Tag Archives: Story Conflict

The Ideal Story Idea Equation

Storytelling, ,

The Ideal Story Idea Equation. Every writer I know, and probably every writer I don’t know, is praying for the Idea from Heaven. The perfect combination of elements that will create the best story you’ve ever written and take you where you want to be in your writer’s adventure. What we sometimes forget to emphasize is the Combination of Elements part. The Equation.

The Technicolor Idea Strike. Most of us have, on very happy occasion, experienced the exhilaration of a technicolor idea strike. A story concept, maybe a scene, appears suddenly, unexpectedly, like lightning in the mind, revealing something entirely new, previously unimagined. “This is it,” we cry out in creative ecstasy. “This is the story I must write.”

An Idea Is Not a Plot. The problem is that we don’t really have a story. We have an idea for a story, and an idea is only a beginning. A story, particularly in the commercial fiction arena, requires a plot with a beginning, middle and end. At best, our flashes of inspiration will get us through the opening scene, maybe the first chapter. Without lots more work and a much bigger brainstorm, the story tumbles downhill from there.

The Cocktail Party Scenario. Permit me to illustrate with a cocktail party scenario that goes something like this. Author stands at the edge of the party crowd to maximize observation potential. Fellow partier sidles over, discovers that Author is, in fact, an author and suggests some variation on the following. “I’ve got a terrific idea for a novel. Bestseller for sure. How’s about I tell you my idea, you write the story, we split the take fifty-fifty?”

The Peril of Underestimating The Storytelling Process. A giant misconception is in play here. This non-writer underestimates the writing process. Somebody once famously said, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.” The partier with the great story idea knows nothing about the bloodletting aspect of the writer’s craft. He doesn’t understand that an idea is not a story.

An Idea Is Only A Kernel. That kernel may possess the potential to grow into the next Nora King Mary Higgins Grisham opus or it may not. Either way, tons of nurturing, strain, frustration, doubt and even bloodletting must be applied between planting and harvest. A clever idea is a jumping off place but without the sweat equity required the storyteller is in for a hard fall.

The Equation Begins With Character. An idea flash may reveal intriguing, even startling circumstances, but those circumstances must happen to equally intriguing characters or the agent/editor/reader will soon cease to care.  An intriguing character comes to life on the page, has a history fraught with complex experience, and a personality riddled with contradictions, like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. Such characters are complicated, often confused, and always in conflict with each other.

The Equation Continues With Conflict. Great storytelling is all about story conflict, and that conflict must have enough power to reach beyond the initial story idea. Enough power to propel the agent/editor/reader, nonstop and without much respite, from first scene to last with a riveting rollercoaster ride between, like in The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

A Powerful Story Idea Plants The Conflict Kernel Deep. A powerful storyteller cultivates that kernel through obstacles, frustrations, near misses and reversals as layered and complex as the characters themselves. Conjuring all of that requires opening the previously mentioned vein. A lightning flash story idea makes the first cut, then the real surgery begins.

The Ideal Story Idea Equation Is Simply This. Great Idea plus Characters We Care About plus An Excruciating Conflict Situation equals First Class Storytelling. Which is, of course, not simple to accomplish, but that’s the challenge which creates the conflict at the heart of your great writer’s adventure. Welcome to the rollercoaster.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

A Wrong Way Home – Alice’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 1 – is a FREE Kindle eBook HERE. Enjoy!

Alice’s latest novel is A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE.

Praise for 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 is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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Daughters and Their Mothers – Riverton Road Monday

Great Read, Kindle Bargain, Romantic Suspense, ,

Mother-Daughter Split imageA Year of Summer Shadows is the second story in my current romantic suspense novel series and it is a hotbed of daughter-mother contention. As follows.

I’m Hailey. My mother is Annemarie Lambert and she’s a stranger to me. I was my father’s girl until he died and left me to watch my mother falter and stumble in a daze from one foolish choice to the next.

Too many of those bad choices involved men. A string of them – each more useless than the last. We live in a small town called Riverton. Everybody saw my mother’s behavior and gossiped about her in hushed tones. I heard them anyway and felt ashamed.

She still lives in our old house on Academy Avenue which has deteriorated along with my mother since Dad died. I go there as little as possible and try to live my life in an upstanding and responsible way so I may never be mistaken for Annemarie.

I’m Julia. My mother is Virginia Hargate and I wish I could get free of her. She’s loomed over me for as long as I can remember and dictates every moment of my life according to what she thinks I should be. She even took my best friend Hailey from me when I most needed her.

My father was an important man in Riverton but he was a busy man too and hardly ever anywhere but his office. So I rattled around alone in our huge house on Blakely Street doing my best to keep out of range of the sound of Virginia’s harping voice.

She wants more than anything for me to be a lady the way she sees herself to be. Admired and envied. Perfect in every way. Her desire for that has given me my revenge. I’ve made myself into the opposite of a lady. I’m neither admired nor envied. I am Virginia’s shame.

I am Angela Kalli. I have four sons but no daughter. I made a special room in our house at on Riverton Road – yellow and pale blue and empty except for the occasional guest. I go there when my husband Gus is away and daydream about the little girl who might have grown up here.

These are the daughters and mothers of A Year of Summer Shadows at the beginning of my story. Will they be changed at the end? We will simply have to read and see.

 RR

 A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story. Launched with summer on June 22nd at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 13th novel. I am its mother and it is my daughter. We had a contentious relationship but now we’ve reconciled. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

 

Catastrophe Looms – Riverton Road Monday

Great Read, Kindle Bargain, Romantic Suspense, ,

Excerpt from A Wrong Way Home by Alice Orr.

Dramatic North Country SkyMatt had to get back to Kalli Corner and tell Kara, but first there was one more thing he needed to know from Junior Dawson.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Matt asked.

Dawson shrugged.

“Let’s just say my loyalty was to Tony Benton. I got no loyalty to nobody else. I could have helped this damned fool, but he wasn’t smart enough to do what he had to do to make that happen.”

“What did he have to do?”

Dawson rubbed his greasy fingers together in a gesture Matt recognized to mean money, probably a lot of money.

“I gave him a chance, but he wouldn’t come across,” Dawson said. “So I’d just as soon see him go down.”

Matt remembered what Kara had seen through the window. Dawson being threatening, except that maybe Dawson didn’t have solid evidence like Benton did. If that was true, Dawson’s threats would have been as empty as his eyes were now.

Telling all of this to Matt could be Dawson’s way of getting even. He was left out in the cold now that Benton wasn’t around to offer a cut in his dirty deals in return for whatever equally dirty jobs Junior was willing to perform. He’d tried for a final payoff, but that hadn’t worked out either. Now Dawson was having his revenge.

“So did you get what you came for?” Dawson asked.

Matt hesitated before answering. He couldn’t help feeling a little dirty himself from just talking to this guy.

“Yeah, I got what I came for.”

Matt didn’t say thank you. He walked fast to his truck and drove away even faster. Away from Vincent’s Garage and Junior Dawson. Matt drove with one hand and clicked Kara’s number on his cell phone with the other. Several rings later, she answered, but it was only her recorded message.

“Leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you.”

Matt reacted to the sound of her voice by pushing the gas pedal closer to the floor.

“It’s Matt. I’m on my way home. Call me when you get this.”

Matt put the phone on the dashboard and concentrated on piloting the speeding truck in the direction of Riverton Road and Kalli Corner. Something told him he’d better get there soon, not just because of what he had to tell Kara or even because of how much he missed her. Like a premonition, something told Matt that Kara needed him, and she needed him right now.

He spun the steering wheel and roared into the Kalli driveway with gravel spraying from his truck tires. The front door of the house flew open, and his mother hurried across the porch and down the steps. One look at her face made Matt’s heart clench with the terrifying recognition that his premonition had been correct.

“Kara’s gone,” Angela shouted as he screeched to a stop. “I thought she was resting in her room, but I just went up to check on her and she’s gone.”

RR

My latest story is A WRONG WAY HOME – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #1 – Matt & Kara’s Story. Available at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 12th novel and this post is a dramatic excerpt.

 Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com