Creativity and Constraint

Who likes rules? Who wants to be curtailed by limits? Or constraints. Most of us began rebelling against such things at about twenty-four months. And writers have spent years encountering commandments on everything from how often you “should” write to how often you “should” use a hook.

The smartest writers among us realize that there’s an exception to every rule. Because there definitely is. In certain instances, you absolutely need to “tell.”  Sometimes more detail is better, sometimes not. Reader expectations about point of view have changed radically and dramatically—even from what seemed acceptable a few decades back. Lots of exceptions.

Still, if you’d like to be an original and “good” writer, as opposed to being someone who writes, consider who benefits when you rebel. Yes, sometimes those exceptions are exactly what’s needed. More often, though, enormous opportunity lurks in addressing issues rather than disregarding them. When writers ignore this source of serendipity, readers pay.

Tip: The best brainstorming you’ll ever do comes from solving an apparently insoluble problem.

Consider this example.

Louella imagined popping the necklace that wasn’t pop-it beads while shrieking, “Don’t you dare comment on me or my kids ever again.”

“Easy there, girlfriend,” Hortense advised, as if reading Louella’s mind.

Is there a constraint here? You bet. The quotation marks in what Louella thinks precede identical quotation marks in what Hortense says aloud. Particularly back to back, two uses of one kind of punctuation are at best distracting, at worst, confusing.

A writer faced with this issue can choose from several options.

1. Assume that most readers will get it, even if it stops them just for a minute.
2. Cut the two sentences and make the point some other way.
3. Decide that the creative response is addressing the issue rather than ignoring or deleting it.

Want to choose # 3? Here’s one alternative: 

Louella wanted to shriek, “Don’t you dare comment on me or my kids ever again.” She wanted to pop the necklace that wasn’t pop-it beads. She wanted to wreck Hortense’s sleek hairdo. She wanted to…

As if reading Louella’s mind, Hortense advised, “Easy there, girlfriend.”

More often than not, there’s an innovative way to follow the rules. So. Why not limit any rationalizing to what your characters say or think. Because the best writers follow very few rules all the time. Those same writers follow all reasonable rules a lot of time. And every writer needs to know those rules—and be able to justify precisely when and why it’s okay to break them. 

After all, as Anne Enright observes with painful candor: “Only bad writers think that their work is really good.”

Respect for constraints is among the best ways to make any writing better.

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

Self and Story

The relationship between them is ironic. Without sufficient ego to believe you have something to say, you can’t write a word. Yet value self over story, and you might be fine. But your story won’t be.

For one thing, if your ego transcends everything else, you’ll disregard legitimate feedback. And few writers succeed, either materially or artistically, without a courageous, creative response to insightful critique.

Curtailing your ego also reminds you who controls your story. Though the obvious answer is “You, of course,” it’s actually more complicated. The author (you) generates a cast of characters to dramatize the fiction and a narrator to guide readers as they follow those characters. Even in memoir, a persona, rather than an author, delivers the story.

What makes for a successful persona? Focus on the readers. In both fiction and nonfiction, guiding readers is the narrator’s purpose. But if ego drowns out everything else, the author begins upstaging the more audience-oriented narrator.

Here’s Katerina Cosgrove on that subject:

I've found, over the fifteen-plus years of being a published writer, that I suffer intensely every time if I let my ego get in the way. Even if I give it permission to stick its tiny little toe out. It always trips me up. In fact, the only way for me to write at all is to let go of any expectations entirely. Otherwise, the disapproval of others, the hot shame of not being enough, the squirmy feeling of not making the grade—or of being simply ignored by the critics, pundits and gatekeepers—is enough to make me want to give up. — “Removing Your Ego From Your Art”

Ah. Though ego might seem to be one’s best ally, that’s rarely true. In “Art and the Ego,” Emma Welsh reminds that as writers

We’re seeking our true voice, our power, our authenticity as artists. We realize—through blood, sweat and tears—that betting on the ego is not going to get us there.

She feels strongly enough about this to pose an extremely challenging question about priorities:

To find out, check out this ultimate test to measure your ego—one that even I can’t pass yet. (Truthfully it may be impossible.) Ask yourself this: if your story was one day incredibly well-loved and highly regarded, would you care whether or not your name was on the project? 

How do you feel about your answer? Maybe you dislike the question, perhaps consider it unfair. Maybe you dislike your answer even more. Fortunately, this isn’t up to any fictitious narrator(s) or characters. You control your own ego.  Maybe a little scary, but also mighty satisfying. It’s your call.x

Tip: Value story over self.

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

The Arithmetic of Fiction

Few novelists ponder the addition and subtraction of storytelling. But writers can gain a lot from doing so.

Tip: A novelist’s single best editing tool is a metaphorical scissors.

As Louise Brooks puts it, "Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination."

Anton Chekhov agrees: "Brevity is the sister of talent."

Dozens of writers have commented on economy, so this blog could offer endless examples. Since that seems painfully ironic, on to the next topic.

Tip: A novelist’s second best editing tool is adding metaphorical bridges when needed.

Those bridges are called transitions.

Transitions are words or phrases that carry the reader from one idea to the next. They help a reader see the connection or relationship between ideas and, just as important, transitions also prevent sudden, jarring mental leaps between sentences and paragraphs.  — Leah McClellan, “Why transitions are important in writing”

Novelists want readers to savor the story without the unpleasant reminder that they’re reading one. So not just any transition will do.

transitions move the story forward cleanly and seamlessly. Done skillfully, your reader will hardly notice the breaks. — “All Write Fiction Advice”

Few of us build those bridges instinctively. How to accomplish that? First, identify the connection that never got onto the paper. Second, integrate that transition into the narrative.

Tip: Excess disguises what matters, not only for the reader, but also for the novelist.

In an odd psychological quirk, novelists often assume that the fictional journey needs whatever they wrote. Why else would they record it? This takes a lot for granted. Details might repeat, wander off topic, waste words, or explain the obvious. In a cluttered passage, how would you know? Inefficiency masks significance.

If clutter buries, you won’t notice the leap you require readers to take between one scene or moment or paragraph or sentence and the next. Cut superfluous dialogue or description, and the landscape of your fictional world becomes visible. Now you’re ready to build bridges.

Subtract enough, and it all adds up.

The Power of Richard Powers: Act I

This prize-drenched novelist isn’t for everyone, because, by his own admission in an interview with Alec Michod, he finds no distinction between novels focused on “thinking” versus those geared toward “feeling”:

We’re all driven by hosts of urges, some chaotic and Dionysian, some formal and Apollonian. The need for knowledge is as passionate as any other human obsession. And the wildest of obsessions has its hidden structure.

Most novels neither reveal hidden structure nor synthesize philosophy with plot. And often, readers associate the Apollonian world of music and hard science with nonfiction, and the Dionysian one with levity, drama, and passion. For this reason, the average reader generally gravitates toward literary novels or the more plot-driven, accessible alternatives. 

Obviously, we all get to read whatever we want, and many readers, and thus many writers, lack the patience for forays into abstractions like neuroscience, genetics, or music theory. If you’re up for that, though, the rewards of any novel by Richard Powers are enormous. What might you discover as reader, writer, and human being?

Powers, a former programmer, now composer, author, and teacher with boundless curiosity and humanity, says that

The brain is the ultimate storytelling machine, and consciousness is the ultimate story.

Let’s examine that. According to Lisa Cron in Wired for Story:The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence:

Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution—more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to.

Both Cron and Powers suggest that if if we’re going to label ourselves at all, we’re not rational creatures who convince with facts but folks inspired, driven, and completed by drama. In other words, the stories we tell make us who we are. 

And who is that? How constricted or broad? Powers continues with 

shared stories are the only way anyone has for escaping the straightjacket of self…We read to escape ourselves and become someone else, at least for a little while. Fiction is one long, sensuous derangement of familiarity through altered point of view…Fiction plays on that overlap between self-composure and total, alien bewilderment, and it navigates by estrangement. (Alec Michod interview)

Whether or not you ever read a novel by Powers (and the next blog will encouarage you to try), consider your opportunities and responsibilities as a storyteller.  You might want to view fiction a little differently.

~ Fiction performs its work by making the familiar strange and the strange familiar.

~ Fiction provides an opportunity to be less and more than oneself.

~ Fiction integrates the wildness of Dionysus with the reserve of Apollo.

~ Fiction convinces by synthesizing character and morality, action and idea.

~ Fiction introduces the grand possibility of uniting rather than dividing science and art.

Tip: Why limit the parameters of fiction? They can be as broad as you want to make them.

How NOT to Revise

Tip: Revising = reading + vision.

According to Susan Bell ( The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself ):

An editor doesn't just read, he reads well, and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its scribes, only great writing. Scribes had to submit to a curious ruse: they had to downplay their reading skills lest they antagonize their employer. The Attic poet Menander wrote: "those who can read see twice as well." Ancient autocrats did not want their subjects to see that well….      In their fear of readers, ancients understood something we have forgotten about the magnitude of readership. Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves—this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing. Editors are scribes liberated to not simply record and disseminate information, but think hard about it, interpret, and ultimately, influence it. 

In exactly the same way, this applies to self-editing—to revising one’s manuscript. 

Still, maybe you’re willing to invest many hours “working” on your manuscript without really improving it. If so, try some of the following:

~ Read what you wanted to say instead of what you wrote.

If you can extrapolate what you meant to say, surely your readers will willingly do the same.

~ Ignore the deep structure.

Focus on changing one word at a time, probably with the assistance of a thesaurus. After all, aren’t structural issues like scenario and plot composed of individual words?

~ Work from the beginning of a scene or chapter straight through to the end. Every time.

This resembles playing a musical instrument and advancing from start to finish without ever improving the weakest parts. What will you get? The good parts will eventually become wonderful. And the parts that sound cacophonous, unrhythmic, or off key? Perhaps no one will notice.

~ Entertain yourself with personal references.

Sure, readers won’t know that your family loves jokes about hot dogs at Coney Island. But you love those jokes—and it’s your prerogative to share.

~ Avoid both speaker attribution and stage business.

Readers are smart and can figure out who said what. And if not? They’ll cheerfully count back so they know who’s talking.

~ Use all the words you want.

After all, words don’t cost a thing. What’s the hurry?

Composing a decent first draft may be hard, but completing a decent revision of it is that much harder. Real revision identifies what’s over- or under-done and accepts the challenge of fixing it. There’s no substitute for the heavy lifting that revision requires. But that heavy lifting makes writers writers.

Fiction as Transportation

This relationship is obvious in science fiction, where improbable vehicles ferry readers to improbable places. But all successful fiction—whatever the genre—always transports, and, ideally, in both senses of the term.

Readers choose fiction for the opportunity to travel somewhere new. Even if the setting is one’s hometown, this fictional world feels as tangible as the “real” one, only far more causal, credible, and compelling. Even better? You get there without the misery of heavy traffic, delayed planes, or cramped seating.

But because readers can suspend disbelief, fiction can even more miraculously transport them to the territory within a novel’s covers. And, if the creator of that world commits no gaffes that fling readers back into daily reality, the magic lingers long after the protagonist’s journey ends. Every time you recall the first line of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”), or wonder if anyone could really be as good as Harper Lee’s Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird, then you’ve confirmed that novels enchant even when you’re no longer reading them.

Tip: The novelist’s hard work makes transportation to a fictional world easy.

Perhaps that’s easier said than done. So what flings readers out of a fictional world?

~ Errors.

Novel readers want to believe in the world they’ve entered. If they didn’t, they’d choose nonfiction. But they can’t ignore the Plaza Hotel standing across the street from Grand Central Station, or female sea horses housing the developing eggs, or “All of it feels badly.” Fiction must be free from mistakes.

~ Motive.

In real life, people frequently behave irrationality. The novel’s job is letting readers escape that. Fiction must imply (though rarely directly explicate) the rationale underlying character decisions.

~ Sentimentality.

Why not leave that to greeting card writers? Fiction must “show” happiness, fear, or anger rather than using abstract generality to label any of these.

~ Conincidence.

Sometimes infants are born on the same day as their grandmothers, and lucky infants have grandmothers who materialize at exactly the right instant. Novels though, ought to avoid the response of “Oh, give me a break,” and accomplish that by setting up and foreshadowing. Fiction pleases most when it links the cause of one event with the subsequent one.

~ Tedium.

To illustrate, try typing up an actual conversation. If you think that’s painful, imagine reading one. Or a detailed description of how the detective arrived at the crime scene. Who cares? Fiction must suggest rather than replicate.

For many readers, a novel that truly transports brings incomparable joy. Don’t you want to write that book?

Voice: Constraint + Conviction

Writing coaches often urge novelists to “let it flow.” Go ahead and write as fast as you can type, which, for most of us, is faster than we can think. In The Basket Weaver, for example, Jan Marquart suggests: “Sit quietly, listen, listen again, then listen some more and write out everything the voice says with no censoring-–none-–not one word.”

For some novelists, there’s no better strategy. But this approach works only if you’re willing to discard everything—yup, everything—that’s self-indulgent, redundant, or second rate. That necessitates more courage than many writers, including yours truly, possess.

Tip: Voice balances wildness with convention.

You need both individuality and artistry. According to Patricia Lee Gauch,

A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer's voice like the stroke of an artist's brush—is the thumbprint of her whole person—her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms. 

If you accept that painters have “voices,” J. W. Turner beautifully illustrates freedom within restraint. He studied, mastered his craft, and produced solid conventional work like this:

But if that’s all he ever did, he’d never have his own gallery in London’s Tate Museum. Historians 

suspect eyesight played a role, but, in any case, here’s why he’s remembered:

a

Without command of the fundamental, how can you paint or write? Like everyone else, novelists can bore, pontificate, melodramatize, repeat, and confuse. If your voice includes any of that, keep it to yourself. Because “Whether crafting fiction or how-to manuals, self-expression is a negotiation” (Noah Berlatsky in “‘Voice’ Isn't the Point of Writing”).

Without command of the fundamental, how can you paint or write? Like everyone else, novelists can bore, pontificate, melodramatize, repeat, and confuse. If your voice includes any of that, keep it to yourself. Because “Whether crafting fiction or how-to manuals, self-expression is a negotiation” (Noah Berlatsky in “‘Voice’ Isn't the Point of Writing”).

This is where writing commandments apply. Your uncensored self belongs only in a journal. And although we cherish the personal writing of  “the greats,” this is usually due to what they crafted for public consumption—through that “negotiation.”

Writing rules not only reduce “telling,” meandering, and abruptly jolting. Consider your readers, and you create a sort of psychological safety net.  Thasia Frank and Dorothy Wall suggest that

Most writers struggle to unearth voice—not only because one’s own voice is simply too familiar, but also because to speak from your voice means confront your world, your dreams, and your entire life raw and unsoftened by explanations.

In the most exquisite sort of irony, you’re less vulnerable when your narrator and characters stand between your naked self and your readers. And without getting psychologically and linguistically naked, how can you find and use your voice?

And here’s why that’s where it’s at. According to David Malouf,

I've long come to the conclusion that when people say they can't put a book down, they don't mean they're interested in what's happening next; they mean they are so mesmerised by the writer's voice and the relationship that has been established that they don't want to break that.

Isn’t that exactly what you want your novel to do?

On Taking Time and Leaving Space

Exploit opportunity. That’s one distinction between good fiction and great. Sometimes, instead of faulty plotting or limp prose, the issue is timing. Let’s say the protagonist and hunky guy have been flirting for over two hundred pages. When he—and she or he—finally finish the chablis and hit the sack, why rush that? And you certainly don’t want to summarize, as in, “They had the greatest time ever.”

And in order to deliver optimal emotional and dramatic impact, maybe you can do even more. Whoops, someone has an asthma attack or breaks out in hives. Does the estranged spouse return for a heart-to-heart, courting interruptus? What about the cat, the dog, the teenage daughter? 

Go for the extra twist, never settling for the obvious. Then, develop the events that fulfill and startle readers—that haunt forever. Pause to think of your favorite moments in fiction. Are they ever ordinary? Rushed?

Be careful, though. Capitalizing involves a sort of tightrope between underdone and overwrought. To avoid the latter, watch out for these:

~ Stay subtle. 

Add vigorous and original events and details, not familiar or melodramatic ones.

~ Encourage inference.

Fiction thrives on hinting and suggesting, not clarifying or explaining. Which doesn’t, of course, mean you want confused readers.

~ Say it right the first time.

 Then you won’t be tempted to repeat, which usually frustrates more than it emphasizes. 

~ Slow down the good parts.

Writers tend to meander through detail, then zip through action and drama. Why? The humdrum and non-confrontational amass quickly,  not to mention more comfortably. Often, though, the scenes writers find most challenging are those their readers find most enchanting.

~ Carve out a space.

Don’t clog critical moments with layers of description or filler. Instead? Create a sort of pause-and-catch your breath moment. To illustrate, say a mother is awaiting news of her soldier son. Why not delineate her facial expression, the worry in her eyes before learning the truth? This delaying tactic prompts the reader to experience suspense along with her, to internalize the magnitude of a moment that resembles a mini-climax. How else will readers notice?

~ Set up.

Then always deliver.

As you move through the world beyond your novel (remember that one?), observe the reactions of people—and yourself—to momentous moments. Then you’ll have a better sense of how to time and design such moments in your fictional world.

Tip: Capitalize on the subterranean—not at all obvious—opportunities your novel offers.

The Man Who Said Everything Twice

“Not much traffic today.” His wife nods, and they continue on. He lights a cigarette. “Nope. Not much traffic.” As their destination comes into view, she says nothing. He clears his throat. “Nice flat lake.” She turns away from him, toward the window, as he repeats, “Nice flat lake.”

Irritating as this man is, she probably won’t leave him for this reason alone. But if this pattern materializes in your novel, your reader will likely leave you.

Most writers know that they mustn’t repeat. So why do they?

~ Metaphorical throat clearing

Saying it again resembles “um” or “er” in conversation. Maybe details or events occurred twice in the first draft and were never deleted. It’s mostly habit—and you can break it.

~ Schooling

Over and over, writers heard: introduce what you’ll say, develop what you introduced, summarize what you said. This makes sense for teaching and learning. Is that what novels are about?

~ Distrust of the reader

This one is the most powerful. Good writers are nearly always insecure, comparing themselves to novelists they love and feeling they fall short. Very short. Concern that the metaphor is shaky, the subtext too subtle, or theme too understated, such writers clarify. Usually, though, they merely repeat what readers already absorbed.

What do writers repeat?

* General/specific

You know. First you comment on all dogs, then on individual breeds. You could also reverse the order to specific, then general. But don’t.

* Metaphor and explanation

If the metaphor can’t communicate without explanation, it’s not one you want.

* Transition

Yes, you must link each detail or idea or moment to the next. But, for example, don’t link each detail or idea or moment to the next by repeating the whole thing!

* Recent events

Never bring other characters up to date by repeating what readers already know. Hint. Condense.

How do you handle the repetition problem? You already know. About the lake and the traffic.

Tip: Once is enough.

It’s Not a Dream!

Fiction is neither as long-winded, random, or forgettable as the scraps of stories that visit us during the night.  The novel’s achievement starts with the creation process that John Gardner describes:

In the writing state—the state of inspiration—the fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols. The dream is as alive and compelling as one’s dreams at night, and when the writer writes down on paper what he has imagined, the words, however inadequate, do not distract his mind from the fictive dream but provide him with a fix on it, so that when the dream flags he can reread what he’s written and find the dream starting up again. 

This is narrative at its happiest and best—writing that gives readers a  world more dramatic, realistic and moral than daily routine. But the boundaries of this world are fragile. In fact, as Gardner points out, “one of the chief mistakes a writer can make is to allow or force the reader’s mind to be distracted, even momentarily, from the fictional dream.”

Those distractions come in many shapes and sizes, but the other kind of dreaming goes a long way toward explaining them.

~ Cliché.

If you’re gifted enough, of course it’s possible to write anything. But, for the most part, any version of “Henrietta woke, relieved that it was only a dream” won’t work. Dreams may be messages to the dreamer, but rarely to anyone else. If you want your novel to delight others, everything must seem new, starting with the plot and ending with the details capturing it. Cliches like waking from a bad dream? That is a bad dream. 

~ Grounding

Dreams let us fly out windows, land in foreign countries without deplaning, simultaneously chat with former lovers and elementary school teachers. If there’s anything fun about dreams, that’s probably it. But readers demand a fictional dream that, however invisibly, explains arrivals, departures, changes of location, and everything else that makes any world outside a dream clear, logical, sensible, and compelling. 

~ Credibility

In your nightmare, your patient and adoring Mama turns on you for no reason, viciously humiliating you in front of every teacher you encountered in your entire life. No wonder you can’t wait to wake up! But the point is that fiction, unlike dream, requires motive and causality. It’s logically true to itself. Anything else shatters the fictional dream that Gardner describes.

~ Pace

Often when we narrate our dreams (or are forced to hear someone else’s), events and details emerge with agonizing slowness. Trivia receives meticulous tedium, while grounding rarely arrives at all. In contrast, novels need momentum and context. Without those, readers doze off, blissfully escaping to the other kind of dream.

Tip: Dreaming is the first step for many writers. But it shouldn’t be the last.

Bridge It

San Francisco weather often hides part of the Golden Gate Bridge. Without the mid-portion, it resembles two ends of a structure—with only heavy mist in between. Omit the transitions in fiction, and readers might feel as if only mist joins one sentence to the next. With an important exception. California fog can seem mysterious and romantic, whereas two disconnected ideas or sentences or paragraphs are anything but.

How often do fiction readers need a bridge? Every time they sense a shift, and that’s in the reader’s mind—not the writer’s. Shifts include focus, time, space, speaker, mood, emotion, scene, or verb tense. And lack of connection isn’t among the surprises readers enjoy.

Tip: What seems linked to the writer doesn’t always seem linked to the reader.

Because most writers live with their story world until every relationship seems obvious. So those crucial transitions joining one observation or moment to the next often go missing. 

Here’s an example: 

Leaning back with a sigh, Abby surveyed everything she loved about the living room: white carpet versus drapes in a slightly different ivory tint, Danish modern furniture, hand-blown glass artfully catching the light in various corners.     Though her husband had only black socks, they always looked mismatched.

Whoops. How did we get from interior design to hubby Bill’s habits? For the writer, this might seem crystal-clear. The character muses on order and taste and how differing hues complement each other, unlike her husband’s mismated footwear. Abby might resent his slovenliness contrasting with her taste, which she clearly admires. Perhaps she wonders why she likes snow-white with ivory, but not brand-new black with three-years-old black. 

And, in fact, developing any of those would clarify why the passage abruptly shifted from decor to laundry. The crucial component you accidentally omit from the page perplexes readers. Huh?

Remedies exist:

~ Notice, even if you don’t want to fix this until later.

Consider capitalizing markers like LETTING HER MIND WANDER, or LATER THAT EVENING.  This reminds that you need to improve this temporary transition.

~ Collect transitions in your daily world.

Store effective links from what you read, hear, and see. This becomes part of noticing.

~ Identify the connections you thought of but never included.

This smooths the way while adding causality and suspense.

Let readers view the entire bridge—without something missing in the middle.

Think like a Bird?

Once a young marsh hawk apparently considered an open garage part of the skyline and flew inside, perching on the metal rafters controlling the sliding door. Fine. Until it couldn’t escape. The woman, nature lover that she was, told the neighbors she’d free it right away. No problem.

First at the front door, then just inside, then closer to the rear, she offered the bird raw hamburger, cooked hamburger, a chicken leg, canned and dry cat food. No dice.

Still undaunted, she got a broom and gently chased the confused stranger toward the front. Over and over it flew maniacally forward, only to reclaim its original post. She became increasingly afraid—she and the hawk both. It clung, fluttering frantically, piteously opening its golden beak to emit silent cries more taxing than a howl ever could be.

The bird had done her in. Or had it? “Think like a bird,” she chided. “Think like a bird,” she barked and began searching the yard for a something natural enough to represent escape. The woman took her time arranging the branch, altering its position, attaching more sticks, setting it up to imitate exactly what it was supposed to be. And, lo, this time when the broom urged the prisoner forward, the raptor found the tree, hesitated, circling for relentless moments until its back leg briefly touched the tip of the facsimile tree and it zoomed away.

For novelists, it doesn’t matter that this woman sank to the driveway gravel and wept for some time. It matters that she thought like a bird.

Tip: Enter the mind of every living being in your novel, whether child, wizard, cat, or grandpa.

After all, if you want every character to feel real for readers, first every character must feel completely real to you. In a short story titled “The Remobilization of Jacob Horner,” John Barth wrote: “In life there are no essentially major or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction and biography, and most historiography, is a lie. Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”

Your story or novel should have neither characters too minor for dimension, nor snapshots that reduce some players to heroes, others to reprobates or scoundrels. 

How do you think like each of your characters?

~ Explore desire.

Nothing reveals a person (or a bird) as well as a burning obsession to change the

external or internal territory.

~ Brainstorm.

Let your subconscious roam free. How are you like a goat? A chancellor? A seer?

~Cheat a bit. 

For a while, choose a hat to wear each time you switch to a different head.

~Empathize deeply.

Use your own emotions, uncomfortable or embarrassing as that perhaps seems.

“Take Your Characters to Dinner.”

Mentally interact with them outside the format of your story.

You needn’t rescue a hawk, or, before the last page, anyone else. But your readers expect that if you include one in your book, at least epiphany occurs, you penetrated that avian mind.

Opening Up

Buds are full of promise. How large will this one get, how fragrant, how multi-faceted, and will the culmination prove worth the wait? If a bud is a rich with potential, how much more so a novel’s first sentence, paragraph, page, chapter. There you entice readers. Or lose them.

Openings hint at what we can expect, help us decide if we should await the outcome. Contrast these: 

Our quick breath encircled our heads in the late-winter air as he pulled me by the hand, through lines of Model Ts and Cadillac Coupes, toward the glow of the Colonial Theatre. My body coursed with elation and guilt, every bit as intoxicating as the rum drinks he'd mixed for us out of the trunk of his car. The frenzy of the Jazz Age had overflowed from the cities into smaller towns like ours in music, film, fashion, and literature, resulting in restlessness and tension between generations and ideals. Fueled by the energy of the new, we had toasted our agreement: That night it was only us in the world, and we would live like it was ours.     He'd lifted a triple-stranded pearl necklace over my head and set it on my skin, kissing the scar on my collarbone, a relic from the first night we'd found each other. He whispered that the necklace was only costume jewelry, but one day he'd buy me the real thing. --Erika Robuck, Fallen Beauty

Here’s a very different beginning:

The girl standing in the foyer when Alex went down to get his mail, trembling slightly on her cane, was Esther. Not a girl, really: a woman. Everyone in the building knew her. Or everyone, it seemed, except Alex, who, in the few months since he’d moved here, had never quite managed to be the one to open a door for her, or put her key in her mailbox, or start a conversation with her in the oppressive intimacy of the building’s elevators.     She was looking out through the plate glass of the entrance doors to the street, where sunlight now glinted off the morning’s earlier sprinkling of rain.     “I wouldn’t go out there if you don’t have to,” Alex said, then regretted at once his admonitory tone.     From the confusion that came over her, plain as if a shadow had crossed her, it was clear she hadn’t understood.     “The rain,” he said. —Nino Ricci, The Origin of Species

Individual readers will prefer one approach over the over. And why?

• Contrast the depth. Which probes psychology in a way that intrigues you?
• Evaluate the scenario. What grabs you, and why?
• Consider the language. Which seems more vital? Original?
• Check the syntax. Which types and variety of sentences meet your needs?
• Respond to the imagery. Does it stimulate your senses?
• Meet the characters. Do you want to follow them—or flee?
• Note the point of view. Is it the kind of window into a world you’re looking for?
• Reader participation. How free must you be to reach your own conclusions?

The average novel reader won’t consciously pose even one of these questions. Still, readers instinctively consider quite a lot of this when checking the opening to decide if this book’s for them. What does the first page offer? Does its potential unfurling seem like something worth following? Whatever the source, is there a genuine hook?

Tip: Your novel’s opening matters more than anything that follows.

“R’s” for Writers

One could easily generate an alphabet for writers, or an alternate list of words starting, for example, with “s.” Fair enough. Today, though, “r” is the star.

~ Recurrence.

Introduce a series of symbols, character traits, facial tics, faux pas, or whatever to build intensity. Just be careful to add and develop rather than merely repeat.

~ Reflection.

A lot of important writing happens minus paper or keyboard. Mull possibilities. Have a notebook or smart phone handy to record them.

~ Repetition.

For readers, this is a dirty word—a disgustingly dirty one. Clean up by varying syntax, word choice, scene openings and closings, and so on. Redundancy is NyQuil for words.

~ Resolution.

Earn it. This means that your protagonist, antagonist, and many members of the supporting cast, face situations and decisions that necessitate growthful change. An earned ending is one you set up, ideally, in the first chapter, perhaps even within its first paragraph.

~ Resonance.

In Literary Resonance in the Art of Writing, the author suggests that 

To “resonate” literally means to bounce back and forth between two states or places. Resonate comes from the Latin word for “resound.” In sound, resonance is a prolonged response to something that caused things to vibrate. When sound reverberates, it's resonating within a bounded space, like the body of a guitar. Thunder often resonates/reverberates across an uneven landscape….Resonance in writing is something that affects us the same way. It's an aura of significance, significance beyond the otherwise insignificant event taking place.      

The novel escalates the potential for emotional and thematic connection when first, characters and events resonate with universal experience, and second, when details and description offer both literal and symbolic meaning. This can be overdone. But without experimenting, how can you know whether layering would enrich?

~ Reverberation. 

Literally, “a remote or indirect consequence of some action,” or “the repetition of a sound resulting from reflection of the sound waves” (dictionary.com) How does this relate to fiction? Strong images and plot points affect characters—and readers—long after the initial moment fades away.

~ Revisitation.

The sestina, a 13th century French poetic form, enhances meaning by changing the context each time the author revisits a complex pattern involving six words. In fiction, the parallel is motif, which reexamines the word or concept under different circumstances. The original meaning evolves, becoming more nuanced. Instead of constantly changing the palette of details, let significance percolate within the space between one mention of a lighthouse, and the next and the next, as Virginia Woolf does in the novel of that title, or Harper Lee does with mockingbirds. 

Tip: Revise to provide resolution through the recurrence that contributes resonance.

Letting Your Words Go

When you write from an image or memory that’s truly striking to you personally, the likelihood of generating a rhythmic sentence increases. Rereading such passages you might think, this is—“lovely,” “cool,” “pretty”—whatever you’re inclined to use when your words please you. And, after all, you’d better be pleased with your words at least sometimes, because if you’re doing it for the money, odds are that you should quit. Yesterday.

But. Let’s consider that lovely/cool/pretty sentence in perspective. Is it relevant? Redundant? Is it slightly ridiculous due to self-consciousness, intensity, or exaggeration? Here’s the real question: Does it work for your reader, or only for you?

For many writers, deleting words, especially those that seem most beguiling, can feel so painful that you stare in amazement at your fingertips, wondering why there’s no blood when you slashed yourself.

Recognize any of these reasons why slashing words seems to resemble slashing flesh?

• Writers write because they love words. Rejecting loved ones hurts.

• Many writers still recall counting words to complete the paper a teacher demanded.

• It’s faster to write verbosely than tautly.

• Like everyone else, writers associate more with greater value. This includes words.

• Big words remind many writers of the youthful happiness when complex constructions, passive voice, or convoluted metaphors made you “sound”—and feel—smart.

Since these are universal and totally normal responses, what’s the antidote?

~ Remember that, as Marie Kondo puts it in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, “The release of what’s not so good or not so necessary leaves space for the new.”

Cramming your novel with words no one wants or needs is like stuffing your closet with clothes you’ll never wear. Or your shelves with books you’ll never make time to read. Or possessions that gather dust yet are neither useful nor appealing. Let go of the second rate, so that, “In the end, all that will remain are the things you really treasure” (Marie Kondo).

~Louise Brooks is right. Proceed as if “Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.” 

~ Aim for complexity of thought, not expression.”― Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile. 

Can you cut or simplify? Then do. Not sure you can cut or simplify? Try harder.

Tip: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” ― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

The Next Page—and the One After

What keeps readers turning pages, and why do you care? The first answer is complicated, the second simple. Without enthusiastic momentum, your reader—whether agent, publisher, or audience—is gone.

Happily, there’s more than one way to keep those fingers moving, because each reader turns pages for slightly different reasons. Here are some possibilities:

~ Suspense

This asset occurs frequently, because many readers and writers associate the novel with impassioned curiosity about what’s next. The supremacy of plot is somewhat genre dependent. Still, whatever your style or subject, don’t skimp on this expectation. Every genre needs some sort of tension on every page.

~ Characterization

Re-examine To Kill  Mockingbird, and its rather antiquated style might dismay you.  Why, then, do so many people list it as their most favorite ever? Few kids rival Scout’s gloriously naive sense of right and wrong. The same might be said of her extremely mature dad. Create characters one can’t forget, and readers will sigh when there are no more pages to turn.

~ Scenario

What do the Da Vinci Code and the Harry Potter series share in common? A wide range of people respond to mystery, underdogs, resourcefulness, and archetypes. Of course it rarely makes sense to replace the scenario that calls to you with a more marketable one. But it makes terrific sense to add heft, originality, danger. Can you make the Concept bigger? More enticing?

~ Emotions

Unless your characters experience them deeply, your readers won’t experience them at all. Yet belabor or “tell” about feelings, and readers still won’t respond. Emotions are concrete, dynamic responses to reality. Present them that way.

~ Secrets

Who doesn’t love them? But if we know too much or little, those whispers can irritate more than intrigue. It never hurts to map out how and when you dispense your novel’s secrets.

~ Humor 

Whether or not your novel is a comic one, exploit every opportunity for laughter, including the bleak irony of tragedy.

~ Poetry

Some novelists write so beautifully that we want more and more and more. At least occasionally, join them.

~ Intellectual curiosity

Those interested in classical music, RNA, or history can’t wait to see what Richard Powers will teach them on the next page of The Gold Bug Variations. What’s your audience curious about?

Whether drama, originality, voice, insight, or point of view, there’s more than one way to keep readers losing sleep and missing calls because they can’t put your book down.

Tip:  Know, internalize, and use your best tricks to keep the pages turning.

Getting to Know What Readers Know—or Don’t

Unless you enjoy clairvoyance along with creativity, you’ll never be certain what readers find baffling or belaboring. But you can develop significant skill at approximating, and the better your guesswork becomes, then the likelier you are to avoid dispensing too much or little. 

If readers have chosen your novel, don’t they want to hear everything you have to say? Of course not. 

Here’s the sort of thing they want you to omit.

“x.” What they’ve already heard.

Never be less aware of repetition than your readers.When writers revise over and over, as we definitely need to do, we sometimes forget what’s been established. This is especially treacherous when informing other characters about preceding events. Assume your readers are smart and have good memories. This encourages you to replace repetition with swift summary.

“x” Abstract description of emotions.

You “tell” every time you say, “Esmerelda was angry,” or “Romanov was sad.” Novelists frequently adopt such wording when transitioning from a general overview to a specific example. But that solves one problem by introducing another. Engage readers with body language and literal or symbolic imagery.

“x” Tedious logistics.

It’s charming that you can pinpoint the distance between the village where Prudence lives and the park where she makes love with Oscar in the bushes. Still, the lovemaking intrigues readers, not the park being 7.4 miles northwest of town, how long it takes to bike there, or even the exact number of hills Oscar must surmount to reach his beloved.

“x” Painful didactics.

Just because you know all about shipbuilding in ancient Greece, Caillebotte’s palette, or every detail about America’s greatest quarterback, don’t assume that readers also want to know. Never bury the plot or lose your voice. Instead? Integrate facts into the story itself, or use them as a delaying tactic to escalate suspense. Keep the emphasis on the fiction—not the “non.” 

Of course you must also guess what readers do want. That’s qualities like these:

~ Clarity.

Readers want to feel grounded. Who is this guy? When did the revelers leave the house? Where are we, and how did we get there?

~ Causality.

What induced this moment? Reveal motive not only through scene goals, pressure points, and character arc, but at the level of the sentence with words like “while” and “but.”  

~ Mystery. 

Manipulate details so that readers can frequently infer without ever feeling confused. That’s the not-so-secret secret to what readers want to know.

Tip: Successful fiction masters the delicate balance between inference and explanation.

Story: Sympathy and Significance

The integration of character with plot moves us as few things can. Here’s an example. Among three 4-D shorts at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium is “Sea Monsters: A prehistoric Adventure (National Geographic, 2007). 

That genre and topic might sound irrelevant to the contemporary novel. Actually, though, the story of a young marine dinosaur named Dolly provokes acute understanding of evolution,  fossil hunting, and one prehistoric creature’s existence. The movie exploits adventure and mystery to teach science and connect with distance that’s difficult to conceive. Whether animated film or fiction, story lets humans remember, relate, perhaps even rectify. That’s the common thread between dolls, dolomite, and Don Juan, along with billions of other possibilities. All of it starts with character.

~ Character

The star of this particular story is a Dolichorhynchops from the vast inland sea of Kansas 80 million years ago. That world feels close and vital less due to 4-D (including rumbling and a bit of splashing) than a protagonist with a plight culminating in more than one happy ending.

Empathy comes from identifying with another being—human or otherwise. Fortunately, face-to-face experience evokes kindness in most primates. But from afar, when beings vastly differ in appearance, lifestyle, habitat, or time span, empathy comes harder, too often disintegrating into a sense of “Other”: “You’re not like me, so I don’t have to care.” 

That where story comes in. Once readers connect, they feel compassion, even when the species has an unfamiliar, unpronounceable name. Happily, characterization often shatters distrust of “Otherness.”

~ Plot.

Dolly’s Super-Objective, or primary goal, is surviving long enough to reproduce. Around 80 million years later, paleontologists from Kansas to Australia, from 1918 to 2002, have their own Super-Objective. What can they learn about Dolly from the fossil she has become? Like all good stories, theirs has elements of mystery, of change.

The journey of a character, whether from another world, timeframe, or continent, always involves external pressure. The interaction between environment and Super-Objective instigates plot. The secret behind all those childhood favorites (“Curious George,” “The Velveteen Rabbit,” “The Little Engine that Could”) is the same secret that drives novelists from Jane Austen to Zora Neale Hurston: Will this character I’ve come to care about get the job done? By the deadline?

Strong plots follow the classical pattern: The protagonist is in trouble. As Charles Baxter put it, “Hell is story friendly.” Then the protagonist must have enough perseverance, chutzpah, and skill to continue struggling even when it seems hopeless. Dolly has quite a battle with that shark. And the entire audience breathes a huge sigh of relief when she escapes with only the small wound that will solve the mystery of her life story (a fragment of shark tooth embedded in her skeleton). 

Plot and protagonist must be inseparable. Unless we care about the character, no amount of plot will matter. Unless something’s relentlessly progressing, even the best-drawn  character can’t sustain the story.

~ Theme.

It’s the reward for integrated character and plot. Depending on how you interpret theme, every story has it, even if it’s mainly that detectives must look beneath the surface to compute whodunit, or love’s better the second time around, or look before you leap.

The themes in this short film are immense. The rocks are full of stories. Fossils are stories. The stories of the dead live well beyond their material existence. And those who hunt those stories become stories themselves. 

Tip: Whatever you want to say, let your story—and only your story—say it.

Giving Thanks for Readers

Without them, we’re just writing for ourselves. Would that be easier? You bet. Would that be preferable? Certainly not.

Tip: Whatever gets you to work harder gets you to work better.

If you don’t “show” when you ought to, make emotion genuine, plot causally, keep tension on every page, respect genre conventions, and word precisely, you can write as fast as you can type. But what kind of goal is that? Write for a reader, however, whether an individual (real or imaginary) or a congregation of them, and your standards rise to meet theirs. 

Here’s how:

~ “Showing” versus “Telling.”

Sadly, nothing about this is easy. If you never “tell,” readers can’t follow the story, even if it’s 250,000 words long, as will likely be the case. The trick is not to “tell” what you can “show.” Though there’s no formula, if a moment involves emotion, you probably want to reveal rather than describe. 

~ Genuine emotion.

Have you considered just how fake emotion can be? Watch commercials for greeting cards or pet food. Or a movie where one coincidence follows another until, thanks to a miracle save, the hero, through no resource of her own, lives happily ever after. Cheap. Fake, Shallow. Manipulative. In fiction, the only source of real emotion is real plot. 

~ Causal plot.

Don Maass has famously said that unless you construct a plot where no scene is expendable, you haven’t plotted the way you need to. Your not-so-secret weapon is causality. Every decision or action causes the next, nothing left to circumstance, nothing engineered from anything but character choices and assets. 

~ Tension on every page.

If the character (and thus reader) emotions stem from a causal plot that produces the outcome of every scene right up to the climax; and if events rather than abstractions like terror or agony deliver those emotions, then the tension will be right there. Let your characters and plot—rather than you the author—deliver the story. 

~ Genre Conventions.

This is where an image of a particular reader, representing a particular audience, really helps. For example, in fantasy or historical fiction, readers cheerfully tolerate so many characters that they’re offered—and willingly consult—lengthy lists of role and identity. But in genres like romantic suspense or women’s fiction, readers will balk at endless minor characters, no matter how melodic your voice or captivating your plot.

Read widely in your genre, and only current fiction counts. How people wrote mysteries when Agatha Christie reigned won’t necessarily tempt today’s mystery addicts. Do your homework. That’s neither cheating nor wasting time. After all, agents and publishers are, first and foremost, readers.

~ Precise wording.

This underlies everything readers seek. But it’s the last step—not the first.

Writers are a rebellious bunch. Many of us don’t instinctively appreciate constraints or critique. Of course you can ignore all that. Do your own thing. Just not if you want readers.

In this time when we need to count our blessings, if only to maintain our sanity, let’s count readers among those gifts. They keep us on our toes. They bring out our best. They remind us why we do this. And I, for one, couldn’t be more grateful. To our readers!

Wait for it

“Timing is everything” applies as much to fiction as anything else.  It’s too late once the wave hits, the leaves fall, or the sun sets or rises, and too early isn’t much better. Timing is a powerful ally—or enemy.

Which factors affect a novel’s timing?

~ Starting too early.

No harm in writers warming up, setting the scene, submerging first toe, then ankle, then thigh into the dark cold of the empty page. If you must, write down what you’re thinking. Then cut. Mercilessly. Novels start with the inciting incident that propels the entire book forward and not with the backstory, context, or status quo leading to the inciting incident. The same applies to scenes. Begin in medias res, or in the middle of the action or tension.

~ Minimizing the best moment.

Like everyone else, writers frequently abhor conflict. Who wants to cause trouble, feel lousy, or send someone else there? But readers await that very tension. As Charles Baxter reminds, “Hell is story friendly.” Offer heated arguments, enflamed accusations, and burning lust or envy. Fire up your characters, then let readers watch the desperate attempts to stamp out the fire. Wait for the moment of most intense passion, then deliver it. Slowly and seductively.

~ Resolving too soon.

Few novelists enjoy torturing their beloved creations with misery, misfortune, or misanthropy. Rather than watch characters suffer, particularly the protagonist, writers often assume a gently maternal attitude. Let’s make things better. As soon as possible. Readers, though, want just the opposite. It’s not sadistic to find character struggle spellbinding. After all, how the protagonist changes and wins, who saves the day and how—isn’t that the entire basis for the novel? So, within each scene, wait for the moment of greatest conflict, and climax there.

~ Ending too early.

Just as the struggles the plot introduces need to play out till the end, the novel as a whole must let both the dilemmas and their solutions ripen. Harvest what’s immature, and nothing tastes good. When approaching the words “The End,” some novelists can’t wait to get it over with. But stop to consider the last novel you read that sagged at its conclusion. Wait until it’s time to let go, and then do.

~ Ending too late.

But don’t wait too long. Fruit satisfies when plucked at just the right moment, neither grabbed too soon, nor left to shrivel. Wait until you’ve nourished all the tension, and all the character change this provoked. Then stop.

Timing is tricky because so many factors urge us to wait too long or not long enough. Think about your audience. Imagine yourself as reader rather than writer. There’s no better way to discern when the moment’s right.

Tip: Time is a crucial, too frequently dismissed element of fiction.