Eva Gale

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NOT.

but this is me, trying to see the good in all things that happen.

This involves house stuff, a septic, and me not being able to take a shower until later which makes me terrible, horrible, no good, very bad NOT to mention how does one function in a house with 6 kids and no toilets*… well you get the picture.

ANYWHO, I will concentrate on tootsie pops and conflict boxes.

I do mine a bit different in that I add in INNER conflict to the box, which if I get it right, conflicts with the character’s outer conflicts. It’s not easy and it normally involves a few Tootsie Pops. (Please, you should see my Dh sitting behind his desk, stack of Very Official Papers all around him, a monitor of the production floor behind him and a Tootsie Pop in his mouth. Ma, I love him awful.) So, I don’t know if this whole process will work without the Tootsie Pops, and you should have them around Just In Case.

I think the last blog post I was nattering about tightening the conflict of the story I was working on next, and that it took me a few months of subconscious percolating to nail it. Well, I still sat down to write and lapsed into a, “Think, think, think.” Kinda like when you’re a painter and you stand in front of a Van Gogh, staring, staring, staring until moments later shouting EUREKA! only to lose it by the time you get home.

For a writer, this is when you whip out the conflict boxes and pop a Tootsie Pop in your yammer.

So I have Lucas, a Landscape Engineer who, disillusioned with GRAND jobs, decided to do a job in a podink town for himself and the people of the town. He won’t be staying, but popping in at certain stages to make sure it’s all being done right.

Only Landscaper Character has an unfortunate accident with tearing his Achilles tendon (my mom had a tree fall on her once and I was trying so hard to use that but something else totally popped out of my brain and it was damned funny if I say so meself). Town asks him to stay.

To which he says no.

And now we have ante upping. $$$

Everybody’s got a price, baby.

But it’s not as easy as that because it has to appeal to him on a personal level.

Lucas       Inner Conflict                                            Outer Conflict

hates his work                                      He has other, bigger jobs due
being a cog in
a machine. It’s
his art and it’s
personal. But he
likes the prestige of
the big jobs-Pride.

Town       Inner Conflict                                           Outer Conflict

They have a rivalry                               Lucas doesn’t want to stay.
going with another town,
and they’re suffering from
their own pride. They want
Big Name to make their park.
On a personal level, the town committee
all want to leave it as their legacy to
the town.

So, where’s most of the conflict? Yeah, right where most good conflict his us, personally. A war is a Big conflict, but bring it down to the families sending loved ones and it’s personal hitting on the inner level.

If I were to put the goals in there they would be

Lucas: Wants to work with the people that will use the designs he creates. He wants to know his work is felt on a personal level.

Town Committee: Want to take a scrubby center town square and make it glorious, the true town center.

And, with that, I’m off to have another cup of coffee before I wrangle myself into something the public won’t run screaming from.

*Make no mistake, Grape Ape thinks peeing on trees is the most fun he’s had in years and is drinking like a fish JUST so he can hit another target. Jonny Quest thinks the whole situation is beneath him and can we please take a room in the Waldorf *sniff*.