F- F is For Failure

     Failure is necessary in good fiction. If you get the sense your characters are strolling down the road of life with flowers being tossed in their path, something is wrong. Your character's journey should feel like trying to navigate a mountain road in the middle of a severe thunderstorm, while carrying a lightning rod and trying avoid the lightning.

     Let's think of a new character. We'll call him Jack--because all good male leads are called Jack--and say that he's 30 years old, unmarried, and captain of an Angerthan-Class star-frigate. Yeah, I right sci-fi, if you didn't get the memo... Jack is in love with a girl. We'll call this girl Jill.

     Jack is stationed in the LL Sector of the Terra Realm, a couple lightyears away from where Jill is, living on Civilization's Jewel. Now how would the story be if Jack's tour got over, he got back to Civ's Jewel, found Jill, asked her to marry him, and she said yes?

     That would be a boring story. So, for the sake of Conflict (check out Day 3 of the challenge), we'll throw in some space pirates, because pirates are good (if you get the reference, you are awesome). These space pirates attack the frigate just as they're about to make the jump home.

     Failure #1: Just as Jack was about to head home and be reunited with his girl, Conflict rears it's beautiful head and says: "Sorry, pal, not just yet. I think the author wants you to have your soul ripped to shreds by forcing you through all sorts of awful situations go on some sort of inner journey or something." We're going to be particularly evil to Jack and have the attack of the pirates throw the worm-core calibrations off, meaning that when they do make the jump, they land on the wrong side of town.

    Through a tragic series of events, Jack is forced to fail and fail and fail yet again, until about 2/3 of the way through the book, where he starts to succeed. Now, I'm not saying he can have no success before this point, but I am saying that the major goals should not be accomplished yet. As you near the home stretch, you can start to build towards Jack's success at his goals. A little victory here, a little victory there, until--finally--Jack kicks the Big Bad in the teeth.

     If you want a great example of this--certainly better than the one I contrived in the space of 30 seconds--go on Netflix and start watching Supernatural. I swear I have no affiliation with Eric Kripke, but there is no show I have seen that weaves a better plot. Watch it with a a writer's eye and notice how well the characters arc, how they are forced through failure time and time again, and how everything builds perfectly to where they kick the Big Bad's teeth in. For the sake of spoilers, I won't say who it is. I'll only say that Yellow-Eyes is small potatoes.

     Seriously, watch Supernatural. That show taught me a lot about writing good arcs.