Storytelling 101: Character, Conflict, Context & Craft

Daniel José Older

Always writing about a turning point.

Character
- Two most important aspects
- Understand and believe their humanity to the point that we care about them
on some level.
- Likeability
- We don’t have to actually like a character, but we have to care
about them on some level (be intrigued). Get the audience
invested in them.
- Comes out in small details that tells us who they are on some
deeper level than just an average X.
- Little eccentricities
- The way they speak
- Think of the way when you have a crush on someone.
You want to know what’s going on with that person. You
want to know.
- Few quick strokes: details that matter, that will stand
out to the reader.
- What is it about them that’s different?
- They have to want something.
- Have to have a desire, motivation. If not, there’s no engine of the
story.
- Care enough about something that they will actively go out and get it.
- They can still think about actively doing it, and eventually doing
or not doing. But thinking about it is an action.
- Might be just to find out what’s going on. They can change and grow.
As they grow, their desire can grow with them.
- You show that a character cares about something, and you take it
away.
- The desire is what carries the character through the hurdles.
- What brings them to life?
- What do they want?
- What do they want so badly that they will run through XXX (a
fear, an obstacle, an enemy, etc) to get it.
- They need that impulse in order to go through the fire.
Conflict
- If you don’t have a conflict, you don’t have a story.
- Crisis is an element of conflict
- We have to understand what’s at stake in the story so that we know once the
character gets or doesn’t get what they want, what the consequences will be
(of failure or success).
 - Understand the economics of the story
- What are the things that are good
- What are the things that are bad
- What do you gain, what do you lose
- Two fundamental kinds
- Internal
- What is going within themselves
- What do they have to overcome to get done whatever they need to get
done to get their desire (the end of the story)
- External
- Whatever outside of them stands in their way in the world
- The best way is to marry the two: that the internal conflict is what they must
overcome in order to succeed at achieving that external conflict
- This way you get to be complicated in the ending
- THey could achieve the internal, but fail at the external, etc.
- Think about complex conflicts, and thing about a way to simplify them…and
then think of a way to complicate them as it goes
- Fueled by desire of character: has to care enough whatever that conflict is
that they go out and get what they want
- Think about POWER in a complicated way
- Power dynamics that are in the way that fuel that conflict
- Sexual power
- Magic power
- Spiritual power
- Gender power
- Class power
- Etc
- What’s at stakes
- Do you understand what are the consequences if the character
succeeds or fails? Do the readers understand it’
Context
- Place + time + power = context
- Place: time, specificity and power: different layers that are going around in the
character in the world.
- What matters about it. Even if it’s a room.
- Understand the world that your character is living in.
- What is the context that you’re creating?
- It’s a complicated and political act.
- Who has the power in the situation
- Who do you see and not see?
- What are the experiential levels? Sounds, smell, see, what do you see, how
do you feel?
- What are the character’s experiencing in this place? Do they have
emotional attachment? Do they have memories? Are they scared
because they’ve never been there?
- Setting in terms of conflict:
- Cities for example are in some level of conflict.
- The character’s Emotional relationship to the place
 - Do they live there? Have they lived there? How long? Do they care about it? Is it in
flux? What stories do the street, building, neighborhood play? Who’s the neighbor?
Do they leave their footprint?

Craft
- Hold it all together.
- Don’t have to have amazing craft, you just have to have CLARITY.
- Is what’s happening clear?
- Do we have a clear visual of the events of the story? Can we see it play by play?
- READ THE STORY ALOUD. It is crucial.
- Are there sentences that don’t make any sense?
- Shake out your style of sentences. Don’t make it monotone.
- Stay away from:
- Overwriting stuff. Take away extra words.
- Trust the reader to get what you’re saying.
- Give it straight. Don’t overdo it.
- It doesn’t feel real if there’s too much detail.
- Avoid the passive voice.
- Instead of saying “I picked out the pen”, you say “the pen got picked
up by me”. It’s awkward and confusing.
- The verb “to be”.
- Be careful with it. Think about why you’re using it every time you use
it.
- It’s a dead verb. Stillness and emptiness. It makes dead sentences.
- “The bookshelf is in the room” to “the bookshelf towers in the
corner.”
- Be economical with your sentences. Try to get more into your
sentences.
- Watch out for adverbs!
- Gets you to be lazy with your verb choices.
- “He briskly walked down the street” to “He ran down the street”.
- Make sure you use them when you use them.
- The verb “to say”.
- You can tag dialogue with action, instead of saying “he said”. For ex.
he picked up a fork after he speaked.
- For every word there’s in a dialogue, there’s a subtext.
- Don’t say that the character said it sarcastically. Pain the picture! Trust that
the reader will understand what’s going on.
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