The Allure of the Lure

What about these openings?

“When the blind man arrived in the city, he claimed that he had travelled across a desert of living sand.” —Kevin Brockmeier, A Brief History of the Dead 

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” —Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” —Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“You better not never tell nobody but God.” —Alice Walker, The Color Purple

In every case, don’t you want to read on? Don’t you feel you can’t help it, even though you ought to walk the dog, empty the dishwasher, pack the lunches, turn out the light?

Tip: Start every scene—especially the first one—by enticing your reader. Irresistibly.

Because, as Paula Berinstein puts it, “We all know that if we don’t capture reader attention within a few seconds, we might as well kiss the sale of our work goodbye.”

K.M. Weiland adds: 

Readers are like fish. Smart fish. Fish who know authors are out to get them, reel them in, and capture them for the rest of their seagoing lives. But, like any self-respecting fish, readers aren’t caught easily. They aren’t about to surrender themselves to the lure of your story unless you’ve presented them with an irresistible hook.

Hooked on hooks yourself now? These tricks might work more often than not:

~ Check to see if your hook is already there—just not in the opening sentence. 

~ Emphasize what drives the scene. 

How will it intensify the obstacles from the previous one? What must the protagonist learn? What additional pressure will the antagonist exert? What single sentence propels the protagonist into the next difficulty or exacerbation of a previous one?

~ Value high stakes over context, which you can easily fill in after you’ve grabbed attention.

How can you crystallize huge tension right now? Can you provide enough grounding with a prepositional phrase or two?

~ Write vigorously. 

This means connotative nouns, active metaphorical verbs, and minimal modifiers.

~ Watch your sentence structure.

Don’t overdo any one technique. But compound sentences rarely coalesce the most energy. Strive for either short sentences or highly rhythmic long ones.

~ Use the ending of the scene to launch the subsequent one.

It’s often helpful to have that in mind before you even begin writing a scene. How will this one cause whatever’s next?

Like so many things about fiction writing, developing hooks is a skill that anyone can master, simply through lots and lots of practice. No magic involved. Doesn’t that challenge hook you?

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.

Banished!

Banishment has a spicy etymology, associated with outlawed, cursed, prohibited, or exiled. 

Here’s the start of a list of what you might usefully banish from your novel.

~ Fatigued and fatiguing scene and especially chapter openings. 

Start with a hook. Every time. John Green opens The Fault in Our Stars this way:

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

Not “My mother’s appraisal was that I was depressed.”

~ Drooping middle.

Glen C. Strathy says that “The middle is just as important as the end.” You need subplots, varied settings, escalating tension, and foreshadowing of every character arc. Make the middle matter.

~ No deus ex machina.

Yes, agents and publishers prefer novels to come in under 100,000 words. You’re already past that, so you—just stop. Always convey at least some resolution, and without any cavalry.

~ Offstage action.

Tough as it might be to write sex, confrontation, explosion, or violence, let your readers experience the exciting parts in real time. Don’t collapse or summarize set scenes or drama.

~ An endless list of supporting characters.

How many is too many? That’s unanswerable. What is? Fewer characters are better.

~ Dead metaphors.

They offer all the imagery of stars on a summer night, and that truth is as good as gold.

~ Mixed metaphors.

They irritate like as an invisible memory glittering in your heart.

~ Passive voice.

There have not been found that many reasons for it to be used by you.

~ Double Negative.

It isn’t right not to use double negatives. See what happens?

Tip: Banish both listlessness and clutter. Exile them from the pages of your book.

Wrong Turn, Right Result

Maybe you were booked for Capri and wound up on the Amalfi Coast instead. 

Or perhaps a visit to the Uffizi paintings became a tour of Renaissance Florence. You could fret, weep, or storm. But wouldn’t you rather appreciate what turned out, instead of what you planned?

You could be pleasantly surprised. This pertains to fiction, as well.

~ Wrong Turn with Your Characters

Don’t save every minor character you introduced just because they’re now “alive.”

Do seek ways to make three minor characters into one. 

Do add unexpected discoveries, which are nearly always the best ones. Did you accidentally discover that your Georgina enjoys Brussel Sprouts or Latin dancing? Who knew that Hector excels at chess, Judo, or solving the Rubric Cube?

~ Wrong Turn with Your Plot

Don’t keep broadening or, worse, repeating.

Do dig deeper. There’s no better antidote for nothing happening. Seek innovative solutions to stagnation. This might be another source of tension (as opposed to yet another character), or what Noah Lukeman calls “a ticking clock,” or an archetypal struggle, such as honor versus expediency.

Do think in terms of causality. How does this event or emotion yield? If your protagonist refuses to confront another character about betrayal, what is the result? And, as Don Maass instructs, avoid picking the first possibility that comes to mind. It comes first to everyone else’s mind, too.

~ Wrong Turn with Point of View

Don’t jump on the easiest solution.

Do use physical behavior or setting to convey the character thoughts that go beyond the scope of your chosen perspective. You might look up how Edith Wharton accomplishes this at the beginning of “The House of Mirth.”

Do pursue an alternative direction. What’s another way to communicate what your point of view can’t legitimately capture?

~ Wrong Turn with a Scene’s Opening

Don’t follow Alice into a nightmarish Wonderland just because you started that way.

Do start every scene with a hook. That’s a great way to know where you’re going before you get too far.

Do start the scene later. You’ll often speed momentum and raise tension by deleting the first few paragraphs.

Do experiment with variations. How else could this happen? Again, focus on cause and effect.

~ Wrong Turn with an Entire Scene

Don’t feel you should keep it just because you wrote it.

Do look for opportunities to collapse entire scenes into a paragraph or so of summary. When you do that, be concrete and explicit. Character emotions are a terrific way to collapse time, plot, or both.

Tip: Like most things in life, fiction benefits from making lemons into lemonade.

Plot Roast

Do it right, and it simmers until every ingredient is equally juicy and tender. Or wait too long, and you’ve got dried-out, unrecognizable mush. The success of dinner depends on what you put together, your means of preparing it, and the cook time. Story is remarkably similar.

The most successful plotters transcend the not-all-that-captivating question: What happens next?

After all, the answer might be, “Esmeralda yawned.” So will the reader. 

Rely exclusively on chronology, and you risk sliding into one or more of the following:

            ~ A series of unrelated, episodic incidents.

          Fiction sometimes works when the protagonist faces one unrelated problem after another, or
          one unrelated villain after another. But the strongest plots emphasize the role of character in
          destiny: choices have consequences. At least in fiction.

            ~ Flatness.

            Protagonist arc can only shift from sad and weak to victorious and empowered because each
            event teaches lessons and summons buried strengths. This stems from the novelist’s emphasis
            on obstacles and solutions, not on the humdrum activity between them.

~ Logistics.

Successful fiction has no room for characters performing morning ablutions, shopping for groceries, logging into the computer, crossing the icy parking lot, or any other detail that merely traces what happens between one drama and the next.

~ Randomness.

Plot based on “If this happens, then that,” rather than “This because of that,” and you risk introducing lots of coincidence. That threatens both credibility and momentum.

And today’s readers expect credibility and momentum. Lots of this is the internet. Every fact is a click or two away, and everything’s presented with teasers (hooks) and sound bites. No waiting. No wondering.

How to achieve that pace in fiction?

*** Summarize everything that’s pedestrian or mundane.

*** Start every scene as late in the action—rather than as early—as logically possible.

*** Hint (but don’t belabor) how each scene results from the one preceding.

*** Launch scenes with a hook—and provide it right away.

*** View plot less as what happens than why what happens is dramatically and emotionally  compelling.

Tip:  Reserve scenes for “someone making a scene,” i.e. struggling with conflict, preferably conflict that forces change.

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?

Structure Your Scenes—All of Them

Coaches like Jack M. Bickham and Dwight Swain offer terrific suggestions for scenes, yet focus more on the building blocks than the writer’s perception of what happens next.

Tip: Plan your scenes to meet the goal of tension on every page.

Here’s an alternative: Character Goal…Hook…Hook.

~ The goal.

Know what your character wants. Instantly. Why can’t the character achieve this right now? And what’s the immediate result of failing?  “Instantly” and “immediately” are the key words. A casual, long-term possibility offers little at this moment. And readers, who have all sorts of other ways to spend their time, don’t want to wait. Don’t make them.

An added bonus: if you identify what your character desires, then you know where the scene needs to go. Win/win/win: characters get motive; readers get conflict; writers get strategy.

~ The hooks.

Use your protagonist’s goal to start every scene with a genuine hook, or anything that whets reader appetite.  Hint: it’s rarely just the setting. Consider these possibilities:

• Seemingly unwinnable goal
• Snazzy dialogue
• Question
• Short sentence that pops
• Secret
• Complex emotion
• Huge dilemma
• Grave danger
• Emotional upheaval
• “Ticking clock” (as Noah Lukeman put it)

Launch the scene with a hook, and conclude every scene but the last with another hook. Again, a bonus not just for readers, but for writers. Hooks help identify which material needs to be in scene while maintaining high tension right up to The End.

Now for the frosting. It’s often the writer’s motive, but less so the reader’s. Some examples:

Ø  Backstory

Ø  Themes

Ø  Symbolism

Ø  Allusions (literary or others)

Ø  Social commentary

Ø  History or geography or any other kind of “lesson”

Ø  Poetic moments

Like frosting, perfectly delightful. But in small doses, and never as a substitutes for the actual cake. The good news? Build scenes from hooks and goals, and you can add that delicious frosting without distracting from the plot. That’s where tension thrives.

Framing

You needn’t look closely to see that nature slips into compositions all the time. Out the window an oak dramatizes a sliver of moon and a single star. A staghorn fern fans itself across the glitter of mica-encrusted rocks.  Male and female goldfinches feed beside a six-foot-tall pure yellow lily. Nice.

But artifice, not nature, shapes the kinds of frames that novels need—the kind that add coherence and aesthetics to plot and tension.

~ Hooks.

Those of us raised on 19^th century novels associate the hooks with setting, often a long, long, long, LONG description of something. But these days anyone can visit exotic places with a couple of clicks. Though E.M. Forster’s Passage to India is a great novel, today’s readers no longer a need a dozen pages on the Marabar Caves—or anything else.

Instead? Hook with drama, tension, secret, promise. Begin and end every scene that way. Want to integrate conflict with setting? Go for it. Just don’t forget the conflict part. That’s the hook.

~ Sequence.

            “A story is already over before we hear it. That is how the teller knows what it means”

(Joan Silber, The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes). Her observation suggests how fiction exerts its power. Novelists comment on truth not just through plot and character, but time itself. So many options. Where does the story start? How much backstory would add, and where does it belong? Is the ending foreshadowed? Does the pace let readers savor what’s interesting and speed past what’s not?  The unwinding of time contributes to the frame embellishing the story inside.

~ Scene structure.

           

Whether you make a plan before you write (definitely not a bad idea), or revise what’s already written, every scene should frame a moment in time. Photographers choose what to include, omit, and emphasize; similarly, novelists can use the constraint of each individual scene to make this chunk of plot coherent, dramatic, and causal.

~ Set-off.

            Frames exist to enhance what’s inside. You might think of description, foreshadowing,

            backstory, and the prose itself as the framework supporting the plot. If any of those distract or

            diminish tension, then the frame overwhelms the part that matters.

~ Set-up.

            Reality is random. What’s great about novels? They aren’t. But only if the narrator frames the

            plot.

Tip: Frame your story. Great frames make what’s inside even more compelling.

Could you writer smarter?

Why work harder if you can work smarter? Why do so many bright and brilliant writers inflict so many obstacles on themselves? Perhaps some of these habits sound familiar.

~ Comfortable:

Only write when you have a good, long stretch of free time available. And unless you’re inspired, you could still rationalize your way into a postponement. Easily.

! Smart:

If you’re accustomed to diving in without thinking about it, you’ll waste less time and energy. Trick yourself into daily commitment. A lot can happen in even fifteen minutes. Julia Cameron is right; “write every day.”

~ Comfortable:

Postpone every challenge. Hate writing dialogue? Save it for a rainy day, or a sunny one, or a perfect one when you can’t write because it’s so beautiful out.

! Smart:

Worry wastes time. Not just with the dentist, but the next scene, stretch of dialogue, or whatever seems an impossible challenge. Even if it isn’t easier than you think, you could complete a whole lot of fiddling and drafting in the time devoted to fretting.

~ Comfortable:

Why worry about starting the book with a great inciting incident or the scene with a great hook? You can always fill it in later. Besides, you’ll know more by then.

! Smart:

The opening launches your book, just as a good hook launches each scene. Think that through in advance to avoid starting too early or without enough conflict.

~ Comfortable:

Go ahead and write everything in scene. You can always decide later if the level of drama and emotion warrant changing the pace.

! Smart:

Why compose what you’ll later compress or discard altogether? It’s true that sometimes you must try things out. It’s equally true that once you try it, you might never want to let it go. Even if it slows momentum.

~ Comfortable:

            Pile on mini-plots and minor characters. Nothing maximizes your word count faster!

! Smart:

It’s not the number of words, but their quality. Even in the first draft, try to streamline.

Tip: Why not surprise yourself with what you can do if you quit procrastinating.

Such Stuff as Scenes are Made on

In the fourth act of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the magician protagonist says:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

Scholars disagree about exactly what has “ended.” Magic? Story? Wakefulness? Life? In any case, Prospero advises that wisdom—and story—intertwine reality and magic. Of course Prospero didn’t add that story blends scene (live-time presentation) with summary (abbreviation of the less dramatic, supporting parts). Yet that mix is a huge part of story magic.

Alas, it doesn’t always happen. Novelists find it easier to condense drama as summary and expand the mundane into scene. But that gets readers thinking about “little lives” and “sleep.” Make your readers happy by plotting with a combination of scene and summary.

~ Hook readers at both ends of the scene.

Though readers want some setting pretty quickly, push the hook as close to the first sentence as you can. It’s not just for readers. When scenes never get off the ground, it’s because the writer knew neither the source of the tension nor where it was headed.

~ Show how the scene advances the protagonist’s arc.

Never let a central character exit a scene unchanged.

~ Create palpable adversity.

If the characters merely shrug and agree to disagree, this shouldn’t be a scene. Raise the

stakes. A lot. Raise them with someone actually doing something.

~ Save scenes for high drama.

Most adults have coffee and drive away in their cars every weekday. Do readers truly want to encounter this over and over? If you need it at all, do it as summary.

~ Develop skill with summary.

Efficiency isn’t inherently tedious. In fact, done properly, quite the opposite. But until you compose intriguing summaries, you’ll put everything in scene. Here’s how to keep your voice when writing summary.

·         View this as a skill—one you can learn. You mostly just need practice.

·         Trace the passage of time with character emotion.

·         Choose specific, concrete language.

·         Emphasize how one event caused the next.

·         Set up the next conflict.

Tip: A mix of scene and summary is the stuff that fiction’s made on.

The Reader/Writer Contract

Here, the only signing is an autograph or credit card. There’s no lawyerly language, and the contract’s easily broken. Readers just donate unread novels to the local library.

Who wants to write an unwanted novel? Or even start one? Fortunately, readers come in as many varieties as writers hoping to reach them. Here’s your part of the contract: the better you identify your potential audience, and the more you satisfy their appetites, then the happier everyone involved will be.

So what’s in this contract?

~ Opening hook.

Get their attention. Don’t wait. What’s the hurry? Keep those library donations in mind.

What happens in the first moments of a book? For William Gibson, author of The Peripheral, a kind of invitation is extended—when  readers will or won’t feel what he calls “the click.” But this transcends connecting with an audience. Gibson adds that “the first sentences invite the writer, too: they contain a blueprint for the book that will be written.” – “The First Sentence Is a Handshake,” by Joe Fassler (The Atlantic)

~ Accessibility

Mark Twain observed that “A classic is something everybody wants to have read, but no one wants to read.” Why does this make us laugh? Because we may admire Wuthering Heights, but it’s not necessarily what we’re rereading. Gripping novels blend suspense and emotion with depth and insight. One without the other is like all protein or all dessert. Who wants that?

~ Context

Wait a second. Where are we? If you can’t tell in the first pages if you’re in Venice, California or Italy; whether it’s right now or fifty years ago; and fantasy or satire, you’ll likely replace this ambiguous novel with one you can follow.

~ Improbable probability

If we can’t believe that this could happen, we won’t care. Nor will we care if it’s obvious on page one who will end up with whom, how the sleuth will solve the mystery, or what gives the protagonist that happy ending. As Don Maass has observed, no reader wants an obvious plot device. No reader wants an unearned ending, either. 

~ Inconsistent consistency

Characters won’t seem credible unless all their traits fit together as a whole. But unless they occasionally surprise us, they’re neither believable nor fun.

~ Room to breathe

Novels that “tell” everything—even almost everything—suffocate. They’re as much fun as consistent consistency or probable probability. You can do better. Your readers deserve better.

Tip: Use the opening to promise readers what they can’t live without. Then deliver it.

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?

Ready, Set, Scene Goal

Whether drafting or revising, writers often imagine what could happen next and start typing immediately. For the lucky few, that’s a great strategy. For everyone else, it’s ignoring an opportunity that may sound like busy work, but in reality is anything but.

Among other things, Jack M. Bickham is known for observing that “Writers write. Everyone else makes excuses.” The quote lets us know we can trust him. In Scene & Structure (1993), Bickham differentiates the protagonist’s over-arching goal from the pressing one in the scene at hand. This is what he says about scene goals:

The prototypical scene begins with the most important character—invariably the viewpoint character—walking into a situation with a definite, clear-cut, specific goal which appears to be immediately attainable. This goal represents an important step in the character’s game plan—something to be obtained or achieved which will move him one big step closer to attainment of his major story goal.

In the last two decades, a lot has happened in and about fiction. Today, one might describe the scene goal this way: Whatever a character desperately wants to get or avoid.

The scene goal differs radically from the author’s goal. Successful scenes do more than supply backstory, introduce minor characters, create atmosphere, or break for an info-dump.

Tip: Focus on character desire; this gives scenes energy, focus, and momentum.

Scene goals assist with every stage of the writing process. Here’s what the scene goal can give you:

~ A genuine hook.

Avoid the summary or context that don’t truly entice.

~ Focus.

You detect details that don’t belong in this scene, or possibly not in any scene.

~ Tension.

How will other characters respond to the protagonist's determination?

~ Foreshadowing.

How will the protagonist fail or learn from that failure?

~ Launch pad.

Before the climax, the goal isn’t realized, only appears to be, or results in worse trouble.

Isn’t it worth that little extra effort to build scenes from what characters—not authors—want? After all, that’s what readers want.

The Little Writer That Could

Whether writing children’s books, fantasy, mystery, or anything else, novelists agree about one thing: Writing is hard. Gadzooks, look at all the things a writer must worry about: a hook to start and end every chapter, complex plot and deep characterization, transitions and point of view. Then you have to put it all together so it sounds as if you accomplished it effortlessly, rather than slaving over every word the way you probably did. Whether the feedback comes from a writing partner, critique group, or you yourself, the goal might feel like climbing Mt. Everest.

In “Mind the Gap” from David Jauss’s Words Overflown by Stars, Betsy Sholl, former Poet Laureate from Maine, observes that, “It only takes one little stammer, one little break in the flow, to become aware of how speech negotiates between our private consciousness and social engagement.”

Writing is hard because it communicates a unique individual vision to someone receiving it through words alone. That’s a challenge. So every time even a single word falters, it’s a metaphorical “stutter” that readers detect immediately. And if writers are any good, they, too, can hear it. Sadly, the more carefully you read, and, of course, write, the more sensitive your ears to even the faintest hint of stammer.

What’s the antidote? You could train yourself to be more careless? Read faster. Write faster. In general, worry lots less about the burden of graceful “social engagement.”

You don’t want that? Quality is your goal? If you’re certain, begin by curtailing those brutal, ugly, and self-defeating messages about what you can’t do. For many, developing patience about one’s goals and weaknesses is a tall mountain to conquer. Most folks with high standards are not only harder on themselves than they need to be, but harder than they should be for optimal productivity and creativity. “Can’t” is as dirty a word as any four-letter one out there.

Replace defeatism with a healthy dose of realistic self-analysis.  Aside from relinquishing “I can’t,” many writers consider identifying strengths quite daunting. Wit? Elegant sentences? Enthralling plot? Dynamite scenario? Write down your assets. All of them.

Now for the mountain. What’s up there? Whatever you identify as your own personal “stutter.” Inorganic plot? Stereotypical characters? Dreary syntax?  All but the weakest writers know well in advance what’s needed to conquer that mountain of difficulties. You even know what you must do to reach its peak. Your peak.

Beautiful writing emerges from a merger of talent and technique. You can sit before your computer until your butt’s sore, but unless you believe in both your talent and ability to hone it with technique, maybe fiction isn’t the mountain for you to master. The best training in the world won’t help if with every sentence you’re thinking “I’ll never make it to the top, never revise the way I want. I can’t.”

Tip: “I think I can” isn’t age-specific, and works as well for writers as for everyone else.

It’s Spring: Take a Risk!

Stick your head through the dirt and you could get frosted. Open fragile petals to blazing sunlight, and you could get burnt. Scenes are similar; it feels safer to proceed cautiously. Few would mind year after year of early, sunny rebirth with just the right amount of rain (preferably at night). But if every scene feels the same, then—every scene feels the same!

The problem starts with structure. Scenes usually begin with a hook and a location. Soon after, the scene goal is introduced. The characters grapple with that for a bit, the tension rises, and then at some intriguingly unresolved moment, there’s another hook to launch the next scene.

Perhaps you’ll argue that everyone does it this way every time because there’s no other way to do it. Maybe. Maybe not?

Tip:  Unless your scenes suggest varied goals, rhythms, and patterns, then a sense of redundancy will diminish your novel as a whole.

It’s spring, time to prune, clean out old habits, dress up old plantings, and seed something new. Apply the following strategies to your scenes. Not all of them will work every time, and some will take effort to engineer, especially at first. But this is a great time to experiment, when it feels as if the air itself is warm and moist with energy.

v  If you always start with a hook about immediate psychological threat, how about replacing that with a hook about the environment? Something breaks down, as things constantly do. Maybe the weather’s about to change or the old furnace about to give out. Look for new ways to begin.

v  If you always start with a hook about physical threat, what if the danger is psychological instead? Or the reverse.

v  If most of your scenes begin outside or inside, switch that. If many of your scenes begin with someone en route, start with them already there.

v  If you always give your protagonist a new worry as the scene closes, try making your protagonist happy and cheerful but clueing readers in on what a false, false hope this is.

v  If you always resolve each scene, stop before the end. Begin a new chapter in medias res with an interrupted scene.

v  Or keep readers wondering how—and if—they ever resolved that issue.

v  If you always present the setting and then the hook, try the opposite order. Better yet, integrate setting and hook into a single sentence—but not every time.

Play with the goal of doing one thing in a truly different way—for each scene. This not only vitalizes scenes but forces you to probe beneath the surface. That’ll provide a bountiful harvest in ways you haven’t even imagined yet.