Free Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver

successful story. They're what stories do, but not how they do it. How they do it is the cause. Writers work with causes, not effects. Creating identification is the goal of every story. Showing you how to create identification is the continual goal of this course.
    So, how do you reveal character? Well, the character can only be revealed if he acts. Action is character. The most wonderful character in the world will not get to us unless he does something. The character will not act unless he has to, unless he's challenged. Like the rest of us, he's not going to get up and push himself to the limit for no reason. He has to be urged, prodded, challenged. That challenge is CONFLICT, which brings us back to the story elements and the basic story form, which is:
    CONFLICT, ACTION, RESOLUTION
    CONFLICT is the first, the number-one critical ingredient, but it's important not for what it is, but for what it does. What conflict does is force the character to ACT—whether he likes it or not, and he will not like it, he cannot. Ahab, Scarlett, Hamlet, Lear, Gatsby did not like what was happening to them or what they had to do. They were trying to enjoy themselves, but they were frustrated at every turn. The character cannot enjoy himself. You, the author, cannot let him, because if he's enjoying himself, the reader is not. So, conflict is what we use to make the character act, to use himself, to reveal himself. Revealing character is what must happen before identification can occur.
    THE NUMBER-ONE INGREDIENT AND SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT IT
    Conflict is the first, most important, and trickiest ingredient by far. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is a social reason. The first time I was told by a writing teacher that nothing happens without conflict, I went home and wrote a story, working conflict in at every turn, making everything difficult for the characters in every possible way. How do you think I felt after making all that trouble? I was worn-out. Working the conflict was stressful beyond the usual struggle of writing. That story was applauded in the workshop, but it had been a real strain to write.
    Why was it such a strain and why will it be until you get used to it? Ask yourself how you get along in society, how you survive when you're out in the world. By making as much trouble as possible every chance you get? No, you survive by avoiding conflict, by playing it safe, by being careful, by doing the exact opposite of what you need to do to write exciting stories.
    Writing compelling stories goes against the grain of all our socialized, civilized training. Creating fiction is an antisocial act. You, the author, are the one who must make all the trouble. And you must be merciless if you are going to incite your characters to the kind of action that is revealing and dramatic. This will be difficult when the time comes to pressure, to assault, to attack your character, a character that you have put your heart into creating and are attached to. But you must, because the more pressure you put on your character, the more he must use himself, reveal himself, so that we are able to experience him.
    If you take the easy way out, which you will be prone to do, consciously or unconsciously, because of your civilized nature and your affection for your character, if you take that easy way, your character will not act in a compelling way, your story will sag, and the reader will leave. So you must be cruel to your characters. It's the only way.
    Remember, the whale didn't kill Ahab. Melville did. The betrayed husband didn't kill Gatsby. Fitzgerald did. In Gone with the Wind, the tragic death of Rhett and Scarlett's little daughter falling from the horse wasn't ultimately from the fall. The author, Margaret Mitchell, had to kill her by making her fall from the horse. Why do that? Why cause such pain to Rhett and Scarlett? Pushing them to their limits was the best way to reach them on the deepest level and to reach us also—to