Free Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass Page B

head trapped under my short pink skirt. "You're the tunnel, and I'm the train."
    I suppose this tells you something about my personality. That I'm not especially good at taking advice. Or that I was born with an overload of curiosity. Or maybe it's about rebellion or boredom or fate. At any rate, it was a one-shot deal and darn disappointing, since I'd only gotten to be the tunnel, and I'd really wanted to be the train.
    Self-observations like this (never mind Stephanie's scathing and hilarious observations of others) make her enormously appealing. We all wish we could be funny about ourselves, and sometimes we are. But Stephanie is funny on every single page.
    In your latest manuscript, how does your protagonist regard himself? What does he see in the mirror? What is the condition of his mind, heart, and soul at any given point in the story?
    In life it is difficult, if not impossible, to like someone whom we do not know. But when someone is self-revealing we (usually) are drawn to him. In any event, honesty about oneself is a positive quality. It takes courage to take a hard look inside. Give your protagonist that courage, and you will give your readers a character whose strength they can see and whose inner life is rich and accessible.
    __________________EXERCISE
    Deepening Exposition
    Step 1: In your manuscript pick a moment in which a point-of-view character does not react to what is happening, or when in fact nothing is happening and the action of the story is paused or static.

    Step 2: Write a paragraph of exposition delineating this character's self-conscious thoughts about her own state of mind, emotional condition, state of being or soul, or perception of the state of the world at this point in time. Start writing now.
    Follow-up work: Repeat the above steps at four more points of deep exposition (passages in which we experience a character's thoughts and feelings).
    Conclusion: Passages of exposition can be among the most gripping in your novel. Indeed they better be, since nothing is "happening." When nothing overtly is going on, make sure that a great deal is at work beneath the surface. Otherwise you novel will have dead spots that your readers will skip.
    Creating Secondary Characters
    T he world is full of people, and so are most novels. But how believable are the secondary characters who fill them out? Too many merely enter, fulfill a function in the story, then exit. They are forgettable, because they are not real. They act in only one way; usually exactly the way we expect.
    Secondary characters do not have to be like that. They can engage us as strongly as the primary players do. When that happens it is because the author has bothered to make those characters in some way as multidimensional, conflicted, or surprising as the novel's major characters are. That's tough to do, especially when there is limited space in which to develop them, but it can be done.
    Legal thriller writer Phillip Margolin is a lean writer, lavishing attention on the technical details that make credible the cases portrayed in his novels, but otherwise sketching his settings, stories, and characters with efficiency. Even so, he treats his secondary characters as more than props.
    In The Associate , Margolin spins the story of Daniel Ames, a young associate at Portland, Oregon's most prestigious law firm: Reed, Briggs, Stephens, Stottlemeyer, and Compton. Daniel's background is blue collar, not blue chip. He believes that his hold on success is tenuous. He works late hours.
    In the novel's opening Margolin has another young lawyer, Joe Molinari, a good-times sort of guy, amble into Daniel's cubicle one evening to cajole him out for an associates' happy hour at a nearby steakhouse. Daniel declines to stay at work, and Molinari ribs him:
    "Hey, man, you've got to stand up for yourself. Lincoln freed the slaves."
    "The Thirteenth Amendment doesn't apply to associates at Reed, Briggs."
    "You're hopeless"—Molinari laughed as he levered