Posts by Kathryn Craft
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
Cliff-hangers and nail-biters aren’t the only ways to keep readers turning pages. When you develop their inherent conflict, quieter, almost insignificant-seeming moments can successfully produce an itch in your reader that only reading on will effectively scratch.
Here are some of the many ways that can be achieved.
1. Someone fakes it
From the time we are born, we are acculturated in a way that allows us to function in a family (don’t bite your brother, even if you want to) and in society (don’t bite your neighbor or sleep with his wife, even if you want to). Showing our characters “faking it” to override baser urges adds layers of interest to our characters by raising questions about why they might be doing that.
In Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick, our protagonist, Pat, is trying to control a tendency toward violent outburst that caused a need for an institutionalized “apart time” from the locus of his all-consuming affection, Nikki. Pat is grooming himself for winning Nikki back through a maniacal devotion to exercise and adherence to optimistic platitudes learned from his friend Danny at a locked psychiatric facility. In this scene, back home in Philadelphia and released to his mother’s care, Pat is seeing his brother for the first time in three years.
You look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.” He feels my bicep, which I absolutely hate because I don’t like to be touched by anyone except Nikki. Since he’s my brother, I don’t say anything. “You’re frickin’ ripped,” he adds.
I look at the floor, because I remember what he said about Nikki—I am still mad about that—and yet I am also happy to see my brother after not seeing him for what feels like forever.
“Listen, Pat. I should have come to see you more in Baltimore, but those places freak me out and I…I…I just couldn’t see you like that, okay? Are you mad at me?”
I am sort of still mad at Jake, but suddenly I remember another one of Danny’s lines that is too appropriate to leave unsaid, so I say, “Got nothin’ but love for ya.”
That Pat feels both anger and love, simultaneously, is the kind of inner conflict that makes him seem real. It also makes the scene buzz with tension. We’ve already experienced a scene in which Pat tears up his psychiatrist’s office because Kenny G came on the radio. Here, when he must quote a friend to clamp down on his true feelings, the reader wonders: Will his desire to end apart time from Nikki be enough to keep him in line, or is Pat once again going to blow?
2. The setting exudes conflict
In these passages from Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, a bright student named Elwood is catching his first glimpse of the reform school he’s been sentenced to for a crime he didn’t commit.
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
In 1999, when Janet Fitch’s debut, White Oleander, was chosen as an Oprah Book Club pick, Winfrey described Fitch’s prose as “liquid poetry.” In an interview at the time, which I’ve never forgotten, Fitch said something that she’s repeated during the free “Writing Wednesday” talks she’s been giving on her Facebook page since the start of the pandemic: that her constant goal, in revision, is to replace any wording in her draft that she’s seen before with something that feels fresh.
Clouds like cotton candy? Out. Heart-breaking sorrow? Out. In: a sky the color of peaches; sorrow that tastes like a copper penny.
Whether or not you write on the literary end of the fiction spectrum, we can rise to Fitch’s challenge of combining words in a way that creates a revelation for your reader. By “revelation” I’m not referring a big plot reveal, but to quieter moments that delight by lending fresh perspective to a situation the reader might already think of as familiar.
The books I’ve been reading this summer are full of great examples. While collecting them for this post, I happened to read a passage in George Saunders’ book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. Saunders writes:
Any of us who’s ever walked out of their house on a lovely summer morning knows the truth of that moment is more than just “I walked out of my house one morning in June.” In that sentence, there’s something missing, which is the “I” walking out of the house. That morning has to fall on a certain mind for it to feel like any kind of real morning.
While the point-of-view character may be enacting an ordinary moment, his specific perspective—formed by his goals, past experiences, passions, beliefs, prejudices, fears, distractions, capabilities and limitations—can inspire an extraordinary expression of it. This authorial effort deepens the reader’s appreciation for the character’s journey while helping her see her own life anew.
Here are eight everyday occurrences, common to so many novels, that have been transformed by an author’s caring evocation of their character’s perspective.
Childbirth
What can possibly be fresh about childbirth? It happens, on average, four-hundred thousand times per day. And the pain just…is. It’s hard to describe.
In Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell took on the challenge:
Her body is one of resilience, of power; she is all muscle beneath smooth skin. But this is something else. Something other. It laughs at her attempts to master it, to subdue it, to rise above it. It will, Agnes fears, overtake her. It will seize her by the scruff of her neck and plunge her down, under the surface of the water.
A mother’s limited patience
I’ve never thought in quite this way about the tripwire at patience’s end, but thanks to Hamnet, I’ll never forget it:
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
I suspect we all know people who will walk in a room and say something like, “I still can’t believe she’d quit on me.” I’m married to one of them.
It’s obvious there is conflict, so this might end up being a good story, but right now the comment is floating in space. I’ll need more words to understand it. Who is this woman? Where did he see her? When did this happen—ten minutes ago? Is he still chewing on something from his youth? Or is this a future action that worries him?
One thing is for sure: to assume that I can read his mind is a sweet yet preposterous overestimate of my editorial prowess. I suppose that’s what happens after you’ve been married a few decades.
But judging from the manuscripts I see, it can also be what happens when you are on your umpteenth draft of a novel and can no longer remember which version of which facts are on the page. For that reason, it can be helpful if at some point, before sending your manuscript to beta readers or developmental editors, you take one pass to make sure that you’ve set each scene appropriately.
Although reportage is different than story-building (for more on this you can check my previous post on paragraphing), borrowing the journalist’s 5 W’s can inspire a set of useful questions that will ensure that the scene you’re building is also giving the reader the information she needs.
Who took action, and who did it affect?
What happened, exactly?
Where did it take place?
When did it take place?
Why did it happen, and why does it matter to this particular story and this particular protagonist?
Wait—didn’t you say 3 W’s?
The bare minimum we need at the outset of a scene is the who, when, and where. With that information, “I still can’t believe she’d quit on me” gains context:
It’s been ten years and Simone’s clothes still hang in the back of my closet. I still can’t believe she quit on me.
~or~
I still can’t believe what just happened at the office—Joanna up and walked out on our partnership.
~or~
I backslid at Ed’s retirement lunch; I couldn’t resist the shrimp scampi. I still can’t believe Cleo warned me to stop eating garlic or she’d quit training me at the gym.
I was thinking about this topic after a question was posed on a Facebook page about how to cleverly fold in these details without being as pedestrian as, say, “Meanwhile, back at the ranch, his brother…” The thing is, though, those seven “pedestrian” words perfectly orient us to who, when, and where.
When it comes to setting your scene, clarity—not cleverness—should be your first priority. Let’s look at how that’s done.
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
Back in grad school, I would sometimes choreograph for the college dance company in the living room of my apartment. I’d move the furniture and face its big windows, a natural orientation for someone used to dancing in front of a mirror. One day I was lost in the flow of the movement—crouching low, leaping high—when my eyes locked on a man watching me through his window from across the courtyard.
I hit the deck, army-crawled to the window, drew the drapes closed, and hoped to never see him again.
A lesson from the School of Hard Knocks: the dynamic of a scene changes when someone is watching.
Entire fiction projects have been built around the “someone is watching” theme. In literature, think Big Brother in George Orwell’s Communist-inspired 1984 (1949). In film, the protagonist of The Truman Show (1998) thinks he is simply living his life, when in fact he is the unwitting star of a reality show broadcast to a worldwide audience. In TV, Fringe (2008-2013) survived the “Friday night death slot” by pitting an FBI team against happenings ultimately explained by the existence of an alternate universe—while its pale, bald, and definitely creepy Observers took notes on the team’s investigations.
Any story with a stakeout, a stalker, paparazzi, an anonymous protector, or a nosy neighbor (anyone remember Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched?) has a watcher. Someone standing in the wings, literally or figuratively.
In religious stories, God is a watcher. Ghosts are effective watchers. In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, even the paintings on the wall serve as observers. And I can’t be the only one who has become self-conscious of her behavior while under her pet’s watchful glare.
Watchers raise tension
I happened to be reading Ken Follett’s historical novel Pillars of the Earth (1989) as I formulated this topic and came across a passage of interest. Tom Builder, a mason who was peremptorily dismissed from his last job, must seek new work by walking to the next town with his wife, teenage son, and seven-year-old daughter, Martha. They are carrying their meager possessions on their backs while Martha drives forward their most valuable investment, a pig they’d been fattening all year.
As they walk through the forest, Tom daydreams in detail about the design of the cathedral he hopes to one day build. After a couple of paragraphs comes this passage:
Tom tried to visualize the molding over the windows, but his concentration kept slipping because he had the feeling that he was being watched. It was a foolish notion, he thought, if only because of course he was being observed by the birds, foxes, cats, squirrels, rats, mice, weasels, stoats, and voles which thronged the forest.
Tom talks himself out of his natural fear reflex. After relaxing for a bite to eat by a pleasant stream the family picks up their journey, but Martha gets tired, the pig is obstinate, and both lag behind. Tom looks back and daydreams some more while waiting for them to catch up…
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
“I’m sorry.”
These two words are like a thick blanket someone will toss over whatever unknown coals might be scorching a valued relationship. The words do not acknowledge the harm that was done—they simply allow the wrongdoer to avoid looking at his or her behavior so the relationship can move on unchanged.
Unchanged? Hmm, that doesn’t sound like good story, does it.
Even so, a character’s blanket apology is a dialogue default I’ve noticed repeatedly over my years of reading client manuscripts. I’ve been thinking about it more since bingeing on 13 seasons of Heartland last December. For me, the Canadian accent (“I’m SOH-ree”) drew attention to how many times per episode it was used. (This is the one and only thing I will criticize about this show, so don’t start with me, because I’ll fight back and I will not apologize!).
If the longest-running one-hour drama in Canadian history can get away with blanket apology, why do the words “I’m sorry” bother me as a reader—especially when I’m a fan of their lavish use in everyday life? It’s because in many cases, they gloss over the real, relatable, and often gritty conflicts the author has strived to build into their story. Yes, we humans must still get along even after hurting one another, or when differing goals or ideologies create chasms between us. But if your characters truly believe they are doing the right thing, should we yank the rug from beneath their empowerment by having them apologize for what they said or did? If they really meant to take the action but feel bad that the other person had to suffer for it, are they really sorry for this?
Let’s say your character is frustrated as to why her children are suffering an ongoing illness of unknown origin. Meanwhile, she discovers that the factory where she works has been covering up flagrant EPA violations. She turns in her findings. She is certainly sorry it has come to this, as it will impact not only her work environment, which is about to turn hostile, but has personally impacted her next-door neighbor, the plant manager who mentored her and who refuses to answer her questions about his children’s health. In the resulting financial restructuring, he’s been laid off, requiring him to sell his home and move his kids to a less desirable school district. Is she really sorry that he has to pay a steep personal price for turning a blind eye toward his company’s practices for so long, if the pollutants have been making her own children sick—and perhaps his as well?
There are consequences for inaction and there are consequences for action—these are your story’s stakes, that you’ve foreshadowed since the beginning of the novel—and in this example, it seems the whistleblower’s “I’m sorry” would feel like back-pedaling. Your character must engage with the stakes or the energy of your story will drain away.
Her inner conflict might be better shown by having her standing in her driveway, hugging her kids to her as they wave goodbye to their friends, as the father—her mentor—averts his eyes. A tear rolling down her face might say more about the situation’s emotional complexity, which will feel more […]
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
Establishing “agency”—proving to your reader that your protagonist is equal to the journey ahead—is a craft element worthy of fresh consideration each time you begin a new project. This is especially true if you spend a good deal of your initial word count probing the protagonist’s memories and thoughts so you’ll understand the inner conflict that will drive their story.
That’s called “starting to write,” not “opening a novel”—but writers often conflate the two.
Reality is, you-as-author are the one who needs early access to that interiority. Your reader might not. Any reader who has met with an unreliable narrator will know that a character’s actions will speak louder than anything s/he is willing to tell us anyway. In order to earn your reader’s faith and investment, your protagonist must be willing to act.
This craft is based on physical law. As early as 1687, storytelling guru Sir Isaac Newton hinted at the necessity of getting your protagonist off his duff with his principle of inertia, which (sort of) states:
A protagonist at rest will stay at rest, and a protagonist in motion will stay in motion until his story problem is resolved, unless acted on by an external force.
Before submitting your manuscript to publishers, consider having your story open with your character already taking an action that suggests the nature of the journey ahead. Once that happens, Newton’s Third Law of Storytelling (oh why not rename them?) promises that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
Action—not thought—inspires the kind of external conflict that will pressure your character to engage with an inner arc of change.
Action—not thought—will show the character’s agency.
Merriam-Webster’s first definition of the word “actor” offers a simple perspective on the matter.
One that acts: doer.
Even a dazed woman wandering through a forest is different from one sitting on a stump thinking about how lost she is: the wanderer is looking for a way out.
This raises the question of whether all characters are capable of “doing” something. Let’s look at three increasingly challenged protagonists.
Anne Shirley
Even kids—and characters seized by PTSD—can act (or act out). If you don’t remember the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, watch a couple of episodes of Anne with an “E” on Netflix. At the outset, Anne, “about eleven” in the novel, is waiting alone at a train stop for her new foster father to pick her up—and when he approaches, she starts talking so fast and at such length that he can’t possibly pose the objection that he had specifically asked for, and expected to meet, a boy.
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
Writers butt up against career envy every single time we open a social media app. Thing is, that career you covet would not make you as happy as you think—because, well, it’s someone else’s. We creatives like to own our successes, which suggests that the most satisfying author careers arise in the same way that the most satisfying writing does: from our own backstory motivations, perceptions, talents, and capabilities.
We authors are entrepreneurs, but it isn’t just a business we are building, it’s our one and only life. So why not create the ultimate expression—a life grown from our greatest strengths and passions?
Today, nine talented women show us how by sharing the strategies they used to build author careers as individual as the stories they share on the page. Look for the way words like passion, love, opportunity, and fun are entwined with their stories.
Crank out a book a year
Nothing says “successful business model” like publishing a good book every year. My own attempt to pull this off had me turning inside out until I came to terms with the realities of my own author career model. I love writing novels, but I need my teaching and developmental editing just as much, as these activities feed an equally essential side of me. I have to accept that those activities eat up huge chunks of time and brain space.
Yet Hank Phillippi Ryan (The First to Lie), who must be one of the busiest women on the planet, makes cranking out an award-winning novel a year look easy. Turns out, she has a mad advantage: before she wrote the thirteen thrillers that made her a USA Today bestseller, she’d already had a long career as a multiple Emmy Award-winning investigative TV journalist.
“Think of how many stories I’ve written—with a character you care about, a problem that needs to be solved, where the good guys win and the bad guys get what’s coming to them, and in the end, you change the world a bit,” says Hank. Her ability to entertain while making complicated subjects fascinating feeds the structure and rhythm of both investigative reporting and crime fiction.
The work of a book-a-year novelist suits her. “Many years as a street reporter made me a fast writer,” she says, adding that the nature of investigative reporting requires that she write before knowing how the piece will end. “So for all these years, I’ve been comfortable—as comfortable as a writer can ever be, at least—by collecting puzzle pieces along the way without quite knowing where they’ll fit. It’s sort of…emergent design. And I always make my deadlines. Every single one of those elements is from television.”
…or two a year…
New York Times bestselling author Shelley Freydont also owes her prolific output to attributes developed in a previous career: she was a professional dancer. Each day, whether she felt like it or not, she had to go to class and rehearsals.
“I’ve been able to translate this discipline into sitting down every day and writing,” Shelley says. “I’ve learned to tune out the frenetic energy of the world and the industry, even when I don’t feel like it…most of the time.”
The result is that […]
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
Imagine if Dickens began A Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times and the worst of times—and sometimes, something else altogether.
Or if Melville opened Moby-Dick:
Call me Ishmael, or, if you like, Ishy.
Or if Ellison extended his iconic first line:
I am an invisible man, except for when it’s sunny, when you are bound to see something of a shadow.
My versions don’t pack the same punch, do they? Yet while drafting a still-developing story, we writers tend to explore all options. There comes a time, though, when it behooves us to weed out roads not taken and focus our characters’ intentions.
This sounds easier than it is.
Address your uncertainty
Hundreds of thousands of decisions will go into the writing of your novel. As you draft (or is it drift?) through its first iteration, you’ll understandably grapple with uncertainty over plot and characterization choices. It’s best to address these questions sooner rather than later. Wishy-washy intention, once on the page, has a way of persisting right through to the late-stage manuscripts I edit. This is no way to win your reader’s confidence.
A common symptom is sentences that start out as if to declare, but equivocate over their course until they become both this-and-that.
Examples might look something like this:
Once begun, this sentence structure has a way of taking over a manuscript, to the point that I suspect these authors are thinking of the pattern as stylistic. To me, as an editor, it comes across as a bad habit. Uncertain prose has a way of drilling holes in the boat meant to convey your story, leaving you with a leaky mess that refuses to go anywhere.
Let’s analyze the example sentences.
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
The Truth that resides in the beating heart of a novel is sacred to its author. Its pursuit called the writer to the page and inspired the perseverance to publish against daunting odds. Once your story feels deeply true, you long to share it—and your target audience will long to read it.
Even though your main reason for writing fiction is illustrative more than prescriptive, you can offer a meaningful by-product through quotes that have the potential to spread your novel’s influence. Yes, your novel’s wisdom can serve as an effective marketing tool.
This notion may come across as crass—or at times, even pointless. In a society increasingly influenced by marketing swagger, it can seem it no longer matters what we know to be true, as long as we can convince people to buy what we’re selling. Writing so that our story’s wisdom can be readily fashioned into a marketing meme may be the antithesis of why we write. And yet if your storytelling has struck on a universal truth, and you can deliver it in a fresh way, your readers will share it even without your blessing—through Kindle highlighting, underlining in shared paper copies, and broadcasting through memes on social media—and in so doing, plant seeds of truth in an increasing number of readers. Pulling quotes is so ubiquitous that Goodreads has a section for this on each novel’s page, where readers list their favorites.
Mainstream media loves quotes too. In August of this year, in honor of the film’s 20th anniversary, Parade.com published 20 Classic Forrest Gump Quotes. Tell me: when Forrest first spoke of life’s box chocolates, did you roll your eyes and say “how blatantly commercial”—or were you charmed?
And or course authors are readers too. Hungry for nuggets of wisdom that will inspire their own imaginations, other authors may laud your insight by featuring one of your quotes as an epigraph in their own work. In the novel I just finished reading, The Favorite Daughter, author Patti Callahan Henry featured quotes about memory at the top of each chapter as her characters grappled with the implications of their father’s increasingly troubling dementia. The epigraph for Chapter 23 was from Pat Conroy’s Beach Music: “Except for memory, time would have no meaning at all.”
Readers love such quotes, that they can print out and hang on their wall. Just look at the number of “highlighters” that litter the pages of your Kindle. Here’s one from Roland Merullo’s novel, Breakfast with Buddha: “When you are a crank, you put yourself on the top of the list of people you make miserable.” Great quote, right? Turns out 1200 others (and counting) agree with you.
Let’s play a game. Do you know which authors generated these quotes?
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
A chapter break, with its span of blank page, is the perfect place for a reader to stick a bookmark so he can take a break to watch TV, cook dinner, or fall asleep.
Hmm. Do we writers really want to be releasing our readers so easily?
Not a whole lot is written about how to divide a novel into chapters. It’s not hard science. The practice hasn’t always existed—in ancient times, the length of a book segment was limited to the length of the scroll it was written on. In Victorian England, books were subdivided so periodicals could publish them in serial form.
With no clear guidelines, what’s a modern novelist to do? If you tend to make random chaptering decisions—every ten pages, say, or at a natural quiet point in the narrative, or even worse, waiting to finish your entire book before tending to this uncertain task—your chaptering could probably be doing more to seduce and retain your reader.
Chapter breaks remind you to think episodically
Readers who consume novels a chapter at a time are busy. If you hope to invest them in your story, a chapter should include at least one full scene.
If you think about it, a scene holds the DNA of your entire story trajectory. A point-of-view character, well-motivated by his past, negotiates obstacles in pursuit of an immediate goal, that will impact his ability to achieve the overall story goal that will carry him into his desired future. The plot pressures brought to bear on the character will force him to undergo difficult inner change in some incremental yet needed way. Since these inner turning points serve to invest the reader in the POV character’s arc, you’ll want to keep the reader on hand for that full scene so he has a chance to assess the chapter’s forward movement.
When writers try to break a chapter in the middle of a scene, it feels like a cheap shot—as if the writer is saying, if you want the goods, you’re going to have to read the next chapter. This is withholding story, not delivering it. Why not go ahead and give the reader the goods, so he wants to read the next chapter? Let readers see if the point-of-view character’s scene goal is met, thwarted, or delayed—and let them in on the emotional significance of this result—before raising a question about some new influence in the next chapter.
Chapter breaks remind you to continually woo your reader
If a chapter break signals a good place to set a book down, how can writers best discourage this behavior?
In last month’s post, I mentioned the key: focusing on seducing your reader with each chapter opening and retaining him at chapter’s end. Many thanks to Cindy Vagas Hospador for her Facebook comment, asking me to expand on this concept.
If like every other writer in the world you have worried over your novel’s opening, you already aspire to the art of seduction. A worthy goal for that first sentence is to orient the reader to the scene by giving out a little information, while at the same time, raising a question that will tip the reader into the story. It could be as, “For the third time […]
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
I have just finished a concision edit on my work-in-progress that I didn’t exactly aim to do.
Mainly, because I’d already done one. After my last full read, I’d finally captured the full emotional thrust of the story I’d always been going for. The cause-and-effect trajectory was all there, the turning points that solder arcs of change for the main characters were there, the stakes were high, the premise was fully explored. Its identity, tight.
But not tight enough. I was over my desired word count.
On one hand, I didn’t let that bother me overmuch. This is a big story, and I wanted to make sure each of its layers had a strong foundation. On the other hand, I was open to even more concision. When you’ve said just enough, and no more, your words are strung together by magnetic energy. This is a worthy goal.
As it turned out, checking boxes on my final self-editing list continued to tighten the manuscript. Here’s how it worked for me, in case it helps you. I’m calling them “random” ways because in each case, my primary goal was different than aiding concision.
[x] Stop just before you want to
Early on in my career, a remarkable agent took time out of her busy schedule to explain to me by phone that I’d written beyond the end of the story. Beyond the climactic plot point, the reader can imagine the rest. But seriously, who wants to stop writing, when you can finally give your characters the happiness and peace of mind they’ve sought? Not me. meaning, I was doing the same thing again in this novel—and in doing so, inadvertently changed the novel’s intent.
A couple of weeks ago, as I was revising toward The End, I identified a place where I could echo some wording I’d used at the break into the second act—something noted by my character then, but not acted upon. I added the words again, at a place where she was acting on them—and right away, I heard four additional words, loud and clear. I typed them in and wow, there it was—that satisfying click that told me the story question had been answered. By that point, it had been long-established what she wanted, and it’s clear what she’s heading toward, and guess what? The reader really can imagine the rest. Over 2K words, gone.
Only 5,500 to go, lol.
[x] Renumber chapters
My next task was to update chapter numbers, since once I get into a heavy developmental edit, I never bother to do so. I also noted the length. My chapters were a little longer this time, on average 10-13 pages. Shorter, punchier chapters were 8. So when one came up 5, that was worth a second look. Was it even punchier? Or, perhaps, not necessary at all?
If a reader can understand the story without one of its scenes, it isn’t needed. This is the sort of determination you can miss when reading straight through, seduced by prose you love, characters who have won your heart, and who are ensconced in a situation that grips you. If your scenes are following a cause-and-effect chain, you’ll simply accept that scene as “this is what she did next.” […]
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
If the last time you thought about paragraphing was when you learned that a paragraph was comprised of a topic sentence, three supporting sentences, and a conclusion, listen up: that staid structure will not have the power to draw readers into your story.
A paragraph in fiction is rarely used to convey information, as our earliest grammar school compositions were intended to do. The reader didn’t come to your novel to find out what kind of cattle produces the juiciest steaks; she can google that. She wants to know what happens when your aging cowboy, still facing hours in the saddle, has overestimated the stability of his reconstructed knee while an unexpected winter storm is blowing in.
What readers want most of story is to be moved, quite literally—transported, from one place to another. Paragraph structure can boost that sense of story movement. These tips should help.
1. A paragraph should develop only one idea. This sounds simple in theory, but while your mind is juggling god-knows-how-many aspects of story, execution can be fraught. As an editor, it often feels like I’m bringing my pen into the midst of a cattle drive to cut out an errant all-terrain vehicle. The ATV is a distraction, obscuring the reader’s perception of where the cowboy is directing the cattle.
You might argue that the ATV is relevant because the novel is about old methods butting heads with the new. If that’s your point, great—but most readers will miss it if you bury that ATV in the middle of a paragraph. That leads me to my next point. (A paragraph should always set up your next point.)
2. A paragraph should help the reader remember important information. If a beta reader calls you out for reiteration—or worse, if she missed an important aspect of characterization or plot altogether—take a closer look at your paragraphing. A paragraph should support memorability.
My motto: Say it once, with impact, and you won’t have to repeat it.
If your beta reader missed the point of that ATV altogether, pull it from its herd of words, place it in a new paragraph, and give it an entrance to be remembered.
Have your aging cowboy swatting around his head, sure that only an insect wanting a bite out of his ear could create a buzz annoying enough to be heard above the thumping of cattle hooves. It grows louder—now the cowboy and even some of the cattle are looking over their shoulders. The herd shies away from the growing sound. The cowboy’s horse fidgets, necessitating that the cowboy apply pressure from his compromised knee. Then have the four-wheeler come over the rise in a cloud of dust, and give us our first glimpse of the damn fool who lives next door.
3. Order paragraphs so that each sentence builds upon the last. While editing fiction, I’m often re-ordering sentences for maximum impact. When I do, I always suspect the writer came to fiction through journalism.
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
If you have a Facebook account, you’ve no doubt had the opportunity to take a plethora of quizzes.
Which Disney princess are you?
What Mexican food are you?
What is your stripper name?
Amusing? Perhaps. Creative time-wasters? Down to the last one.
Here’s a quiz, however, that will actually help you with your writing process. It was constructed by a highly qualified friend of mine, Dr. Katherine Ramsland, who holds graduate degrees in clinical psychology, forensic psychology, criminal justice, and philosophy (an MFA is soon to be added).
Originally published on her popular blog at Psychology Today, “Shadow Boxing: a blog that probes the mind’s dark secrets,” the quiz assesses your observational quotient or “OQ,” and places you on a scale of inward to outward focus. Knowing which end of the scale you gravitate toward can help you identify your natural strengths as a writer.
Ramsland defines observational intelligence as:
The ability to observe one’s surroundings, including the people in it, and to understand what the details show.
We each have an OQ, but according to Ramsland, people oriented in an interior direction have to work harder at adding important story details than people with an external orientation.
This is good for a writer to know, since being observant is a crucial trait for both the author building the story and the protagonist delivering it. Yet observation is not a mad, natural skill for everyone. “Innies” tend to miss a lot. I find it interesting that Ramsland herself, who writes about externally-detailed processes such as crime scene investigation, confesses to being an “innie.” Knowing this informs where she will have to exert more energy.
This quiz can be an eye-opener when it comes to your personal relationships as well. When my husband and I shared results, it explained away as innate traits things we’d previously seen as inexplicable downfalls.
The first question, for example, asks us to rate how true the following statement feels:
I am alert to the environment around me.
On a scale of 0 (not true of me) to 2 (that’s me), my husband would have given me a “0”. I am so often lost in the riveting cloud of thoughts unspooling in my mind, that each time we leave a hotel room, he gets ready to corral me with his arm, knowing I’ll head the wrong direction in search of the elevator. (But seriously, does he not understand that once I come to a dead end, I can turn around and find my way? The way I see it, there’s a health bonus: extra steps!)
I, however, gave myself a “1” on that question, because sometimes, I do notice the darnedest things. For example, I just noticed the light was left on in our closet, and thought, “Did my husband leave it that way all night?”
Take the quiz
Your turn! You have 3 options for each item: 0 = not true of me, 1 = sometimes or sort of true, 2 = that’s me!
Read More
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
When I set out to write a “body of work,” I didn’t intend a “string of failed proposals” to define its completion. I had hoped to leave a legacy of, well, you know. Actual written novels.
Yet it was time to try again. From a fresh page, my cursor blinked at me; I cursed and blinked right back. Where to go from here?
My attention strayed to my bookcases—in particular, the way I’d organized them. The one on the left holds a couple hundred new and used novels that piqued my interest. I plan to read them someday.
The bookcase on the right holds a couple hundred new and used books that piqued my interest and which I’d promptly read.
It seemed worth my time to determine what made the books on the right “must-read-nows.” I don’t want one of my titles to languish on someone’s left-hand bookcase, where more urgent reads will find a way to slip ahead in line, and where the sum total of the sale is the $1.15 that was banked toward earning out my advance. A great read is certainly great whenever it is read, but “someday” may be dangerously close to “out of print,” a time when discussion, review, or word-of-mouth recommendation can no longer help drive sales.
It is important to be read. I want my novels to be in the right bookcase. How about you?
I assessed the books I’d gobbled as if choosing them for the first time: reading the back-cover copy, where I could find the inciting incident that would suggest the type of story, and then opening lines, where the prose had a chance to set its hook. Some results from my “right bookcase study” are below. Red type signifies what about each of them said I have to read this now.
For this exercise, I set aside one hook that can be particularly compelling—buzz—since it did not emanate from the work itself. The following examples hooked me all on their own, whether through opening lines that begged my continued interest, an inciting incident from the back-cover copy that raised a question to which I needed the answer—or, in some cases, both. I dove right in because I was hooked.
These examples will address a question from WU commenter Cheryl O’Donovan on my last post, “Identifying and Crafting Your Inciting Incident”, who asked whether hook and inciting incident are the same thing. The answer: sometimes. More on that at the end of the post.
Read More
