Moving Along
By Donald Maass | December 4, 2024 |
Hello from Bisbee, Arizona. Have you been? Everything here is named Copper Queen This-or-That, after the played-out copper mine outside of town. Today you mine the antique stores for copper kettles, cast iron skillets and Western wear. There are historical hotels and outstanding meatloaf.
What am I doing around here? Teaching at a writers’ retreat, naturally, at a ranch deep in the southern New Mexico desert. The land around is vast and empty, a dried-up prehistoric seabed where now you can walk and hear nothing except your crunching footsteps. At night the Milky Way hazes serenely in the velvet black sky. It’s a place to hear your inner thoughts. Day or night, nothing moves.
Which brings me to manuscripts, and this week’s students. As is often the case with developing fiction writers, there are recurring issues in manuscripts as well as skills to impart, ranging from stronger narrative voice, to scene shaping, to emotions on the page, to micro-tension and more.
However, primary among the topics to tackle is the one that I term sequential narration. What that refers to is the tendency of newer fiction writers to spin out a story as if it is a transcript of the movie in the mind, a flowing visualization that walks alongside the main characters from the opening moment in time to the concluding moment in time.
The most obvious shortcoming of sequential narration is that it produces lulls, pages that present low-tension business such as lengthy arrivals, traveling between scenes, domestic humdrum, and so on. For the most part, those things are presented visually in the belief that anything that a protagonist might be doing matters if we can “see” it.
Summary—the collapse of time—can help with that, but that trick masks a misunderstand about what it is that conveys to readers that a story is progressing. What accomplishes that is not entirely what we “see” any more than it is the passing desert, seen through a car window, that gives one a sense of making progress over the land.
Drive along Highway 80 and you’ll understand what I mean. One mile of desert is very much like another. The desert going by is dull. After a short while, one’s sense of movement arises not from the car rolling along, mile by mile, but rather from road signs, monuments, far-off mountains, tiny towns and the thoughts in your head.
Newer writers believe that it is the plot events that provide a feeling of story progress. That’s true, in part, but another sensation of story movement comes from inside, including—and perhaps most importantly–from readers’ experience of human moments. Every time we “get” it—meaning not what a character feels but what a story moment feels like—then we inwardly take a step forward.
Call it emotional beats, if you like, but this kind of movement arises not from what characters are going through, but from what readers are going through. And one thing that readers can go through—if you make it happen—are human moments of recognition and connection.
Human Moments
In creating moments of human connection for readers, there are several variables. The first is narrative distance. However, it doesn’t matter how “close” we are to characters or not. What matters is whether what you are writing about on any given page produces an experience for the reader. It’s not just a matter of getting us to see a given story moment, but to take us there. Not to the moment, but into it.
Let’s try something mundane. A character named Bob walks into his town diner in Iowa and orders a cup of coffee. The sequential narration—wholly visual—way of handling that passing moment would go something like this:
Bob parked his pickup truck and walked into Mel’s. It was the morning rush so the booths were all taken. He sat on a red, round swivel stool at the counter and signaled to Rosie for a coffee. She was already bringing it.
Okay, not bad. We can visualize Bob’s movements, the server’s too, and we can infer that Bob is a regular at the diner. Even so, the moment is flat. Bob could be anyone, the diner could be anywhere, and the coffee weak or strong. Now let’s handle the same moment with sensory detail:
Bob parked his truck and walked into Mel’s. Instead of air conditioning, Bob was blasted by the aroma of bacon, eggs and coffee. At eight in the morning, the diner was noisy. Soft rock coming from the ceiling speakers. Hard politics booming from the farmers filling the booths. Bob made a beeline for the counter and signaled Rosie for his usual.
Better? Maybe. Now we can not only visualize the moment, but hear and smell it. We have a stronger sense of place, in this case small town and rural. We can infer that it is summertime, hot in temperature and politics, and that Bob would rather not engage. All fine, maybe you can “see” the moment, but on the other hand, do you feel like you are truly there with Bob?
Let’s try it again with emotion:
Bob parked his truck and walked into Mel’s. Usually, the diner was his morning safe place. Bacon. Eggs. Coffee. Solitude. But today it was noisy. Farmers filed the booths, arguing rain and politics. Not what Bob needed. Not today. He headed for the counter.
Better? Maybe. In that version we discover how Bob feels upon entering the diner. We know what he wants, and this morning he isn’t getting it. He’s avoiding people. We infer how Bob is feeling, but even so we remain distant from Bob. Look again. Bob is not open on the page, rather it is the narrator who is telling us about Bob.
Let’s try it again fully sinking into Bob’s POV:
Bob parked his truck and walked into Mel’s. Shit. The diner was jammed, booths full of farmers jawing about rain and politics. He didn’t want to get into it. Once you started on that crap, it never stopped. Politics was as played out as the Iowa soil. Arguing about election integrity would somehow improve crop yields? Forget it. He should know. He sat at the counter and signaled Rosie for coffee, which she brought without a word.
Better? Possibly. Now the narrator is absent and the moment belongs wholly to Bob. We don’t have to infer very much. We know exactly how he feels about the atmosphere in Mel’s diner that morning. We know how he feels in general: sour. Is he himself a farmer? Possibly, but he might also be a local politician feeling that his work is futile.
In any event, the moment is more immediate. Close. Personal. Perhaps it reads more realistic? Is there any more we can do to zip it up? Let’s try it once more a different perspective, emphasizing not visuals, sensual details, emotion or close POV, but rather the experience of being Bob himself in that moment:
Every farm town in Iowa had a Mel’s Diner. It might be called Maria’s or The Starlight, but it was always the heart of the community. It was Bob’s heart too. The bacon was always local, the eggs were fresh, and the coffee was like communion wine. Every morning at eight AM, Bob was redeemed.
Bob parked his truck, walked inside, sat at the counter and ordered a cup of deliverance from Rosie, pleased to think that someday he would die in the town in which he had grown up. No better place for either.
How about that version? Did you notice what I sneaked in? Warmth. Positive feeling. Not just what Bob feels, but a snapshot of his existence. This version has no visual details, no smells, no emotion regarding what’s going on in the diner, but rather a snapshot of what’s happening in Bob.
But hold on…what if you don’t want a small-town Hallmark moment, but instead to capture Bob’s existential state of alienation and discontent? What if the tone of the tale is topical, or darker, or both?
Let’s try the same Bob-centered moment in yet another way:
Every farm town in Iowa had a Mel’s Diner. It might be called Maria’s or The Starlight, but the bacon, eggs and the patrons’ politics were always the same. Bob had heard it his whole life. Washington. Cheaters. Crooks. Burn the whole thing down. He felt that way too, on occasion, but what he wanted to set on fire wasn’t any government, but rather the dry minds of Iowa’s farmers. Shoot, they imagined that they could do better. It was a fantasy as ridiculous as that Saturday would bring rain.
That morning, the red leatherette booths at Mel’s Diner were full, looking like a dried-up soybean field littered with brown fossilized forearms and green baseball hats with “Deere” printed on them. The patrons of the diner were his neighbors. His friends. As long as you agreed with them, that is. Bob wanted none of that. Not today. Today, he was a drifter passing through his own hometown.
He took his customary seat at the counter and signaled Rosie for coffee, which she delivered to him with a frown.
Again, we are focusing not on visualizing, sensory details, emotions, or close POV. We’re focusing on Bob. His state of mind. His opinion of his neighbors. The condition of his world. The condition of Bob.
In creating non-plot story momentum, what matters the most, perhaps, is not what we can see. Or smell. Or learn about what a character is feeling. Or how that is voiced. What matters the most is who characters are in a given moment. Their condition. What they are experiencing. In Bob’s case, that is hometown pride and contentment…or possibly discontent.
Get Moving
Now, read all of the versions again. Which one would you choose for your manuscript? There’s no right or wrong choice. You might go for the visual one, the sensory one, the one with underlying tension, or the one which brings us right inside Bob’s brain. All fine. But here’s a different question: Which version gives you the strongest sensation that what you’re reading feels real? Which version sinks you into the story of Bob?
And, in a way, the story of you?
I would argue that the first four versions have their merits, but it is the final two versions—overtly static—which are the most genuine and true. They are soul-snapshots of some guy named Bob being a human being on a farm country morning. What we get is not what Bob is doing, sensing, feeling or thinking. What we get, instead, is what it is like—in this eight o’clock AM moment—to be Bob.
When we connect with what it is like to be Bob, we are not just visualizing or empathizing. When we connect with Bob, a fictional character, we connect with ourselves. We feel our own humanity. We are, for an instant, alive. And when we are alive, story is moving. Ours and yours.
Now imagine a string of such moments, scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Your plot is unfolding. Character arc and relationships too. But something else will be moving, as well. Something inside your readers: the sensation of life happening. Little by little. Step by step.
Footfalls in the desert.
What are your favorite moments of human connection in recent novels? What’s your favorite in your WIP?
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
[coffee]
LOVE the exercise of rewriting a snippet with different aims and emphases! As you say, there’s no “right” way—although, personally, I find that certain kinds of writing that attempt to bring me close by describing every eye filling with tears, every clenched stomach and inner reaction, quickly become suffocating and make me want to leave the story … which doesn’t mean, in contrast, that less is always more. The key, just as you say, is evocative power.
Your two sentences, book-ending the exercise, sum up what I’ve learned as a writer over the course of four novels (number four coming in the Spring, but I’m counting it here b/c it’s done):
Statement of what you are going to show: “This kind of movement arises not from what characters are going through, but from what readers are going through.”
Restatement of what you have shown: “Your plot is unfolding. Character arc and relationships too. But something else will be moving, as well. Something inside your readers: the sensation of life happening.”
It’s not all that interesting to read about what fictitious characters are experiencing. What we crave, through art, is to have our own experience. The best art gives us that.
Thank you for this, Don. Copied and pasted to remember.
These words, from a non-fiction piece, inspired me to write one of my new scenes the other day, a scene which is still in the rough.
From author Cole Arthur Riley: “we grant ourselves permission to be terrified. To check beneath the bed. To flinch, to question, to weep. The world is dark. For many of us, in the literal sense, as the days become shorter in winter and the nights begin to stretch on. But also, for many of us, the soul of the world feels dark. Disorienting. Uncertain. Frightening. And in this season, we tell the truth about it. We name the monsters under the bed. We learn how to fall asleep in spite of them.
And still, the darkness of Advent is never far from the darkness of the womb. A beautiful dark.”
Once again I lose track of time and get pleasantly surprised by your piece, Don — and what a piece it is.
Thank you for bringing so much together here. Of course we have so many tools for re-angling what looks like the same scene, and a lot of them are the character and the moment (“The bartender sees the crowd, the decorator sees the barstools, and the SEAL is counting the exits”), but it’s also this opportunity to reach for the *reader’s* state of mind. If there’s nothing vital happening (or even if there is?), a scene can play up one part or another of its potentials, and let the reader ease back and feel the moment as a mood of its own, a spin on what’s there and what that spin says about the flow of the story.
Does a scene slow down and marinate when it clearly could have sped up? Does it line up deeply with the character’s mood, or does it edge over and nudge the reader with how the character’s focusing on only one part of the truth now? Is it ominous, peaceful, ironic, funny, poetic… and how will the reader feel to find that, after where the story has just been, and knowing that this scene is inflected this way when it didn’t have to be?
Choices.
This is a helpful explanation of one of the most frequent comments I make in editing authors’ manuscripts: to let the reader into the character, the scene, their world. I’ll be sharing. Thanks, Don.
Love this post, love this way of writing. I’ve written someone on his way to a diner, but it’s too long to post here. Here’s a different snip from my latest – inside an 8 year old fortune-teller, that I hope readers from the northeast at least, might experience some feels.
It was the morning of a perfect Autumn day. The sky, as she walked to school, was postcard blue, the fluffy clouds cartoon cute, the air so crisp it made her think of picking an apple from a tree and eating it right there, the sweet juice dripping on her chin, her new school sweater finally feeling cozy instead of sweaty-hot.
If her mother was alive, she imagined, they would have plans for going on a hike in the afternoon. They would drive to the mountains and drink from a spring where water burst from a rock. Such a beautiful day, they would both say.
The water would heal this Curse inside that churned through her like an eel in the river, an ugly, snake-like slithering slime that was now a part of her. It held her so strongly lately, making her stomach gurgle and her throat scratchy. Her mother would know exactly what to do. Her mother would know why, when her friend Dustin’s mom and her friend Jill’s dad were working the snack shack at the baseball game, Belladonna couldn’t even feel herself, couldn’t even see the candy and gum, couldn’t begin to decide what she wanted because the invisible Curse slithered over all of them.
Last night she had had a dream, where nothing made sense, but the feelings were real. She was Dustin’s mom and Jill’s dad and she was falling forever. Never before had she felt the Gift-Curse so strong and this time it was pure Curse. She woke her father, begging him to call them, warn them, but he refused.
This beautiful day was a good sign. The Curse wasn’t out in the world, it was only inside her. Still, she couldn’t look at Dustin in the schoolyard. She was finding it difficult to look at anyone. He asked her what was wrong.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. How’s your mom?”
“My mom? Fine, I guess. She left early to drive the carpool. Why?”
“She gave me a cupcake at the game on Saturday, no charge. She’s really nice.”
He shrugged. “I guess. I mean, she’s a mom.”
“Yeah,” said Belladonna, touching her mother’s pendant.
Amazing, Don! I will spread the love.
Hugs,
Dee
Footfalls in the desert. That is the biggest clue or point I think you are making. Thanks, Don. Our stories, novels, OUR WORK, needs to demand attention from the reader, needs to make our characters alive and living people on the page. No one will go on reading if the words are just about things we already sense or know…the dessert, a cafe. As you often remark, we need to go deeper, reveal the persona of our characters and how they react IN THIS PLACE. The footfalls maybe LOUD or SOFT. But they must take us directly into the STORY.
I will be pointing writers to to this post when I am trying to explain to them in a developmental edit what I mean by narrative distance and expressing the emotions not by naming them but by getting us to feel them. Once that clicks with people, the writing vastly improves and they get excited again!
Oh my indeed, I have been to beautiful bounteous Bisbee. Taken in the copper-colored slag pond just outside town? It’s particularly … impressive … in the moonlight. (I visted the area several times while researching The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday.)
I like Tiffany’s phrasing in her comment above: let the reader into the scene. I might even say, “Invite them in.”
I’ve been reading Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Cancer Ward,” and your post made me think of how he begins the novel. First, the opening chapter is titled, “No Cancer Whatsoever.” Then:
“On top of everything, the cancer wing was Number 13. Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov had never been and could never be a superstitious person, but his heart sank as they wrote “Wing 13″ on his admission card. They should have had the ingenuity to assign number 13 to some kind of prosthetic or intestinal department.
But this clinic was the only place where they could help him in the whole republic.”
I think this is a pretty good example of being invited in: the dark humor, the fear it hopes to obscure, the unwelcome and unfamiliar suggestion of bad luck, and the crucial nature of this facility: the only one that can help him. Next we find out he’s been told by his doctor that the growth on his neck isn’t cancer, but …
Tricky business, this fiction thing. Kinda like juggling knives.
Wishing you and your family a lovely holiday.
Great column, helpful and fun to think about. I confess I prefer the second and third versions, but maybe that’s because the rest of this story is missing. The fourth version seems overly sentimental, too Hallmark for me, and in the fifth Bob sounds like an outsider, not a local boy who disagrees with the people he grew up with and cares about.
In my WIP, two different viewpoint characters visit a cafe on the outskirts of a rural hub town, thirty-plus years apart, both in pursuit of the truth about Dan Sweeney. The first VC is his son, Pat, and the second is his son’s friend and former college housemate, Spike. When I looked back at these two scenes, I was surprised to see that I didn’t describe anything physical about the cafe at all, but I’m counting on the reader getting the picture (my bad if they don’t!). Here goes:
1 — But then, once they were seated in the cafe — at Dan’s favorite table, no less, right by the window where Dan could point out all the local characters walking by — that’s what Dan did: tell stories about local characters. Good stories. Pat knew he’d enjoy hearing them if he wasn’t so anxious to get the difficult conversation over with, but Dan didn’t give him a chance. The mound of biscuits and gravy, sausage patties sputtering with grease, eggs over so easy they liquified at the touch of a fork, stacks of white bread toast lathered with something resembling butter, arrived and disappeared into Dan’s lean frame while tales of the Modern West, the fading frontier, the decline of independence, the sunset of self-reliance, rolled on. Pat chewed leathery pancakes and listened, unable to find an opening, and finally gave up.
2 – I sat at the counter and ordered coffee, eggs over easy, and biscuits and gravy. The ambiance of the cafe was just what I’d imagined from Pat’s story. I said so to the counterman: “I had a friend who came here thirty years ago. He told me about this place, and it’s just the way I pictured it.”
The fellow grunted at me — probably taking me for what I was, a displaced urbanite, as well as what I was not — not intentionally — a seeker of local color in a famous rural hub: eager to rub shoulders with lumberjacks, cowboys, men’s men who ate biscuits and gravy to fuel up for falling trees and wrassling steers. But then, who could blame him? Why else would someone like me be eating breakfast at the Sidekick?
Hi Don!
My writing group is emailing this column around this morning, so it’s definitely hitting home for us, and we all love, love, love the examples.
Without disagreeing with the central argument, which YES, we agree, I can’t help but notice that the first four examples are 43 words, 61 words, 44 words, and 77 words. (Average: 56 words)
The fifth and sixth examples, which are obviously much better, are both 178 words, three times as long. So isn’t part of the improvement the simple fact that there’s more layering for the same moment in time or can this effect be created just as well with fewer words?
I’d love to see a seventh example of Bob in this diner that’s just as good as the fifth and sixth versions, but only 56 words. (Yes, I am going to try it.)
Thanks for the column. Always enjoyable to read and much appreciated.
MG
Every farm town in Iowa had a Mel’s Diner. It might be called Maria’s or The Starlight, but the bacon, eggs and politics were the same: Washington. Cheaters. Crooks. Bob agreed, but that morning, what he wanted to set on fire was his neighbors’ dry minds. From his customary seat, he signaled Rosie for coffee, which she delivered with a frown.
61 words
Just last evening in my memoir Read & Critique group I used these very same words to one of the writers: Invite the reader in. I’ve forwarded your post to my group. Thank you for this one.
I’ve enjoyed and learned from your insightful and helpful posts and books for many years. Now embarking as I am on a new novel… I’m going back to page one of “The Emotional Craft of Fiction” for a brush-up course.
Brilliant.
In golf there is the saying, “Be the ball.” I would title this lesson, “Be the Bob.”
Hey Everyone, I’m having technical issues today, which are keeping me from replying individually. But thank you for your comments. This is a food-for-thought post. I hope it is causing folks to consider the choices and balance of visual, sensory, emotional, close/distant POV, and the capture of state of being.
Not all that makes a story move is plot movement. Not everything that connects us to story moments is what we can “see”.
Bisbee, wow! Although I live in the Midwest now, I spent a lot of time in Southeast Arizona at my grandparents cattle ranch when I was much younger. Yes, the Milky Way is a magical thing in that place and oh, what the dry desert air does to sunsets.
Your examples are wonderfully thought-provoking. I find myself wanting a combination of 2 and 4 which goes to show how subjective readers can be. This subjectivity makes it hard for me to decide just how to put together scenes with the characters I want my readers to sink into, but you’ve given me plenty to think about. Also, you’ve made me curious about that frown Rosie developed during her last coffee delivery.
Don, this was brilliant. It reminds me again and again how different it is to write than to read. I write to understand and it brings clarity, but when I read, it’s for inhabiting the story world and how it makes me feel. Thank you.
This is such a good point, Don. I can “feel” how the last example resonates. It gives us a better sense of the setting and Bob’s frustration with his town and neighbors. I also love the set up—“Not today.” Because? That hooks me into reading more!
Enjoy Arizona!
I would love to get your schedule of where and when you’re giving workshops. That would help me decide on which writers’ conference to attend.
I had an incredible Valentine’s dinner at the Copper Queen Hotel some years ago. I’m sure the meatloaf was great :)
Wonderful post. I needed this today. I’ve noticed I slip into more sequential detail when I’m feeling unsure about the writing. Honestly, I guess it’s when I’m not really trusting myself to be able to do this thing. I’m going to rework the section I was looking at last night with an eye toward what it is like to be my character in this moment and trust that by connecting the story will move. Thank you!
I wrote a scene yesterday that surprised me—A roughly pocket-sized pet dragon enters an ancient garden while on his companion’s shoulder, and is struck by that wet, heavy, sweet and slightly decaying smell rainforests have. It reminds him of a real rainforest he’s been in before, and for a moment he’s drowned in emotion and memory. Dragons have a hoard instinct, a fundamental drive to obsess while still being totally alienated from the object of obsession. This dragon, faced with a truly interwoven body of living things, is broken with shame at his basic isolation as a creature, and with longing to be buried in the earth, where he would take in water through his skin and the roots would tangle with his bones. Not out of desire for death, but out of desire for union with something, anything other than his own self-absorption. The scene scared me for a bit, partly because the language was so strong it felt too revealing and morbid, but upon reading this post I see that that strongly phrased and that penetrating of a snapshot might be exactly what is necessary to show this character’s condition, as contrasted with the union he longs for. It’s also the first moment in the narrative that this defining truth about him is directly revealed to the reader or himself, which further justifies taking some time for the moment to unfold. Thank you, Mr. Maass!