By
A P von K’Ory (Guest Blogger)
Point 2: Test Your Protagonist’s Convictions
Normally, we avoid thinking in this way, and yet in a very real sense, to bribe someone is to pay them to go against their beliefs, right? And to extort someone is to threaten them unless they go against those beliefs. Michael Dobbs’ Francis Urquhart in “House of Cards” uses these two “means” abundantly and ruthlessly. He has no qualms about having opponents “embarrassed” or killed, or putting them in his annual list for knighthood – at a “price”.
But I digress. Back to our lessons. For example:
Take a vegan. How much would you have to pay them to forget animal rights and eat a steak (bribery)? Or, how would you need to threaten the vegan in order to coerce them into eating the steak (extortion)?
In romance, think of how much it would cost to get the loving, dedicated couple to agree to keep away from each other forever (bribery). Or, how much you would need to threaten them to get them to do this (extortion)?
What would you need to pay the pregnant teenage Catholic girl to convince her to have an abortion (bribery)? What threat could you use to get her to do it (extortion)?
You get the point. Always invent ways to bribe and extort your protagonists. No mollycoddling, like I tend to do. Kill your darling, not the flu virus. As creators of fiction, we sometimes care about our protagonists so much that we don’t want them to suffer. Maybe that’s why no script ever allows James Bond to have his crafty fingers sawed off. As a result, we creative souls literally cringe at the mere thought of putting our protagonists into difficult or dangerous situations.
But, unfortunately perhaps, keeping them safe and comfortable precisely negates what we need to let happen to them in order for our fiction to be compelling.
So what’s the worst thing you can think of happening to your protagonist, contextually, in your story? Got it? Okay, now challenge yourself: try to think of something else just as terrible, and force your protagonist to decide between the two.
Dig deep to discover your protagonist’s convictions by asking, How far will s/he go to … ? and What would it take for … ? In my Golden Shana series, the love story between Roman and Svadishana (Shana) teeters because Roman is expecting a baby with another woman. He fears that if he tells Shana this truth, he’ll never have and keep her. On the other hand, Roman is a moral person (at least in this regard) and can’t simply abandon his girlfriend and his innocent unborn baby, let alone think of an abortion. Now I need to ask myself
(a) How far will Roman go to hide the truth from Shana?
(b) What would it take for him to stand by and watch his baby grow up not knowing him, the father?
Over to you now.
(a) You as a writer could ask yourself, how far will your heroine go to find freedom?
(b) What would it take for her to choose to be buried alive?
OR:
(a) How far will Detective XYZ go to pursue justice?
(b) What would it take for the detective to commit perjury and send an innocent person to life in prison or a death sentence?
As writers we should ask ourselves: What does my protagonist believe in? What priorities does s/he have? What prejudices does s/he need to overcome? Then, put the protagonist’s convictions to the ultimate test to make their truest desires and priorities come to the surface.
(a) How far will Detective XYZ go to pursue justice?
(b) What would it take for the detective to commit perjury and send an innocent person to life in prison or a death sentence?
As writers we should ask ourselves: What does my protagonist believe in? What priorities does s/he have? What prejudices does s/he need to overcome? Then, put the protagonist’s convictions to the ultimate test to make their truest desires and priorities come to the surface.
Now
you get an insight about what Kill Your Darlings mean.
An
evening at the opera house La Scala in Milan twirled the lives of
five people into a web of intrigues, heartaches, human hunts, loss
and revenge.
Roman:
I never chased after a woman. It was always the other way around.
Then I caught a glimpse of the woman I would kneel for, at the opera,
and I didn’t even know her name. But I determined to find her if it
took me the rest of my life.
Shana:
He stood in the room with her. The frisson in the currents freaking
between them was as solid as a steel portal. The mutual force of
predator and prey blasted its way into her core ... her soul ...
Danger. Keep far away from him.
Marie:
Some men were born to rule the world; others were born to ruin it.
Roman Alastair Northcott Broughton Castell was born to do both. But
she loved him and awaited his baby.
Alyssa:
He was the lover she wouldn’t tire of. Roman had something so
damned perilous about him he was addictive. Who gets addicted to safe
and riskless? Not her.
Grieg/Phoenix:
Had His Girl interpreted that Friday night as abuse? He’d only done
what she wanted – protection of her cherished innocence.
Excerpt
What
a difference a day makes… And it
hadn’t been a day. It had been an evening
in Milan. Brief
moments of an evening. I didn’t care
about the consequences to whomever. Through my obsession with
Svadishana I became aware of the fact that I was a person. A human
being, not an almighty god, with all the baggage that comes with
being that. I too – eureka! – had a heart pumping white and red
corpuscles through my veins. Blood, not icicles.
Was
it love I felt for Svadishana? A woman I’d spoken three whiny words
– Please call me!
– to? Was it more than simple lust and desire? Did I want to
possess more than just her body?
Pondering
these questions alone was so unlike me. That woman had turned me into
an alien even unto my own self. What I felt, my inner voice said, was
more than the thrill of the hunt. More than lust, desire, need,
passion, the excitement of possession, and subjugation.
Of
course all that was part of it. But the basis or the source, the
seedbed on which all that sprouted and was growing to full blossom in
me, could well be something else.
When
I thought of her, saw her image from Milan in my mind, watched how
she moved in long smooth strides in YouTube, my brow beaded with
sweat. I couldn’t pull my gaze away from the few photos I’d
fished out of the Internet. Group photos at a family birthday or the
authorized biography of her father. Her movements in a YouTube
conference clip were springy and powerful even in their smoothness.
She exuded strength all over the place, laughing, talking,
gesticulating.
A
breath-taking beauty. Such beauty that I dared not believe it at
times.
And
brains to go with it.
In
love or not, I knew what I wanted and Svadishana was the answer. I
wanted her and would do anything short of suicide to get her. Who
knows – perhaps when it came to that as the only means available,
I’d really murder too. I didn’t in the least care about the
consequences, as long as they got me to where I wanted to get to.
Svadishana’s
arms and knickers and… heart?
What
obsession, Roman. Get back to real.
No
chance. Real was
Svadishana.
Roman
finally gets together with Shana. But he finds himself wedged between
three women and the man intent on killing him because of Shana. And
there’s the secret of Marie’s unborn baby.
Roman:
I wanted to eat all of her. Even within that fortress I longed to
erect around her to hold her captive in, to keep her away from men
not worthy of the sight of her, I’d devour her.
Shana:
Roman was deadly sex. She had no antigenic for immunity against him.
Instead she lay there on his bed, in an impossible state of sluttish
disarray, holding her breath.
Marie:
“So you didn’t bring your rich old cow with you.” The bitch was
ten years older than her, years older than Roman himself. Weren’t
men supposed to prefer younger women?
Alyssa:
She was not going to let Roman treat her like a hole in the air. He
started this triangle and she was going to make it equilateral.
Grieg/Phoenix:
His philosophy stated that peace was bondage, and war was freedom.
His Girl was his territory, and no other man’s.
Excerpt
I
picked her up and carried her like a bride. Or a sleeping child. She
nuzzled between my neck and shoulder. I kicked the door shut behind
us.
We
were both ablaze, and I needed to check that, wind it down a notch.
“Like
to lie down on the sofa and cuddle till we both slow down a bit?”
“Bed.”
Her voice vibrated against my neck.
We
left the entrance hall behind us. The flames kept on leaping.
“Overriding
my sensible decision?”
“Yes.
Bed.” Tremulous once, tremulous twice.
“Just
got me, and you want to run away with it.” I bore her past the
living room.
“Bed.”
“I’m
getting a restraining order on you.” I took the first stair, chest
tight again.
She
lifted her head off my shoulder and her Huskies sent megawatts to my
blues. Unveiled desire. My balls clenched. At this degree I risked
coming where I stood with her in my arms. I was tempted to close my
eyes and summon my control. For the first time I felt life surge
through my veins for a woman, the whole woman, not just sex with her.
Again, I experienced that powerful instinct in me to guard and
protect her, the fragile and most precious thing in my life. She had
a pull on every cell in me. Her masses of loose curls gave warm slaps
through my chinos to my hip, sending the sergeant into planning
guerrilla warfare for its freedom.
The
witch. I was hypnotized. I had to stop climbing the stairs and get my
head cleared. She was as necessary to me as the air I breathed, yet
she knocked that air straight out of my lungs. Her naked desire was
intoxicating. Insanity mingled with reality. I really had her back in
my arms. She came to me, came to my home for the first time. And
ordered Bed, not a mutual shower. She was the first and only
woman to take me to this Newland. She was my perfect balance. I’d
fallen hard and didn’t even want to get back up. It happens to the
worst of us ingrained rogue playboys.
The
Huskies still pinned me in Newland. “Skirting around the deed, are
we?”
“Protecting
my golden goddess.”
For
sheer survival, I broke the lock of our eyes and started up the
stairs again.
Golden Shana: The Untouchable (Book 3)
Roman doesn’t even want a harem. But the harem relentlessly seeks him. No sooner has Shana left Roman than Grieg/Phoenix is marking time on Roman’s door, out for a war, not a fight, over Shana. And so is Marie, whose pregnancy Roman still keeps a secret.
Roman:
I loved owning women. Then I found my woman. But she would never be
owned, not even by the gods. She left me. Still, her dangerous
admirer and I began wars over her, not merely street fisticuffs.
Shana:
Roman scares me in every way and the fear excites me. I’m
brainless in his arms, brainless just from thinking about him. He
makes me navigate so many labyrinthine passages and secret doors that
I’d never even been aware of before. My body knelt and wept for
him. My common sense made me flee from him while I could.
Marie:
I sold Roman my heart and soul. Only to realise my body had not been
consulted, and was therefore out for war.
Alyssa:
I really got all that about Roman. The super-ink indelibility of him,
the substance of him that stamped his four-figure-euro Ferragamo
Oxfords, the supernatural charisma that rocketed him all the way up
there with Lucifer. His square would never fit my round. But hope
springs eternal, right?
Grieg:
“If I have whoever your girl is, why
don’t you simply come over and take me off her or her off me?”
Roman had not reacted like a man who
had received that damning message. Over the phone, he’d sounded as
if he didn’t have a single feather ruffled. Time to start the war.
Excerpt
I
heard him change the phone to the other ear. “Castell, you’re a
kid running a billion-euro crib, you pervert.”
My
system actually waged wars for me to jump out of my skin. Control,
Castell.
“Oh,
yes. I’m about as straight as the U-bend under a sink, fuckwit. So
is this the problem? A pissing contest based on having some beef
about your wallet being a little anorexic in comparison? Have I got
that bracketed?” I heard him swallow again. I decided on a blind
knock on that, although for all I knew he was drinking water. “By
the way, I’d ease up on the drink. Otherwise you won’t manage to
solve the square root of bugger all, let alone remember if you have
any other name but Sggirb.”
“I
know you right up to your fucking perve room, Castell. I delivered
the CD—had the CD delivered – right into your fucking office,
practically into your hands. You know nothing about me. So you better
watch your smart mouth.”
“Ah,
you thought you’d simply storm the Bastille that’s my home and be
discreet about it, then slink into my office building and show me the
dot over the i that amounts to your balls? You’re right, I know
nothing about you. You’re not even in my periphery, private or
public.”
“I’m
not a ball of yarn to your kitten, so watch your fucking mouth,
Castell!”
Just
to keep him put off his stroke, “Who would you say has all the
tools for annihilation, fuckwit, the kitten or the yarn?”
“You’re
lucky I’m—”
“Luck
is basically mythical. Reality is called chance. How about we
meet?”
He
said nothing.
Not
good, because now that I was screwing him hard, I needed to keep up
the pace. So I said, “You could make it your mud hole or you could
haul your arse back here to my city. Then we roll up our sleeves, or
whisk off our T-shirts. Then we start doing a little tribute to
Muhammad Ali out in the Congo with Joe Frazier.”
He
said nothing. I heard him swallow at intervals during the silence.
“I’m rapt with attention, fuckwit Sggirb, so let’s have a date
and then – to quote your countryman –you are an American –
float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
“You
think you’re so fucking cool…” He rumbled the word out long:
Coooooollll…
“Oh,
I don’t just think it.”
“Just
keep your hands off her, Castell. Keep your hands off My Girl!”
“If
I have whoever your girl is, why don’t you simply come over and
take me off her or her off me?” I paused for a reply, none came.
“Or is this the sheep being docile until they get utterly
famished?” Another pause. Silence, so I continued, “You sound
like you wouldn’t find a clitoris if you were armed with a compass,
street map and a fucking NASA telescope.”
“You
can’t intimidate me, Castell.”
Which
only exposed to me the wound I’d ripped open in him. Time to add
chilli.
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Untouchable PB:
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1 comment:
Dear A P - welcome back to Beyond Romance! You have certainly practiced your own advice in the Shana trilogy. Your characters face incredibly hard choices.
Hope the tour goes really well!
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