Free Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver Page B

nothing, she could not live with herself. She would have no self-respect. This would eat her up from the inside.
    Now, of course, there are gentle, subtle stories that may not go the limit to this degree. But even the best of these follow this form. At a minimum, they have a sense of urgency, an encounter/confrontation, and a resolution. But don't get distracted by that now. Your job is to learn to create drama. Once you can do that, you can do anything.
    Obstacle: Following immediately on the heels of the want must come the obstacle. But how can you tell if you have enough of an obstacle, a dramatic obstacle? Well, first, the obstacle must be as determined, driven, and desperate to block or deny the want as the want is driven to overcome the obstacle. If they are not of equal determination, you have an uneven match and a false conflict—one that will be resolved quickly. The best way to measure the want-obstacle relationship is to consider what would happen if the character ignored the obstacle. If you have a dramatic obstacle and the character ignores it, if he does not act, he will be seriously harmed or destroyed—emotionally, physically, socially, financially ruined. If the character can do nothing and still suffer no injury, you have a false conflict or no conflict—no drama, no story.
    Obstacle First: Now, a person's want often doesn't get fired up until it's thwarted. The obstacle often appears first, as in Hamlet (the ghost of
    Hamlet's father appears out of nowhere) or in my Larry scene (my wife kisses Larry). The want is there. It's understood, but it's dormant. We assume Hamlet wasn't longing to have the problem of avenging his father's death dumped in his lap. So, he doesn't give it a thought until it is. We assume that I don't want my wife cheating on me by kissing Larry, but it doesn't cross my mind until it happens. Often it's easier to dump a big problem on the character to get things moving than to try to work up a want first. Or you can create an obstacle, then start your story before the obstacle appears and build up the want that the obstacle will threaten or deny. Whether it's want-obstacle or obstacle-want, they need to appear as close together as possible.
    Action: Activity is not action, not dramatic action. A character can be doing all kinds of things (ranting, raving, thrashing around) that are not to the point, not an attempt to make something happen. For action to be dramatic, it must be either a direct attack upon the problem or a defense against it. Trying to convince someone to loan you money so you can pay off a gambling debt is a direct attack upon the problem. Hiding behind the door with a baseball bat to club the juice man who's coming to break your legs at eight o'clock is a defense against the problem—a problem that's coming to you. In both cases the character must assert himself in a major way.
    Thinking: Thinking can be action. Thinking that involves wrestling with the problem and planning an attack or a defense is action. The mind is a dramatic place. The written story is the only story form that can do the mind well, that can portray it to its fullest. All great stories involve the workings of the mind and the internal conflict, the character's struggle with himself. The mind is the deepest, most intimate connection that we can make. But all writers do not go into the mind to the same degree—mainly because it's the most difficult part of the
    craft next to using conflict. Portraying a character's thoughts is difficult and complicated enough that it needs a chapter of its own, which will come later.
    WANT, OBSTACLE, ACTION Your first line of defense. The never-fail tools.
    The holy trinity of story.
    Want, obstacle, action are the one, two, three of dramatic movement. If you get those three elements in place and working properly, your story will have the dramatic energy to propel it to a strong ending. The first questions to be asked when reworking a story or a scene are: 1. Who