Tag Archives: Plot Tip

Scrooged Stories Redeem Our Writing

Storytelling, ,

Scrooged Stories are the writer’s ideal holiday gift, because they come with Scrooged storytelling and the Bountiful Writing that can result from opening this particular package all the way into your creative heart.

The result for Charles Dickens was his fabulous and fabled A Christmas Carol which has turned out to be one of the best known and most popular stories in the English language.

You can wrap some of that and gift it to me anytime, and I don’t believe I know a single writer, or reader either, who wouldn’t feel the same. Scrooged Stories are pay dirt and pop chart dirt too. So, what can Charles and Ebenezer teach us about how to get a dusting of that magic on our own storytelling shoes?

I imagine most of us are familiar with the narrative theme, “How the Mighty Have Fallen.” Some of us, including me, have even written those stories. A Christmas Carol, the ultimate among Scrooged Stories, moves beyond the downfall scenario to “How the Mighty Have Fallen Then Been Dragged Back Up Again.” In other words, Scrooged Stories are about Redemption. The best Scrooged Stories are about Dramatic Redemption. Dramatic, because of the depth of the depravity pit into which the central character has plunged himself, usually before we encounter him. Scrooged Stories are, after all, mainly about the Scrooge.

Our prototype, Ebenezer’s personal human depravity has to do with compassion. He doesn’t have any, not any we can readily discern from his perpetually scowling face and stingy, heartless behavior. Worse still, he is pleased to be exactly what he is and regards the caring world as, in a word, a humbug. Redeeming this dude won’t be easy. But then, that’s what makes Scrooged Stories so reader appealing. The more irredeemable the character is, the more dramatic the story will be. And drama, along with power and intensity, is the wellspring of that pop chart pay dirt I mentioned.

Thus, Ebenezer is the poster boy for those of us who would like to produce Scrooged Stories of our own. He is a deep-down mean, unrepentant character who disdains charity and scoffs at charitable folk, betrays his beloved sister’s wishes by disowning her only son, and all but freezes poor Bob Cratchett out of his threadbare office. Such an extreme character portrayal demands an extreme plot, and well-crafted Scrooged Stories do not disappoint.

Dickens thickens his extreme plot with a ghost. Not a happy, harmless Casper, but a chain-clanking, shrieking, ominous and terrifying horror named Marley, who is dead set (pun intended) upon rattling Ebenezer out of his complacency , into awareness of the doom he inevitable faces, if he doesn’t change his ways.

Thus, the quintessential exemplar of Scrooge Stories presents us, and Ebenezer, with his story goal. He must change. Which is also his story problem, or internal conflict, if you prefer. He does not want to change. He is absolutely committed to his bad old self. Dickens will have to dredge up some mega-dramatic means to so much as capture Ebenezer’s attention, much less motivate him toward metamorphosis.

At which point, my particular favorite of Scrooged Stories gives us more ghosts because, besides being a Redemption Story, A Christmas Carol is a ghost story too. Our heartless (supposedly) hero (sort of) is forced to experience and, even more soul-quaking, to witness what these phantasms have to show him about himself. His past retreat from human feeling. His present cold, solitary, disconnected state and how it affects others. The dark, dire future consequences that await him if he fails to change.

Meanwhile, this Father Christmas of Scrooged Stories, rackets us, and its host of readers, relentlessly forward through Ebenezer’s tumultuous adventures at whirlwind pace, all the way to the most foreboding possibility possible. The grave. We are set up big time for the payoff and the pay dirt. The Redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Once again, Scrooged Stories don’t let us down. We are showered with a bounty of glorious gifts, the most bounteous of which may be the key insight into what make this story as popular as it is. The dramatic contrast of its final act from its initial one. Joy, giddiness, laughter so unrepressed we might think it would break Ebenezer’s stony face. And it does. Which brings us to the most satisfying payoff of all. Magnanimous deeds. Ebenezer scatters goodness, light, and even life in every direction.

Because Scrooged Stories are, at their essence and at their endings, all about satisfaction. A wild, careening ride from the depth of depraved darkness to the light of salvation. The satisfaction of the main character’s life versus death problem. Satisfaction of his hard-won goal. Satisfaction of the author’s goal as well, in the form of many satisfied readers.

Scrooged Stories are the gift Charles Dickens gives us, at the holidays and throughout the year. Each story element brightly wrapped and ready to be transformed by way of your unique imagination into your own Tale of Redemption. Your own addition to the ever-popular pantheon of Scrooged Stories. To which I say, “God Bless Us Every One.”
Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

– R|R –

A Time of Fear & LovingAlice’s new novel, including a Scrooge of her own, is A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. You can find all of Alice’s books HERE.

What readers are saying about A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.”
“Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.”
“The tension in this novel was through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“I never want an Alice Orr book to end.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

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TAGS – Character Development, Plotting, Dramatic Storytelling

 

 

How to Be a Pantster – Ask Alice Saturday

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Flying Woman imageQuestion: Are you a Planner or a Pantster?

 Answer: Back when I was first a book editor then a literary agent and still a publishing author I was a Planner big time. I even wrote an article called “The Painless Synopsis” for Writers Digest Magazine. I was devoted to planning my stories in detail up-front. I had to do that because my writing life was regularly interrupted by my day job.

My workday mind had to be deep into agent tasks. I needed a synopsis to keep track of my story as I dragged my head back and forth between my agent brain and my writer brain. My guess is that most people juggling a full-time job with a writing regimen need to do the same.

Now that I’m a full-time writer I can indulge myself with the joy of making it up as I go along. Because I write Romantic Suspense I start out with three characters – a murder victim, a heroine and a hero. I also know the conflict that motivated the killing and at least a little about how the heroine and hero fall onto opposite sides of that conflict.

I also try to have an idea how the story ends – who committed the murder. But I’ve written two books this way so far and by the end of both of them the identity of the killer had changed and the stories were better for it. I now understand that I shouldn’t cast the ending in stone up-front. It’s better to leave room for my imagination to find its way.

Kurt Vonnegut compares this approach to driving at night. You can see as far as the headlight beams allow you to see. A former client of mine Jo Beverley calls it “Flying into the Mist.” I call it fun.

I’m playing with my story and my story is playing with me. I can afford the luxury of this playfulness because my head is pretty much always in the story. I no longer have to interrupt the flow to bury my gray cells in my day job.

In my case at least the choice between Planner and Pantster couldn’t always be about preference. It had to be about my circumstances. Like so many of us – I did what I had to do. I feel blessed that what I have to do now is have a storytelling good time.

RR

My current novel is A WRONG WAY HOME – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #1 – available at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – launches with summer on June 22nd. These are my 12th and 13th novels and both were Pantster born and brought to life. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

 

How I Escaped Chapter 29 – Ask Alice Saturday

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Question: What can I do when my story gets stuck?

Alice & Jonathan Wedding Day Answer: I’ll tell you what I did. It happened in Chapter 29 of A Wrong Way Home. I was in trouble. This was the first book in a series and if I couldn’t make this story work I couldn’t make the story work. Still I was worse than stuck. I didn’t want anything more to do with Chapter 29.

The demon in my head even suggested I didn’t want anything more to do with the whole damned thing. The book – the series – all of it. I’d come all this way. I’d written 28 chapters but it was simply getting too hard. That was the theme of my whining anyway. So I tripped into something I do too easily – the avoidance dance.

I decided our bedroom must be rearranged. Heavy furniture needed moving so I recruited my husband. He had no idea I was really avoiding Chapter 29. An important step in the dance is not to tell anyone you’re doing it. After 42 years together my husband knows it’s sometimes better just to go along with things so he hefted the heavy stuff.

[That’s us on our hippie wedding day all those years ago. We weren’t moving furniture or avoiding because we were too busy dancing.]

Back to my story. The bedroom did look better and I gave hubby a hug and loads of gratitude. But Chapter 29 still loomed large on my laptop. I needed another detour. As I gazed around our newly imagined bedroom it occurred to me that we needed to be better entertained there too. Behave. I hear your sniggers. For once I’m not talking about sex.

I decided we couldn’t survive without Amazon Prime on the bedroom TV. Again I enlisted my husband as unwitting accomplice. He was more enthusiastic about this project than he’d been about moving furniture. The prospect of binge watching Ray Donovan all weekend lured him in. He took over the lengthy signup process I dread then binged away.

Unfortunately Monday arrived and Chapter 29 still lurked. I did my best to avoid my laptop. But I was beginning to feel some shame. I needed a truly justifiable diversion this time so I decided to pay the bills. There’s usually nothing I hate as much as the tedium of bill paying. Apparently I hated Chapter 29 more.

Monday turned to Tuesday but not before I developed a convenient cough in between. I told myself I had a summer cold coming on. It was August at the time. My grandmother used to say “There’s nothing worse than a summer cold” and Grandma never lied. So I downed a couple of pills that put my brain in a fog and that took care of Tuesday.

The next morning inevitably dawned and it was just as inevitably Wednesday. Hump Day. The day I had to get over the hump of Chapter 29 or give up altogether. Would the previous 28 chapters ever forgive me if I gave up? Would I forgive myself? Then I remembered that the most important writing exercise is to put your butt in the chair. So I did that.

I opened Chapter 29 and there he was – Matt Kalli – the hero even I’m in love with in A Wrong Way Home. Matt knew I’d been gone but he was only partly happy to see me back. “You have to make something happen here,” he said. “Something that kicks up more trouble between me and Kara.” She’s the heroine I also love in this story.

Suddenly the solution popped into my head. Secrets and Lies. My two favorite plot thickeners are also wonderful story movers. Have somebody keep a secret or tell a lie and the story suddenly gathers new momentum. I needed to plant a lie and a secret here. I went back to the end of Chapter 28 and started planting.

Kara finds out that Matt hasn’t told her something crucial – a lie of omission. But she’s not going to tell him she’s found out – a secret. Matt is worried about where she is at the beginning of Chapter 29. When she shows up she’s boiling angry and won’t tell him why. Kara knows why she’s red-hot mad. We readers know why. Matt has no clue.

This creates tension and drama and a “What will happen next?” feeling. That question and the suspense that come with it carry us all out of Chapter 29 at last. I’m so relieved I can’t help but have a mischievous thought. I even say it out loud. “What if all this red-hot anger in Chapter 29 turns into red-hot lovemaking in Chapter 30?”

Voila! The story is unstuck. And so am I.

RR

 I’m Alice Orr – author of 12 novels, 2 novellas, a memoir and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells – soon to be updated and on sale online. I’m also a former book editor and literary agent. Now I live my dream of writing full-time. Plus I present workshops on writing for publication and/or pleasure. I have 2 grown children and 2 perfect grandchildren and live with my husband Jonathan in New York City. Occasionally we partner each other in the avoidance dance. This is us on our wedding day over 42 years ago – just dancing.

Find my books at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. Email me at aliceorrbooks@gmail.com. Visit my website www.aliceorrbooks.com. Regular mail me at P.O. Box 6224 – Long Island City NY 11106. I’d love to hear from you.