Posts by Susan DeFreitas

“Okay, but Why Do They Want It?” — 3 Questions All Novelists Should Ask About Their Protagonist’s Goal

By Susan DeFreitas / October 28, 2024 /

If you’re a fiction writer, you have no doubt heard of the creative writing rule that your protagonist has to want something in the story, even if, as Kurt Vonnegut  put it, “It’s only a glass of water.” (though Vonnegut actually said that of every CHARACTER in your story, not just the protagonist, has to want something, and that’s good advice as well—It’s difficult to write compelling scenes if you don’t actually understand the agenda of each person involved).

But when it comes to the protagonist’s goal in a novel, we’re really not just talking about wanting a glass of water—that’s a goal that’s too easily achieved (in most situations, at least). We’re talking about a goal big enough, and difficult enough to achieve, that it will take the entire story for this character to either achieve that goal or give it their very best shot and fail to.

For this reason, the protagonist’s goal is actually a key structural element in long-form storytelling. If the character achieves the goal too early, the reader will get the signal that the story is essentially done, and now there’s just some writerly wrap up to be done.

And if that character really doesn’t have a goal they’re trying to achieve at all, the story just won’t feel like a story, as far as your reader is concerned.

But there’s a deeper element to this aspect of fictional craft that’s not nearly as widely discussed, which is why your protagonist wants what they want in the first place.

What in my protagonist’s past led them to desire this goal?

Whatever your protagonist wants enough to spend a whole novel pursuing, their motivation to achieve it probably lies somewhere in their past: and while your readers probably actually don’t need to know half the things you worked out on that super-involved character development worksheet you downloaded from one writing authority or another on the internet, they DO need to know this.

Which is to say, whatever it is in your protagonist’s past led them to fixate on this particular goal, it’s essential backstory: Meaning, it’s backstory you want to find some (elegant, invisible, natural) way to integrate into your story as it’s unfolding. (There are many different techniques for achieving this, many of which I teach in my self-paced course Voice and Vision—so don’t let anyone convince you that backstory is bad and simply should not be included in your story at all—in fact, story without backstory tends to feel meaningless from the reader’s POV).

Why does this goal matter so much to my protagonist?

This question tends to follow directly on with the last.

And when I ask why this goal matters so much to your protagonist, I’m talking about mattering in a way that has a strong emotional charge, because this is what will make the goal feel like it matters to the reader as well—and, as a consequence, charge each inch of progress toward achieving that goal with meaning and emotion as well, while making each setback in that same quest feel like a real bummer.

“Getting the gold” or “stealing a million dollars” is a sort of classic protagonist’s goal, one we’ve seen in countless heist stories and thrillers. It’s an excellent goal, because […]

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Heart of Darkness: Depth and Meaning in Fiction

By Susan DeFreitas / April 29, 2024 /

There are people, I imagine, satisfied to write the sort of stories that provide no more than a few hours distraction from the difficult bits of being alive.

I cast no shade upon them, truly. Those difficult bits can be difficult indeed, and we all need an escape hatch at times—the mental equivalent of comfort food.

But speaking for myself, I strive to create the sort of stories that have had the most impact on me as a person—the sorts of stories that have changed the way I see the world, and expanded the borders of my heart.

I think these are the sorts of stories that make the world a better place—the sorts of stories that change it, one person at a time.

And one of the things, I’ve found, that makes for stories like that is darkness.

No, I don’t mean darkness as in work that touches on or flirts with horror (“dark speculative fiction”). Nor do I mean it in the way I’m gesturing to in the title of this post, by referencing Joseph Conrad’s take on Africa, “the Dark Continent,” and her variously melanated peoples.

When I use the term darkness here, I mean story elements with a negative charge—sorrowful, traumatic, difficult, unjust—reflecting issues that aren’t generally out in the open in society. Negatively charged issues and experiences that are generally hidden away from view.

As both a writer and a book coach, I’ve found that touching on these sorts of issues tends to add a sense of depth and meaning to a story—a sense that not only is this an entertaining story, it has something to say.

Bringing harm out of the shadows and into the light can enlarge the reader’s understanding of the world. And if the reader has experienced this sort of harm themselves, your doing so can make them feel seen in a way that’s powerful—even healing.

Really, haven’t we all been touched by darkness of some sort? And haven’t we all found insight and catharsis in the form of stories?

This is a key component of what I think of as “story medicine”: fiction’s potential to heal and make whole. Not because the author has all the answers, but because she’s willing to see what others look away from.

Here are four key questions for creating a greater sense of depth and meaning in a novel:

1. What darkness lies in the backstory?

Your protagonist has a character arc, and therefore some internal issue in their life at the beginning of the story—a “problem in need of fixing” in the language of Save the Cat.

So: What led your protagonist to develop that internal issue, that problem on the inside, that skewed their way of seeing the world?

Chances are, they didn’t just emerge from the womb that way—there was some sharp corner in their past that led them to believe, for example, that they can’t speak up for themselves, or will never be as great as their dad, or will crash and burn in a spectacular fashion if they dare to pursue their dreams.

Story coach Lisa Cron considers it so important to understand that development in your protagonist’s past that she recommends actually writing out the scene in which that internal issue was established and including that scene in your novel.

I don’t […]

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Three Critical Questions for Filling in Plot Holes

By Susan DeFreitas / October 6, 2023 /

Recently, I did a little something with a client that felt like magic.

Or, let’s say, I did something that seemed pretty normal for me, but seemed to strike my client as magic: I helped her fill in a gap in the plot of her novel in a way that struck her as just exactly right, and in a way that was totally in tune with her own vision for her novel.

At which point she actually stopped me and said, “Hey, can you break down how you did that? I want to understand the process here.”

So: How exactly do you fill in plot holes in a novel?

After all, there are many different ways you could fill in that spot in the story you’re still a little fuzzy about. What makes one option superior to another? And what sort of process tends to yield that “just exactly right” solution?

Perhaps in the first version of our novel—the one that’s either in the outlining stage or a rather drafty first draft—you’ve got a bit of a mushy part in the middle. Meaning, you know what happens leading up to that point, and you know what has to happen afterward, but you’re just a bit vague, or just a bit dissatisfied, with what happens in the middle.

Let’s say it’s a historical novel, the story of an upper-class young man—I’ll call him Alfred—living in England in the 1860s. As the story starts, we learn that he’s been hopelessly in love with his best friend from boarding school, and they’re getting ready to part ways as this friend—I’ll call him Oscar—goes off to serve in the armed forces in India, which is currently under British rule. At the last moment, Alfred dares to confess his feelings for Oscar, but Oscar acts as if he has not heard, and heads off on his steamer without acknowledging that vulnerable confession.

Alfred is heartbroken, but he knows it’s probably for the best—if his father knew he was gay, he’d disown him. So Alfred goes to work with his dad in managing the family textile factories, and does his best to toe the (respectable, traditional) line. But inside, Alfred is dying—not just because Oscar is gone, and possibly in mortal danger, but because Alfred knows the conditions in his father’s factories are deplorable, and feels himself to be in moral jeopardy in taking over their management, as his father intends.

So Alfred takes to drink, and to seedy underworld liaisons—but along the way, he discovers that he loves the theater, and decides to buy one, and to become its proprietor. His father is incensed, and attempts to block the purchase, but an eccentric great-aunt intervenes—it’s a historic theater, and she thinks it would be a shame for it to be razed, as the city intends, and she never liked her brother much anyway.

Then Oscar returns from India and confesses his feelings for Alfred. And the two of them live HEA with all of Oscar’s wonderful, colorful theater friends.

That could be a fun story but…there are some definite gaps in the plot as it stands.

First: If Alfred was so afraid of his father’s disapproval when the story started, what gave him the nerve to stand up to his dad by saying […]

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Your Story Is Amazing. But Does It Actually Make Sense?

By Susan DeFreitas / March 20, 2023 /

As novelists, we work hard on our stories, and as a consequence, we usually fall in love with them a little.

I think that’s one of the reasons it can be hard to see the glaring issues in those stories from our reader’s point of view.

One of the most common ways that I see otherwise excellent manuscripts go astray is in the ways that the characters actually make decisions or take actions (or in the ways that these things are communicated to the reader).

These are issues with the story logic, and they can hide in plain sight in your novel.

Before I get to some of these nuances, though, let’s revisit the most basic thing, as far as this side of your novel goes, and it’s the fact that your protagonist must have a goal in your novel.

Here’s why the protagonist’s goal is so important:

  • It imparts the story with a sense of cohesion, the sense of being about
  • The story is about the protagonist’s quest to figure out/find/achieve X. Meaning, there may be many different episodes or incidents or set changes or characters who come and go, but the thing that ties the whole story together is X.

  • It contributes to narrative momentum
  • Narrative momentum is generated when the reader is compelled to turn the pages in order to see what happens next. The quest for the protagonist’s goal is a natural source of narrative tension: We keep turning the pages because want to see whether or not they will achieve it.

  • It reflects reality
  • As human beings, we never do anything without having some sort of agenda or goal: even when we’re chatting up our next door neighbor at the coffee shop, we’re probably  seeking to strengthen neighborly ties (or even seeing if we can learn anything about the strange car we saw parked in front of their house last night). This means that your protagonist needs to have a goal simply in order to come across as realistic—even if that goal is just to maintain the status quo in the face of life’s (inevitable) challenges.

    Why This Goal?

    But even when you have a clear goal for your protagonist in your novel, it’s important to ask yourself why they have chosen that goal.

    These sorts of things tend to be easier to see when we have a story example, so let’s say that your protagonist is from a small Southern town, and his higher-order goal (the one he’ll be trying to achieve over the course of the novel) is to become a big-city fashion designer.

    What does he do in order to pursue that goal? Let’s say he up and moves to Chicago.

    How did he conceive of that idea? Why Chicago and not New York or L.A. (or even Atlanta, for that matter)? And if he doesn’t already know anyone in Chicago, or have a job lined up—well, have you established why your protagonist would decide to do something like that, totally out of the blue?

    If the answer is no, then you have an issue with backstory and characterization that will have to be addressed if the story itself is going to make sense to your reader.

    Lower-Order Goals

    Lower-order goals are ones that support the protagonist’s higher-order goal—meaning, in order to achieve Y, they first have to achieve X.

    In this […]

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    I’ll Feel What She’s Feeling

    By Susan DeFreitas / October 7, 2022 /


    It’s one of the most magical properties of fiction, the way we can share in the emotions of an entirely imagined character—and understand the emotions of the people that person encounters in the story.

    I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of the main reasons those of us who write fiction got into this game to begin with.

    As the great Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

    I think the same is true of the books we love: we might forget their plots, but we never forget how they made us feel, and how they made us feel is what made us want to become writers ourselves.

    But conveying emotion in fiction is also magic in the sense of stage magic—there’s a craft to it that’s not at all obvious from the outside. Because when it works, you don’t see what the writer is doing, you’re just caught up in the emotions of the story.

    If so, then consider this post your primer on this essential bit of prestidigitation in fiction.

    Avoid overt statements of emotion (or, at least, don’t rely on them to get the job done)

    Newer writers tend to just come out and state the emotion of the POV character overtly, as in “John felt sad,” or “Julia was furious.”

    Rather than allowing the reader to experience that emotion for herself, these sorts of overt statements tend to create a sense of distance from the character’s POV—the sense that we’re looking at what they’re feeling from a distance, rather than feeling it for ourselves.

    Because when we’re actually sad, we don’t tend to think “I am sad” and when we’re furious, we’re too busy actually being furious to stop and label this emotion we seem to be having.

    Which is not to say that statements like this can’t work at times—only that they don’t do the work of carrying the emotion in a way that the reader can actually feel.

    Include the thoughts that carry the emotion

    To convey the emotion of the POV character in a way the reader can actually feel, you have to share the thoughts that carry the emotion—the thoughts that translate the general emotion (in this case, sadness, or fury) into the specific circumstance of this character now.

    Here are some examples of prose that includes both overt statements of emotion and the thoughts that carry those emotions; in each case, the emotion would be more clearly conveyed by just the thoughts themselves:

    Example A:

    “I boiled with anger, resenting them both for talking about me as if I weren’t there. I wasn’t a dog. I could speak on my own behalf.”

    Stronger: “They were talking about me as if I wasn’t there. I wasn’t a dog. I could speak on my own behalf.”

    Example B:

    “I grew more upset. This was not a good idea. I should say something now.”

    Stronger: “This was not a good idea. I should say something now.”

    Example C:

    “I resented that A. could just assume that she was included in my project. Yes, she rescued me back there in homeroom, but she’d also coopted my idea. What else would A. steal from me? What would I let her? I felt […]

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    When Story Is Medicine

    By Susan DeFreitas / July 5, 2022 /

    Please welcome new Writer Unboxed contributor Susan DeFreitas to Writer Unboxed today! Susan is the IPPY-Award winning author of the novel Hot Season, the story of “an outlaw activist on the run” and most recently the editor of Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin. She is also the creator of Story Medicine—the course for writers who want to use their power as storytellers to support a more just world, and a Founding Coach for Author Accelerator. Her essays have been featured in the Writer’s Chronicle, LitHub, the Huffington Post, the Utne Reader, and elsewhere.

    As an independent editor and book coach, she specializes in helping writers from historically marginalized backgrounds, and those writing socially engaged fiction, break into publishing.

    You can learn more about Susan on her website, and by following her on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

    When Story Is Medicine

    There are many different kinds of stories in this world.

    Stories that stoke our curiosity with tantalizing clues and tricky plot reveals. Stories that touch our hearts with “aww, isn’t that sweet, the world isn’t a total flaming Dumpster fire” sorts of moments. Stories that linger with us for a few days, and then lift off and drift away.

    There’s nothing wrong with those types of stories. But to my mind, the very best stories do more than that.

    The very best stories act as medicine, delivering some emotional insight or understanding that changes who we are, on some level, and the way we operate in the world. And they stay with us much, much longer.

    These types of stories often come to us at our hour of greatest need, and one came to me in 2015, when I was recovering from cancer: Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things.

    On the surface, this novel offers a fine escape from reality: It’s a historical novel, set in the 1800s, and chronicles the life of a female botanist and her ill-fated marriage to a pious lithographer with an almost otherworldly sense of goodness about him.

    For me, it was the perfect novel to read while on the mend from the surgery that, as it turned out, would save my life: immersive, transportive, funny, intellectually stimulating, and even a bit sexy at times. (It also clocks in at 500 pages, which is a great length for putting reality firmly on hold.)

    But there’s a message at the heart of this novel (and my sharing this with you won’t spoil the story, because as with any story, it’s the journey, not the destination, that ultimately matters). This message is that being good, being pure of heart, being selfless and giving and kind—being all those things that women especially are taught to be—may get you into heaven but will not save you here on earth. Because here on earth, it is often the toughest that survive—the ones with the strongest will to live, the strongest love for life itself, in all its messy, earthly glory.

    You can imagine how visceral this message was for me, at this time in my life. Elizabeth Gilbert gave me a great gift with that novel, and that […]

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