The Summer of Writing workshops are approaching! In the run-up to the summer workshops in August & September, I'm posting a writing skill each fortnight – plenty of different stuff for you to play with fresh angles, develop your writing, and whet your appetite for the workshops. Each of the skills connects with one of the Summer of Writing workshops and I'll explain the aspect of writing it’s developing at the end of the post each time.
This week's skill is Same Act, Different Reasons, playing with character actions and motivations – and how those motivations shape the action. This is a two-parter, so if you have twenty minutes to spare, start with Part One. If you can only snatch ten minutes from the Jaws of Time, skip merrily ahead to Part Two.
Part One: Listing motivations
List exercises are always brilliant for coming up with ideas, because they take the pressure off the individual idea. As a rule of thumb, whatever you're trying to think of, whenever you can't come up with one, come up with twenty! In this list, you're going to come up with motivations: all the different reasons a person might do a thing.
Either give yourself ten minutes for this or write the numbers 1–20 down the side of a page. Some people prefer a time limit; some people find time limits stress them out and prefer a quota. You choose whatever suits you best. Then write a list of motivations. For example,
- for love
- to show off
- as revenge
- to cover someone else's mistake
- out of laziness
It's fine to write big general motivations, eg "for love", "for money". Then, if you can, break those down into more specific motivations, each its own item in the list. Eg "for money" could be...
- to pay basic necessities
- to help a struggling friend / family member
- to repay a debt
- to keep up social appearances
- to fund a gambling habit
- to give to a charity
and so on. The more motivations you write, the more possibilities you see!
Part Two: Same Act, Different Reasons
The central action is simple enough: your character is going to sing a song in front of people. That could be around a fire with friends, in a folk-song type pub, at a formal historical gathering (Austen / Poldark style), out busking, whatever appeals to you. You don't need to have an existing character for this; they can simply emerge out of the action and through the writing.
Yu're going to write the same central action twice over, with the same character, each time with a different motivation. If you did Part One, you'll have your own list of motivations to refer to. If you didn't, here are some suggestions:
- for love
- to show off
- as revenge
- to cover for someone else's mistake
- out of laziness
- to repay a debt
- to keep up social appearances
Pick two motivations that contrast very strongly for you. If you're doing this as a ten-minuter, set yourself a timer, five minutes for each piece. And if you'd like an extra challenge, then don't give the character's internal thoughts to explain their motivation: only describe their and others' actions and reactions, to show the motivation.
Why this skill?
This skill links with the Page Turners workshop on 12 August. What keeps a story gripping, whether it's pacy genre fiction or slow-burn literary fiction, isn't just the drama of the events: it's the underlying emotions and motivations, through the story as a whole and in every scene, on every page. Something as small as arranging a vase of flowers can become intensely gripping, depending on the character's emotions about it and motivations for it. By playing with the identical action and differing motivations, you can see how much that shapes the impact and engagement of the scene. If you take the extra challenge, you're developing another aspect of this skill as well: emotions and motivations affect the reader much more when you don't name them, but instead show it happening.
You can read more about all the workshops and book your places here. (They're filling up fast and several are full / almost full, so do be quick if you want a place.) There's also a new skill each fortnight, so you can subscribe to the mailing list on the side or at the bottom of the post.
The full list of Summer of Writing workshops is...
- Unravelling Secrets (Saturday 5 August): How to balance suspense, secrets, and clues in thrillers, mysteries, and crime fiction
- Page Turners (Saturday 12 August): How to map out your novel and every scene to keep the reader engrossed
- Planning a Novel (Saturday 19 August): Hands-on practical strategies to manage the process of planning a novel, whether you’re starting from scratch or reworking raw draft
- Narrative Voice (Saturday 26 August): Using a character’s voice to narrate the story, playing with their limits, and keeping the story vivid
- The Creative Well (Saturday 2 September): Playful challenging activities based on top research to create new ideas and explore the creative process
Read more details about the Summer of Writing workshops and book your places here.
