From Story Board to Storyboard

Today, storyboard connotes is a series of illustrations or key points illustrating the concept for a film or TV program. Like many techniques from the screenwriting world, this method is also wonderfully useful for novelists and so popular that you’ll find numerous online options for help. But the basic idea is actually much older. Much, much, much older.

Illiteracy, thankfully now far less widespread, was once the norm. If you wanted people to understand the story, you had to show it. Only pictures would do.

For example, in one of the oldest storyboards, the palace of the Neo-Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) at Nimrud (now in northern Iraq) had larger-than-life slabs depicting royal and religious ritual. In the photos below, a winged god drops offers pollen from the scared tree of life, insuring the fertility of the land and its people.

Though novelists use words, the storyboard can give the author an equally useful visual. As Candace Williams observes in “Storyboarding for Novelists,” 

Storyboarding is not a rigid plotting device. The whole point of the board is that it’s flexible. The greatest advantage is seeing exactly how your novel is “built,” just as an architect refers to a blueprint.

The storyboard is especially useful to these novelists:

~ Plotters and pantsers.

If you’re a plotter, this lets you assess pivot points even more efficiently. If you’re a pantser, a storyboard lets you see where you’re going with the least restriction possible.

~ Internal world addicts. Do you revel in oodles of talking and thinking and more of the same? 

Provide an image for each scene, and something will happen in the physical world.

~ Nonlinear writers.

a storyboard, you can write the fourth scene, sixteenth, then second and so on. Compose in any order you like and still see where you are.

In an interview, Rebecca Skloot, author of the complex and successful The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, addressed the complexity of her creative nonfiction with index cards. 

Chuck Sambuchino, in “Storyboarding For Success: Plotters vs. Pantsers,” reminds that:

The magic of a storyboard is turning a book idea into a visual tool, which makes the story’s structure much easier to grasp and handle. A storyboard can be drawn on a board, a piece of paper, or in a computer file.

The storyboard reveals where the climax is, and, in fact, whether you have a climax at all! The inciting incident and major moments that earn the ending are visible—and thus readily reparable. Use index cards, sticky notes, sheets of paper, an Excel spreadsheet, or the many free apps and templates.

Tip: Storyboarding’s been around for a long, long time. With good reason.

To Verb?

Not “verbalize,” but “verbify,” as only verbs can. Because they resuscitate, activate, renovate. Verbs definitely make love, definitely make great prose. As Constance Hale put it :

A sentence can offer a moment of quiet, it can crackle with energy or it can just lie there, listless and uninteresting. What makes the difference? The verb. 

Since verbs soar, burrow, compress, and energize, why would so many writers waste them? Lots of reasons, but mainly bad habits and worse word choices. Since verbs drive fiction’s engine, “So many problems are solved simply by knowing enough verbs.” (Teresa Nielsen Hayden)

Knowing them is almost enough. You must also choose which and when.

~ Verbs can electrify or lull.

Pedestrian verbs entice no better than the adjectives and adverbs generally employed to vivify those verbs. “Marshall turned,” “Penelope went,” “Byron responded,” “Andromeda moved,” “The quintuplets waited.” Yawn. 

However literary a story, action still pumps its heart. Harness verbs that tease, propel, and capture. Annie Dillard  believes that “Adverbs are a sign that you’ve used the wrong verb,” as in “She walked mincingly” (instead of “minced”); “He moved slowly” (instead of “trudged” or “sauntered”), or “They advanced stealthily” (instead of “tiptoed” or “crept”).

~ Verbs can act or just be.

As William Safire said, “If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.” William Safire  raises the stakes higher:

Root out all the “to be” verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No “It was” or “they are” or “I am.” Don’t let it be, make it happen. 

Characters must act and react rather merely “being scared” or “having doubts.” The best inciting incidents and climaxes still lag when the language conveying them describes rather than performs, analyzes rather than dramatizes.The writer’s task? Don’t block the reader’s view of the character, which, by definition, modifiers do.

~ Verbs can punctuate or falter.

Many writers learned (in contrast with “were taught”) to relish the grammatical accuracy of “I had been sobbing” in contrast with the current flood of tears. However correct, this distances the characters—and the scene they inhabit.  “I was sobbing,” produces the same effect, not to mention “I feared I would have been sobbing if my daughter had not been waiting downstairs for me.” Don’t emasculate what happens. 

~ Verbs can symbolize or confuse.

Verbs make miracles—highlighting themes, exposing subterfuge, feigning innocence, swelling tension. Often a barely visible metaphor cements this. If you strike an argumentative blow, it won’t override your adversary’s stamina. If mom illuminates an idea, her son can’t blot it out. If you dissolve a problem, its tentacles can’t rear up to haunt you. 

Tip: Select great verbs. Follow them to their logical conclusion. Then get out of their way.

“The Decisive Moment”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s to “decisive moments.”

Fiction versus Nonfiction?

The pronounced divide between these has diminished. At its best, nonfiction sparkles because it incorporates characterization and drama, while writers like Jonathan Franzen, Margaret George, Daisy Godwin, David Liss, and Donna Tartt wow readers with facts they never knew they were dying to know. How do they do it?

Tip: At its best, fiction so cleverly disguises a little nonfiction that readers barely notice.

So what is this nonfiction that needs to be there, but needs to be disguised?

~ Background and backstory.

Every character lives somewhere and has a certain education, political slant, and life before the Inciting Incident. Readers might not need to know all that but certainly need to know some. 

~ World-building.

Much contemporary fiction derives its power by recreating Tudor England, the Italian Renaissance, or the Vietnam War; or by inventing new planets, species, or social systems.

~ General information.

Contemporary readers often enjoy leaving a novel knowing more about chromosomes, knitting, the transgender experience, hockey, or life on the tundra.

The good news is that you can “teach” a bit of what you’d like to—perhaps the original motive underlying the novel—by thinking about how, and when, you do that. No part of your novel should resemble a lengthy nonfiction lapse readers never signed on for. So try these:

*** Watch your sentence structure.

Basically, the more complex the information, then the greater the necessity of shortening and varying sentences. Work to divide concepts into accessible mouthfuls, so your readers don’t have to. Alternate sentence length. Your goal isn’t showing off what you know, but condensing and simplifying.

*** Be concrete.

Whether with literal details or symbolic comparisons, frequently introduce one or more of the five senses.What does an RNA strand resemble? How does a touchdown sound?

*** Check your organization.

That’s the beauty of computers. You can swiftly try a sentence in six different locations.

*** Provide something to hang on to.

Hang the abstract or strange on a rack that’s both familiar and substantial.

*** Balance edification with suspense and emotion. 

A moment of high tension or heartbreaking loss is a great time for a fact or two. Just never let it feel like a “teachable moment.” 

Do it with a plot.

How Not to Break a Bough

If you pile on too much weight, whether it’s a tree limb or a story’s spine, the structure won’t withstand the burden.

Story spine? This term from the screenplay world is equally useful to both screenwriters and novelists, explaining how story builds from the fusion between longing and action. The article “Classical Screenplay Structure,” from the Screenplayology site, defines the protagonist’s driving desire as a Super-Objective, a passion that motivates the journey from inciting incident to climax:

the Spine is the unified thread of actions taken on the part of the character in pursuit of his or her Super-Objective. Together, the Super-Objective and Spine offer the screenwriter a path of adherence to Aristotle’s prescription of plot unity.

Of course Aristotle’s three unities (time, place, and action) translate only indirectly to film and fiction. Many novels span planets, across centuries. And although a play without subplots might seem exquisitely coherent, contemporary audiences both expect and enjoy subplots. The Poetics best assists contemporary writers when applied to the spirit, rather than the letter, of its laws.

Tip: Strong story structure originates in an inextricable meshing of plot and character.

In Kate Wright’s excellent blog on “The Five S’s of Screenwriting, she clarifies that

Spine begins with discovering what your story is about through character behavior. It is about creating a unifying depth within your story, character by character, action by action, sequence by sequence, layer upon layer. The surprise is that once you discover what your story is about on a profound level, there are an infinite number of insights and details you can infuse into the material through character behavior, actions, and images. The challenge is to discover this unifying idea or principle that synthesizes what the story is about in simple terms.

Have you identified the driving force of your novel? That’s the start of its spine, a backbone both sturdy and flexible enough to support all the images and examples most novelists long to include. Solidify the fundamental structure, and you get to indulge yourself a little (though just a little!) more.

Karina Wilson’s column on “Screenwriting: The Emotional Spine” analyzes the fusion of individual units into a powerful whole:

The spine has three main functions in a vertebrate: strength, flexibility and communication. The emotional spine of a screenplay serves those same purposes. It provides strength, joining the separate elements of plot and character, and connecting the three acts. It provides flexibility, especially within characterization, allowing people to twist, to be flawed, erratic, make bad decisions and U-turns–as long as they remain connected to the spinal cord. It permits the communication of messages, particularly within subtext and meta-narrative, running deeper than dialogue, or a single character’s arc.

Each portion of that backbone must fit and contribute.  Obvious as this sounds, most writers at least occasionally get lost in word choice at the expense of the deep structure.

How to remedy that? Susan Kougell suggests literally picturing a human spine and hanging plot points on that. Some may find this a bit metaphorical. The idea, though, is to fashion  a spine sturdy enough to support all the characters, details, and description. No vertebrae can be weak or absent. The story shouldn’t stoop over or suffer from osteoporosis, a pitiful core, or a flabby middle.

For many of us, weighing down the offshoots comes more easily and feels more fun. But that makes for a misshapen tree or novel. Build a mighty trunk, capable of supporting a blizzard of snow—or words. It’s all about the spine.

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.

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.

The Psychology of Three

Writers and readers don’t necessarily experience fiction the same way.  Novelists usually love the set up, where they got the idea in the first place! Ah, the climax. It aptly rewards or disciplines, restoring moral order and communicating theme. Not to mention the relief of typing “The End.”

Readers might disagree. Because the characters are still unfamiliar, the stakes must be swiftly and enormously high. Theme is enjoyable only if subtle, credible, and deserved. If readers love a book, they rarely want it to end. Hard to say goodbye. The next novel might be less appealing.  Many readers, then, favor the middle. There the conflict escalates, the characters breathe. Choices surprise, while events seem motivated yet unpredictable.

Perhaps the middle causes more trouble for you than your characters. What’s the strategy?

~Accelerate the inciting incident.

Start with a symbolic Big Bang. An explosion like that will organically engender a chain of events that force your protagonist to learn the requisite lessons for a happy ending. Deliver the inciting incident immediately, and choose one you needn’t explain.

~ Look ahead.

Be willing to discard your homework. Why does the protagonist hold grudges, despise autumn, or refuse to own a poodle? It’s great for the writer to know all of this backstory —and more. Just so the reader needn’t endure what amounts to someone else’s notes.

~ Explore plot templates.

The web offers numerous reminders of what the mid-section must accomplish. Among the best choices? Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey or Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method.  Pick a recipe that suits you, and use it flexibly rather than dogmatically.  

~ Streamline.

At the first sign of a sagging middle, the average novelist rushes to fill the gap, usually by reaching wide instead of deep. Rather than adding new subplots or minor characters, focus on what’s already there. Intensify and intertwine. Too many ingredients spoil the soup.

~ Fall in love with how your protagonist earns the ending.

If you’ve done your job right, your main character worked as hard as a team of dogs to enjoy that happiness, victory, or moral triumph. As Ursula K. Le Guin observed, “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

Tip: The development of the opening sets up the finale. Revere your novel’s start, middle, and end.

The Past Lives Still

Ruins (our odd label for the remains of past glory) preserve both culture and aesthetics. The characters in novels, too, retain remnants of who they were. No one can wander there, reverently touching stones, marveling at the engineering, artistry, and longevity. Yet the past controls actions and decision. Even if it remains unexcavated. Still.

Still—both enduring and motionless. And if you’re fortunate enough to discover a corner of an ancient amphitheatre where you can feel entirely alone, that’s enough to still your own heartbeat.

This happens in novels, too. History, either personal or otherwise, constrains the psyche and thus shapes plot. Pip’s boyish willingness to aid an escaped convict ultimately elicits the “great expectations” that will break his heart. To win his first love back, Gatsby slips on the first “gold hat” he finds: bootlegger.  In Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, one torturous night of staring at his uneaten dinner shapes a future split between conning and being conned. As a powerful source of angst, the past is a powerful source of plot.

Even when the ruins of childhood or adolescence don’t engineer the inciting incident, the penitentiary of memory affects everyone. Why else would backstory and flashback attract like magnets? Writers instinctively promote the moments that shaped characters, that influence what they’ll face and how.

Tip: In fiction, the past is a terrific tool unless it overwhelms the present or future.

As Alain Resnais puts it, “The present and the past coexist, but the past shouldn’t be in flashback.” In other words, don’t give the past more “in-scene” air-time than it deserves. More on that from “How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them―A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide”:

 For mysterious reasons, many authors consider it useful to provide a story about a forty-year-old man-about-town with a prologue drawn from his life as a five-year-old boy. ... There’s only one letter’s difference between “yarn” and “yawn,” and it is often a long letter, filled with childhood memories. ― Howard Mittelmark

How to use the past while exploiting momentum?

~ Hurry.

A few lines of backstory go a long way.

~ Imply.

Rather than belaboring how the past controls the present, hint instead of declaiming, “And I knew right then what so terrified me—and why.”

~ Raise the immediate stakes.

The only justification for a character’s past is intensified present-time trouble. The past isn’t there for its own sake, but for the mystery and secrets of the present.

~ Complicate.

            Use backstory to plot, rather than the other way around.

The past lives still. Which doesn’t mean you should let it upstage present-time conflict.     

Cassandra and the Causal Plot

Poor Cassandra was doomed to accurately prophecy but never be believed. This legendary clairvoyant has more to offer the topic of causality than mere alliteration. She raises the question: what makes people believe a prediction? If ancient Greek gods are involved, there’s not much you can do about convincing your audience. But if you’re plotting a novel and want it to seem credible, you need causality—the antithesis of life’s randomness.

In contrast to good or bad luck, causality means that actions have consequences. Foolish or self-centered choices incur costs, while moral behavior eventually bestows a metaphorical pot of gold.

In fiction, causality shows up in two distinct arenas:

~ Foreshadowing.

Cassandra warned the people of Troy neither to welcome gorgeous Helen nor trust the gigantic horse assembled outside the city. The Trojans ignored her—and paid dearly. Novelists, too, must pay for not looking ahead. Unless you sow the seeds for what’s coming, the theme won’t seem any more credible to the audience than Cassandra’s predictions did.

1.      Hint in the very first chapter at the protagonist resources that will produce the ending. Just be sure to hint rather than bludgeon.

2.      Make each scene lead inevitably to the next. Agent/author Don Maass reminds that scenes must be so tightly interwoven that if you remove one, the entire plot unravels. Each scene must cause what follows. No exceptions.

3.      Derive theme from the resolution of the plot. Want your themes to be the icing on the cake? Then directly correlate the protagonist’s choices with what protagonist and reader ultimately discover. Together.

~ Climax.

Whether it’s called “pressure point,” “arc,” “story promise,” or “inciting incident,” the opening impetus needs enough heft to get both characters and readers to the climax.

1. A credible climax develops from the opening launch.
2. An empathetic climax involves human actions and decisions. Avoid your own version of Athena forcing the Trojans to quit ignoring Cassandra.
3. A causal climax reveals how struggle summoned the protagonist’s best. That’s how you earn the ending

Tip: The novel’s opening explosion results in a chain of events that lead the protagonist to the climatic choice, which often resolves the initial dilemma.

You needn’t be Cassandra to know that while readers happily suspend disbelief , they’re terribly unhappy about inconsistency, randomness, or manipulation. Causality helps you view plot as far more fundamentally interconnected than a beginning, middle, and end. Which do you think your readers would prefer?

How Much Do People Want to Change?

Not much. Every New Year’s brings promises of writing more and eating less, of visiting the gym, giving or tossing items you never use, and finishing the draft. If any of those happen, it’s usually because—something happened.

Tip: Inertia is powerful. Events drive characters, people, and novels.

What about the people writing the novels? All have the best intentions. They plan to write daily, revise based on critique, research agents early on, take the necessary steps to make the dream come true. Yet somehow, potentially wonderful novels linger unfinished, unrevised, and unagented. Sometimes reality interferes. But more often, inertia does.

What gets a novelist moving? An event. Your best friend gets an agent, writes “The End,” transcends a rejection slip. Alternatively, your worst enemy gets an agent, writes “The End,” transcends a rejection slip. You’re ready to act, so don’t drift back to getting it done whenever you do. Because without another event, who knows?

Events control people—and characters—in a way that good intentions rarely can. Of events, the inciting incident is among the most provocative, seductive, and inflammatory. Whether the protagonist answers the call or vows to resist it, the world is forever changed. As Hamlet said, “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right.” Like most protagonists, Hamlet knows that he’s been called to act.

That’s what the inciting incident is. Too often, though, writers assume that the inciting incident is for the reader—a hook to explode the plot with a giant bang. That, too, of course, but the inciting incident is mainly for the protagonist. Without an impetus like his father’s ghost appearing to Hamlet, the protagonist simply rails against injustice. And stays stuck.

How can a novelist combat inertia?

~ Choose your inciting incident carefully.

It needs sufficient oomph to carry your entire novel.

~ Substitute event for syndrome.

People and characters will tolerate a fair amount of dissatisfaction without taking action. But guess what? Readers won’t.

~ Clarify in your own mind (not on the page!) how you want your protagonist to change.

Is it from selfish to generous, snobbish to compassionate, or passive to proactive?

~ Eliminate inert brooding, worrying, planning, and fantasizing.

None of those remove the protagonist’s difficulties or fulfill the protagonist’s dreams. Plus it’s no fun to read.

~ Be the protagonist of your writing life.

Look for events that motivate you. Do postponed deadlines have consequences? Hmmm. If not, should they?

Ideas are glorious. But action gets things done—both inside and outside of fiction.

Getting off the Ground

Planes taxi plenty before liftoff. Add a scheduling or weather problem, and they idle in their spot on the runway as passengers grow increasingly irritated. The passengers are stuck. Readers, however, are not.

Unless you get underway swiftly, readers might simply opt for a different journey. They don’t want to wait to hear the safety instructions or weather report at their destination. They simply want to be en route to it. Yet writers sometimes treat readers like trapped passengers.

Why not let readers feel they achieved altitude without all those preliminaries?

~ Establish what’s at stake.

Immediately. Infuse that opening trouble/conflict/problem with as much tension and emotion as you can muster--because it has to be big enough to build a book on.

~ Start with a straightforward event.

Self-explanatory incidents generate the greatest suspense. Avoid situations that necessitate lots of complicated set up.

~ Limit backstory.

Explain what you must. Stop there. As Don Maass once put it at a conference in Madison, “Once you’re 70% of the way through your novel, you can have as much backstory as you want.” Not before, though.

~ Make things move.

Not every novel includes adventure, or needs to. But contrast spilling the contents of a shopping cart with worry over some sort of trouble occurring in the supermarket. Big difference between those.

~ Add context.

But limit yourself to who, what, where, when, why. No one likes to be lost. But no one’s reading your novel to get directions, either.

~ Emphasize the physical.

Commenting on the protagonist’s problems is the equivalent of “telling.” Focus on what happens both to build scene and eliminate everything interfering with it.

~ Watch the metaphors.

Even if yours are great, don’t overwhelm at the start. The opening is a place to connect with characters and empathize with their troubles. Make that the focus.

~ Set the tone.

Don’t mislead by promising humor, sex, or adventure that never reappears after page two.

No one likes waiting.

Tip: Don’t request patience at your novel’s beginning. Instead? Just begin.

Where Does Your Novel Start?

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

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

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

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

For your opening, you need the following components:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Novelist’s Neglected Child

The middle child syndrome is prevalent enough to earn entry in the Urban Dictionary.  Dr. Touraj Shafai defines this as a child “not getting enough attention and love because the parents are busy and providing more attention and care to the oldest and the youngest children.”

Does this reflect how novelists sometimes view their work? “I’m busily revising my opening till it’s practically perfect,” one writer tells another. “The end is what turns me on” is the reply. “Fireworks! Transformed characters! Completed arcs!” Many novelists revel in either the inciting incident or the climax, neglecting the middle brainchild.

It could be that the middle drags along, lacking direction, constantly rambling about the past, and describing everything while doing very little. Your listless one can evoke exhausted listlessness in its originator. Yes, the middle is the difficult position, and difficult is usually the least loved.  The middle offspring faces:

·         Sluggishness.

·         Redundancy.

·         Arrested development.

·         Obsession with the past.

·         Stagnation.

·         Precocious urge to figure out and solve everything—instantly.

No wonder the novelist wants to concentrate on the thrilling potential of the youngster or urbane sophistication of the one beautifully grown.  But like a good parent, a good novelist loves all three offspring, and as equally as possible.

There’s hope—plenty of it, actually, for the middle, the one raising those offspring, and those encountering them in a book that works from start to finish.

Tip: The middle is where all the fun happens.

You can bring out the best in your under-appreciated middle with:

v  Defeat.

Are you coddling the middle of your novel like a sensitive child? If so, stop.  Make trouble. Trap. Corner. Ravage your characters. They might object, but your readers never will.

v  Motivation.

Which events and pressures cause the protagonist to change and grow?

v  Foreshadowing.

How can you hint—neither invisibly nor obviously—what’s ahead?

v  Surprise.

Is the middle one a little obstreperous? If not, time to encourage that. After all, psychologists are divided over whether it’s a desirable or difficult position to hold. Go for desirable.

v  Resonance.

How can the middle integrate what precedes with what follows? Echoes are great fun. Let readers enjoy them.

v  Insight.

Isn’t the fun of the novel the journey rather than the arrival? That’s where this child really shines. Take advantage.

Love the beginning, middle, and end equally—and your readers will, too.

Incite and Insight

Character change must mirror psychological change in the real world. Only a Pressure Point, or external impetus, can realistically motivate someone to take action instead of enduring the status quo. These actions build character arc. The first Pressure Point incites the entire journey, and subsequent ones thrust the protagonist into the next learning opportunity.

To illustrate, let’s say your neighbor inflicts numerous small inconveniences on you. He amasses leaves so they blow into your yard, damages your flowerbed with piles of grass clippings overheating in the sun, and lets his dog use your yard as a euphemism. One summer day, wearing shorts and flip-flops, you exit your backdoor only to slip on a gift from Rover. You-know-what is smeared all over your foot, shorts, legs and thighs. Ugh! Without pausing to shower, you bang on your neighbor’s door.

Why so angry? It’s what Malcolm Gladwell calls “the tipping point.” Suddenly your view of the situation isn’t just different but perfectly clear, as if the optometrist finally got the prescription right. Your neighbor isn’t malicious—wasn’t for the last six years and isn’t now. But his nonchalant apathy about boundaries amounts to abuse. And although you pride yourself on turning the other cheek and hoping he’ll curb both yard and dog waste, that strategy is history. Your new insight? Sometimes you must speak up for yourself, even if you’d rather avoid confrontation no matter what.

In fiction, Pressure Points incite insight the same way. Certain events—sources of pressure—insure that nothing will ever look the same again. The definition of “fair” or “reasonable” has changed irrevocably: You can no longer accept what seemed acceptable. That door has closed.

An added bonus? It’s not only the protagonist’s worldview that shifts. The reader’s does, also. Pressure Points invite readers to examine their own definitions of “fair” or “reasonable.” After all, isn’t that why people read fiction?

What lets Pressure Points offer the greatest insight?

·         Choose self-explanatory events; avoid the necessity for lots of backstory.

·         Use the physical world; avoid basing everything on thoughts or dialogue.

·         Exert great pressure: avoid the myth that anyone changes easily.

Tip: Use external pressure to reveal how we reach insight.