More on Motivation Reaction Units

It's been a while since I last posted on MRUs so I thought now would be a good time to gather my thoughts on the subject.

Regular readers may remember that I have been rewriting my earlier chapters using MRU's in between writing the new chapters. This has been quite refreshing and allows me to get into different parts of my protagonist’s head (parts that have become dull with time and almost forgotten about). It has also allowed me to see how much my writing has improved over the course of the novel.

When I first started writing using the MRU technique, I found that I produced short choppy paragraphs. To some degree, I still do that now, but when I feel there is too much white space I look over some of the preceding paragraphs to see where they can be embellished.

Often this is a simple fix. Sometimes all that is needed is to clump several motivations together and have your character react to the most important one. Other times a little interspersed description will do the trick.

If your writing tends to be very tight and to the point, you'll find this is a great way to increase your word count without bloating your story.

You can find a whole lot more on MRUs in Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain and here on Randy Ingermanson's Advanced Fiction Writing and in some of my previous posts below:

Motivation-Reaction Units
Thou Shalt Not Have Thy Protagonist in Thy Motivation Unit
Thou Can Have Thy Protagonist in Thy Motivation Unit
Mini Post
Fridayitis is Back (er except it's not. It was then but it's not now, but it might come back this week - who knows!)

Mini Post

So it's decided then.

I'm going to buy those books... Soon...

Um, well I haven't had much time to actually write as the real world has been pretty hectic lately. So I'll see if I can get the creative juices flowing now and just leave you with two things:

Adam asks an eternal writing/publishing question Why Do I Want To Be Published? and actually provides a darn good and insightful reason too.

Randy Ingermanson has finished off his series on MRUs.

Both of these are well worth a read. Enjoy!

Fridayitis is Back

I know, I know I've been scarce. What better way is there to be?

I feel kinda guilty actually neglecting my blog like this. I've been busy to say the least! There's so much to do when you find yourself out of work. All those forms to fill out just so your family can live, but hey, we can all take heart from J K Rowling, and even though she is a phenomenon even among best selling authors she (according to some commentators) earned £3 million A WEEK last year. Wow! Let the good times roll!

The current MRU series from Randy Ingermanson is now in full swing.

Congratulations to Editorial Anonymous as on Oct 1st they were Blogger's Blog of Note.

Just a short one today - have a good weekend.

Thou Can Have Thy Protagonist in Thy Motivation Unit

Following on from Thou Shalt Not Have Thy Protagonist in Thy Motivation Unit...


It seems you can have a reaction that is, in effect, a reaction to a reaction as in Sam’s MRUs taken from Advanced Fiction Writing's Blog.

This is good so far, but now you’re worried about the sentence that follows: “The all too familiar agita churned.” This is an emotive Reaction, but what is it reacting to?The answer is that it’s reacting to the POV character’s own interior monologue. So it has to come after the interior monologue. You’ve got the emotive response in the only place it’ll work.

Interior monologue being a potential rational thought and therefore a potential reaction in itself.

I've been struggling myself with the fact that it must be possible for the protagonist to react to internal thought. For instance, remembering something important that they had forgotten to do.

Seems only logical. Well, some of the parts of the information, in the articles, I've posted about obviously stuck with me more than other parts.

Most important of all is the fact that your character does not appear anywhere in the sentence, either by noun or pronoun. This is especially true while you're still a beginner, getting the feel of this device. For example, you do not fall into the trap of writing, “Now, Brad saw the red Jag pick up speed,” etc. The reason you shouldn’t do this is that it’s very, very easy for the inclusion of any mention of your character in a motivating sentence to transform said sentence into one of reaction; or, at least, to mix the whole thing up to the point where there’s a feeling of clutter to your sentence.

Dwight V Swain

I've quoted this before, but see the important stuff about being a beginner? Well that's me. I'll have to try and keep the protagonist out of the Motivations but where he is in there I'll have to extra vigilant it doesn't end up being a mix of Motivation and Reaction.

Thou Shalt Not Have Thy Protagonist in Thy Motivation Unit

Most important of all is the fact that your character does not appear anywhere in the sentence, either by noun or pronoun.

Dwight V Swain

Well, silly me. If I didn't have my main character mentioned in the very first Motivation Unit. This is the first Motivation Unit that also happened to be not just the very first paragraph, not even just the first line, but the very first word!

Yes, this is the Chapter I've just completely rewritten using MRU's... Methinks I have a but more work to do.

Motivation-Reaction Units

Motivation-Reaction Units can be quite tricky!

I've been wrestling with them for the last few days, and so far, I think it is a lot harder to rewrite something in MRUs than it is to write it from scratch. I'm still going to rewrite what I have already written, because I believe it will make my work much stronger. I am also a firm believer that if you learn something the had way, you'll learn it that much better.

Some scenes lend themselves to MRUs much better than others. The scenes, I am having difficulty with, are the ones where it is hard to identify the external motivation.

If you haven't read Randy Ingermanson's Writing the perfect scene Perfect Scene, or his series of blogs on MRUs then it is well worth checking out.

Let me allow Randy to explain how MRUs work.

The Motivation is external and objective, and you present it that way, in objective, external terms. You do this in a single paragraph. It does not need to be complicated.

The Reaction is internal and subjective, and you present it that way, exactly as your POV character would experience it -- from the inside. This is your chance to make your reader be your POV character. To repeat myself, this must happen in its own paragraph (or sequence of paragraphs). If you leave it in the same paragraph as the Motivation, then you risk whip-sawing the reader. Which no reader enjoys. The Reaction is more complex than the Motivation. The reason is that it is internal, and internal processes happen on different time-scales. When you see a tiger, in the first milliseconds, you only have time for one thing -- fear. Within a few tenths of a second, you have time to react on instinct, but that is all it will be -- instinct, reflex. But shortly after that first reflexive reaction, you will also have time to react rationally, to act, to think, to speak. You must present the full complex of your character's reactions in this order, from fastest time-scale to slowest. If you put them out of order, then things just don't feel right. You destroy the illusion of reality. And your reader won't keep reading because your writing is "not realistic." Even if you got all your facts right.

Now, the problems I've experienced are with internal motivation. Surely there is internal motivation - a thought for example?

Well, er, no, not that I've found anyway! So, this is where it gets tricky. Very tricky.

As a result, I've been struggling with some passages in my book.

But then, maybe I've been looking at it all wrong. Maybe I have to write it as a reaction, and just a reaction. Looking at Randy's series, it seems that way. The motivation may be obvious and therefore not written. For example, let's say my POV character presses a button. The presence of the button is the motivation, but maybe I don't have to write about the button until my character actually presses it. Otherwise we have a series of one line paragraphs, and frankly, they look pants.

Well I think I have it right anyway.

Here's hoping!