One of the biggest problems you’ll face in the evolution as a writer is this – what obstacles can I throw at my protagonist? You might think it’s boatloads of fun – after all, thinking of wacky situations that the good guys will run into is what I became a writer for, right?
Wrong. This quirky, creative energy that you tapped into to create all those lovable obstacles is very easily drained, as you’ll find out. Once you write too many obstacles, you’ll run out of ideas. You’ll realise that your supposedly boundless imagination wasn’t all that boundless, and the hundred good ideas actually amount to maybe three or four usable ones.
And then you’ll start to realise that what was once fun to write (the obstacle) is now a chore. Why should my protagonists run into any problems? I already took so much effort justifying their trip to Mount Doom. Isn’t that gruelling enough?
Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s gruelling to you, the writer, but the reader doesn’t see it, doesn’t feel your pain. And your job as a writer is to make your reader feel enough pain such that the reward at the end is so much sweeter, so much more deserving, and a fitting finale to your masterpiece.
This also means that your pain is doubled. First is getting there, and next is creating the obstacle that they face. I mean, when Tolkien first planned the Mount Doom scene, I’m pretty sure all he had were notes like
- Gollum must play important part in destruction of the One Ring
- Frodo must finally fall prey to the burden he’s been whining about for 3 books
- One Ring must be utterly destroyed in such a way that it won’t be found again (phew I got this, I said they had to throw it in the volcano)
- Frodo must face challenge in throwing the One Ring down volcano. Note that Frodo and Sam are hobbits so challenge cannot be so great that it is unbelievable.
- Oh I know! Gollum should be their final challenge.
- But Gollum also needs to be reason why One Ring is destroyed
- zzzzzzzz
Believe, me, that’s what happens when I write. It’s the zzzzz part that accounts for 90% of writers’ block. It’s connecting the dots that makes it fun (to me), but it’s the obstacles that make it fun for the reader.
Otherwise in the Mount Doom scene, Tolkien could very well have written it such that Frodo throws the ring down Mount Doom and they go home as Gollum reaches a minute too late. That wouldn’t be too exciting, would it?
After a batch of writing, I find obstacles very tedious to write. Why can’t the heroes just find the information there? Why bother with the red herring? Why are there fisticuffs? (Just kidding, I love brawls, and I try to throw one in wherever possible). Why is it so urgent that they do this within so and so limitations and constraints?
I call this the unnecessary complication. Because in the grand scheme of things, this obstacle doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter that Sam was caught spying on Frodo at the beginning of Lord of the Rings, was it? Or that Indiana Jones is scared of snakes. But it creates a memorable moment and generates conflict. And conflict, as we all know, is the root of all drama.
Here I present to you several methods of generating obstacles when you’re stuck. This is the useful part of the post.
Constrain the constraints
Your protagonist always has a constraint on them – perhaps a time limit (most common), or it’s a dangerous location, or they’re keeping a secret. That’s why you want to find out whether they succeed. So generate an obstacle from their constraints – the time limit becomes shorter (it’s a bomb!), the location becomes more dangerous (the dam broke and it’s going to flood!), or they have to keep the secret from a lot more people (mum mustn’t find out, but neither can bro, sis, and dad find out either!).
If you’re not sure what constraints exist, go back to the 5W1H and consider all the dimensions of the conflict/problem at hand. Most of my other tips stem from this, or are more complicated variations of this.
Someone else wants something else
All conflict exists because two or more parties want different objectives, possibly so different as to be polar opposites. Hence you have man vs man, man vs nature, man vs himself type of conflicts in literature. So, exacerbate this conflict. This can be done by looking at the prize/object/McGuffin of the conflict.
The object of desire must be singular (only one party can have it) and it must be exclusive (no other objects can exist if this one exists). With these two qualities, whatever additional party you decide to throw into the conflict can have any object-desired motivation, and it’ll still work.
If the other party wants the same object, hooray, it’s singular, only one person can have it. Conflict!
If the other party wants something different, the goals are mutually exclusive, so they must thwart the hero in order to have it. Conflict!
Uncontactable
All protagonists need some sort of guidance or reference to accomplish their goals. Cut them off from this guide, and you’ve got an obstacle – the protagonist needs to do it relying on another different set of skills that he may or may not have.
It’s easiest to see this in cop shows – when the comm link goes dead, the protagonist is stranded without resources, and HQ needs to rescue him or her. Or the dutiful husband loses the grocery list that his evil mother-in-law gave him. Wolverine needs to rescue Storm from Asteroid M, but loses the map that shows which cell she is in. Suddenly, what was once a simple task is given additional layers of complication. Unnecessary complication, yes, but still complicated.
The Red Herring
Oh I hate this. But it works quite well. A good red herring creates both surprise and retrospect (the clues were there all along, you should have know!). Hawaii Five-0 does it pretty often – the heroes go off chasing leads that don’t quite pan out. Every other time though, they do discover a secret that you didn’t realise was there in the first place, so it works.
The red herring has to seem legit, but it also has to seem too good to be true – if the girl discovers that the boy loves girls who bake peanut cakes in the first ten minutes of the movie and finds the world’s best recipe for peanut cakes, you know something will go wrong. The recipe is wrong, or the boy was heartbroken by the previous peanut cake baker so his tastes have changed. Of course, this is too on the nose an example, but you understand. In hindsight, you have to think to yourself – oh, yeah, that wouldn’t have worked out.
The red herring has to have the following qualities: be too good to be true, be clearly unattainable or ineffective, and require a great deal of effort to obtain. Otherwise it will seem like exactly what it is – a red herring – even before you spring the surprise that it was a red herring.
An ally is a bad guy
This is a subset of the Twist or the Mislead, but it works especially well when the ally is someone who is ostensibly helpless and weak. For example, when you discover the true bad guy is actually a small child instead of the massive leviathan? Or when you discover that the trusted auntie is actually scheming to gain the throne. In cop shows, when the person who was robbed/injured turns out to be the mastermind of the whole crime – this is an example of an ally is a bad guy.
This is usually used towards the end of a series or a movie, since one of the prerequisites is that the ally must be likeable and you must sympathise/empathise with her. This takes time to build up, but there are several shortcuts to manufacturing it within the span of half an hour.
Have the ally that’s a bad guy be injured, have someone close to the ally be injured, appear too weak to fight any bad guy, tell a deep personal secret to the protagonist (and have secrets told to them in turn), be a childhood friend of the protagonist, or be about to die/leave. As cheap as this sounds, it usually creates enough positive emotions towards the ally that’s a bad guy, that when you pull your reveal, there’s a suitable amount of shock and creates the obstacle – how do I fight someone who was my friend?
Something needs hiding
Another variation of constraining the constraints, but this involves more concealment than anything else. The task must be accomplished while balancing something else. The hero must defeat the monster without revealing his secret identity when his mask is torn off. The undercover cop must betray his fellow policemen who have unknowingly stepped into a trap. Or the pregnant girl must give birth without letting anyone know she’s in labour.
For this to work, you need strong supporting characters who will jeopardise the main character should the balancing act fail. As with the example of the hero with the secret identity, it’s not so much that he’s worried about his own fate when the public learns who he is. It’s when his loved ones are attacked by the public and monsters, that jeopardises him.
Merlin went through 5 seasons of this. 5. You would think it got old, but somehow it didn’t. Proof that you can use this obstacle as an entire premise, if need be.
New information
“She has cancer.”
And with this one sentence, you have introduced an obstacle that will change the dynamic of everyone’s relationships with her. Or at least those who know she has cancer. Her impending death is what will colour perceptions of her behaviour, thus creating a passive obstacle. It doesn’t have to be cancer, of course, but it has to be something that was previously thought to be the opposite. Like Spider-Man was actually a woman. The loyal dog was actually bred as an assassin. Or your father is actually the bad guy of the trilogy.
I call this a passive obstacle because it’s not really something you can overcome, but it presents enough of an unnecessary complication that you can’t ignore it while writing. It also creates a bit more interest and excitement in what might possibly be humdrum motivations.
So go ahead, create those unnecessary complications, and write. Stop reading about writing and actually go finish the darn thing!
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