As Lightning Strikes

hey god it's me again

“Two thousand years ago, Aristotle wondered why the great poets, philosophers, artists, and politicians often have melancholic personalities. His question was based on the ancient belief that the human body contains four humors, or liquid substances, each corresponding to a different temperament: melancholic (sad), sanguine (happy), choleric (aggressive), and phlegmatic (calm). […] But Aristotle’s question never went away; it can’t. There’s some mysterious property in melancholy, something essential. Plato had it, and so did Rumi, so did Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Maya Angelou, Nina Simone … Leonard Cohen. But what, exactly, did they have? I’ve spent years researching this question, following a centuries-old trail laid by artists, writers, contemplatives, and wisdom traditions from all over the world. […] And I’ve concluded that bittersweetness is not, as we tend to think, just a momentary feeling or event. It’s also a quiet force, a way of being, a storied tradition–as dramatically overlooked as it is brimming with human potential. It’s an authentic and elevating response to the problem of being alive in a deeply flawed yet stubbornly beautiful world.”

• Grab a few events (minor or major doesn’t matter) from earlier or later in the story and trace out the causal chains. What caused it and what did it cause? Can the domino effect lead to a new event?
• Trace out the “story” of the main cast’s motivation. How does the motivation interact with the story and how does the motivation change over time?
• Go hunt for story elements you put in earlier that could be escalated into subplots.
• Take a few characters who have different levels of information (or are more or less close to antagonists) and go through the story from their perspective. Perhaps you don’t know what should come next for your main character, but it might be obvious what comes next for a different character.
• When you throw in new characters, first try to repurpose old characters. This makes them feel less cheap and gives them a better chance at developing depth. And when you do want to use a totally new one, consider someone who’s related to an existing character or a causal chain. The reader might already be wondering where X character’s parents are, after all.