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.

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 Scope of the Story

Focusing a novel is a bit like poor Goldilocks struggling to find what’s neither too huge nor cramped but “just right.” Reviewing Scott Anderson’s biography of “Lawrence in Arabia” in “The Times Book Review,” Alex Von Tunzelmann had this to say: “Regardless of the relative historical value of these individuals, however, the multicharacter approach has the great virtue of opening up the story’s complexity.”

Few fiction readers consciously assess how much complexity they seek. But since most readers instinctively know, writers need to care. It’s the reason one likes an author or title enough to scan the opening online or in a store, yet rejects this one. The novel feels either like too much work or insufficient substance. Either boils down to “not worth my time.”

Several factors contribute to complexity. The point of view could be roving or omniscient. Maybe numerous subplots tangle up the story. Perhaps the sentences feel ridiculously short or long. The metaphors congregate like ants at a picnic. Or the cast of characters under- or over-whelms.

Tip: Use your cast of characters to give your novel “just enough” complexity.

Having too many characters resembles agonizing over who survived the aftermath of the hurricane on page one, but instead learning that little Tiffany, in room 478, has a cousin whose great-aunt passed when she was only ten, and perhaps because of that, there’s been a lot of divorce on that side of the family. In fact, Marcia, the step-daughter of the step-aunt’s fourth husband, is one of six children. Wait. Was Marcia in the storm’s path? Is she a major character? If not, why mention this?

Too many characters bloats the story badly enough to affect compassion for the characters we’re supposed to care about.

Yet a scarcity of characters builds a skewed world. In our dreams we’re often both protagonist and antagonist. In our memories or anecdotes, it’s a one-person show starring its originator. All of that’s kosher, because the goal isn’t constructing a completed story. When that’s the goal, however, you need enough characters to help the protagonist grow and change. Yet you don’t want so many characters that you blur what’s important.

How might you reach “just right”?

• Introduce characters in terms of the protagonist—and usually protagonist stress.
• Give every character a distinct voice and identity.
• Watch for arcs. Unless every minor character has one, bring out the ax.
• Use every character more than once. Cull those with bit parts.
• Merge if possible. You’ll produce one strong character instead of two weak ones.
• Assess complexity. Is this number of characters apt for the intended audience?

Fiction and Flux

 Novels trace change. Think about that. Fiction begins by making trouble for an appealing protagonist. After that, all but the darkest stories follow that protagonist through a series of changes yielding resolution, if not success, happiness and a pot of gold at rainbow’s end.

No one wants to notice those incremental changes in the protagonist. That would resemble watching the wizard work the machinery behind the curtain in the land of Oz.  Change should evolve mysteriously. Yet every scene must advance the protagonist to the climax.

Tip: Justify each scene by centering it around an incremental change in your protagonist.

This is easier to execute than you might think. Try these techniques.

• Plan how the scene will affect your protagonist.
• Revise scenes to incorporate protagonist maturation.
• Coordinate external events with internal realizations.
• Let the antagonist induce growth in the protagonist.
• Use your minor characters to help the protagonist evolve.
• Mesh the external environment with your protagonist’s arc.
• Represent many kinds of change, from psychological to moral.
• Consider how small changes help deliver your theme.
• Imagine your novel without this particular scene.

This last one is the toughest, but perhaps the most instructive. Don Maass, at a Writer’s Institute at UW-Madison, said that every scene should be so essential to the whole that the entire structure collapses without it. Every scene must contribute. Every scene must capture change. That’s more credible, of course, because nothing in the world stays still. It’s also more engaging, because the protagonist’s growth inspires our own.

Yes, you might lose some scenes and have to revise others. Isn’t it worth it to have a novel that’s realistic, dramatic and haunting because it proceeds—inevitably—to its outcome?