believe it was what made that trip magic. Now I’m going on another long trip. But I’m 55. And the vagabond life isn’t as easy as I thought. When kids laugh at me as I’m hunkered I’m the ground outside my hammock, scooping beans from a can into a pita in my palm, I suddenly wonder why I ( a woman who makes $80k a year and will go back to that job at the end of my year long trip) am doing what I’m doing.
Id love to know what readers think about this conflict? Intriguing or just weird?
Intriguing, of course, except for the part about going back to the job. The stakes just got lowered. Unless of course, you have to endure the full year and there is some time-based threat that must be dealt with now and because you rented out your house you can’t go back and then your van is stolen with all of your survival gear and you have no place to stay until you walk around the lake and find….
Or something like that 🙂
As I reread my OTT example, I realize that of course all of those are external treats. The internal conflict that you hint at could be “woman discovers that trying to recreate her youth doesn’t bring her peace after the death of her partner and learns instead that she must…”
Definitely not weird, except for the part about scooping beans (presumably cold) on to a pita. That is definitely weird 🙂
I am intrigued by what internal force is drawing your character away from life and society as if she alone, is destined for discovery or better yet, drawn to a distant place where she will be the only person with the skill set to save the day. The compelling draw to travel NOW is one we have all felt and she is acting on it. But, if she doesn’t realize this, and stumbles her way along, thinking she is simply repeating her 20 year old self? This could be a great setup for mishaps, still with that unshakable draw to something ‘out there’ that she just has to find.
Thanks for this analysis – it’s spot on. In my WIP. my POV character is being offered a promotion and she herself is fairly gung ho about it (more money, more prestige, ability to have more effect on the world) but her father is issuing a warning bell – all work, no personal life won’t turn out well in the end. So in your example, he’s the “voice of dissent” or in some story structure scenarios, he’s stating the “problem” she’ll have to realize by the end of the novel.
Sounds like an excellent way to communicate that internal trouble–while also touching on the Mentor archetype from the Hero’s Journey…
Thank you for this. It has me thinking about my character and whether the internal conflict is apparent early enough in the story.
Glad it’s gotten some gears turning for you!
My MC is a teen striving to be a good guy. His father was a nasty person, and my MC is does not want to be the scoundrel’s son. He wants his actions to have a positive effect and to help those for whom he cares. But he still has to overcome other’s expectations of him as the kid from the bad neighborhood. And bad stuff happens to his friends beyond his control, and he is at a loss as to how he should deal with it. And it is the 16th century.
All this is super sympathetic. What’s the character’s internal issue/conflict?
I have just begun my first novel (historical fiction based loosely on my Italian family’s immigration history). My protagonist is done with his father’s domination and the grinding poverty of Italy and wants to head to America where he believes all will be better. His father, as always, violently opposes his plan, but it is his mother’s more subtle concerns about her son being alone, about dreams and fantasies that lead nowhere or into traps, about dividing a family that for centuries has been the source of each member’s strength and confidence, etc. that is the core of the protagonist’s tension. The mother’s doubts, rather than the father’s obdurate opposition to everything his son wishes, will become a thread of a novel in which most of the family eventually emigrates to the US, faces overt racism and oppression, suffers enormous loss, setbacks, and the death of loved ones. Only two generations after the son emigrates does the now divided family begin to achieve the son’s dreams, but even the youngest generation shows the scars that demonstrate the mother’s insight and wisdom.
It sounds perhaps like some degree of naivete is your protagonist’s internal issue at the beginning…
I’m having my third novel edited now. My editor takes issue with the beginning pages. I may have too many issues. The protagonist Kate at twenty wants to start her own life, move out of home, and develop a singing career. It’s September 1939 in England, and war is declared. She wants to escape (internal issue) but now has bigger problems to contend with.
Too many internal issues is definitely an issue! Focusing in on just one, clearly, is part of what gives an opening the sense of concision, no matter how big the world of the story may be.
Thank you, Susan. Between you and Lisa Cron and Jennie Nash (throw in SWP) the tide is rising for women.
Very helpful—thanks!
Susan, this is really useful. It really unpacks something I only understood at a surface level.
Question: I assume it’s somewhat applicable to memoir, but in my case my first scene is a flash forward. How would that work, with your advice above?
It’s hard to say, in the abstract–but in memoir, that sort of jump in time can often serve to say, “This is the problem I had then,” and signal to the reader that the story will show the path by which that issue was resolved.
Does that make sense?
Thanks Susan – I didn’t want to go into too much detail as I thought that would be overkill for a comment thread.
Basically the flash forward is me in an exciting scene where ‘things have turned out incredibly for me’. I suppose my confusion, is that… the flash forward shows me ‘after the character arc’ (problem solved) so I’m not sure how I can also reference what the initial problem was. Maybe it’s simple as a line like “No more (problem 1), no more (problem 2).”
In this case, it seems like the thing might be to really show how hard the problems were, before they were solved…
Very timely article as I’ve been working to improve the opening pages of my YA novel. I’m curious why the main character can’t also be aware of their internal struggle. For example, they know there’s an issue they need to work through, but they acknowledge that they don’t know how to resolve it. Why doesn’t that work?
They can be aware of their inner struggle, but not the deep root of it, WHY they struggle–because that’s what the story is going to open up for them. Does that make sense?
Yes, that makes perfect sense. Thank you!