By Shanaya Wagh, Core Contributor
ISSN 2977358x (online)
All around the world, various communities and societies have either a series of celebrations or one particular festival that is the highlight of their year. Writing books set during these occasions can be a fun experience, but for a fiction author, it is a challenge to introduce much needed tension when everything seems so festive.
But are all festivals full of fun and merriment? They might appear to be times of great joy, however, they are also times of great stress and landmines stuffed with argument-grenades.
As authors, these points of contention are tools in our festival-writing toolkit.
Why do you need conflict and arguments in your story?
Conflict or impending probability of an argument keeps your readers guessing about what happens next. Conflict is the driver of story and, wielded skilfully, can make your book a page-turner.
The level of contention will depend on the type of your story i.e. a cosy mystery vs a hard-boiled detective novel has very different types of conflict in them.
You might be writing a story set during a holiday that not everybody celebrates. Diwali, Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan and many other festivals have their own rituals and nuances.
As the author, you’ll need to weave these traditions in your story – these nuances make for fun reading because you also get to explore a new culture alongside a riveting story.
But while the traditions might not be common, the stress and task lists that go into each of these festivals is fairly similar. We’re all prepping for that huge celebration, and we all want the festivities to go off without any major glitches.
To Do:
1. Research the festival you are writing about especially if it’s one familiar to you. We are often so absorbed in the version of the holiday we know, we might fail to write about other events and traditions that are a part of this holiday.
2. List out ways to describe the holiday: What is unique about the holiday? What is its relevance to your culture or people? When is the holiday generally celebrated? How do you celebrate it?
Festivals also have their set rituals. Of course each individual family will have their own way of doing things, but for Christmas you will have a Christmas tree or dinner with family, just like in Diwali you’ll exchange gifts and light lamps.
So when you’re describing the holiday and the general environment surrounding it, your readers might come to your books with an expectation and conversely, you might have your own set of ideas around that holiday.
To Do:
1. Start with a list of events that are the cornerstones of that festival.
2. This list will inform the scenes you must have in your book. Hallmark Christmas movies do a great job of demonstrating this. In every movie you watch, they’re either running contests, baking cookies, spending time with family, decorating, Christmas shopping, or mentioning the various miracles of the season.
3. With this skeleton in place, fill in the rest of the colours.
Now that you have your main scenes already in place, you know the highlights of your story. But these scenes might be far too smooth with not much conflict in them.
That’s when the perfect holiday fiction recipe calls for tension to be sprinkled in. The danger here is that sometimes conflict can feel put on instead of natural.
It might help you to inspect your characters and their interpersonal relationships to find that ticking bomb. The right impetus will have it exploding rather organically.
External:
Draw on real life.
During the holidays, my family home is utter chaos. There are things to do, food to be cooked, and with so many relatives underfoot, there is ample room for arguments to break out.
You may have that irritable uncle who hates noise, the niece who’s just been gifted a toy guitar, a grandmother who won’t stop fussing…
They all make your story relevant, entertaining and page-turning.
Internal:
The conflict could also be a character’s wound – they don’t remember the season fondly, they don’t like too many people in a room, or they are not where they ought to be in life and would thus like to hide.
Holidays also tug at our egos. Who wants to hear a list of their shortcomings by their family members? Your character might thus find themselves on a quest to appear to be someone they are not. That again adds that edge to your story. Where do their siblings or cousins fare compared to them? How does their family take this new version of them?
We’ve all been in such situations, and we’ve all done some stupid things to fit in with our families.
Tying these internal and external tensions together can make for an entertaining read.
Make sure you use every single aspect that you can find to ramp up and dial down the stakes. Festivals and celebrations can seem like they are fun events, but they are those which are high stakes (everyone wants to pull off the perfect party), high conflict (there are so many people involved), and high on love (cause family-friends can drive you insane but still love you).
Best of luck in telling your festive stories. Just remember, if you base someone too closely off a family member, you might find yourself facing them during your own family festivities soon!
What holiday are you planning to write about?
Shanaya writes romantic suspense and mysteries set in Scotland under the pen name Shana Frost. For stories as dramatic as the Scottish landscape visit Shana’s home on the web at https://shanafrost.com
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