Quite a while ago I made a thread called "Somebody Wants Something". Quoting from that thread:

Quote:

Somebody Wants Something You have no plot - nada, zip, zilch - unless and until you have one character who wants something: that's Motivation. They set out to get it and run into problems: that's Conflict. The problems get more thorny, the goal tantalizingly close to being realized or lost forever (Rising Action) until... The Climax! The problem is nullified, perhaps by being solved, perhaps by the realization that the problem can't be solved, or was misunderstood all along and the proposed 'solution' wouldn't actually solve anything. At the same time, the main character(s) have grown in some way - either by changing themselves to suit the world, or reaffirming their resolve to stay the same and change the world to suit them. Let the reader down gently by exprssing your moral and wrapping up loose ends in the Resolution and NOW you've got yourself a real story with a complete plot. Maybe it's not a great story, because greatness is a gestalt phenomenon resulting from all the artistic choices you make in creating your story; but it's definitely a story. And since you can't have a great story unless you first have a solid plot to hang it on, I'd say that's a good start.

Now, I'd like to talk about the 'problem' part of this recipe. "Somebody wants something... BUT there's a problem." There are two main kinds of problems - inanimate obstacles, and animate opponents. Generally the first kind are unsuitable for the major problem of a story because they don't fight back (although it is possible to use a particularly humorous or creative-solution-requiring inanimate obstacle as the main problem of a short story). Generally for a story long enough to be a game/play/novella length script you need to have at least one animate opponent, and preferably several. Many RPGs have a major villain, his staff of minor villains and boss monsters, in addition to a conflict within the main character's mind and conflicts between the main character and his other team members. Then these opponents create inanimate obstacles for the main character to deal with directly. These inanimate obstacles include things like the price for buying an object, a wall or locked door keeping the main character from progressing, a status ailment hindering the main character's progress, a law preventing the main character from doing something, etc. So, let's do a little exercise: Let's say your main character wants to be a leader. BUT, there's a problem. ...So what IS the problem? Think of as many different obstacles which might block your character from becoming a leader as you can. Go! :)

I just thought of something I thought I should point out, here.
I don't think inanimate obstacles/opponents are really less of a problem than you think. I think what happens, when there is nobody to conflict against, is that the protagonist then conflicts against himself/his allies.
A mountain is an inanimate obstacle, yet if your hero has to climb it to get to his ultimate goal, there is ample opportunity to make this a conflict. A conflict not just with the environment and the harshness of nature, but also an internal conflict: the necessity to keep going despite difficulties, pain, and maybe other conflicts with your allies, who are also experiencing their own internal problems and possibly lashing out as a result.

Every time the protagonist is confronted with something that cannot be changed, cannot be delt with, but must be overcome, it is an opportunity for you the writer, to show him confronting himself and his own limitations, and an opportunity to grow and learn through introspection and inner resolve.

There are books out there that have the environment as a main villain, if you think about it, sending out his minions to fight you in an indirect way. Think of the desert, think of the ocean, think of the mountains...
I suppose, how alive and personal you can make such an environment, depends on your personal experience, as a writer, of those same environments.
I have a too vivid experience of mountains to think of it as just rocks and some snow, for example [grin].

Now let's take your example of a person who wants to become a leader.
The hero, a farmer boy, has heard of noblemen living in massive castle, of knights leading cavalry charges, and other heroic leaders performing their heroic deeds...
Obstacles : he is young, he lives in a farm in some god forsaken corner of a remote location of the realm. He doesn't have any means of transport except walking, but that means he'll have to cross the forest, possibly camp in the wilderness, etc.

All that is inanimate obstacles, isn't it, and yet it's quite a set of difficulties to overcome. And again, they only highlight the inadequacy of our protagonist, and hopefully should inspire him to become better...

Just my two cents, anyway :P

The above post was mine.

For the comments about animated and inanimated obstacles, I think ahw is correct. If you read s/s's post the distinction that she made between the two was at best arbitrary. Inanimated obstacles is just as important as animated obstacle, just as driving into a tree at 50mph is the same as driving in to an incoming car 25mph each. It depends on your speed. And ahw showed that it indeed depends on the presentation of the character. It seems inadaquet to classify a collision by the objectives involved instead of the collision itself.

Using 'inanimated' to describe obstacles that don't fight back is probably a misnomer. Newton would tell you they do. In the context of stories, 'inanimated' obstacles still play a major role. For the earlier discussions about revenges (by TechnoGoth), the main character, semantically, is not fighting against the 'villain', but the futileness of the revenge. As the character goes deeper in revenge, the loss deepens. In this context, the distinction between 'inanimated' and 'animated' obstacles falls short in describing the gist of the conflict. How would you classify 'vengeance' as 'animated' or 'inanimated'? Doesn't it also fight back the harder you try to pursue it? Can you really call it 'animated' even though there is no notion of intention? (I am speculating that you originally called obstacles 'animated' because they are the 'active or reactive causes' of conflicts.)

For the brainstorm, there are simply too many reasons. However, there are approaches that can facilitate brainstorming. One of them is to ask a more preliminary question, such as: What is a leader? What do you see as a leader?

- A position. This seems to be how DecipherOne sees a leader in his post. From this perspective, you will get all the obstacles involved with 'obtaining a position'

- A representative of a group. This is probably a closer description of what a leader is. From this perspective, you can get all the obstacles involved with communication, goals and interests, representation, representator, conflicts of interests, etc...

- A vision holder, a director. This is also a common definition. From this perspective you get the obstacles involving visions, management, risk, planning, etc...

Therefore, the more inspiring question to ask is probably: what do you see as a leader?

Suppose I say, 'a leader is a gift'. What kind of obstacles can you see from this perspective? What other associations can you make?

Quote:

Original post by Anonymous Poster Using 'inanimated' to describe obstacles that don't fight back is probably a misnomer. Newton would tell you they do. In the context of stories, 'inanimated' obstacles still play a major role. For the earlier discussions about revenges (by TechnoGoth), the main character, semantically, is not fighting against the 'villain', but the futileness of the revenge. As the character goes deeper in the path of revenge, the losses also deepen. In this context, you will see that the distinction between 'inanimated' and 'animated' obstacles falls short in describing the gist of the conflict. How would you classify 'vengeance' as 'animated' or 'inanimated'? Doesn't it also fight back the harder you try to pursue it? Can you really call it 'animated' even though there is no notion of intention? (I am speculating that you originally called obstacles 'animated' because they are the 'active or reactive causes' of conflicts.) - A position. This seems to be how DecipherOne sees a leader in this post. From this perspective, you will get all the obstacles involved with 'obtaining a position'

I was under the impression that the definition here, of obstacles was more pertaining to outside entities. As in physically tangable things, inanimate being things that don't have a spark, animate being things that do. If this isn't the definition, then I would have to change my response to ahw. However, I can see where inner conflict and emotions can be obtacles as well. I suppose I was looking at the scene with a little bit of tunnel vision. As for my definition of a leader, I kind of got bored and lost my direction with what I was writing previously. I can see where you would interpret my take on a leader as being someone in a position of authority, but as you stated that is a broad scope, and I simply picked a niche to define it. To speculate on definitions forever, nothing will get done. I realize perception makes reality, and you pose some good questions and offer some intelligent insight. Looking this over again, and realigning my train of thought, you guys make a lot of sense. zzzz

The idea was not to argue about the definition. A leader IS a position. There is nothing wrong with that. The idea was by first brainstorming about the definition, it opens doors by corridors, instead of opening them one by one. For example, by defining a leader as a position, you can immediately draw parallels and analogies to conflicts involving heirloom and such.

Brainstorm is not just about jogging down any thoughts. It can be systematic also. Brainstorming first on the definition is a tunneling technique, in terms of optimization. Sometimes it saves a lot of time when you tunnel through into a new area that is totally unexplored. At that moment you can be sure that you ideas will be original.

I am sure SnS was just trying to focus on character conflict because that's the sort of stuff she prefers, but I found her dismissal a bit, eh, superficial.
I was just pointing out what I think inanimate obstacles are good at.

I also don't like the implication that using "inanimate" has, i.e. obstacles that don't have a soul, a personality. As I stated earlier, I think any writer with a personal experience of an environment should be able to bring out the spirit of a place. The sprawling expanse of industrial suburbs and their smoking factories, the feeling of immensity when you stand on top of a mountain, seeing the horizon extends all around you, watching the clouds beneath like a sea of white stuff; when you have experienced places like these it's hard not to antropomorphize (is that even a word?) them, give them a personality, a spirit.

In effect, and that was the point I was trying to express, it's not so much the fact that an obstacle is another sapient that matters, but rather that you as a writer can make it a antagonist, with respect to our protagonist.

Any obstacle is an excuse to create a conflict, to show our hero under pressure, to make him mature, and so on.
Whether that conflict can be expressed in a clear straightforward manner (an argument, a negotiation) or in a metaphorical fashion (a climber cursing at the sky, a sea captain offering a sacrifice to the waves as a form of negotation) is IMHO irrelevant.
This is what I meant by saying that inanimate obstacles are useful for showing the inner conflict of a character. Depending on how much a character antropomorphize his surroundings, the environment becomes a source of "characters" to handle, or a series of inner conflicts for the character.
How you handle the conflicts is up to you the writer, depending on how you see your protagonist, but the conflicts are there, no matter how you handle them.

If you think the only obstacles worth being considered are other sapients, I can't tell you that you are wrong, because if you can't make the inanimate obstacles "animate" (give them a soul), then your writing wouldn't probably feel as inspired as if you were writing about people (which I assume you can make feel animate without trouble!)
Nothing wrong with that, eh. Some people are good at talking about other people, some other people enjoy making the environment feel alive around there characters.

I just feel dissing out inanimate obstacles out of hand is a sad mistake, and a waste of perfectly good writing material, IMHO [grin]

Quote:

Estok For the brainstorm, there are simply too many reasons. However, there are approaches that can facilitate brainstorming. One of them is to ask a more preliminary question, such as: What is a leader? What do you see as a leader?

That's a great thought!
I would even go one step further, in fact: What do your _characters_ consider a leader. Because if different interacting/conflicting characters have different views of what it means...

The way I was thinking about it is, internal conflict is conflict with yourself, and you are clearly an animate opponent. Nature personified so that it is deliberately attacking you is also an animate opponent. My intention was to define an 'inanimate obstacle' as anything which does not fight back, i.e. if you unlock a normal door the door does not try to lock itself again, or find some alternative way to resist you passing through it. If you knock a hole in a normal wall it doesn't throw bricks at you or deliberately collaps on your head when you try to go through the hole. My argument that inanimate obstacles are inherently less interesting than animate opponents arises from the fact that they are easily defeated, usually with a single action, and their behavior is predictable and thus does not create suspense. Players do not hunch breathlessly forward wondering how the door will react to the outrage of being unlocked. When you walk past the door 3 hours later you don't wonder if it remembers you and has been plotting revenge all this time. Inanimate obstacles which the player solves with one action and then forgets about are dramatically very weak, and when a designer litters them around an RPG I think it dilutes the power of the gameplay in that RPG to be meaningful and unified.

LOL [grin]
OK, fair enough, but then what if the guards find that door open?
What if its lock is trapped with a silent alarm (Again, alerting guards).

I suppose I am pulling this thread OT, so I'll stop, but as I said before, I just think it's up to you the writer to make things interesting.
Inanimate obstacles as you define them seem rather irrelevant, but you can always make them matter by tying them to "animate obstacles"...

But if you do so, you are then looping back to "animate obstacles".

Moreover, unless it is part of Nature itself, I tend to envision furniture and walls as a part of the "animate obstacle", since it has been placed by an animate opponent. A door has been locked by someone. A barrier has been raised by someone. That hole has been dug by someone. And all the time, you are doing your best to overcome the efforts of that person.

Now if you were trying to blast that great cliff, no one created that cliff. It can be then safely put in the "inanimate obstacle" section. If you are trying to cross that abysmal canyon, it's likely that no one actually took to the pain to dig it, unless you refer to ancient Lore. Even when you try to go through the Rockies and the Appalaches, you are not trying to defeat traps set up by Paul Bunyan, because he is suppose to have created them while playing with Babe, his ox, or bull, I can't remember which, and was, at the time, NOT thinking about you. There HAS to be a will in an obstacle, be it an exterior will, for it to become an "animate obstacle". Sometimes, you fight people who have absolutely no desire of fighting you, but have to, because they are soldiers, or competitors. And sometimes, you just happen to make your best through coincidental causes, which just happen to be, with no particular design behind them.

My girlfriend lives with a handicap, and although she "happened" by accident, and although her father had the very same handicap as she does, she can't be said to fight through her life against the will of her father, who gave her that life and handicap to have fun seeing her having difficulties. The handicap is "inanimate". But when she tries to, say, get a job, she experiences difficulties, not because of her handicap, but because of the way people see the handicap. The obstacle is "animate", and it is not the handicap, but other people, trying to keep her off.

As for the "animate obstacles" a wannabe leader might have to overcome, I can imagine three:
Rivals
Trials set up by tradition or by judge.
Lack of will of the people he is supposed to lead.