Karen S. Wiesner: HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 3 (Writer's Craft Article)

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 3

Based on CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} by Karen S. Wiesner

This is the final of three posts focusing on how to spot dead or lifeless characters, plots, and relationships in your fiction

A lack of development and progress in character, plot, and relationship is something that can be seen throughout an entire book and sometimes the whole of a series. James Scott Bell advises asking yourself, "Who cares?" and "What's the purpose?" to ensure validity and clarification of the reason for each scene even existing. I'd add for clarification that characters, plots, and relationships all need to have a reason for existing. If readers are never engaged on even one count of core elements, what's the purpose of the book existing and, honestly, who cares if it gets read? If there isn't passion burning inside all three of the core elements, bursting out so the story has to be told, there is quite literally no point to starting, continuing or finishing. For anyone.

Development of all three elements is crucial and progression has to be evident from one scene to the next. If something is actually happening in a story with all three of the CPR elements, the reader will want to stick around to find out more--to find out everything, with a sense of avid anticipation and participation rather than frustration and disengagement, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two current bestselling authors writing series focused on main characters in white collar fields. In both series, the stories are plot-leaden (as opposed to merely heavy). These authors are known for action-packed stories, and they deserve kudos for providing that every single time. However, in both cases, the series are almost completely character and relationship-development deficient. In either, beyond what the main character does for a living--with above-average intelligence--we learn almost nothing about him personally, about his current life beyond his work and the story quest, about his past and his future drive. All his internal conflicts and goals and motivations are plot-focused to the point where his own private needs and desires are rarely if ever considered or attended to. Relationships never feel well-grounded. They happen in the present--and they merely happen. We're given only sparse glimpses about what occurred between characters in the past and those glimpses are cold without strong, emotional connections, memories, or developments. Readers don't feel any encouragement about future developments with those relationships either. Personal attachments--temporary or otherwise--serve the plot. Period.

The sheer evidence of the insufficiency of character and relationship development lives in how neither author includes enough "downtimes" (a point in which the main character takes a rest from the action to reflect) within the extreme action sequences of the individual stories. The main character in both series is almost constantly running from or toward something. He doesn't sit down and ruminate on his life, let alone take that time to cultivate strong connections and emotional attachments with the people running around with him. As a result, the consequences are muted, lacking both tension and intrigue, and certain exhaustion (also for the reader?) may be the only end-game in sight.

Whenever I read these series which are admittedly enjoyable (though ultimately disappointing because of all the reasons I mentioned above), I'm forced to imagine the author holding a doll of his very popular series character and slam-driving that poor, defenseless thing through one breath-stealing action sequence after the other without a single break in the arduous trek each book goes through. Nothing personal breaks up these ruthless tasks the character is given back-to-back in every story.

But, not only are the creators forcing the characters through the motions, the authors aren't going beyond those motions themselves--and that's the biggest travesty of un-/underdevelopment of core elements. In both cases, the main character isn't dead but he's almost certainly lifeless. Unfortunately for demanding readers who want three-dimensional core elements, the intrigue here is with plots (and--in a stretch--settings, which is a component of character development) almost exclusively. I consider these particular characters little more than zombies. Yes, there is a semblance of life. The POV character is actually moving around, going through the motions, but he isn't actively living, breathing, or functioning beyond basic instinct in direct response to the plot, which he serves. With a little more effort, these authors could actually breathe life into all CPR elements of these series stories and make them wonderful and memorable beyond the exciting plots.

Fix this axiom in your mind: Character reveals plot and relationships, just as plot and relationships reveal character, and relationships reveal character and plot. This trinity is vital to the cohesiveness of your stories. They work together to unearth, connect, and layer a story. The strongest stories are the ones in which every part of the story--the characters’ role, physical descriptions, personalities, strengths and weaknesses, relationships, skills, conflicts, goals and motivation, and even settings--becomes cohesive and fits together organically. We’ve all read books in which the key aspects didn't quite merge naturally. Maybe we didn’t notice a specific issue, but we knew something was off, lacked logic, or didn’t quite fit with the rest of the story, and the imbalance frustrated us. There’s a chance you never finished reading those books. The ones that you absolutely cannot put down and that stay with you every minute of the time you’re reading them and for years afterward are the ones in which every aspect is so intricately connected that separating the threads of CPR development is difficult, even impossible.

While it should be easy to spot dead or lifeless conditions in our characters, plots and relationships, it's nowhere as simple as author would like it to be. In this three-part article, we've gone over some of the telltale scenarios that may reveal if any aspect of your CPR development is outright dead or simply lifeless, in whole or in part with the "alive" part potentially carting around the "lifeless" or "dead" elements. So often these scenarios are utilized as if they're legitimate methods in so-called CPR development--and they can't and shouldn't be. The scenarios in this article should help you pinpoint if any of your core elements are dead or lifeless.

Have you ever read a book with dead or lifeless relationships? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Happy writing!

Find out more about CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION here: http://www.writers-exchange.com/cpr/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JDYXMFQ

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Karen S. Wiesner: HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 2 (Writer's Craft Article)

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 2

Based on CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} by Karen S. Wiesner

This is the second of three posts focusing on how to spot dead or lifeless characters, plots, and relationships in your fiction

 It should be simple to spot dead or lifeless CPR conditions in our characters, plots, and relationships, I know, but it's unfortunately anything but. I feel your pain in identifying dead or lifeless CPR elements because it's a question that been with me from the very first book I wrote. With the need to identify dead or lifeless CPR development in mind, let's go over some general ways that should pinpoint whether any aspect is dead or merely lifeless. In the chapters that follow, identification will allow us to give the lacking areas either the kiss of life or a jolt of electricity. 

Poking and prodding your characters, plots, and relationships in all the compass points with sketches should exhibit some reaction one way or the other. When you start asking questions about all of these things, getting absolutely no response--beyond a blank, cadaverous stare--is clear enough. Yup, dead. Time of death? The moment of execution. (Forgive the really bad pun.)

Merely lifeless core elements, however, may show a few signs of life and that's what makes lethargy in development so hard to spot. As we said earlier, conceivably, some evidence of development can allow those areas that are at least functional to carry around the dead elements. In these cases where the book is already published and the functional elements are hoisting the dead ones in a sack over the shoulder, readers may even overlook your failure because the solid development of those one or two core elements gives the reader part of what he's seeking.

The identification of partial necrosis is almost always deeply startling to readers. There are times when I'm reading a story I'm enjoying but not in an in overwhelmed, obsessive way that I'll suddenly visualize the author's hand holding the character as if she's a puppet or a dead body, forcing a certain situation on the poor thing. That hand will move the character around in response to action, even thrusting another story puppet/dead body up against her in a contrived effort to make something happen between the two that's equally artificial, awkward, and not a little disturbing.

One aspect or another in a story like this is undeveloped or underdeveloped and, in the course of reading, I'll usually, eventually, figure out what's lacking. Maybe the main or secondary characters have no obvious signs of life, nothing that makes them unique, no legitimate personality, personal goals or motivations. A main character's conflicts as they're portrayed may not convince me she truly cares about them, has an intensely personal investment in them, or that they're cohesive with what's been set up as who this person is and what's she's all about in other aspects.

Whether the conflicts are internal or external, the story may not feel like it's actually hers. Events are randomly happening to her, and there's no personal connection to them. She's not authentically motivated to act in the face of what's happening to her. It may be easier for her to run away--and that goal at least may feel legit. When she's compelled to react, jerky clunkiness may be the result, more robotic than flesh and blood.

Also, her relationships might not seem quite realistic and deeply planted, growing enough to feel warm and realistic. Maybe she's going through the motions with these people who are part of her life, but even those most intimate ones don't go in-depth enough to spark emotion in me, as the reader. In the worst case scenario, I've read romance stories where relationships are integral to the genre yet those attachments had little or no depth, dimension, desire, or connection between two people who were supposed to be falling in love and making romantic, reading hearts swoon. If a romance story doesn't include strong, profoundly emotional relationships, it's failed on the most elementary level.

I've also read books and even series--some of them that were actually published--where the author has deigned to give a main character a first name, neglected the last, and sometimes doesn't bother with physical descriptions or details about the past nor "drive" for the future that would fully flesh out the character. Plots and conflicts (and the corresponding, crucial goals and motivations) are almost always spur of the moment, created scene by scene, no setup, no buildup, no curiosity, and certainly no tension. The relationships feel cold, stilted, off-focus, frequently with secondary characters that serve no other purpose in the story beyond being soundboards for the main character or, worse, merely bulking up the word count. Even if a minor effort has been made to plant foundational seeds of character, plot, and relationship, so often those seeds aren't developed and advanced properly or at all throughout the subsequent scenes in the book. They're buried so deep, it's not possible for them to come out to see the light of day and flourish.

In Part 3, we'll talk more about how to spot dead or lifeless CPR development.

Have you ever read a book with dead or lifeless plots? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Happy writing!

Find out more about CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION here: http://www.writers-exchange.com/cpr/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JDYXMFQ

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Karen S. Wiesner: HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 1 (Writer's Craft Article)

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 1

Based on CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} by Karen S. Wiesner

This will be the first of three posts focusing on how to spot dead or lifeless characters, plots, and relationships in your fiction.

"Confirming and declaring that someone is dead is a careful process. Check for a pulse, pupil response, and heart sounds. If a patient is in a coma, check for signs of brain death, including irreversible brain and brainstem damage, an inability to breathe on their own, and, again, a lack of pupil response. An EEG, a test that measures electrical activity in the brain, will flatline when all functions in the heart and brain stop." ~"Exactly How a Doctor Knows That Someone is Dead" by Sara Coughlin on the Refinery29 company website 

In real life, you can get to know some people easily. With others, it may take you years and an incredible amount of effort to truly get to know them and understand who they are. Characters are just the same. Some come to life with the first story spark and flesh themselves out continuously throughout all the stages of writing. Other characters refuse to come out of hiding so easily. In some ways, these characters are hiding from the writer, so it becomes that much harder for the writer to get to know them and bring them to life. These characters have barriers the author absolutely must break through in order to bring them to life.

A lot of authors ask, How do I know whether my characters are coming to life? The assumption is that, if a character is walking, talking, and moving through each scene in the book, she must be coming to life. Real, living characters and merely lifelike characters are two completely different things, especially in this age, when it’s so easy to manipulate images and facts. Authors can be holding those characters like lifeless puppets, thrusting them through the story when there's no life in them. Real, living characters are what you’re striving for because only these characters allow the readers to understand what lies behind the face presented within the story. Readers will see personality, deep issues and conflicts, goals and motivations, and amazingly natural growth and evolution. Lifelike characters are merely cardboard, and most readers will see right through the careful façade you constructed because there’s clearly nothing behind it--no personality, no growth, no true internal conflicts, response to external conflict, or deeply personal goals and motivations as a result of the problems.

If you don’t have to ask whether your characters are coming to life, it’s probably because your story is reeling through your mind in full color. As a writer, you should wake up with your characters in the morning and go to bed with them at night. In any given situation, you should know exactly what they’d be thinking and saying and doing. You see them growing and developing as they work through their conflicts and relationships, and you have a solid idea about what motivates them in any situation. It goes without saying in this best of all scenarios that your characters, their conflicts and relationships are living and breathing through you. If your critique partners, publisher, agent, and readers feel the same way, consider yourself blessed.

It’s harder to define when--and especially why--some characters don’t come to life. However, in most instances, the characters, plots, or relationships are lifeless because the author hasn’t developed them three-dimensionally enough to allow them to live and breathe. You as the writer need to create solid CPR development throughout the story. But keep in mind that both author and character need to share control of development. An author should never be so controlling that the character is too stifled by rigidity to come to life nor can an author allow the character to run amok in a story in ways that simply don’t fit. The author should give his character enough freedom to be able to emerge and develop naturally and enough discipline to keep the story logical and cohesive.

Dead CPR development sounds as easy to spot as a dead body in real life. See the quote at the beginning of this article for the medical process of determining such a state. Dead doesn't move, doesn't so much as twitch, groan, or reach for help, especially the longer it's been lying around. There's nothing there. No breath, no pulse, no warmth, conscience or *conscious*ness, let alone activity or movement that might imply something once existed, walked, and talked at any time previously. If nothing else, the analysis of your own story's core elements in the search to locate signs of life should point to either a definitive extreme in the positive or the negative or something in-between. Unfortunately, it's not always so cut and dried in telling whether or not our characters are dead or lifeless.

In some instances where this fact was (unbelievably and yet it happens) ignored, the dead elements may reek so badly, there's no question about whether you're in the presence of something dead or lifeless. Few readers will get past the first paragraph. No one wants to get near it, not even those who claim to love and care about you but are begging off desperately concerning this story. On one hand, it's a good thing if it's this obvious. At least you know, right? Logic says that, if you realize it, you can do something about it.

In other cases, only one or two of the core elements are actually dead. The living elements are "carrying around" the other one or two. (If that's not a vivid image, I don't know what is.) In theory, we should be able to recognize dead development when it's paired with something living. In that situation, can you point out what you're enjoying and connecting with? Those are the living parts. Are other potentially specific things unfocused, surreal, and maybe even unbelievable, without a pulse, a sign of life, or the proper foundation to begin building on? Those are dead or lifeless.

Easy peasy? Sigh. Not so much. In Part 2, we'll talk more about how to spot dead or lifeless CPR development.

Find out more about CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION here: http://www.writers-exchange.com/cpr/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JDYXMFQ

Have you ever read a book with dead or lifeless characters? Leave a comment to tell me about it! 

Happy writing!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner