I’ve often felt that the key to drama and anxiety for a lot of people who may be reading your stories, or just from life in general came from something very simple. And that’s the constant idea of ‘choice’. Better yet, a dilemma. The more that I played around with the idea of it all in my own fiction, the more enamored I became by the power of it all. You can use it to put pressure on your audience, and create a much more stressful situation out of a fictional that may seem like a very easy answer, created by a spontaneous reaction to the moment. Learning how to use this tool in your writing can force readers to see the fork in the road, and realize what might happen by following either one. How do we do that? By presenting the problem through the thoughts and actions of your characters. Expressed openly, clearly, and allow your audience to weight their options against with whatever it is that your characters are going through. Just make sure to balance out all sides and let people wrestle with their own questions and get further involved to see how it all turns out.

One thing that can create a boring and disengaging story is the act of filling it with uninteresting questions that all lead to uninteresting answers. When we do that, it dulls the experience to the point where reading through it is just a matter of going through the motions. It’s like that feeling you get when you’re watching a movie, and you reach a point where you’re simply not concerned at all over how it turns out...but you’ve already invested so much time into what you’ve watched so far, you surrender to the idea that you might as well sit ther and make it to the end credits. Hehehe, obviously, you don’t want anyone to think about your story in this way. Especially if it’s their first encounter with one of your works. It’s a slow and painful death for any author to deal with, believe me. Ugh!

How do you get around this?

With a touch of cleverly exposition, that’s how! Hehehe! Now...I know, I know...some of th rules that I’ve talked about before can occasionally seem as though they’re in direct conflict with one another, but you’ll quickly learn that any rule that you’ve taught yourself to adhere to when writing will tend to waiver, morph, and shift, as the need calls for it. So don’t worry about it too much. The beauty of art comes from its flexibility sometimes.

Now...if you’re an engineer or a computer programmer...the same rules do NOT apply! That’s just asking for a tragic collapse to happen. With fiction? Not so much.

See...every time that you present a choice to one of your characters in a story, you want to make that choice one of significance. Something that will possibly have a major affect on how the story moves on from there, both for your protagonist and for your readers. But I find that it helps to actually get in my main character’s head and actually think through the pros and cons of both choices before making a decision between them. I state it openly and do what I can to follow their thought process in a way that allows my readers to know what the stakes are. What are the possible rewards? What are the potential consequences? What’s the probability that things will go the way your protagonist wants them to once they choose one or the other? What obstacles are in the way? How does their personality or their past experiences affect this equation? And are the X-factors that they may not even be thinking of right now? If you’re writing a ‘choice’ part of your story, I think it can be a really effective practice to tackle all of these questions on screen where your readers can see them laid out. And here’s why...

I have written soooo many stories in the past where a lot of the feedback has been so incredibly different from person to person that I couldn’t help but think that we weren’t all on the same page at the same time. Now, I’m fully aware that every story is going to be interpreted differently by each individual reader based on who they are as a person and how and where they grew up. That’s a given. But these responses were extremely scattered in ways where I found myself going back to look at my own work to see if it was an interpretation or if that’s how I actually wrote it. Because it does happen, you know? Sometimes I might write something that comes off in a way that I didn’t mean for it to, in which case revisions may be necessary to get the appropriate message across. But as I went through the comments and emails and the like, I discovered something. People were choosing sides and courses of action without having me paint a complete picture as to how the rewards and consequences might be severely out of balance. Looking back, I would have certainly made different choices in how that fork in the road was depicted in the writing. And I would have done that by expressing answers to the questions that I listed above.

Hopefully I haven’t lost you yet! ::Giggles::

Check out this video down below. It comes from a movie called, “Ladybugs”, which is a silly guilty pleasure of mine! LOL! Always has been, since I was in high school. Plus, I mean...Jonathan Brandis. Sighhhh! (RIP) This is an exaggerated example of what I’m talking about here, but watch this clip and look at how the problem is presented to us, ‘the audience’, as the weirdness begins.

Now, watching the whole movie will give everybody more context as to what is going on with the character ‘Matthew’ dressing up like a girl to play on the girl’s soccer team and not having his cover blown, but if you’re watching the clip...do you see how the predicament is simply put out there on display to keep everyone together on what’s going on and what they stakes are. What the consequences might be if he’s caught on either side of the equation?

It can just be a comedic scene of a teen boy and his crush, and hiding from his mother while changing clothes and racing up and down the stairs...but then you have parts of the audience saying, “Why doesn’t he just get his mom to leave the room?” Or, “Why doesn’t he just sneak out of the door with his girl crush while his mom isn’t looking?” Or any one of a thousand other options that might be presented to them in the midst of all this unnecessary chaos. Suddenly you have one hundred different perspectives looking off in one hundred different directions, and a bit of the story’s cohesion gets lost in my opinion. It feels much better to me to bottleneck some of those points of view and guide them in a certain direction where I’ve got a bit more control over the narrative and the questions don’t get to be too distracting. It’s not always possible, but it helps to make an attempt.

With my stories, I always had comments pop up from some readers who would be frustrated with my protagonist. “Jesus! Why doesn’t he just go up and ask him out on a date already? He OBVIOUSLY likes you! Just do it already!” Well...who knows?

I do. That’s who.

Maybe this boy thinks his love interest is way out of his league. Maybe he’s bashfully shy to the point where it’s an almost crippling experience to talk to the boy of his dreams. Maybe ‘coming out’ isn’t an option for him for fear that he’ll be bullied or disowned by his parents. Maybe he’s been abused his whole life and his confidence is barely enough to allow him to love himself, much less someone else. There are answers to all of their questions when it comes to making one choice over another...but those answers aren’t doing my story any good just rattling around in my head. In “A Class By Himself”, Derek feels inadequate financial and has nothing of real value to offer a love interest who is so much better off than he is. In “Jesse-101”, Tristan was recently dumped and had his heart broken by someone he thought he could trust, and now he has doubts about going through that again. These are things that I think about when I’m writing for one of my characters, and now I try to make it a point to take their big choice moments and write them out for my readers to actually see. Just to let them know that my characters are actually thinking logically, weighing their options, and trying to assess the number of threats on both sides so that they can hopefully pick the road of least resistance. Sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong. Such is life. But they ARE thinking with a rational mind. They’re not just making whatever decisions I force them to make for the sake of story melodrama, there’s a process going on here. Hehehe!

So, as I began to experiment with this method of adding weight and depth to the choices my characters make, I found myself feeling better about the results of my work, and I noticed that people (while some of them could still feel frustrated from time to time...hehehe, which is ok. I get it) began to understand the story situations and the characters themselves with a bit more patience than they ever did before.

Bottom line...some people came out of the closet when they were only thirteen years old and had no problems at all. Some went through hell and were outed against their will in college. Some were already married, then divorced, with a couple of kids, before they felt comfortable being themselves. Some people grew up in a large, accepting, and all inclusive, metropolitan city. Others grew up in small rural towns where everybody knew everybody else and spent every Sunday in church. All of these elements form who they are as people, and you’re never going to be able to please everybody. Don’t even try.

But...if you can take a few paragraphs, or even just a few sentences, here and there to explain to your readers why they might be leaning in one direction or the other when it comes to the pressure of making the next big choice in their journey towards the end of your fictional rainbow...you build a sense of understanding between the two. They might be able to say to themselves, “Well...I would have just told my parents that I was gay and let them deal with it...but I can see why this character might see that as being a bad idea.” And it helps to have your audience connect with your project on that level. It’s more realistic, you know? Not everybody has been sharing your personal experience. Not everybody is seeing the world through your lens. How can they possible make choices based on a set of rules and inner conflicts that they know nothing about?

Anyway, as always, I hope this draws some attention to a few techniques that you guys can use to further enhance your work in the future. I really do enjoy sharing this stuff with you guys, as I think only other writers would really be able to make much sense out of it. Hehehe! Just remember to present the problems in your character choices in as short and as clever a way as you can. Your readers should always be asking themselves what they have to gain, as well as what they have to lose, at every turn. No matter what road they decide to choose...they’re going to have to sacrifice something in the end. Even if it’s only a few awkward moments of discomfort.

Got it?

Cool.

Seezya soon! And stay beautiful!