One Foot Out of The Door

The expression one foot out of the door is used to express a condition wherein your character has mentally but not logistically moved on. It could be a job, a family, a relationship, or a place. They have already envisioned an alternative reality and are anxious to explore it. Certain personality types live one foot out of the door. For others, it creates a true dilemma. The conflict arises when they are not free to leave just yet.

It’s so hard to stay when you desperately want to leave.

1) In a Romance, one partner may be ready to move on. He or she may have envisioned what it might be like to be with someone else. Perhaps they have that someone already picked out. This creates the will they stay or will they go push-pull. 

2) In a Mystery, this dynamic creates internal conflict when Dick must solve one last case when he'd rather be spearfishing in Fiji. His partner may be eagerly anticipating a promotion and chafing at having to finish the case.

3) In a Literary or Young Adult Coming of Age tale, this dynamic forms the battleground of the young adult striving for autonomy while still coping with parental expectations and restrictions. Every parent and teenager has dealt with this rocky road from tweenhood through college. It could be told from the parent’s or teen’s point of view. 

4) In a Historical tale, Dick may be trapped in a city or small town while dreaming of moving west. He is eager to go, yet something forces him to stay. Perhaps he dreams of being a sailor but must stay and deal with his sick parent while his peers take off on great adventures.

5) In a Thriller, this can affect Dick’s dedication to solving the overall story problem. He may be ambivalent about the cause, the people involved, or his role in it because he'd rather be somewhere else.

Use internal conflict scenes and internal narrative to illustrate the character’s impatience, impaired decision making, fantasizing about the new reality, anxiety, anger, and frustration. He can step forward then step back until a crisis forces the issue. You can close the door on your character, preventing him from ever leaving or you can set him free, allowing him to slam the door behind him. The artistic choice is yours.

Rising Resentment

Somewhere deep in your character’s dark little soul lies a tiny nugget of resentment. How passive or aggressive your character is determines how he handles it. Passive, simmering resentment can blow up at the least convenient moment. Immediate reaction can throw flame into an already tense situation.

Resentment can be an internal conflict your protagonist comes to grips with. It can be an interpersonal conflict between friends or foes. It can fuel the protagonist’s battle with the antagonist. There could be several layers of resentment between characters to complicate the story. 

How to use it: 

1) Choose a seed 

The seed usually arises from your character’s deepest desires, fears, traits hidden in the shadow self, or childhood wounds. Use something from the character’s past that can create future conflict. 

2) Fertile field. 

Having chosen a seed, you must plant it in a scene. You don’t have to spend chapters telling the backstory of why Dick is jealous of his older brother or why Sally resents Dick for always finding a way to be absent whenever the family needs him most. You can effectively address it through dialogue or action in one scene.

3) A little rain.

Use future scenes to reinforce the resentment, making it grow taller and more bitter. Resentment thrives in darkness. Show your character feeling hurt, angry, disappointed, or sad. These scenes push your character toward a dark night of the soul. 

4) Surfacing.

A turning point occurs when the resentment is brought to a head. The situation can be cathartic or make the situation more thorny. Hostile reactions can fuel the cycle leading to the climactic moment when things are resolved. 

5) Death/rebirth. 

Coming to terms with resentment is a way to illustrate character growth. At the climax, the relationship either mends or dies. If you want an up-ending, the relationship is healed. If you want a down-ending, one of them can decide to hang onto the ill-will while the other lets go. If you want an up-down ending, they can put it behind them but realize there is no way to continue on together.

A satisfying story arc includes all the phases.