The Writer’s Journey, Series #3, Post 1 of 5, Polarity

What is Polarity?

Polarity is a certain type of tension that comes from having two opposing forces constantly pulling or pushing each other throughout the story.  The Movie Megamind is a perfect example of the ways in which polarity can be used to bring tension to a story.

At first, we have Metro Man, who is polarized as a “good guy,” and Megamind, who is polarized as a “bad guy”.  Then Megamind is suddenly successful in overthrowing Metro Man and the polarity is thrown completely off-balance as the bad guy gains control of Metro City.  At first, it’s all fun and games, but then Megamind gets bored and decides to create a new good guy to re-establish the balanced polarized tension.  However, Titan, the hero Megamind creates, turns out to be more of a bad guy than Megamind.  He defeats Megamind and takes over the city.  Now the polarity is overbalanced in one direction.  When Megamind decides to come back and challenge Titan to heroically save the city, Megamind shifts his polarity from “bad” to “good” and restores the polarized balance.

The Rules of Polarity

1. Opposites Attract – Megamind and Metro Man attract each other’s attention in their battles for control of Metro City
2. Polarized Conflict Attracts the Audience – The audience is drawn in by the conflict between Megamind and Metro Man
3. Polarity Creates Suspense – The audience is in suspense because of the tension in the conflict
4. Polarity Can Reverse Itself – Megamind goes from “bad guy” to “good guy”
5. Reversals of Fortune – Megamind goes from the one who is constantly losing to the one who always wins

Polarity and Balance

The single most important thing about polarity is that it stays balanced.  If one character in the pair begins moving toward the other side, the rest of the characters, or the scenery, or the plot, or the story itself must somehow balance out the other side of the polarity in order to maintain polarized tension.

This does not have to apply to “good” and “bad”.  It could also apply to “selfless” and “selfish” or “physical” and “mental” or “emotionally receptive” and “emotionally distant”.  Any pair of opposing character traits can be used to create polarized tension.  They can be applied to characters or plot devices or to the world where the story takes place.

How to Use Polarity

Polarity will inevitably appear anywhere there is tension.  You can insert extra polarity if you want, or you can use the polarity that appears naturally in your characters and your story to help make the story more tense, create more suspense, and draw your audience in deeper.

Want to know more about Polarity?

Check out Chris Vogler‘s Book, The Writer’s Journey Mythic Structure for Writers

Coming Soon – The Writer’s Journey, Series #3, Post 2 of 5, Catharsis

Writer, Killer, Character, Reader

Today I had lunch with a good friend who had just finished rereading the manuscript I’ve been working on.  She loved nearly all of it and when she did make suggestions about what to change, she was so passionate about them, I knew I had written something that connected to her on an emotional level.  She is as excited about this story as I am, if not more.

So where’s the ‘but’?  Well, it’s here:  The things that need to change the most are all related to the depth of the characters and making it feel like they are fully-rounded people instead of stereotypes.  The more we talked about the experiences these characters were having and the emotions that needed to be shown, the more I realized I had cheated my characters.

You can’t write a depressed or insecure character unless you can grasp the feeling of depression or insecurity within yourself and describe it in maximum detail.  This usually means dredging up painful memories and past experiences, reshaping them into the experiences of your characters, and then living those new experiences with your character moment by moment, recording everything that happens.  It’s one part acting, one part journalism, and one part creative fiction.

I think that in all good fiction someone is always in some kind of pain in every scene, whether it’s a life-threatening wound, or unrequited love.  Someone has to be hurting about something.  I cheated my characters in that I hadn’t been willing to write the painful emotions, and thus I had cheated them out of fully living.

I continued mulling this over all afternoon and into the evening and tried to start pulling up some of those memories of some of those experiences so that I could start really getting into the hearts of my characters instead of just inside their heads, and I hit a block.  It felt like I was killing something in the process of my catharsis, and at first I thought it was the earlier version of my characters (out with the old and in with the new), but the more I considered every angle, the more I felt that this feeling of death had nothing to do with my characters and everything to do with me.

You see, in order to get back into those old memories of mine, I first have to break through the psychological wall I’ve put up to protect myself from those memories.  I don’t need to go leaping headlong into some painful feeling, but I do have to be willing to at least dip my toes in to remind myself what temperature the water is, and even that much can be difficult.

And here is the incredible philosophical discovery I arrived at:  When I write in such a way that I take pieces of my deepest soul, where I locked away all those most painful memories, and display those emotions in profound detail in my characters, readers will connect to that.  In a way, it’s like my readers and I will have connected to each other through my characters and the emotions we all share among ourselves.  Isn’t that amazing?

It’s one thing to teach a class and be at the front of a crowd, giving instruction in what is actually a rather distant relationship.  It’s another thing entirely to be the one a reader connects to when she is curled up in her bed, at home with the flu, enjoying the story you’ve created.  That scenario of the relationship between reader and writer is so much more intimate, in its own way, because of the emotional closeness.  Physical distance means nothing.  Having that emotion spread out before you in painstaking detail means everything.

And now I want to go back through my manuscript and edit for emotional impact, make sure that every sentence, every moment, every letter, packs a tense punch to the emotional stomach of every reader.  So, I will leave you with these thoughts and go type some more on something that I hope will one day connect to readers all over the world.

Reflecting on the Journey

I am about two-thirds of the way through editing my manuscript and teachers have to start back for the new school year this Friday.  Considering how I’m ripping pieces of this manuscript apart at the seams and then sewing it back together with new pieces here and there, I’m really not thinking this is going to get finished before Friday.  That has me worried.  I’m going to have very little time and energy for editing, or even writing, once the school year starts.  My focus is going to have to be on the job that’s actually paying me instead of on the job that I hope will someday pay me.  So, I’m kind of bummed.  The good news is my manuscript is the strongest it’s ever been.

I was thinking back on my “journey as a writer”, and how it started out by my writing pulling me, and how it’s come to a point where I’m pushing my writing on.  There was a moment about a year ago, where I decided that I was going to be willing to spend money on writing, just like I spent money on college for my teaching career.  I decided that I was going to look at writing like a career instead of a hobby.  That was when I bought my first book on writing: How to Grow a Novel by Sol Stein.  I’ve collected a few more since then.  Following some advice from the 2010 Guide to Literary Agents, I started this blog, and got a twitter, in an attempt to start a platform, without fully understanding what a “platform” is supposed to be.  Now I’m pretty sure it’s got something to do with marketing yourself and turning you as an author into a brand along with the books you write.  I joined the American Independent Writers and attended their annual conference last spring.  This was my first writing conference ever, and it was also where I met an agent who requested the first three chapters of the manuscript I’m two-thirds done editing.

Today, I’m deciding that I’m in this for the long-haul.  I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I was fourteen.  From that point, it took seven years of learning and training before I started teaching.  I knew I wanted to write as a career when I was twenty-two.  From that point, I need to give it at least seven years of solid effort before I even think about giving up.  Probably eight or ten, because now I have a job and a husband and sooner or later I’ll have kids.

So, new goals:  Finish polishing this manuscript by December 31, 2010.  Send the first three chapters of this manuscript to the agent who requested them by January 31, 2011.

And, challenge goals:  Finish polishing this manuscript by October 31, 2010.  Send the first three chapters of this manuscript to the agent who requested them by November 1, 2010.