The power of what if

For Christmas I got season 1 of the TV show Once Upon a Time. The first thing I watched was the bonus features, because I love seeing how these things are made. What stuck out to me was how many times the writers of the show said "we wondered what would happen if" or "this path was obvious, so we asked ourselves what if..."

The biggest thing to me is when they were talking about Prince Charming's back story. They knew everyone would expect to know his story--the royal prince with a rich father who would take Snow White away. So they asked "What if that wasn't his story? What if he was actually a pauper?" From this simple realization that  the story would be more interesting with Charming having a different back story, the show has a whole other plot to go into with the conflicts of becoming a prince without having been raised as one.

As I've been plotting my next book, I've asked myself these same questions. What would the audience expect to happen from this? If it's something good--like the heroine winning, then I don't touch it. But who's expected to be the bad guy? The good guy? What cliches are in this genre that I want to avoid? Then from this, asking "what if this happened?" Sometimes it's awful. But sometimes it's good. And I've found that things are a lot less predictable and a lot more interesting.

Do you have any tricks for plotting your story?

The Character Your Character Could Be Like

The following post has spoilers for Once Upon a Time, including the most recent one. Just in case you care and haven't had a chance to watch it yet.

Sadly, there aren't enough characters like Rumpelstiltskin as he's portrayed in ABC's Once Upon a Time.

He's not a moral person. Some would probably even call him evil. But the writers of OUAT know how to develop characters (these are the same people who did Lost after all). I've always been impressed with the characters on the show, but last week's episode blew me away.

You see, Rumple here has a heart. We knew from his previous episode "Desperate Souls" that he can love--he had a son before he did anything to protect. But what about the Rumple we first saw behind bars, jumping around like a madman? With the end of his origins episode, people (or at least I did) assumed that he just became evil after he took on the power of The Dark One. But now we know from this past episode he is quite capable of love, despite all of the bad things he did. Even after the more than twenty-eight years since he lost Belle, he continues to love her. He just thought at the time he loved his power more. 

Rumple isn't a good guy. But he's a rather sympathetic character when knowing his backstory. Usually I only root the the good guy, I've never been the kind to side with the villains. But at this point in the story, I don't see Rumple as a villain anymore, even though he does some awful things.

From what I've learned with Rumple's character is that you need to go deeper with your characters. Are they really all good/bad? (probably not). What made a specific character the way that he is? What about the character will surprise the reader, but still fit with her personality?

This past episode has really made me consider my own characters and develop them further.