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    Transform Your Fiction: Essential Tools
    Transform Your Fiction: Essential Tools
    Transform Your Fiction: Essential Tools
    Ebook143 pages1 hour

    Transform Your Fiction: Essential Tools

    By DL Fowler

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    About this ebook

    Master the Craft of Storytelling

    Successful authors begin with great writing. Bestselling author and writing coach DL Fowler helps you transform your fiction by focusing on the Hierarchy of Readers' Needs.

    Fowler's concise guide demonstrates how to create memorable characters, map captivating journeys, craft engaging scenes, and develop intimate bonds between readers and characters.

    Discover fresh ways to:
    •coax memorable characters out of the shadows
    •grab readers with conflict that's personal
    •inject scenes with emotional power
    •embed readers in your characters' journeys

    Focus on these essential tools and you will:
    •find the right voice for your story
    •write an irresistible opening line
    •stay focused on your core story problem
    •energize your story’s middle
    •end your story on the right note

    Includes examples from leading authors along with worksheets, recommended reading, and discussion guide.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDL Fowler
    Release dateApr 13, 2017
    ISBN9781370854851
    Transform Your Fiction: Essential Tools
    Author

    DL Fowler

    The bestselling author of Ripples - a novel, Lincoln Raw - a biographical novel, and Lincoln's Diary - a novel of suspense, DL Fowler gets inside people's heads and takes readers along for the ride. Fowler spent his childhood in northwest Georgia and lived his teenage years in in the shadow of Redlands California's Lincoln Shrine. During summers, while working as a camp counselor, he backpacked through the San Gorgonio Wilderness. After graduating from University of Southern California with a BA in Humanities, he earned an MBA from California State University - San Bernardino and pursued a career in finance. He now makes his home in picturesque Gig Harbor, Washington and travels frequently to America's heartland.

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      Book preview

      Transform Your Fiction - DL Fowler

      ESSENTIAL TOOLS OF WRITING

      He was getting nowhere. The young infantry lieutenant had radioed for help. Air cover. Mortars. Didn’t matter. Army ‘Intelligence’ on the other end of the call was stonewalling. Said there were no hostiles in the area. Nazis had given up; on the run heads-down, fleeing the Allied invasion of Italy’s Po River Valley. The lieutenant knew better. His platoon was pinned down by hostile fire. If HQ wouldn’t give him what he needed, he’d find another way. He put the squawk-box on the ground, drew his revolver, and blasted the thing. Out of Com, he was on his own.

      Readers are like that lieutenant. If a story doesn't fulfill their needs, they'll find something that does. But what do readers need from us?

      After World War II, Abraham Maslow explained human motivation with his Hierarchy of Needs¹. He said that meeting certain physiological and security needs doesn’t motivate, but failure to satisfy those needs demoralizes people. Once those threshold requirements are met, however, people awaken to the motivational power of higher level needs like belonging, esteem, and actualization.

      People read stories in order to achieve the sense of fulfillment that Maslow called actualization. They either need to grow psychologically or to validate growth they have already achieved.

      Regardless of genre—whether our stories are short or novel length, memoirs or narrative non-fiction, or poems—readers pick up books to discover memorable people wrestling with compelling problems. They don’t want simply to be told about those journeys. They want to experience them. The rhythm of our stories and the intimacy we create determine how deeply readers become engaged in our characters’ journeys.

      A story’s arc is the path characters take through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in order to achieve actualization. A writer’s job is to help readers vicariously pursue the characters’ journeys. We do that by meeting particular needs readers bring to the experience of reading. Characters, journeys, rhythm, and intimacy make up the Hierarchy of Readers’ Needs. Satisfying those needs is the key to masterful storytelling.

      Hierarchy of Readers’ Needs

      The pyramid above shows the relative importance of each need. Understand what that means. We can’t simply skip the first three needs and give our readers only intimacy. Each need builds upon the foundation of those beneath it.

      Without characters and journeys, readers don’t even have a story to follow. When we make characters memorable, journeys compelling, and add engaging rhythms, readers are drawn deeper into our stories for intimacy. Intimacy happens when readers find themselves walking in a character’s shoes, pursuing the same goals, facing the same obstacles, and experiencing the same emotions.

      Trust is the key that unlocks intimacy for readers—trust that we will not hold back any necessary element of the journey, trust that the characters will share the most secret parts of their souls, trust that we will bleed on the page.

      A few talented authors appear to fulfill the Hierarchy of Readers’ Needs intuitively. For them, creating memorable characters, compelling journeys, engaging rhythms, and intimacy seems to come naturally. The truth is that intimacy in fiction happens the same way it does in real life—with intentionality.

      CHARACTERS

      In each of us there is another whom we do not know.

      —Carl Jung

      If stories aren’t about memorable people and their compelling problems, there is no one to invite readers in, and the story has no heart. So where do memorable characters come from? Two geniuses from the past offer clues.

      Carl Jung, a father of modern psychology, wrote about the myriad personalities within each of us. Our most objectionable characters get suppressed—pushed into the shadows and ignored—because our culture doesn’t like dealing with them. However, these shadow characters invent ways to be noticed. Characters who are desperate for attention can be magnetic, even if they’re unlikeable.

      Jung encouraged his patients to attend to the shadow personalities by letting them out in the sunshine for regular doses of supervised play. If we look inside ourselves, we should never be at a loss for interesting characters with which we can entertain readers.

      In addition to shadow characters hiding in the recesses of our minds, many more are lurking in the ordinary, often overlooked places around us.

      Every block of stone has a statute inside, and it is the task of a sculptor to discover it.—Michelangelo

      While working on a piece of stone, Michelangelo was asked what he planned to do with it. The stone had been rejected by earlier masters, including Leonardo di Vinci. Michelangelo replied, There is an angel inside, and I am merely letting it out. The angel inside turned out to be his famous statue of David.

      Our first job as authors is to romance characters, convincing them to come out of the shadows, or to show themselves in places as ordinary as a rock.

      Romance Your Characters

      Often, characters wind up flat on the page because we don’t take the time to romance them. On our search for characters, we might shy away in fear, or decide that romancing each character takes too much time. We have deadlines—self-imposed or otherwise. If the truth be told, deadlines are irrelevant if stories don’t engage readers.

      When we’re romancing someone, we try to find out whatever we can about them. Every first date (that shows any promise) gets around to the tell me about yourself moment. If we find the person interesting, that’s only the beginning. Our curiosity leads us to learn as much as we can about the person. We might make subtle inquiries of mutual acquaintances, check out their social media pages, or Google their name to see what tracks they have left in cyberspace. If our search doesn’t set off any alarms, a second date might be in order. The more time we spend with them and the more glimpses we get into their personality, the more likely we are to fall in love. We should romance characters in a similar way.

      Begin by writing down every detail about each character: physical characteristics, favorite everything, phobias, flaws, strengths—the list goes on. Next, write a backstory for every character, right down to the parking valet who appears only briefly. File away all you have written and lock the drawer. Mail the key to Aunt Sophie (pretend you have one) whom you haven’t called in ten years. Just don’t put those details in the story … not yet. The story will let you know when you should add it. Remember. Information isn’t a hook; relationship is.

      Essential details will bubble to the surface if and when readers need them. The way to know whether a

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