Tag Archives: Character’s Emotional Throughline

The Most Useful Thing I’ve Learned (So Far) About Writing a Sequel

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For the past several months—or possibly the past several centuries; it’s sort of hard to tell—I’ve been writing the second book in a trilogy. If you’re wondering whether writing a sequel is easier or more difficult than writing a stand-alone novel, I am here to tell you with complete confidence that I have no idea. The only thing I know for sure is that no book comes easy, and this one hasn’t been much of an exception.

To be fair, writing a sequel does have its perks. When I sat down to write the first draft, I already knew my main characters and their world. I was intimately acquainted with everyone’s personality quirks, backstories, neuroses, and food allergies. I didn’t have to worry about figuring out the story’s magic system, since I’d already hashed that out in the first book, and I knew exactly how long it would take my characters to travel cross-country via train, horse-drawn carriage, and pirate ship. I even knew where my plot was headed, since I’d done my best to set my characters up for further adventures at the end of book one.

Emotionally, however, I was stumped.

I mean, my emotions were okay—or at least as okay as the emotions of a debut author writing a second book under contract can possibly be. But at the end of book one, I’d brought Hilary, my protagonist, to a stable and happy emotional place. She couldn’t remain stable and happy all throughout the sequel, could she? No; that would be boring, and it wouldn’t give readers a reason to care about her adventures. Would I have to tear Hilary down again? Would I have to undo all the emotional strength she’d built up in the first book? That didn’t seem right, either; I didn’t want to write the same story twice or cancel out everything good that had happened in the series’ first installment. Just as I’d designed the plot of book two to build and expand on the events of book one, I wanted my characters’ emotions to build and expand in a natural way. But I had no idea how to accomplish this.

At this point, for probably the millionth time, the superheroic community of Vermont College students and alums came to my rescue. Even though I’m no longer a student, I still rely on my MFA program friends to offer smart perspectives on the craft problems I’m wrestling with, so I handed off the question to them. “Hey,” I said (more or less), “I’m working on this sequel, and I have no idea what to do with my characters’ emotions. Should I give them something new to struggle with? Should they just repeat the same old struggle they overcame at the end of book one? Can I please, please, please write a book in which no one has any emotions at all? ‘Cause that would be much easier.”

I got lots of great responses, but there were two in particular that helped me see the emotional trajectories of multi-book series in a new and really helpful way. Val Howlett mentioned that in some of her favorite series, the characters’ emotional struggles aren’t fully resolved at the end of each book. Take the Harry Potter series as a familiar example: Harry is constantly wrestling with the loss of his parents, though that wrestling match takes a different form in each of the seven books. “In all the series I’ve loved,” Val said, “there were these emotional needs that were big enough to grow and shift, but remained at the heart of the series.” In other words, a good series has an emotional core that runs through each of its books. That emotional core is part of the connective tissue that holds all the books together and unites them as a larger work.

Val’s response helped me decide that I needed to return to the core of Hilary’s emotional struggle in book one—her desire to earn her dad’s respect—but I still wasn’t sure how to do that without making my sequel repetitive. Jessica Leader gave me a great solution, though, when she said, “When the author pans back to show the reader and the character the bigger problem, it mirrors the process of maturation: at first, you can only see your world, but gradually, you gain the ability to think about your place in it, and then the world itself. So there’s built-in character development at the ready!”

That’s when it clicked for me: Each book in my series could focus on the same core emotion, but it could look at that emotion in increasingly broad contexts. If the emotional core of my series was Hilary’s desire for respect, maybe she’d search for that respect first (in book one) from her family, then (in book two) from her immediate community, and finally (in book three) from the community at large—and from herself.

This concept of an emotional core that expands in scope from one book to the next has been incredibly helpful to me as I structure my series. I know I’ll be able to apply it to future stories, and I hope it’s useful to other writers, too. Most of all, though, it reminds me that a writing community is priceless, and that when we don’t have the answer to a tough writing problem, it’s not the end of the world. It’s probably just time to start brainstorming with our friends.

Creating Story in Non-fiction Narrative

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cover for Tanaka's Earthquake!

 

So far this week, we’ve been talking about how to create empathy in narrative non-fiction through well chosen sensory details. But there’s more to the story. In non-fiction, just as in fiction, you have to find a through line. Through line comes from the frame you set for the character’s story, is augmented by the balance of summary and event, and builds on hope and disappointment toward the character’s goal.  

 

Framing Your Narrative

I was lucky enough this January to be in the audience at Vermont College of Fine Arts, when author Shelley Tanaka unveiled photos from her book A Day that Changed America, Earthquake! With each photo came a heart wrenching tale about the individuals whose lives were turned upside down that April day. And it reminded me that a well crafted non-fiction book can make true story as gripping as any piece of fiction.

Like the sinking of the Titanic, this historical event especially captures our imaginations. And while there might be many reasons, including what was happening historically, socially and culturally at the time, the bottom line is, it’s the humanness of the tragedy that lingers. We all yearn to be safe, to have our dreams fulfilled. And it’s the dashing of these dreams and the struggle to reclaim them, which creates great narrative.

As Robert Owen Butler writes in From Where You Dream, “We are the yearning creatures of this planet.” Find what your character yearns for, even in non-fiction, and you have your story. To bring the idea of empathy back in, yearning ties us empathically to others, as author Jeremy Rifkin finds in The Empathic Civilization, because our human capacity to empathize is not only emotional, but an ability that is hard wired into our neurological pathways. You might say we feel empathy (and thus yearning) in our very bones.

The writer’s task, then, is to tap into this yearning to frame his story. In books such as Tanaka’s, and those mentioned earlier by Levinson and Barton, the author’s stories, and thus the through line, were framed by events, the events offering a beginning, middle and end to the human journey set within its borders. But if you’re writing a book larger in scope, such as a biography, the challenge is to unearth a through line that creates its own frame. And that’s a matter of carefully sluicing through, and summarizing, your research, then balancing your findings with your character’s emotions.  

 

Research Rollercoaster

It’s tempting when you research non-fiction to want to use every bit. You may end up with fabulous first hand interviews, letters, diaries, other biographies, newspaper articles, and historical accounts of the times. But you have to then carve away at your findings to reveal those points that relate to the story happening to your character.

 

Picture of Rising Action

Emotional Though Line

When I was writing the Scholastic biography Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia I had my story when I found this through line. Catherine was born Sophie in a small German principality. She wanted to please her mother, who raised her to marry well. Marrying well, which meant marrying into a ruling class, became her own goal (her yearning) as she grew.

But Sophie’s hopes were dashed early in life when she was disfigured by a long illness. What future husband would want a disfigured woman? Worse, her panicked mother summoned the executioner, the only one who could fashion Sophie a body cast to help straighten her crooked spine. The active girl had to wear this disabling cast for months, if not years. But it was during this time that she studied and read, and built the intellect that would later help her rule Russia.

And so it went. When, at age 15, a now straight-backed Sophie was summoned to Russia as a possible bride for heir to the throne, her cousin Peter, she made sure she pleased Empress Elizabeth and the Russian people. Sophie’s plain looks were a downfall, but her intelligence a plus. Later, after she’d pleased the Empress, been christened Catherine, and married Peter, her two children—born from liaisons with other men—nearly did her in. (Catherine’s internal struggle also played a huge role in her story since, as she struggled to understand herself, she could be her own worst enemy.)

The list of ups and downs grew. Catherine was locked away after childbirth and feared imprisonment. She seized the throne from her husband and perhaps arranged for his murder. Later, as Empress, she gave up a desire to be an enlightened ruler when a peasant uprising threatened her power. So, while her short term goals changed, Sophie, now Catherine the Great, never lost sight of her yearning to rule. And each of these elements was important to the overall thread of her story goal. In writing her biography, what didn’t fit in moving her to this goal, had to be left out.

 

High Tide photo sand and tide

Find what your character yearns for in your non-fiction narrative. Frame you story through events or by using your character’s emotional through line. Imagine your through line as an incoming tide, each wave cresting and falling like your character’s inner waves of hope and disappointment, hope and disappointment. These waves—in ever increasing intensity—will create your story. Until finally, at high tide, your character faces her crisis moment. Crisis leading, as we know, to resolution, and the smooth sand as the tide pulls back.

                                          –zu vincent