Here is an article, originally posted in 2003 that deserves our writing attention again.

In The Writer’s Idea Workshop, author Jack Heffron sets himself the task of letting his readers know what to do after a first draft is on the page.  In his manuscript, he writes:

As we move deeper into the project we’re developing, we sometimes sense it going flat. It lacks the inspiration that kept us going through the early stages of creation, and even though we’re willing to suspend judgment, we can’t shake the notion that the piece needs more of something. Sometimes we don’t make this discovery until we’ve finished a complete draft and shown it to readers. Our great idea that sent us racing to a notepad in the middle of the night, the one that scorched our brains through exhilarating sessions at the computer, now lies on the page, a ghost of what we hoped it would be.

I have seen such ghosts in both memoir writing and fiction writing.  In memoir, I have seen people set out to tell the story of a time in their lives that was filled with resonance but somehow the layering of life experiences that made life meaningful is absent from their pages.  In fiction writing, I have seen people start from something observed and then fail to find a way to make what was an inspiring event into the meaningful, gripping story they imagined writing.

By email, I asked Jack questions about tools for facing this situation and continuing to develop those drafts into lively, bold stories.

What do you advise to begin making those manuscripts that are merely ghosts of what we hoped for into what we want?

For an idea to work well, it needs to grow, to complicate itself with more ideas. By complication, I mean a second idea that extends or enlarges the first. It’s tough to know all of these complications when we first sit down to explore an idea. We discover them as we write.

Doing more writing despite our disappointment in the first draft can be part of the remedy?

Yes, it’s important to work on a promising idea long enough to explore its possibilities. We must give ourselves time to make discoveries, to add new ideas to the generative idea.

Here’s an example. We’re working on a story about a woman whose boss is making her life miserable. His demands are impossible to meet. We create several scenes showing the boss unfairly and caustically criticizing the protagonist. Then we write a few more. And a few more. The woman works harder, but the fatigue caused by the pressure and the shaky judgment caused by her lessening confidence makes her prone to error. She talks to a colleague, then to a friend or two. The story progresses in this way, but the conflict is, for the most part, flat-lining.

A strong idea that is full of drama and conflict becomes a one-note story, in which the writer presents the same conflict between the same characters in largely the same way and with the same tone until the story has lost its punch. The initial conflict is played to its inevitable conclusion. It’s the kind of story that makes inexperienced trusted readers of the draft fumble for what to say. They often question the pace, saying, “It seems slow in the second half.” And, indeed, it does. But the problem isn’t the pace. The problem is a lack of invention. The initial idea isn’t developed with more ideas. There are no surprises, no complications.

If you’re feeling your piece go stale or if readers aren’t responding to it in the way you hoped, step back and evaluate how you’ve developed and complicated the initial idea. How many scenes or how many pages are spent making the same point or eliciting the same response from the reader? Grab some colored markers and underline in a single color all the sentences dedicated to one conflict. If the conflict shifts or if it’s complicated by new information, grab a different marker and keep underlining.  When you’ve finished, step back and see the result in living color. Perhaps the problem with your “dull idea” is simply that it hasn’t taken the next step into something larger or deeper.

It’s time to add ideas. Imagine possibilities. What if our hapless employee has quit her last two jobs, having disliked or failed at them for various reasons? Staying at this job and satisfying the tyrant takes on greater importance. The stakes have been raised. Or what if she’s raising children on her own, or her husband is in law school and she’s the only breadwinner? Her pressures at work spill into her relationships at home, expanding the range of the story. Or what if you gradually show that the boss’s complaints are justified, reversing the reader’s expectations? Or what if she discovers the boss’s marriage is failing or that he’s working through some personal grief? Now there’s a matter of humanity involved, a question of how much sympathy she’ll allow to excuse his behavior. Or what if you changed the relationship between the characters? What if the tyrannical boss is her father? Now we have a new element, a father-daughter theme.

You see my point. Imagine the situation from a new perspective. Raise the stakes. And raise them again. How can the situation be more distressing for your protagonist? How can the outcome be of greater consequence? How can she, in attempting to extricate herself, plunge even deeper into confusion or misery? Of course, when you’ve got her there, you’ll need even more ideas to get her out.

Sometimes we wince when we think of making life more complicated and painful for our characters.  How can we get over our own reluctance about being “not-nice”?

Good stories rely on conflicts and complications. The situation driving the story must be a crucial one in the life of the character. As author Stanley Elkin once said, “I would never write about someone who was not at the end of his rope.” We all have these times in our lives, and they are the ones we remember. So don’t think of it as being cruel to your character. Instead, you’re honoring the character’s situation by exploring all its facets, exploring its depths. Here are some ideas to help you make things complicated.

Brainstorm a list of complications for your work in progress. Make it a big list—at least fifteen items. Go crazy with it. At least three of the complications must be preposterous, requiring of you (and your reader) huge leaps of faith.

Describe your story in two sentences. Now add a third sentence, introducing a new element, even one that may not seem appropriate. For example: “This story focuses on a weekend visit by a woman’s mother, who has always been very critical. During the weekend, the daughter realizes she’s outgrown the need for her mother’s approval.” As a third element, she might add, “As the mother loads up her car to leave, the daughter insists that they go shopping together.” Try this prompt several times, playing with possibilities for the third element.

Create a new element of the story that is being kept secret by one of the characters. Allude to this secret somewhere in the first scene. As you move ahead, slowly reveal the secret, one that adds another complication to the story. You needn’t know the secret yourself when you start writing. Allow yourself to discover it as you write.

If you feel your scenes are too similar in their objective, add a random element, an object of some kind. The more random, the better. Brainstorm a list of possibilities. Or, if you feel you won’t be random enough, consider these possibilities: a fortune cookie, a necklace, pruning shears, a flat tire, a grocery receipt, a ferret, a negligee, a park bench, a glass of water, M&Ms.

These all sound like fun–So, I had a story about a woman who was feeling neglected by her husband because he was always at his computer (as I felt when my husband first got into computers as a profession.  She goes about her evening feeling sorry for herself because of his inattention.  Okay, now third sentence: an old high school boyfriend calls asking her if is she will help him plan their high school’s 20th reunion. Whatdaya think?

Excellent. The old boyfriend provides another narrative element and allows you to explore the protagonist beyond her role as partner to her husband. In that way you’ll avoid hitting the same note throughout the story.

Can I use the same story situation and add the second complication to it–the secret?  The husband wants to find someone from his past–a high school math teacher who disappeared before he answered a nagging question about an algorithm.  I don’t yet know the question or why the unanswered nature of it matters so much now. When I begin the story I can have Hannah, the main character, describe her husband’s eyes tracking the cursor on the screen with the same intensity he used to scan a crowd looking for her when they would meet after work. 

This could work well. Now they both have secrets, ones that are tied to their pasts. There’s also a nice irony in that the shared goals—recovery of something in the past—can fuel conflict between them rather than bring them together. Though they share similar goals, they can’t share those goals with each other.

Now I’m getting interested in this story.  Here’s my attempt at the third exercise:  Scene:  Hannah is in the kitchen gathering cookies on a plate and pouring herself some tea for her nightly excitement of watching the 11 o’clock news while her husband is at his computer.  Now she has the news that her high school sweetheart is inviting her to co-chair the 20th high school reunion event (he is on the East Coast and she is on the West Coast). She spies a gardening catalog that arrived in the mail that day.  She doesn’t garden since she and her husband live in an apartment.  But something about that catalog captures her attention. She puts down the plate of cookies and sits down with the catalog.  It isn’t long before she rummages through the kitchen drawers for whatever resembles gardening tools. She leaves the kitchen with a serving spoon (silver from her bridal registry five years prior) and the new Williams Sonoma kitchen shears she had just treated herself to.  She heads for the landscaping outside her building.

Jack, this is fun! How am I doing?

You’ve got plenty of good material for a story—lots of elements that open up the conflict rather than narrowing it. You also have a lot of specific images, such as the computer, the catalog, the spoon. And instead of your protagonist approaching her husband and asking for attention (the most obvious move and one that would sap tension from the story rather than create it) you have her outside at 11 o’clock at night landscaping her landlord’s property. Interesting stuff!

Thanks so much for these exercises–how many are in the book?  And there is an earlier book, right? What is in that one?

I think there are more than 300 exercises in the book, most of them focused on building upon an idea. As an editor and contest judge, I see so many stories and essays that open with a strong idea but then go flat. They lack the complications that make a good idea better. The instruction and exercises in The Writer’s Idea Workshop were created to help writers be more creative throughout the entire process of completing a piece.

The earlier book, The Writer’s Idea Book, is in the stores, and it focuses on ways to get ideas. So the new one is a natural extension of the first. And though our exercises here relate mostly to fiction, both books apply to writing any sort of narrative, fiction or nonfiction, screenplays, whatever.

Well, whatever that whatever is to be written, your exercises and instruction will be most helpful.