Competing Desires

I stay with a story - be it a novel or a movie - because of intriguing, quirky yet respectable characters. If I frankly don't care what happens to them, I turn the DVD off and pass the novel on to someone else. Diane Chamberlain and Jodi Picoult do this well.

As author Alexandra Sokoloff explains: the inner and outer desires of our main character(s) must be in conflict, and over the course of the story we begin to see their inner desires triumph. And this often comes at a very high personal cost. Dramatize your protagonist's inner desires - paint a series of lovely and excruciating icons as these desires emerge.