Wednesday Writing Workout: Your Character's Internal and External Quest

Last Friday, I blogged about the revision retreat I recently attended led by award-winning authors Julia Durango and Linda Sue Park. Today's Wednesday Writing Workout is a follow-up to that post. So if you haven't read it yet, please do so now. I also recommend you read this blog post by teacher Keely Hutton at Writer's Dojo, in which she has her students identify the main character's internal and external quests in a recent Disney movie.

Welcome back! Now you're ready for Step 1 of today's Wednesday Writing Workout:
---Take one of your own works-in-progress and document your main character's: 

• External Quest: what he wants to accomplish (the plot objective) and
• Internal Quest: what he needs emotionally (this drives the character's emotional growth/change) 

Is this harder than you expected? Here's one more example, shared by Linda Sue Park at the Revision Retreat and in The Craft & Business of Writing: Essential Tools for Writing Success (Writer's Digest Books). Speaking of Tree-Ear, the main character of her Newbery-winning novel, A Single Shard, Linda Sue says: "Tree-ear's external quest is to find a way to make celadon pottery. His internal quest is to find a place where he truly belongs."

Okay, now for Step 2:
---Look at the first ten pages of your work-in-progress (or the entire manuscript if you're working on a picture book). Divide the pages into scenes. For each scene, ask yourself:

Does my main character make progress toward and/or face impediments to one or both of the quests?

If the answer is "no," you need to either revise the scene or re-examine your character's quests.

Repeat this step for the next ten pages and continue working your way through until you've analyzed the entire manuscript.

Optional Step 3:
---Remember the one-sentence synopsis Jill blogged about 2 weeks ago? Well, one way to come up with yours is to look at your main character's internal and external quests. Here, for example, is the summary of A Single Shard that appears on the book's copyright page: 

"Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potters' village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself."

This synopsis explicitly states Tree-ear's external quest while hinting at his internal quest by mentioning he's a homeless orphan. See if you can do the same for your WIP: craft a one-sentence summary that incorporates your character's external quest and, if possible, hints at his internal quest.

By the way, a book's one-sentence synopsis is very much like a "logline" used to describe a movie. For some helpful tips on writing loglines (including examples from well-known films), see How to Write a Logline at Cracking Yarns, and the follow-up post, How to Write Better Loglines.  

In case you're wondering, I found the following logline at Write2Reel for the movie Keely Hutton discussed with her students:

A video game villain wants to be a hero and sets out to fulfill his dream, but his quest brings havoc to the whole arcade where he lives. 

This incorporates the very external quest Kelly's students identified! 

Don't forget--today is the last day to enter our Book Giveaway! You could win an autographed copy of Michelle Markel’s and Melissa Sweet’s Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 (Balzer and Bray).

Happy writing!
Carmela

Wednesday Writing Workout: One-Sentence Synopsis

Anybody who has been in one of my workshops knows what a fanatic I am for the one-sentence synopsis. If you don't know what I'm talking about, take a look at the title page of (almost) any book for kids. See the sentence that sums up the entire story? Not much to it, is there? Should be easy to write one, then, right? Um...

Sometimes called an elevator pitch – because if you find yourself in an elevator with an editor and s/he asks what you're working on, you don't want to ramble on like a doofus (she said from experience) – the one-sentence synopsis is also an excellent tool for keeping your story on track during the writing process.

Oh, how many times my stories – especially my rhyming stories – go off in a direction I hadn't intended. When a story veers out of control, I know it's time to back up the truck and ask myself one simple question:

What is this story really about?

Crafting a one-sentence synopsis has saved my bacon time and again. It cuts to the heart of the story, clarifies your main character's motivation, and illuminates the path from a story's beginning to its end.

So give it a try. Write a one-sentence synopsis for your work in progress.

Include:

1.  Your main character's name.

2.  What it is s/he is struggling with.

3.  What's at stake for your MC (if not readily apparent).

4.  What s/he does to reach her goal or overcome the problem (if needed).

Here's an example from one of my 2014 books, I Am Cow, Hear Me Moo! (Dial):

Nadine, a braggy cow, gets into hilarious trouble when, to save face, she's forced to lead her friends on a nighttime hike through the spooky woods.

That probably isn't what will be on the finished book's title page, but it's my one-sentence synopsis of this story. It pretty much tells you everything you need to know in deciding whether to read it or replace it on the shelf.

If you care to, go ahead and put your synopsis into the comment section, I'd love to see what you're working on.

Good luck! And don't forget to enter our giveaway for a chance to win Tamera Wissinger's Gone Fishin'. Hurry! Today's the last day.

Jill Esbaum