The Novel World: Deep rather than Broad

Novelists have numerous reasons for spreading out instead of digging down. For a start, it’s easier. More available territory lessens anxiety about lacking sufficient tension, or even lacking sufficient material. Perhaps novelists haven’t completed their homework—and everything they know about the character and plot is already on the page instead of supporting what appears there. But that world will be a shallow one—the opposite of what readers anticipate.

Instead, explore what you’ve already introduced rather than blissfully introducing more and more. And more.

Tip: Superficial plotting and characterization yield unoriginal plotting and characterization.

Originality can come only from what you bring of yourself to your story. In other words, originality is not a function of your novel; it is a quality in you.     Where so many manuscripts go wrong is that if they do not outright imitate, they at least do not go far enough in mining the author’s experience for what is distinctive and personal. So many manuscripts feel safe. They do not force me to see the world through a different lens. — Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great

In Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, Maass emphasizes the need to reject the first two or four or even five twists and traits that come to mind. Why? Because they’re obvious; they stem from the surface rather than the depths. To counteract this, he offers a series of exercises geared to reveal the astonishing pleasure of the unexpected. 

Alternatively, you can increase the probability of surprise by asking yourself what is possible without being improbable. Nor is that a one-time question. Have you pushed each moment, conversation, scene, and confrontation as far as you can? On every page, do you give readers at least one apt yet refreshingly new detail or occurrence?

Too often, life feels predictable. Motives and responses, choices and obstacles seem redundant, mundane. Not only is the real world familiar, it’s unfocused. People and obligations compete for our attention. Few days offer any focal point, and most of us face not only significant concerns but inconsequential ones like will the milk make it one more day.

Such is life. In fiction, though, the last thing anyone wants is tedium or blur. After all, we read fiction to leave that behind. And fiction won’t provide escape when muddled with slow pace, tenuous tension, or panorama so sweeping that readers forget what’s at stake and for whom.

Any time story issues don’t contribute to the true challenges and conflicts of the main character, you’re directing a story’s energy and passion away from that character and her story. — The Editor’s Blog

However implicitly, this observation dispenses some friendly warnings:

• Limit the number of characters.
• Imply (rather than state or ignore) the focus of each scene.
• Link subplots to issues that reflect or enhance the protagonist’s arc.
• Let readers follow the character they’ve invested in.

Give your story resonance and focus by developing its primary ideas and characters. 

(**** Laurel's new book, Beyond the First Draft, is now available from Amazon or Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing. ****

Edit like an Agent

Whether novelists submit paranormal, YA, or literary, the reasons underlying rejections and requests for rewrites constantly overlap, regardless of genre. Doesn’t this across-the-board similarity seem odd? Actually, not at all. Because fundamental qualities apply to every work of fiction—and every agent seeks these fundamental qualities.

Tip: To land an agent, think like one.

So what are some things that agents might be thinking?

~ Begin earlier than you thought you could.

Over and over, I hear about agents asking novelists to cut five, ten, even one hundred pages. Why? Because you need to start where the trouble does. Don’t set up, take your time, create a world, or establish a serenity to disrupt. Instead? Begin with an actual inciting incident. And right away.

~ Eliminate self-indulgence.

This insidious issue can creep in without writers even noticing. Too many characters. Too much amazingly aggravating alliteration. Heartfelt anecdotes about Gram, whom you loved so very much. Irrational contempt for your arrogant brother-in-law. Be on the lookout for stuff that belongs in your diary, not your professional submissions.

~ Delete backstory.

Donald Maass got an audible groan from a large UW-Madison Writer’s Institute audience when he insisted, “Once you’re seventy percent of the way through the book, have as much backstory as you want. Before that? Forget it.”  Agents are readers, and every reader longs to know what happens next—not what happened yesteryear.

~ Shore up the middle.

            What’s worse than hitting page 102 and no longer caring what happens next?

~ Fix clumsy sentences.

It’s human nature to rationalize. “Oh, the sentence isn’t that bad. They won’t notice.” For better or worse, they definitely will. Every awkward sentence conveys one of the following: The author doesn’t know which sentences don’t work, or the author didn’t care enough to fix that one. Seriously. Do you want to convey either of those messages?

In the background, I imagine increasingly audible grumbling. “How do I know how late I can start?” “How many characters are too many?” “This published book I read made all of these mistakes, and so I…”

Forget all that. If you curb rationalization, you already know the answers to all those questions. Objectivity reveals when to start your book, which characters you can cut, and when your syntax is clumsy or cutesy. Pay meticulous attention to everything you already know, and you’ll read like an agent. That’s how you get one.

“V” Is for “Vivid”—Not “Verbose”

The internet revolutionized our assessment of “vivid” versus “verbose.”  

Do you ever skip description in a novel? I do, too. Obviously, merely describing how things look, sound, taste, feel, and smell is not, by itself, going to bring a location to life. Something more is required…Only through the eyes and heart of a character does place come truly alive.”  — Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction

Neil Gaiman illustrates this in American Gods:

The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.

That works. This does not: “The house smelled of must, dampness, and the sweetish smell of rot.” What makes one “vivid” and the other “verbose”?

1. Originality.

Particularly when dealing with anything familiar—like a decaying house—transcend same-old, same-old. What’s the best source of that? Your character’s perception.

2. Comparison.

This could be a metaphor, simile, symbol, or analogy. In all of these, successful comparisons arise from “an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar” — Aristotle, The Poetics.  Does the resemblance resonate at the deepest level? If so, readers instantly sense that a mockingbird or white whale or scarlet letter represents not only the literal but also a meaning beyond that.

3. Insight.

Setting becomes meaningful when it reminds readers what they didn’t know they knew.

4. Tension.

Setting should set up what’s ahead, and without “telling.”  In Kraken, here’s what China Miéville does with the sky:

The light was going: some cloud cover arriving, as if summoned by drama.

And Amy Tan with war in The Joy Luck Club:

But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people—men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.

Images of “clouds” or “war” abound on the internet. So even incorporating all five senses won’t necessarily produce something “that readers will not skim,” as Maass reminds. Unless setting intensifies response to plot and character, it often feels “verbose.”

Tip: Setting becomes “vivid” only when it’s as integral to a novel as its plot.

Building the “Building” Where Your Characters Live

Writers often associate worldbuilding with science fiction, and bildungsroman with coming of age. But isn’t every novel world at least partially imaginary—composed of details about the environment that the author must somehow communicate? And doesn’t every protagonist with an arc advance from inadequacy to greater strength?

The building you have to build reveals what your protagonist faces and why. And if you want readers beyond your loved ones, exploring that building must be fun.

Tip: Secrets are the most fun when one discovers them one snippet at a time.

The secret to successful worldbuilding and backstory? Hint just enough to incite curiosity. Was it murder? Now hold back. Is the protagonist a coward? What must the protagonist unlearn to make it in the metropolis? Will the last human perish?

It’s all in the timing. At a writer’s conference, grinning merrily, Don Maass stunned his audience by saying, “Once you’re seventy percent of the way through your novel, go ahead and have all the backstory you want.”

He’s right, of course. Then how do you build the building until then? By taking a stroll in your reader’s shoes. Aside from the plot, what do you absolutely need to know?

If you’re thinking like a reader, that’s quite a question. Don’t shrug it off. Probe. Deeply and honestly. Want some additional tricks for suggesting and keeping secrets?

~ List at least ten things you intend to hide.

Plan where to insert them, insinuating early, then failing to dish the dirt till the last possible moment. This focuses a first draft or adds tension to a later one.

~ Compose an elaborate backstory.

Writing it out can restrain the impulse to dump all of it into your novel. Drizzle small details, always integrating the past with current conflict. Tease.

~ Explain the whole world.

Add everything. In the first few chapters. All at once. Now? Slash and burn. If you omit everything you possibly can, you might have just exactly enough.

Eventually readers should see the entire building—because you built it one secret, one brick, one shadow of a brick at a time. Getting to know this building? Really, really fun.

The Novel and the Novelist’s Emotions

Like everyone else, writers may be reluctant to wade through their deepest emotions. It’s like a swamp down there—with all the worst quagmire characteristics: rotting material, oppressive atmosphere, fetid odors—the stuff of nightmares. Maybe even the idea turns you off. Who loves swamps, or wants to revisit fear, anger, or pain? At best it puts you in a terrible mood; at worst it hurts.

But dark places can originate creativity: carnivorous plants, larger-than-life creatures, symbolism, secrets.

In Writing 21^st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques, Donald Maass suggests that novelists often gain the greatest impact by probing deep inside—unearthing what they’d rather forget or ignore.

Tip: You’re the best source of the depths that make your characters compelling and real.

The point isn’t self-torture, of course, but the kind of experiment that scientists like Newton have always performed. To whatever extent you can step back to notice or recall profound feeling, you might gain both perspective and stoicism. You might unearth the details that create complex characters, which in turn creates compassionate readers.

Questions to might help achieve that:

~ How would you rank this pain (or fear or lust or rage)?

Scoring helps recall other instances of intense emotion and produces more objective comparisons. This can yield specific examples and strong metaphors. Make yourself take notes so you can later round out your characters—even your minor ones.

~ What’s hidden in your personal swamp?

Perhaps there’s more envy (or competitiveness or greed or selfishness) than you usually acknowledge. But it’s okay, because you’re wearing protective garb: “This is for the writing.” That arms you against hideous imagery and noxious fumes while you dig up the traits that shape intriguing characters. Write down the details.

~ How does intense emotion affect you physically?

Note breathing changes—also your pulse, lips, shoulders, and tongue. Which of the five senses dominates? What happens to hunger, thirst, energy, even digestion? Record your observations to replace clichéd body language like turning, yawning, and shrugging.

 If life dumps you in a swamp, such exercises may feel intolerable. But if you can wade the bog for the sake of your novel and its characters, your discoveries might enrich not only your fiction, but your life.

Born Toxic?

Jellyfish (jellies) are. They die that way, too. Try stepping on a desiccating one, or, rather—do so at your peril. Antagonists? That’s a matter of nature and nurture, and one of crucial importance to fiction. In Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, Donald Maass reminds us that a multi-dimensional opponent is not only more intriguing, but “more dangerous.”

And as Robert McKee puts it in Story, “All other factors of talent, craft, and knowledge being equal, greatness is found in the writer’s treatment of the negative side.” Why? Because without a worthy antagonist, a protagonist has no compulsion to defeat inertia. The status quo seems less exhausting. Why not just …

Tip: The antagonist is the source of change—and growth—in the protagonist.

Two kinds of worthy antagonist can motivate your protagonist. The first is doomed. But your antagonist obviously needs greater complexity than a creature with only a nerve net. Maybe your antagonist yearns to be good, cursing the universe that makes some of its inhabitants unable to conquer their worst foibles.  These villains fill Shakespeare’s plays—because such antagonists offer credibility and inspire empathy.

As a novelist, it’s your job to make us grasp that level of pain. What would it be like to envy the impulse toward morality? Challenge yourself to understand that notion, so your readers can.

Other antagonists haven’t the slightest desire to change. They rationalize lust, greed, arrogance, or violence so skillfully that the audience wonders whether there’s something valid about those arguments. The compelling antagonist has mastered self-justification: “It’s absolutely okay for me to murder or starve or rape these people because I…”

It’s your job to complete that thought. The source is backstory, not on the page, but in your grasp of character. Which sociological and psychological factors formed this person? This requires viewing your antagonist as a person—not a creature.  Again, the answers probably come from your worst secrets. What stories do you tell to legitimize moments of selfishness or deceit? On a much uglier magnitude, the antagonist’s mind works the same way. The darkest, dirtiest parts of you long ago familiarized you with the storytelling that lets us do what we want instead of what we know we should. There’s a little antagonist in most of us.

Jellies come in hundreds of species. They’ve been around practically forever. Antagonists, born toxic or otherwise, are at least as old as Greek tragedy. Despite pollution, jellyfish still thrive. So do antagonists, every time you reveal what makes such individuals as real and complex as everyone else.