Composition: Harmony and Variety

In paintings or photos, balance creates attention and beauty. No single element should overwhelm any other, while those individual components echo, contrast, and complement. Finally, monotony of form, color, or anything else, muddies. Where’s the focal point?

These precepts also pertain to the novel, though, obviously, not in terms of color or shape. The fundamentals of fiction include:

* Action: Dramatization of cinematic scenes.

* Dialogue: Two or more characters conversing.

* Narrative: Transition and context grounding action and dialogue.

* Information: Backstory, exposition, facts, or intellectual stimulation.

Tip: Good fiction varies and harmoniously balances its components.

~ No one element should overwhelm the other

Unless sufficient narrative supports the action, you’ve dumped the reader in the stream without a life preserver.      Everything in fiction serves story. So even if this is an informative moment, it mustn’t overwhelm the characters’ journey. Still, too much action resembles a few crumbs of cake slathered with a quarter-can of frosting. In fiction and everything else, too much of a good thing remains—too much.

~ Individual components echo, contrast, and complement.

Fiction immerses readers when the whole’s more than the sum of its parts. The narrative adds irony or clarity to the dialogue. If the stage business simply repeats, such as “‘Get Out!’ Marge shrieked angrily,” you’ve neither contrasted nor complemented.     But, for example, if setting affects the action, or intensifies the dialogue, one element enhances another.      Contrast matters, too. When suspense is high, tease readers with an information break. Conversely, if you’ve just explained at length, appeal with humor, lyricism, or tension.

~ Monotony of form, color, or anything else, muddies.

Some writers treat dialogue like a faucet that stays off or on. Characters don’t say a thing for pages, but then talking floods everything else. A mess in either a novel or a painting.

Whether with fiction, photos, or paintings, audience satisfaction springs from balanced elements that each contribute without any one overpowering.

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

Micro-tension: What Is It and Why You Care

Many novelists know about the need for “tension on every page.” How do you get that? Micro-tension, as Donald Maass explains in The Fire in Fiction:

Keeping readers constantly in your grip comes from the steady application of something else altogether: Micro-tension. That is the tension that constantly keeps your reader wondering what will happen—not in the story, but in the next few seconds. 

The April 19, 2009 “wordswimmer” blog adds

the term alone–-micro-tension–-implies a larger tension in a story, say, macro-tension, which in turn suggests two levels operating within the story simultaneously.

So the novelist is juggling, but juggling more than pure action. 

In a December 13, 2012 interview with Michael A. Ventrella, Maass elaborated on micro-tension:

Tension is not about action, explosions and shouting. It’s about generating unease in the mind of the reader. There are many ways to do that, many of them subtle. Even language itself can do it. When tension exists in the mind of the reader there’s only one way to relieve it: Read the next thing on the page. Do that constantly, on every page, and readers will read every word—you have a “page turner,” no matter what your style, intent or type of story.

Clear now? But of course you need to not only to understand the concept but apply it. Here are some strategies for accomplishing that.

~ Crisp details.

Less is more. Give readers lots of information, particularly at moments of high suspense, and you elicit thinking when feeling is the goal. Watch where you position your exposition.

~ Hard-working dialogue.

If characters talk the way people do, you get the same lack of tension that often fills daily life. Also, as Sol Stein puts in Stein on Stein, give your characters “different scripts.”

~ Time crunch.

The ticking clock keeps readers as worried as characters. What if it’s too late?

~ Internal dilemma

Little is more suspenseful than a cornered character unable to choose between two impossible options. Torment your characters. Readers will love you for it.

TIP: Novels need both broad overall tension and incessant, immediate edginess.

“The Decisive Moment”

In the preface to the book of that title, Henri Cartier-Bresson accompanied his photographs with commentary, including “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.” Unintentionally, of course, this idea applies not only to camera work, but to the engine that drives fiction. 

Tip: “Decisive Moments” structure your novel and the scenes (or summaries) composing its plot.

It starts with noticing. Whether with camera, computer, or pen, you need first to identify significance, then be certain that you capture it. After all, as he observed, “Once you miss it, it is gone forever.” 

Ready yourself to seize flashes of inspiration, whether they wake you at dawn, strike when you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, or disrupt concentration on rush hour traffic. 

~ Don’t, needless to say, endanger yourself with sleep deprivation, eyes on your iPhone, or both. 

~ Do make sure you have a means to record even the most slender wisp of idea. Otherwise, how will you ever know how big it might have become?

Cartier-Bresson felt strongly about the impact of a single moment, saying, “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.” 

~Don’t view this premise as unrelated to fiction.

~ Do harness the construct of the “decisive moment” to structure your novel and choose what you present in “live time” and what you summarize.

In fiction, those “decisive moments” are the pressure points that create character arc. The protagonist’s customary response, whether waiting, rationalizing, or denying, is now impossible. However painfully or foolishly, the character must act—and immediately. Just as photographers portray the external world, the novelist must accept that readers want to view the most intense moments through action and imagery. The best pressure points are photographable. This prevents the clutter of excessive rumination, review, or reconstruction. 

Once you recognize your novel’s events in terms of “decisive” or “significant,” you’re on track to decide what should unfold, detail by detail. The rest? Collapse it into a swift abbreviation of what readers need to know but have no need to watch.

The Cartier-Bresson phrase “proper expression” is already ambiguous, and more so when applied to prose. Yet in either fiction or photography, “proper expression” means that the portrayal says it all—no caption needed. If you’ve found the “decisive moments” of your protagonist’s journey, never deflate them by explaining what they mean. 

Haven’t found the “decisive moments” yet? How matter how many words, drafts, or themes you’ve amassed, it’s back to the storyboard. The best novels, no matter how historical or literary, always build from the moments when there’s no turning back. And it’s most fun for readers when these pivots, or turning points, are barely visible until the plot ends and readers grasp the how and why. 

Here’s to “decisive moments.”

Asset or Accident, Experiment or Intuition?

Recently, a very talented writer confided that he never has the slightest idea whether his material is awesome or awful. And, he’s partially right: every writer needs feedback. Yet every writer also needs honest, judicious self-assessment.

Tip: Learn to be your own best, most trusted critic.

Writers usually know a ton of “rules,” everything from “Vary the length of your sentences,” to “Tension is the most beloved character in every novel.” If you know all those rules, and you’re a smart cookie, why can’t you see whether you break the rules unintentionally?

Because most novelists rationalize as skillfully as they write. And then, alas, succumb to their own rationalizations. Ever used one of these?

• It’s monotonous to start every chapter with a hook.
• Sometimes readers need a break from all that action and just want to overhear the characters thinking, wondering, and deciding.
• Words like “anguish,” “yearning,” and “joy” engage readers emotionally.
• An occasional point of view slip makes things more interesting.
• Readers choose the novel form because in order to study history and savor description.
• Anyone who can create compelling characters won’t need much plot.

Hmm. How much of a critic, or writer, can you expect to be if you defend every misstep, justify every self-indulgence, excuse every shortcut, and break every rule?

The trick is to know when you can—should!—break the rules. Certainly too many exist, along with too many instances where rigor should bow to the serendipity of inspiration. Still, those rules exist for a reason, so you need a reason to ignore them. 

Want some help deciding?

~ Identify and appreciate your skills.

Writers often prefer listing their faults. But to undermine those, you need your—assets.

~ Notice and exploit writing accidents.

            They produce some of the loveliest writing moments.

~ Experiment with your plans.

            Try things out. Take risks. You can’t revise what you never wrote.

~ Intuition.

Anyone inclined toward fiction intuitively knows when to ignore the rules.

Listen to yourself. What better way to discover much you already know?

Do you serve a buffet?

Long, food-laden tables aren’t just popular because of all that food. The variety attracts. So does the freedom. Once you pass the meat and seafood and advance to the salad items, you can always return for one more shrimp. You can circle the table to sample a mini-brownie before you dig into that crab cake. It’s all available at whatever order and pace you choose.

Readers can’t control fiction that way. However obvious it seems, it’s significant that nearly every reader proceeds in a linear fashion. Of course one can skim, backtrack, or peek at the ending. What readers can’t do is position the setting beside the dialogue or help themselves to more of this and less of that. The buffet that fiction ought to provide is the writer’s gift and responsibility.

Why wouldn’t every writer host a buffet every time?

• It’s easier for writers to focus on one thing at a time, such as dialogue.
• It’s easier not to shift gears, because then you don’t need as many transitions.
• If you adore setting, for example, you might overdo it at the expense of action.
• If you see the complete picture already, you might not notice its absence from the page.

 How can you break this habit of offering only desserts or appetizers instead of a full buffet?

~ Improve your skill with transitions.

Make friends with transitions. Once you bridge acting with thinking, tension with backstory, and so on, you’ll shift more willingly, knowing your readers can follow. Build transitions from the underlying similarity between what’s going on and where, between gesture and symbol, and between rumination and behavior.  What better way to engage reader emotions than to create a whole world instead of one part?

~ Read like a reader.

As Harper Lee put it in To Kill a Mockingbird, imagine someone else’s consciousness by willingness to “climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”  This isn’t easy. It is doable.

~ Imitate reality.

When we converse, we still notice surroundings. If we terminate a job, investment,  friendship, or marriage, we experience a range of emotions, all of which impact all our perceptions. For credibility, fiction must re-create a world where more than one thing goes on at a time. That’s reality. Fiction must follow.

~ Accentuate with contrast.

Description matters in novels only when it supports the characters. Tension enhances dialogue, which enhances action. “Light can only be understood with the wisdom of darkness,” said Ka Chinery. Since readers can’t supply what’s missing, make sure that you do.

Tip: Break the habit of long stretches of dialogue, description, or narration. Blend them.

A Gift or To Give?

Today’s a time of chocolate, roses, expensive jewelry and store-bought poems. But in either real or fictional worlds, how much love do these offerings convey? Is there something a bit facile about 77% cocoa or a new watch?  What’s the best way to express any emotion, including love?

“All human happiness and misery take the form of action,” Aristotle said. It’s easy to buy carnations, say “I love you,” or keep repeating, “I’m sorry.” Why is the quote that “actions seem louder than words” so famous?

Because it’s true. The opening of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory illustrates:

Mr. Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder: out into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust. A few buzzards looked down from the roof with shabby indifference:  he wasn’t carrion yet. A faint feeling of rebellion stirred in Mr. Tench’s heart, and he wrenched up a piece of the road with splintering finger-nails and tossed it feebly up at them.

Yes, Greene comments by mentioning “indifference” and “rebellion.” Yet the memorable part is the protagonist’s behavior: braving the heat, tearing at the road, taunting the buzzards.

In Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones, she captures atmosphere not by describing it but “showing” hope and connection, however inhuman:

 And then a cat, its belly sagging with young, ambled over and brushed her leg with its tail—the one warm gesture in a cold country.

Marshall needn’t explain that no amount of frustration will make this protagonist give up; the cat conveys this for her. Through action.

Like the cat, characters must do something. Otherwise, the writer forces readers to accept narrator claims about emotions, decisions, and options.

Jonathan Franzen often comments on his characters’ emotions—but only to add depth and insight. These few sentences capture a range of emotion through the behavior of Pip and her boyfriend:

Pip shut the door again, to block out the words, but even with the door closed she could hear the fighting. The people who’d bequeathed a broken world to her were shouting at each other viciously. Jason sighed and took her hand. She held it tightly.

Even without reading this extraordinary novel, you know that the overheard accusations are unbearable, that Jason wants to support her but is helpless to help, and that she clings to him because he’s there and that’s all she has. The physical responses capture this with active verbs: “shut,” “block,” “closed,” “shouting,” “sighed,” and “held.” Something happens.

Something happens with a gift, too, of course. Who wouldn’t want a carefully chosen one? But loving acts exert greater power. And in fiction? Store-bought expressions of love, pain, fury, or terror can only “tell.”

Tip: Nothing conveys emotion like behavior or action.

A Tale of Two Questions

You can reduce many questions about writing your novel to just two:

1.      Do readers want to experience this as a live-time scene?

2.      Do readers want these contextual details, and if so, earlier, now, or later?

Tip: Question what your readers want, and when. It won’t make you clairvoyant. It will improve your ability to meet reader needs.

1. Start with scenes.

Novels can’t survive without them. What must they accomplish?

~ Direct access to the characters.

Sol Stein, in Stein on Writing, reminds us that “scene happens in front of the reader, is visible, and therefore filmable.”

~ Lack of resolution.

According to Jack M. Bickham in Scene & Structure, scenes are for characters struggling toward their goals, not for achieving those goals. 

~ Psychological change.

Author and writing coach Jessica Page Morrell says that scenes change characters. Unless there’s enough pressure to force that, maybe it shouldn’t be a scene?

2. Connect your scenes.

Background and context are the glue that sticks scenes together. Readers want who, what, where, when, and why, and neither so early that the information seems cluttered and irrelevant, nor so late that they’re already confused.  It’s all in the strategy.

~ Connect details to what’s happening in the novel right now.

Sometimes you have to delve into the past. Always use that to escalate present-time tension.

~ Disperse gradually.

Info dumps, if they belong anywhere at all, are for textbooks. Respect reader attention span.

~ Keep action prominent.

Sense of place is crucial, but not necessarily as the start to every chapter. A hook pulls in the reader while reminding the writer where the scene is going.

Question the contents of your scenes. Question the details connecting your scenes. The answers help create the illusion that your novel is perfectly paced. Isn’t that worth a question or two?

The Space Between

At the recent AWP (Association of Writers and Writing programs) conference in Minneapolis, novelists Stacey D’Erasmo and Charles Baxter, and poet Carl Phillips tackled the reader/writer relationship. The panel focused on the reader’s relationship to the text. How much does the individual affect the meaning of what’s on the page? How much should the individual affect the meaning of what’s on the page? Their consensus? A lot. I heartily agree.

But reader participation requires “space.” Not the kind buzzing with unimaginable sub-atomic particles, but an emptiness—because not every dot is filled in—that lets the reader join a “conversation.”

This space resembles openness, or white space on the page, or the silence between the movements in classical music, or the blank parts of a drawing or painting. The individual ear or eye fills that space. Novels work the same way.

The quality of the space depends on the fragile relationship between reader and character, reader and narrator. Not enough narrator, and there’s insufficient context for the reader to react, much less interpret. But too much narrator, and reader interaction becomes impossible.

Tip: The secret to handling empty space in a novel is the balance between character and narrator.

Don’t

~ Let your narrator offer interminable logistics, or not enough who, what, where and why.

~ Let your narrator draw every conclusion, preventing readers from doing that.

~ Let your narrator withhold so much for so long that readers lose interest.

~ Let your narrator upstage your characters. Readers follow characters.

Do

~ Let your characters rely on subtext. Implication intrigues everyone. That includes readers.

~ Let your characters intimate intimacy. Readers want to contribute their own experience.

~ Let your characters fall silent. This doesn’t mean silence while worrying or yearning and

   reminding readers of that. It means characters acting, so readers can decide what that means.

~ Let your characters steal the show, with readers deciding who deserves a happy ending.

A novel is an opportunity to enter a world so compelling that we leave everything humdrum, improbable, or amoral far behind. Any real world, fictional or otherwise, is composed of clarity and vagueness, of questions answered or only introduced, of people saying what they think while we calculate whether they mean what they say they think.

Give your readers an opportunity to enter a world of conversation and silence, of empty space that readers can fill with questions they never knew they wanted to ask. Give your readers enough space to reflect on those questions.

Emoticon versus Emotion

Here’s an irony. Many of us can’t resist decorating our emails, texts, perhaps even blogs with silly little faces that presumably capture emotion. For casual communication? No problem. But just as emoticons never summon the dynamic complexity of human response, characters aching with the agony of anguish never summon much except irritation.

Some things about story remain the same forever. It will always be true, as painter Paul Cezanne put it, that “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.”

Yet if emotions don’t change over time, art does. Like emotions, it’s always on the move. Novel readers no longer respond favorably to blatant, oversimplified description. Charles Dickens, born about two centuries back, is still—and will always be—a great writer. But today’s novelists don’t get to remind us that “‎Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.” (Great Expectations)

That’s because, as writer and writing coach Jessica Morrell explains, “Resonance takes place when the stimuli put into our stories evoke meaning or a responsive chord in a reader.” For better or worse, certain plots and word choices no longer elicit the same “responsive chords.”

Our world has changed, and our novels along with it. In White Oleander (1999) Janet Fitch says

That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific--chair, eye, stone--but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out.

Labeling emotions cages them, diminishes them, makes them less than they are. That causes readers to feel less than they might. What’s a writer to do?

~ Use dialogue. Confrontations between characters—including the subtext of what they never say—both mimic some of the most intense moments in real life and reveal the motivation for character choices.

~ Capture the reactions of other characters. Response to the behavior of the protagonist or antagonist is a shrewd away to advance the plot, so long as you avoid all those abstract, oversimplified words like “sad,” “happy,” “perplexed,” and the even more painful ones like “yearning” and “ecstasy.” They have the same impact as a heaving bosom.

~ “Show” emotion through action—and not just tears, shrugging, or exiting.

~ Try symbolism. Might your character realistically compare inertia to a stone wall, with only one way through? Might your character overeat or starve? Learn boxing or sink into a stupor?

Tip: Give emotions the complexity they deserve so your readers can experience the emotions they deserve.

Where Does Your Novel Start?

The first page of your novel—and even the first sentence and paragraph of that page—matters more than any other part of your book. You not only attract readers (or fail to), but set the tone, elicit sympathy, and clarify what kind of journey your protagonist and thus readers will take. More importantly, you establish whether readers want to invest in that journey. With the stakes this high, you want to—keep the stakes high!

More than anything else, that comes down to where you start. Recently a writer asked if she should begin her novel when Larry’s wife Erica disappears. Or, instead, should the novel open at the moment when lonely Larry determines to begin actively searching?

To decide, consider the difference between these two starting points. One is a feeling of desperate loss, a feeling which introduces questions about what to do, which actions to consider. The other moment—a forceful decision to take action—is an actual plot point. It’s a true inciting incident, because it produces the plot rather than preceding it.

Mark Twain observed that “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning-bug.” Isn’t the start of your novel far more significant than word choice? Note the gap between thinking about an action and taking one. Use that distinction to identify your starting point.

For your opening, you need the following components:

~ A moment of action (not a feeling, situation, or problem)

~ A self-explanatory action (not one that requires backstory, context, or elaboration)

~ An action explosive enough to drive an entire novel (not a conflict, but a dilemma)

~ An action with high stakes (not just risk, but a lose-all or win-all gamble)

~ An action that reveals the nature of your protagonist (not soon, but instantly)

~ An action that bonds us with your protagonist (by uniting courage with vulnerability)

As an exercise, a warm-up, an off-stage gathering of insight, it’s terrific for you to develop a full understanding of the events that caused your protagonist to risk the action that sets your novel in motion. But that’s only for you. You needn’t share it with your readers, and you definitely needn’t start out with it.

Tip: Begin your story not with what motivates action, but as close as possible to the point where the action starts.