Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

What I’m (th)Inkingabout

75+ Ways to Make Things Tough on a Character

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No story goes along smoothly for the main character. In fact, how they respond to adversity is how we get attached to the people in the novels we love. If they don’t struggle to get what they need, we won’t want to read to the end. There are innumerable ways for conflict to occur in a story.  I’ve listed the 75 I’ve come across in my or another author’s writing.

1. Everything has been working fine, until now.
2. The best friend is disloyal/undermining/lying
3. They aren’t his parents
4. The power goes out
5. The car beaks down
6. What she thought she knew is wrong
7. Injury
8. Attack
9. Not everyone made it to the agreed upon site
10. What was safe once is no longer safe
11. Supplies are lost or stolen
12. Weather change
13. Ambush
14. The character’s arrival is expected
15. The character’s arrival is unexpected
16. Sibling jealousy
17. Paralyzing fear
18. The parameters are changed
19. She refuses to go
20. Misplaced information
21. Locked door/cabinet/safe
22. Locked out of the city/house/business
23. Sabotage
24. Time is running out
25. He gets lost
26. Incorrect assumption
27. Malfunction
28. Loss of food supplies
29. Dangerous terrain
30. It is believed impossible
31. House burns down
32. Loss of parents/family
33. Loss of faith
34. Poison/illness/plague
35. Arriving late/early
36. Flight/bus/train cancelled
37. The store is closed
38. Misplaced keys/ticket/passport/spell/identification
39. Difficult terrain
40. Battery runs out
41. Old injury/illness flairs
42. Toothache/pink eye/infection
43. Curiosity
44. An immovable object
45. Prejudice
46. Mugged
47. Lost luggage
48. Missing vital ingredient/material
49. Lacks a skill/knowledge
50. A telegram/email/missive/letter
51. Inheritance
52. Loss of fortune
53. Ostracized/disowned/ignored
54. Waking up to a major change
55. Loss of memory
56. A misunderstanding
57. Death of a loved one
58. A major decision
59. Uncertainty
60. Phobias
61. A tool/skill/talent/gift has special powers, but the character can’t figure out how to work it
62. War
63. The craft is spinning out of control
64. The world is coming to an end
65. The phone/communication device goes dead
66. Someone has released the dogs/lion/critters with unfriendly intent
67. Things just don’t look/smell/feel/sound right
68. The other character would not normally say that
69. An unfamiliar vehicle has parked outside and the people in it appear to be watching the house/business
70. S/he won’t/doesn’t answer the phone
71. Heart-broken
72. Lack of confidence
73. Impatience
74. Tied up/trapped
75. supernatural/unnatural change of self/enemy/friend/general population (i.e., Zombies)
UPDATE to list provided by Marcy Peska.
76.  curses and other magical obstacles 
77. trolls
under bridges
78. gastric distress from eating too many
sugar-free candies
79. small and uncooperative children
80. hobbits too
interested in mushrooms and second breakfast
81. abrupt changes in mental
status/consciousness
82. being unable to act effectively due to being
grounded or having to go to work. [?] 
83.  Oh…and having a small bladder which requires frequent bathroom breaks. [?]

If you are a writer or a reader, you are aware of many conflicts that characters have faced. What  conflicts have your favorite characters faced? What other conflicts can you add to this list.

#conflict
#plot
#writing

Who decides what goes? New Horizons got me thinking.

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The New Horizon spacecraft is carrying Clyde Tombaugh’s ashes. He is the astronomer who discovered Pluto. Reading this fact in an article, made me stop and think a bit about who decides what is added as extra payload for such a scientific endeavor and how is the decision made? And what would Tombaugh have thought about it or his family?

Did a panel of people sit and discuss this, throwing out possibilities, conjecturing the symbolic meaning behind what was placed. Or did they only just enter the room when one person said, “Hey,  what do you say we get a tube of Clyde Tombaugh’s ashes. He did discover Pluto. Shouldn’t he get to take the ride?” And they all nodded. And did they agree because it meant one more thing could be ticked off the list, because it made sense, or because it felt so right there wasn’t any better choice?

Everybody has had those moments. Somebody says something and everybody’s internal processor says, “That’s the answer. There are no others.”

We’ve also have had those moments when we just say, “That will work. We’ll go with that, now on to the more difficult business of….”

And we also experience those times when a bunch of people are in a room and have to come up with one decision that all agree with, and we know that’s never going to happen, so we start throwing out ideas. Some stick, some are just plain stupid and some sit there slowing gaining traction or like a snowball, keep rolling and picking up momentum and size until there isn’t really any chance for any other option.

Or was there another option and the two sides dooked it out for days until someone gave in or most were convinced and that was enough?

And how much trouble was it to get those ashes?

If it was my family that was asked, there would be four avenues to getting those ashes as each one of us kids have a portion of our father’s remains. Still it would be tough to even get one flake from us as we are all pretty attached to him and this is all we have left of his physical being. However, of the four, the one most likely to give up a vile of our Dad is me. I would like the idea of him heading off into space. And I can hear him yet. “That’s just the shell.” Still it was a darn important shell to us. But our dad was full of surprises. Heading off into space certainly is no less amazing then some of the other things he was thought to have done.

He played a role in the Saturn rocket, but what exactly, I can’t say. He was as much mystery as surprise. In any case, he didn’t go, Tombaugh did. And if Tombaugh was asked about whether or not he wanted to take the ride, I rather believe anyone who went looking for planetary bodies and found Pluto probably would have said, “Hell, yes.” My Dad would have said, “Do what you like with my ashes; I won’t be needing them.”

#newhorizons
#tombaugh
#Pluto

Retirement: it will happen to you ready or not

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Ready for retirement?

I’d like to talk about retirement. I’d like to retire too, but since that’s not coming anytime soon (unless my books start really rolling off the digital shelves–feel welcome to participate in precipitating my early retirement), I’ll just talk about it.

First, you must consider as early as possible that you will retire one day and that you want a place to live, a partner to share it with, good health and money coming in. 
My mother was recently placed in elder care, and she had little liquid funds and only a house with investment value. We are scrambling to support her care. She is in excellent health though deteriorating mentally. But living with funds available is the issue. 
Second how can you prepare for retirement?  Investments are good. (Can’t help you with choices on that.) We have employee retirement that we are vested in, and a supplemental retirement plan we send to monthly. We purchased land at a nice but not popular lake, and we started building a house on it last summer. We are doing everything except pouring the concrete for the foundation, but we did handle troweling the concrete into place and smoothing it, relatively anyway. 
We just about have the house at the dry-in stage: windows in, roof on, last of the siding going up as I type. Time frame for completion?  Was two years, but my husband recently, nonchalantly, stated a day ago that five years wasn’t an unreasonable likelihood. 
Point here. Be ready to face the obvious thing you forgot to note. In our case, that was our daughter’s college tuition. It impacted our savings potential significantly. Both our retirement-related loans (land, building) are on less than ten year runs. Still, we do have that house we are currently living in that has value we can make use of for tying loose monetary ends later. 
How far away is our retirement? Ten years. So we’ll make our deadline fine. But we wouldn’t have if we hadn’t started early. 
As for the other requirements? I’ve been married nearly 35 years and my fellow continues to be good company. Health for both of us is good, and we make the effort to maintain it. Continued employment appears strong as well. 
I feel better now that we’ve had this chat. How are you pre-managing your retirement? Are you planning ahead or buying lottery tickets? Do you have a will or are you indestructible? Smoke and eat fast food or are you taking your vitamins, prescriptions, exercising regularly and vigorously and seeing you doctor once a year?
Retirement, it’s getting here whether you are watching for it or not. I’ll take tremendous sales figures on my books any day, but in the mean time, I’m going to do a few supporting actions for a modest retirement just in case the New York Times list does not come knocking. 

Writing metaphor: two dogs, shedding a little of the dark and the light

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Two sides to writing

It is Wednesday evening and for two days running I have not been writing on my #wip. Arggg! I even am a bit late on my blog. Not good.

So what is the status on Book 4 of Students of Jump you ask. Well, so far it is the longest book I’ve written, coming in at just a bit under 100,000 words.  Besides watching out for typos and diction errors, I’ve been adding a scene here and a scene there. My fabulous beta readers, friends and fellow writers Marcy Peska and L. A. Hilden have pointed out some issues and areas for expansion and those have been keeping me quite busy this month. (By the way, all my books are available at Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo and other fine ebook retailers.)

I have been busily writing and content editing. Until yesterday. Family stuff, a bit of Trivia Crack and dog maintenance. Let’s deviate off the path of wherever I was going and focus on dog maintenance a moment. I have two Labradors, lovely ladies. We call them the bookends because they tend to take positions right next to each other and either mirror each other or lay identically. Of course, one is a chocolate and the other a yellow so they are always opposites in one way. The yellow sheds year round, while the chocolate sheds twice a year.

Consider this: they are both Labrador retrievers, not quite a year apart in age and they live in the same air conditioned residence. Yet, when I brush Cagney, the yellow, I am left with enough hair to cover a whole other dog. Lacey, however, produces about half a tennis ball size of hair fluff, unless it is the start of spring or early fall when she drops considerably more. After an hour of brushing Cagney, I simply give out. If I keep brushing, she just keeps letting go of hair. I look her over, and other than looking sleeker, she’s still well favored in soft yellow hair.  Do you remember those dolls that had hair that you could pull out of the top of their heads or roll it back in by pressing a button at the center of her back? I had one of those, still do in a cedar trunk. Cagney is like that. No, no buttons, but it sure seems like there is an unlimited supply sprouting from her skin, perhaps brush activated.

Where am I going with this? Well, I will admit, I had no idea at first. But something came to mind, just now as a matter of fact. Here it is. Sometimes writing is like this. There are days when I am a Cagney and the keys just keep activating my word production and other days I wonder if I am trying to write in the wrong season. See Cagney is the lots of words day and Lacey is the drought day. And if you think about it, they are the same but opposite too. At the end of the day, something was written. Good/bad, a lot/a little, brutal/effortless, willingly/forced, ears back/ears forward, mouth open and panting/mouth clamped shut.  Writing is like having two dogs, same breed, but different.

It was a struggle, I know, but I found a connection. I challenge you to write about something that enters your mind and show how it is an metaphor for an activity you love. It need not be writing. But if you got to the bottom of this twisted doggy run, you are probably a writer, or at least a reader. Thank heaven you exist.

#writing
#creativity
#dogs

We gather the music of words to create a story

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A few days ago I went to a band camp concert. My daughter was one of the players. As I sat there listening to the rising and falling notes, flutes coming in as clarinets drop away, background drums rolling in crescendo and tubas filling the brief spaces in between, my heart racing and relaxing with each movement, I realized that a good book is much the same.

The opening lines just like the first notes played introduce the vision: science fiction with electronic tones, romance flutes of the first attracting glance, Bronte storms in the kettle drums, piano-keyed mysteries or an oboe lilt of a cobra rising from the basket of an Agatha Christi novel. Each rise in the action another movement to thrill the reader.

The middle movements fill us with ideas, emotions, connecting us as a group to a single vision.  And the final notes, whether sudden and thrashing or softly fading away, give us a sense of closure and completeness.

Writers, like conductors, construct a story with the instruments at hand. We have our characters, imagery, setting, rising action, inciting event, climax, pacing and conclusion just as they have their woodwinds, keys, capriccio, adagio, brass, cymbals and the like. We create an experience, one the reader/listener wishes to experience again and again.

Sitting there caught up in the music of the moment, a part of me felt the desire to race from the auditorium and compose my own worded score, to put into words the images that floated before my eyes in response to the pull the music gave to my imagination. But the other part of me wished to remain to listen as my daughter and her fellow musicians crafted musical stories in my head.

Learning to play an instrument is as essential as learning to write. Not all of us will be great musicians any more than all of us can be best selling writers. But all of us need to experience the attempt to make music, write poetry, paint a picture, sculpt a figure, or crochet an afghan. From each experience we gain much and, on occasion, find beauty to inspire others and be inspired.

What inspires you? 

#music
#writing
#inspiration

Wordsworth still makes daffodils dance for me

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Dancing with the daffodils


I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

I’ve read this poem so many times with my students. When I first began to teach, this poem showed up in my ninth graders’ literature book. I skipped it feeling I had evaluated this poem into nothingness in college and did not want to revisit it with ninth graders.

It showed up again when I began teaching college British Lit. Again I passed it over as I made selections for my syllabus. But when we read excerpts from Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals and found references to the walk the two had taken that carried this image, I had to go back and reread the piece. Motion and color, brilliant sparkles and breeze dancing daffodils filled my mind. But that wasn’t new, though it was fresh again for me. It was the last lines that were so suddenly telling. The image of the sea of daffodils had stuck but not the message.

Startling events, snippets of conversation, fragrances, and images come to us in those quiet moments of repose. They come alive again, thrill and move us. Writers live on these enveloping sensory memories. We can aspire to recreate them, be a Wordsworth (D or W), and leave an impression on our readers that will find a place in their quiet moments.

#writing
#Wordsworth
#imagery