Beauty and Brokenness

I write romance. Whether as the main binding of my novel or a smaller thread, romantic elements are a staple in almost everything I write. I love…love. Why? Oh, there are so many reasons. The emotional high, the subdued gentleness, the tender service, the transforming power.

Love makes a difference - 

Especially when we add the element of God’s love into our fiction.

But what makes these ‘love stories’ so meaningful? What changes our stories from a simple, two-dimensional fairytale-like story to a tale that brings our hearts to life or inspires us?

Well, I’ll venture an answer.

Brokenness.

Every major character we bring onto the page has been broken in some way. Even the highly adored Mr. Darcy was broken!  Yet, he is a most loved character BECAUSE he was broken, and then we got to watch love turn him around :-)  (However, Mr. Knightley might very well be perfect. Just sayin’ J)

In a world of broken things, we have little use for perfect people. Perfect people, if you've ever read them, fail to grasp our hearts and emotions as well as the broken ones do. Why? We can relate with broken people because we’ve all experienced some element of brokenness. Big or small, we know the sting.

In fact, I’m pretty sure we struggle with some form of brokenness on a daily basis.

Think about some of your favorite book characters? What made you fall in love with them? Perfection?

If you’re like me, these characters captured your heart because of their growth through brokenness.

Whether in romance or other fiction, brokenness is a key element in character development.

Brokenness provides the wound which only love can heal.

Now, I’m not quite singing along with the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love, but I am saying, as we create powerful characters, we are taking them from a place of brokenness to a place of healing by the end of the story.

Isn’t this what usually happens in most stories? It’s one way conflict and the character arc work together.

Can brokenness be beautiful?

Why do we love happy endings?

Because on the other side of brokenness, love brings a deeper joy.

How different the story of Cinderella would be if she traveled to the Ball with her stepmother and sisters, caught the prince's eye, and was swept away to marry him. Sweet story, but depth? Beauty of the ending?

Not quite as poignant, right?

What about if Rapunzel crawled down from the tower and went straight to the castle to find her parents?

What if Angel in Redeeming Love tossed away her old life as soon as Michael Hosea walked into the brothel?

Sweet endings, sure, but we get something EVEN BETTER.

We get the 'conflict', struggle....the brokenness to make that ending all the more beautiful.

This idea is fresh in my mind as I finished edits for my December release and am currently working on edits for my February release. Both of my heroines were significantly broken in the beginning of the books. One was aware of it. One wasn’t. What makes each of their journeys more powerful is the way their brokenness shapes them in the beginning of the books and the way love transforms them by the end. It’s a constant battle between living in brokenness and learning to live in love.

What a beautiful experience. Both realized the sweetness of love in a deeper way than they would have without the brokenness to frame their vision.

Love changes things.

Especially God’s love.

In our writing, in our lives, the power of God’s love transforms broken pieces of a life and places them back together to make a masterpiece…more beautiful than before. At the heart.

So tell me – what are some great ‘broken’ characters you’ve read? Written?

Are you like me? Do you think broken characters are more beautiful?

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As a native of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Pepper Basham enjoys sprinkling her Appalachian culture into her fiction whenever she can. She’s an award-winning author of both contemporary and historical romances, mom of five, speech-language pathologist, and lover of chocolate. She resides in Asheville, North Carolina with her family. She is represented by Julie Gwinn and her debut novel, The Thorn Bearer, released in April 2015. Her first contemporary romance novel, A Twist of Faith, released in December. You can connect with Pepper on her website at www.pepperdbasham.com, Facebook-  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pepper-D-Basham or Twitter at https://twitter.com/pepperbasham

Applying the Moral Premise to your story

In my last blog post, I shared with you the one ingredient common to every commercially successful story.

If you’re not up to speed with the rest of us, take a minute and go read the post here. I promise we’ll wait. J

Back again? Great. So now you know that for your story to experience commercial success – for it to resonate with a broad audience – it must be built upon the foundation of a Moral Premise. You also have an understanding of what the Moral Premise is, how it differs from the concept of a theme, and how the Moment of Grace becomes a pivot point between the protagonist’s pursuit of vice and his pursuit of virtue.

This week, we’ll be looking at how to apply the principle of the Moral Premise to our stories. Dr Stan Williams, the brilliant author of The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue and Vice for Box Office Success, breaks down the process into 8 straightforward steps.

1. Determine the controlling virtue.

What do you want your story to really be about? And how do you go about narrowing down all the possibilities to one key idea? Do you just close your eyes, poke your finger at a list of virtues and see where it lands, then run with it?

No. Because if you choose a value which means little to you, your story will flounder in the shallows. Your audience will sense your lack of passion.  Dr Williams explains this so eloquently I’ll quote him directly:

“A controlling virtue… is a value that you, the writer, must hold in the highest esteem. It is something you are passionate about getting more of; something that gets you out of bed in the morning to write about. It has to be a value that connects with your view of humanity on every level. It is something that is eternally true, and hopefully of importance to most, if not every member of society… your audience.”

2. Determine the controlling vice

The controlling vice must be directly oppositional to the controlling virtue. For example – greed vs. generosity, or love vs. hatred.

Williams then shakes things up by advising writers to allocate vices to the protagonist, and virtues to the villain.

Yep, that’s right. Kinda the opposite of what you might expect, huh? But he has a point. In order to avoid cardboard cut-out characters, our villains need to have a sympathetic side, while our heroes need flaws to overcome so we can relate to them and see them grow throughout the story.

3. Determine the Moral Premise.

Let’s brush up on the structure again.

(Vice) leads to (defeat); but

(virtue) leads to (success).

Here, Dr Williams lets us in on another pointer. He suggests thinking of the defeat and success elements as the physical/ external goals of the protagonist, while the vice and virtue components sum up the characters’ psychological or internal goals.

Are you beginning to see the power of this tool? Nail this step, and you’ll have a structure that embodies the internal and external story arcs, conflict, and resolution of your novel.

4. Determine the (story’s) genre

Williams rightly points out that the writer’s choice of genre creates certain inherent expectations, which will predetermine much of your story’s structure.

You’re writing romance? It’s a given that the guy and gal will end up together. If you fail to deliver on this for your readers, you’ll lose their trust. If you’re writing women’s fiction, on the other hand, you have a bit more wiggle room. Women’s fiction authors like to do unexpected things such as killing off the male lead halfway through the book. (Insert evil laugh here.)

Whatever your genre, knowing its accepted parameters will help you define the structure of your book.

5. Determine the protagonist’s physical goal

You already know what your story is really about. (See Step 1.) Now you need to relate this to the physical goal of the story so that the external action becomes a metaphor for the internal truth of the tale.

Often, the physical goal (the hook) is what you begin with – the original spark of an idea for a book – and the internal truth follows as you learn more about your characters. Whichever order you develop these in, it’s essential that the two are related in order to convey the Moral Premise in a powerful and consistent way.

6. Determine the protagonist’s physical obstacles

That is, the things that prevent him or her from achieving the physical goal. Often, this will be an antagonist whose goals oppose those of the MC.

7. Determine the major dramatic beats

This step involves creating character arcs for each character in your story, each of which must embody the same Moral Premise in differing ways. The essential rule here? KEEP IT ABOUT ONE THING.

Williams iterates, “If the physical goals of the various characters do not refer implicitly to the Moral Premise, then you are writing two different (stories). Stop. Fix it. A successful (story) is about only one thing, like a well-constructed sentence or paragraph. Each sentence in a paragraph supports the topic sentence. If it doesn’t, get rid of it, use it in a different paragraph, or a different (story).”

8. Sequence the dramatic beats

Here’s where you take the information you’ve worked out about your characters – their goals, virtues and vices – and structure them into a plot: a sequence of events that will propel your protagonist to the climax.

Williams delves into great detail at this step, with extremely helpful structural advice. Such detail is beyond the scope of this article. Want to know more? You’ll need to buy his book! I highly recommend it.

Did you find this breakdown helpful? My lightbulb moment was when Dr Williams says that if our characters’ goals don’t refer implicitly to the Moral Premise, we’re writing two different stories. Uh – GUILTY! To be totally honest, I’ve probably been writing four different stories! I’m so happy to finally be able to pinpoint the main structural flaw of my novel! Anyone else have a lightbulb moment…? J

Image by chaiwat, courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Karen Schravemade lives in Australia. When she's not chasing after two small boys or gazing at her brand-new baby girl, she spends her spare minutes daydreaming about the intricate lives of characters who don't actually exist. Find her on her website, on Twitter or getting creative over at her mummy blog.