You are in your story world, telling your story, (or reading your child’s story ideas) when suddenly, you are starting to feel a bit bored by it. Or it feels like it’s taking forever to get on with it. What’s going on? Why isn’t the story moving forward? Your student’s story has characters, those characters have desires (hopefully dramatic desires), and the plot is moving forward. Slowly. And not really getting there. Why?

It sounds like the story might be missing a valuable element - the ticking clock. Take a moment, and sit still, and listen. Can you hear a clock ticking? Not so much anymore (though I do have a really loud clicking decorative clock in my library, which I either find comforting, tick-tock-tick-tock, or totally annoying, Tick-TOck-TICk-TOCK!), but when you do, a sense of timeliness pervades. A happy ticking clock is the countdown to New Year’s, or a scary one could be a ticking countdown on a bomb. Whatever it is, knowing that the time is short and when it’s up, it’s UP, develops a sense of movement and the need to press on.

In a story, a ticking clock is very specifically the pressure that is on a character to accomplish their desire before time runs out. This means that the character NEEDS to act before the time runs out. This pressure gives the character motivation to act and generally drives a story forward. Sometimes, as your student is working on a story, they might need a bit of help seeing the need for a ticking clock, and finding what it is that gives their character motivation to move forward. Of course, this is where you’d want to help them make sure that their characters have a dramatic desire (exercise #17 in A Pirate’s Guide), and once they do, that there is some kind of ticking clock to help them achieve it.

In Real Life :: And, to be honest, we all need a little ticking clock in our lives. “You can’t eat your ice cream until your dinner is done” is one simple example. “I can’t check my social media until the kids are in bed” is another. “I want to run a 10K at the end of the summer” gives you a time frame for doing that couch to 10K routine. So what motivates you? Your student? Maybe a little ticking clock can help everyone move forward!

Finding it in the Story :: the clock in this chapter is simply that they need to see it before they get to the island.

Tags: Character Desire