Purple Prose [Search results for universal feeling] 

Theme and internal conflict are important for all genres. But have you dug as deep as you can go with your WIP?
Until recently, I thought I’d figured out my WIP’s theme and the internal conflict of my main character. But when I sent it out to my beta readers, one kept asking me questions about these two elements. Fortunately, I had put a lot of thought into it so I could answer them.
But as my awesome beta reader kept asking more questions, because she wanted to figure out the universal feeling I was going after, we both realized (okay, she realized it first), my theme and internal conflict weren’t quite what I’d originally planned. Yes, my story was still about how revenge is never as clear cut as it seems, but when I dug deeper, that wasn’t the true inner conflict or universal feeling I was apparently going after (wow, who knew?). The one my story dealt with had to do with control, or rather, the feeling of lack of control, something many teens can relate to.
So, what is universal feeling (okay, I’m not sure if this is the real term, but since this is my blog, I can call it whatever my beta reader wants)?
Think of Percy Jackson from The Lightning Thief. Percy’s inner arc is that he has to come to terms with being a demigod and that his father is Poseidon. This isn't your typical inner conflict for a teen. But what is typical is that teens have to figure out who they are and embrace their strengths. That’s the universal feeling of the book.
So my challenge to you is to dig deep. Ask yourself if you’ve really captured your character’s inner conflict, and see if you can identify the universal feeling you’re after (or do you need to dig deeper?).
Warning: digging might cause your story to unravel to the point it’s no longer workable. This is why it’s important to dig BEFORE to plot your novel. Unfortunately, no matter how many times I tried adding two and two together, I kept getting five. Now I’m no mathematical genius, but even I know that’s a big #mathfail. Lucky for me, while having a shower yesterday, the answer finally hit me on how I could rework the story. *does happy dance*

(A huge thanks goes out to my CP extraordinaire, Christina Lee, for all her brilliant suggestions and cheerleading while I banged my head against the wall. And to Laura Pauling (the beta reader) for asking all the painful throught proking questions. You two rock!)

©Stina Lindenblatt

Story isn’t about plot. It’s about emotion. It’s the element that leaves your body tingling in fear or anticipation for what will happen next, and what readers want from the first page to the end. But how do you bring in emotion to add maximum power to your story?

Universal Theme

Universal theme will help your readers connect to the characters and emotions in the story. These are themes that everyone can relate to, even if they can’t relate to the specific circumstances of the story. For example, how many of you know what it feels like to have the mob kill your family? None of you, I hope. Now, what if you wrote a story about how your protagonist’s best friend tells her uncle, who happens to be the Godfather of the local crime family, that she suspects the friend is the estranged daughter of the family he’s been salivating to kill, after her father turned state evidence on his former boss? Depending on how you set up the story, you can choose to focus on the universal theme of betrayal. At one point in our lives, we’ve all experienced the feeling of being betrayed. Now we can relate to the character and the emotion of the story, even though we have never, thankfully, gone through the same experience.

Character Wounds

Another word for character wound is backstory. This is where you create the most painful past possible for your character, and let it guide your character’s actions. The type and depth of wound will be dependent on genre. The wound then plays a part in determining your character’s fears, and it is the wound and fears that make the character vulnerable. Since he doesn’t want people to know his vulnerability (especially the antagonist), he creates a persona that protects him from being hurt. For example, you could have a character who lost his parents due to an accident and is bounced around the foster care system. He ends up in the worst of homes, where the foster parents only care about the money. He’s neglected and abused. He learns not to trust adults, and because he’s bounced around so much, he learns not to develop attachments to other people. He becomes the bad-boy loner, complete with tattoos. Inside, he’s still the caring individual he was before his parents died, but he refuses to let people get close enough to discover this. That is, until he finds the right girl.

Naturally, you would not dump this information on the first page. Write the backstory down in a separate file, and fit slivers of it into your story. Start with the small stuff, hinting of the possible wound, and as the story progresses, hit your reader with the most emotional, gut wrenching parts of your protagonist’s past. Your reader will keep turning the page, because she wants to find out what really happened X number of years ago. It’s a great way to build emotional suspense.

Have you considered universal theme and character backstory when creating the emotion behind your stories?

Part two will be posted on Wednesday.