Motive and Movement

Inexperienced comedians and actors often wander the stage aimlessly. Sometimes that’s part of the schtick. More often, though, random action signals nervousness and simply distracts. So in theater, directors often warn actors that you can’t just cross the stage because you feel like you’ve been motionless for too long. Movement originates from motivation.

Tip: Never let your character say or do anything without a current, immediate motive.  

In “Motivation-Reaction Units: Cracking the Code of Good Writing, ” K.M. Weiland explains the “motivation-reaction units,” or MRU’s, that Dwight V. Swain introduces in Techniques of the Selling Writer:

In a story, everything that happens can be separated into two categories: causes (motivations) and effects (reactions). Once you grasp this, all you have to do to create solid and comprehensible prose is to make sure your MRUs are in the right order.

The First Gate blog explores this further. The:

Motivation-Reaction Unit is the fundamental building block of an action sequence (it’s important to stress that it does not apply do description, exposition, or reverie).  It’s pretty simple:  something happens, the hero reacts to it, the situation changes, and something else happens.  How characters react to events will largely determine their plausibility and how closely we bond with them. — 1/21/’11

If perhaps a stream of MRU’s seems like extra work, first consider how logical this is. Then consider all the areas you’ll improve.

~ Characterization. 

To link motive to action, you must clearly identify character psychology. 

~ Verisimilitude.

In real life, people do things for reasons. When they don’t, others ask, “Where are you going?” Or, “What’s suddenly bothering you?” Novels need to supply the answers readers might want to ask. This is especially true when characters change their minds or make major decisions. But. This isn’t permission for a paragraph or two of rumination, because there’s never permission for that. It does mean one sentence pinpointing explicit motive.

~ Stage business. 

A character hears something and thus does something. Causal and realistic. It also tests whether stage business serves some purpose beyond interrupting the dialogue.

~ Causality. 

Within the scene, these MR Units mirror what Linda Seger calls “pressure points”—the five or six turning points forming the spine of the novel. Use MRU’s, and the structure of each scene parallels the structure of the scenario.

~ Emotion.

In both characters and readers. Only characters that make sense elicit empathy, and characters can’t make sense unless the rationale underlying behavior is clear. 

Link motive to motion and action, and you enrich both plot and characterization. Because“why” has always been fiction’s most compelling component. 

Writer “R” and “R” and “R”

Pushing yourself to meet deadlines, achieve goals, and revise deeply—all great. Rejuvenating every so often is not only equally great, but crucial. So here are some “r’s” to balance not only writing, but the writing life.

~ Replenishment.

How can you create if you’ve exhausted the supply of words, ideas, story questions, metaphors, and revision techniques? Maybe you need a vacation. Or a staycation.  Or a rigorous workout, a hilarious movie, a fancy dinner.  No two novelists will need exactly the same thing or amount of it. But when you genuinely need a break, take one. Minus the guilt.

~ Remembrance. 

As Dean Koontz reminds,

Have fun, entertain yourself with your work, make yourself laugh and cry with your own stories, make yourself shiver in suspense along with your characters. If you can do that, then you will most likely find a large audience; but even if a large audience is never found, you'll have a happy life.

When did you last remind yourself what drives you to write your novel?

~Rhythm.

Obviously, you want rhythm between dialogue and narrative, scene and summary, snappy and leisurely sentences. Don’t you also need a rhythm in your writing time? Sometimes a super-short session on one day might produce a far magnificently productive one the next. In contrast with flexible goals, rationalization, of course, is the writer’s enemy.

~ Reality.

As A. Lee Martinez put it, “Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.” External and internal circumstances will never cease rollercoasting, so protect momentum when it hits. For the rest of time, if necessary, create a schedule. Then respect it.

~Resolution.

Neil Gaiman admits that “All writers have this vague hope that the elves will come in the night and finish any stories.” If that hasn't worked for him, it’s unlikely to work for the rest of us. This doesn’t mean that a litany of “should’s” “should” immobilize you. Or you “should” descend to guilt equivalent to consuming an entire carton of gelato. Resolve not to squander the exquisite energy fired by your scenario, or characters, or the stimulation of crafting words. Remind yourself why you’re writing.

Tip: The act of completing a novel requires as much balance as the art of writing one.

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.

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.

Dive? Wade? Submerge?

Charge into your novel without some sort of outline, synopsis, or series of turning points, and you’ve plunged headfirst into three feet of water: you could spend a lot of time recovering from sad mistakes and broken parts. Not a pretty sight.

So what about edging in? Great, except you might get so comfortable at the shoreline that you never progress. Some academics don’t complete the dissertation because they continue researching. And researching. Some novelists can boast a nifty outline, sleek synopsis, or glorious first twenty pages. They never advance: too cold. Too scary.

So if you’re not supposed to plummet or inch, what might you do instead? I discovered some answers a few days ago, when I enjoyed the privilege of a brilliant, talented group of writers discussing how to get started. What are the pitfalls and panaceas? What’s the antidote for angst?

You might call this The Submersion Theory.

Submersion Theory.

Enter swiftly, but not haphazardly.

1. Plan first.

If you just pour your heart out, it might sound like—your diary. George Sand wrote that way, and despite her many attributes, today she’d have a tough time finding an agent, a publisher, or readers. Contemporary fiction requires not only the deep psychological insights she offered, but a causal, well-paced plot . Few novelists accomplish that without a plan. A flexible plan, certainly. But a plan, nonetheless. Unless you’re among those fortunate few, design a strategy. You can always change it as you go. In fact, by all means change it as you go.

2. Don’t procrastinate.

Once you design an approach, avoid posing endless unanswerable questions, like “Is writing a stupid hobby/proclivity/career move?” “Will I be good enough?” “How will I ever get an agent?” Most writers require some time, say a few months, to see if the scenario works and the characters come to life. Will the joy of creating this protagonist’s world transcend the stress of perfecting it? Grant yourself some time without self-destructive questions. As Mark Twain said on the subject not of worry, but conscience, “It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good nohow.” Will hesitating, shaming, or agonizing really make you a better writer?

3. Revise as you go.

Completing the first draft empowers you to perceive the shape of your story, develop what you omitted, and delete all those fantastic middle-of-the-night stream of conscious ideas that—aren’t all that great in the clear light of day. But if you save all your revising for the end, you’ll not endure a series of obstacles, but could wind up with flat characters, empty dialogue, a coincidental plot, and lots of ugly sentences.

Tip: Writing is like pace in fiction; proceed neither hastily nor hesitatingly.

Question Whether You Question Enough

Tip: Nonfiction is for answers. Fiction is for questions.

Certainly, fiction has much to teach, and not just about society or morality, but also about ornithology, teen pregnancy, Victoria’s reign, the Song of Songs, and so on. But if fiction accomplishes this teaching with a sound that’s overtly educational, most readers close the book. What’s the solution? Questions.

The questions that propel fiction originate in the writer’s own questions:

~ Who is the audience?

~ Why struggle through this when I might make more money at McDonald’s?

~ Does my plot deliver my theme?

~ Wait. Do I have a theme? If not, do I need one?

Start there. Then consider your writing lifestyle. Maybe, like many writers, you’re addicted to critique, conferences, coaching, and a canon composed of brilliant minds like John Truby’s, Robert McKee’s, Donald Maass’s, John Gardner’s, and so on. Great!

Yet instruction doesn’t necessarily pose questions the way that good feedback does. Do you let rules or explanations bury the fundamental questions?

Whether you struggle with your first or twenty-first draft, work alone or with a group, certain questions always apply:

• Is your scenario original and electric? Too good to ignore?
• Does at least one character evoke empathy?
• Do you capitalize on your point of view?
• Do you open the first chapter, and every chapter and scene thereafter, with a big bang?
• Do the details support the story, or mostly your own subjective interests?
• Do you dramatize what’s truly exciting, and summarize what isn’t?
• Does your plot keep readers turning pages?
• Is your story more important to you than your readers are? (Oh, oh.)
• Are too many of your sentences annoying?
• Does your novel ask more questions than it answers?

The best fiction leaves us with questions. Nathaniel Hawthorne wonders whether hypocrisy is more contemptible than adultery. F. Scott Fitzgerald invites us to decide what the past means. Harper Lee asks if we ever considered the connection between innocence versus racism or sexism. Tracy Chevalier questions whether we noticed how many women influenced a history peopled with men. Jonathan Franzen speculates on the meaning of “purity.”

If you prefer answers to questions, is fiction the best genre for your tastes and talents?

Reading the Rocks

Whether polishing novels or agates, what we call “art” reveals what’s deep inside, awaiting someone to make it visible. As Michelangelo put it, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” In this way, rocks and stories share something in common.

Like lapidary, novel writing involves carving and polishing in order to reveal. The initial premise resembles a geode, like the ones in the picture below.

Not much to appreciate there, not until you expose the contents of its heart. To do that, you need to imagine the secret shapes, lines, and textures you want to bring to the surface.

I was lucky enough to discuss the art of polishing with the patient—and exceedingly talented—lapidarist Alan Vonderohe. A lot of that conversation applies equally well to novelists.

~ Choose raw material with potential.

Not every geode or scenario is worth the effort. Why invest time and energy in something dull or commonplace? But don’t dismiss before you’ve considered the possibilities, either.

~ Study your options.

Vonderohe may spend a few days examining a rock to discern its secrets. The truth is that, with stones and scenarios, once you discover the right approach, it’s difficult to imagine another alternative. In fiction, we call that causality. Outlining helps you bring the best to the surface, the way handling a rock opens you to its potential before you start to polish. Ultimately, thinking before cutting or composing saves time and energy; it’s a shortcut to emphasizing what matters.

~ Nourish flexibility.

A good lapidarist keeps changing the view to disclose the best angle, perhaps an almost invisible vein of blue. Why view your novel from only one direction, missing all those possibilities that never crossed your mind? The rut is the artist’s enemy.

~ Uncover the heart.

Lapidary begins with taking away, while writing fiction begins with building up. In the end, though, every art involves polishing. How else will it seem finished?

~ Respect nature.

At mineral and gem shows you’ll find rocks dyed garish colors or carved into triangles, skulls, hearts, and butterflies. Yet doesn’t art originate in the tension between naked raw material—whether anecdote or uncut stone—and the artist’s interpretation of that? A story or stone can become so contrived that its integrity disappears. If it no longer seems true, if interpretation descends into commercialization, is that still art?

Tip: Polishing lets others see what one imagination detected hidden beneath the surface.

Types: Stereotype, Archetype, Trope

Archetypes, stereotypes, and tropes are about equally elusive and significant. Does it matter if you’re sure which you use?  Classification’s unimportant. What matters? Lay a foundation with archetype; use trope to speed pace; avoid stereotype whenever possible.

~ Stereotype.

The etymology says it all. The word comes from the mold that made identical copies of the original. In life or the novel, stereotypes feel clichéd—uninspired. Worse still, generalizations about ethnicity, religion, size, education, hair color and so on ignore individuality. Stereotypes are misleading and harmful. How useful can they be in fiction?

Stereotypes are contrived writing solutions, while archetypes are the platform that tradition offers.

~ Archetype.

The archetype is the original mold used for the stereotypes that follow it. According to Carl Jung, roles like the Hero originate in the “collective unconscious.” We’re all in it together. (For more on this, check “The 12 Common Archetypes,” by Carl Golden.)

In The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler analyzes archetypes as a source of plot from inciting incident to climax. Archetype underlies the classic plot: coming of age, abuse of power, love changing identity and history. Yet without your own original twist, the situation and its characters will seem stereotypical.

If the distinction between archetype and stereotypes is a bit fluid, trope is even more so, because it’s used in several different ways.

~ Trope

It can be a symbol (a rose equals love), a genre convention (“once upon a time”), a shortcut conveying plot or character (a stranger came to town), or an over-used device (the bossy, bespectacled librarian). Tropes range from very, very useful and efficient to very, very the opposite. While archetypes are universal, tropes often refer to a particular genre, like YA, Horror, Cozy, Western.

What does all this boil down to?

Tip: Tradition can both bring forth the richness of allusion—or the poverty of cliché.

How to know the difference? The easy answer is to solicit feedback. A wise, objective reader will let you know if you’ve united the benefits of both convention and innovation.

The harder answer lies in the details. Obviously, the over-familiar is tedious, manipulative, or facile. The “novel” part of the novel demands “something new under the sun.” Build on the conventional: archetype, trope, allusion.  Add to that dimensionality, mutability, individuality, and universality. You’ll have something good—maybe even great.

The Economics of Fiction

Lots of fiction centers on money: Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (banking), David Liss’s A Conspiracy of Paper (how banking created the mess Dickens described), or the endless array of novels touching on wealth, power, class, and the interaction between them (Tracy Chevalier, Jonathan Franzen, Chad Harbach, Hilary Mantel, Fay Weldon, and on and on).

Aside from that, novels, like everything else in the world, have value. Time it right, and you can win it all with sharks, a boy wizard, a noble adolescent girl, or the decoding of a religious mystery.

But too early or late, too similar or different, and the market isn’t there. Neither are the readers. This makes second-guessing pointless.  If you could predict the market, you could publish not only your own novel but everyone else’s. Since you can’t, and since a novel is a lot of work, write because you love the work—not because you hope to love the result of all that work.

Keep your day job. Then assess credits and debits in your fiction.

Like any other account, put in more, and you can take out more. It’s just that this particular economy runs on details, ideas, and words used to capture them.

Of course readers disagree about credits or debits. Genre and voice play a huge role. Yet certain fictional elements consistently tend toward + or – .

Debits!

• Backstory. If it already happened, it’s slowing things down.
• Setting. Unless it’s new and vibrant, it often competes with plot.
• Speaker attribution. We have to know who’s talking, but “said” is no more invisible than any other word.
• Psychological analysis. What the characters think and why—can flirt with “telling.”
• Stereotypes. Been there, done that.
• Explanation. Readers need context. But we don’t always love what we need.

Credits!

• Tension. It’s often the way to balance any item from the list above.
• Characters. They make fiction fiction.
• Clues. Engage readers in discovering what you tantalizingly hint.
• Sex/romance. You already know why it belongs on this list.
• Archetypes. Allusion adds depth and richness. It gives novels heft.
• Electricity. This could be plot, characterization, scenario, voice, or all of them.

Most novelists have an ulterior motive, like roaming with dinosaurs, uncovering racism, celebrating Impressionism, making music, or condemning war. Want readers to follow wherever you want to go? Stuff the vault with scenario, plot, voice, imagery, and characterization .

Tip: Use your novel’s assets to balance whatever you want to express.

Scenario and “The Woman Upstairs”

The brilliance of Claire Messud’s novel, The Woman Upstairs, is taking the pain of a woman symbolically dismissed from view and using that to analyze the pain that an unnoticed person of either gender can endure. Who’s the woman upstairs, and what ticks her off?

Bertha Mason, the mysterious character in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, is a potentially dangerous madwoman in the attic. Messud handles the allusion so lightly that a reader can fully appreciate the novel without noticing the reference to Rochester’s first wife. 

But Messud brings new life to Bronte’s question: Is Mason dangerous because she’s a madwoman, or because cruelty and misunderstanding have reduced her to one?

Put “the woman upstairs” in a contemporary setting, and you can reveal the psyche of a woman treated as if she lacks merit, feelings—in fact doesn’t exist. Her purpose is fulfilling the needs of everyone else, constantly putting herself last, if she counts at all. In The N.Y. Times Book Review, Barbara Kingsolver observes that “A novel’s extraordinary power is to allow a reader to take possession of the inner life of another.” Messud accomplishes precisely that.

So why did this novel fare so poorly compared with Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch?  Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes) says, “The world doesn’t think what she’s doing is as worthy as what Tartt is doing.” But why? What’s behind the acclaim for a laborious book with a meandering plot and lots of stock characters versus an exquisitely written, deeply analytical one about individual pain representative of all human pain?

It’s all in the scenario. The Woman Upstairs attracts about as much attention as its protagonist, who tells us, “And especially now that I’ve learned that I really am invisible, I need to stop wanting to fly. I want to stop needing to fly.”  

The flight Nora Eldridge longs for is the equivalent of High Concept—the Big Idea that sells movies, books, and film options. If your scenario resembles an unnoticed person in hiding, its premise won’t help sell your book. What should you do?

Tip: Decide what really matters to you as an author.

If your heart’s in a winning scenario, you’re so lucky! But maybe your heart’s in writing something agents and critics might consider mundane. Then you must choose between writing the book you long to write or, instead, concentrating on making the sale. There’s no right or wrong answer here. However, you do need to be honest about what you choose, your rationale, and the probable consequences of your choice.

Because the truth is that the woman who wrote a brilliant novel got little recognition, and the woman who wrote one with a High Concept won a Pulitzer. The prose didn’t make the difference; the scenario did.

As Messud puts it, “When you are the woman upstairs, nobody thinks of you first.” 

"Anansi Boys": Taking Risks Because You Have a Parachute Handy

Risk creates gorgeous prose, thrilling scenarios, and memorable characters. But risk without a means of protection is merely self-destructive. Neil Gaiman’s great talent is taking wild leaps, yet always landing safely. 

The character Fat Charlie Nancy has endless troubles: his father, brother, job, fiancé, and future mother-in-law. It’s partly his fault, but mostly not. His troubles take place in a world both magical and realistic, both sensuous and scary. How many writers humanely combine mystery with wit, folklore with justice, creepy bad guys with music, mythology, and the essence of family, evil, storytelling, and silliness? It’s all here.

How’d he do it? What parachutes does he use?

~ Create a narrator who’ll let you say what you want to. It’s all about voice.

    “Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn’t a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their song instead.”

~ Invigorate familiar metaphors. This can surpass creating brand-new ones.

    “Daisy looked up at him with the kind of expression that Jesus might have given someone who had just explained that he was probably allergic to bread and fishes, so could He possibly do him a quick chicken salad: there was pity in that expression, along with almost infinite compassion.”

~ Create character with dialogue. Spider and Charlie each sound unique.

    “The ties of blood,” said Spider, “are stronger than water.”

“Water’s not strong,” objected Fat Charlie.

“Stronger than vodka, then. Or volcanoes. Or, or ammonia.”

~ Characterize quickly and concisely. Go for the sentence that speaks volumes.

    “Ahh,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy. She could disapprove with just that one syllable.

~ Stay in voice when you shift time or offer transitions. Don’t freeze up.

    “Like all sentient beings, Fat Charlie had a weirdness quotient. For some days the needle had been over in the red, occasionally banging jerkily against the pin. Now the meter broke.”

~ Go a little wild. Just know where your parachutes are.

    “There was something about being in the vicinity of Grahame Coats that always made Fat Charlie (a) speak in clichés and (b) begin to daydream about huge black helicopters first opening fire upon, then dropping buckets of flaming napalm onto the offices of the Grahame Coats agency. Fat Charlie would not be in the office in those daydreams…”

Tip: Find your own parachute and take your own leaps. You can’t pull back from what you never wrote.

Fiction and Figure Skating?

Perhaps. Unrelated as these seem, they’re alike in capacity to achieve excellence via more than one path. Skaters can rack up points for athleticism or artistry, while writers can magnetize readers with suspense, aesthetics, or other gifts.

If your aesthetics are glorious enough, you might get to compete in the Olympics even if other guys jump higher, quicker, more often, and with additional rotations. Put another way, you can make a few mistakes in an ambitious program or execute a less ambitious program with near-perfect exquisiteness. As a writer, you can have an ambitious scenario that leaves some room for weaknesses, or something simpler that you deliver perfectly.

Tip: If you’re great enough at one thing, you might not have to be great at everything.

This doesn’t mean that you should disregard your weaknesses (c’mon, you know what they are). Nor is it permission rationalize about those few painfully clumsy sentences or pages painfully free of tension (at least on the characters’ part).

It does mean that assessing your strengths and weakness will take you far—maybe all the way to the “gold,” whether skating or writing.

~ Say you want to start with your strengths. You’ll need detailed description. Picture the person who most loves your writing. If that’s not you, it might be your writing partner, mentor, spouse, or friend. From the perspective of this admirer, compose a short blurb raving about attributes. Don’t hold back! Such an original, charming, yet authentic voice. Such mastery of the long, flowing, embedded sentence. Such understanding of human psychology—not only of motivation but secrets, desires, and impetus for change.

~ Want to start with your weaknesses? A list will do; many writers excel at despising weaknesses rather than extolling strengths. Admit what you don’t like: parts of the plot are contrived; you start lots of scenes the same way; the dialogue goes on too long, or appreciating and adoring those present participles can prove annoying and maddening. Make a column of weaknesses. Match each one with an asset. You don’t get to quit until the number of strengths equals the number of tiny or terrible troubles. Play fair.

Writing is hard. On rough days some might compare it to Olympic competition. To keep going, you have to believe in yourself and your words. Being perfect is harder still. Isn’t it fabulous to know that you needn’t be perfect or excel at every single thing?  There’s more than one way to excellence. Athleticism or artistry—your choice.

Figure skating and Your Plot

It’s not everyone’s sport. Maybe you’re no fan of glitter, Puccini (which many skaters choose), or a sport reminiscent for many of what they dislike about ballet. Despite all that, as a novelist you might want to at least notice the metaphor.

Take all those lutzes and loops.  Most of us never quite understand the distinction between them, whether skaters execute three turns or four, and if the entrance is difficult or ordinary. (How do the judges arrive at those “magical” numbers, anyway?) It’s like asking a reader, or perhaps even a writer, to differentiate turning points from pressure points. To the observer, the machinery isn’t relevant: only the final effect.

Plot works the same way. The average reader isn’t hunting down the details a writer cleverly inserted in order to exploit later. Readers don’t pause to wonder if that event caused this outcome. And no reader will articulate, “Wait. This is right at the end. Isn’t it supposed to be the most exciting part?”

But just as in figure skating, you needn’t be a judge to notice the painful, disheartening mistakes. So like a skater, you should avoid disappointing your audience. Here’s how.

·         Don’t bite off more than you can chew. If you can’t generate effective transitions, for example, don’t create a scenario requiring an endless succession of them.

·         Don’t stuff the middle with obvious gimmicks. Readers notice attempts to add fluff or distract with irrelevant plots or characters.

·         Don’t fizzle out at the end. You may be exhausted. But if your audience is still there, your book has to be, too.

·         Do plan. You can get through the first draft or wait until after. At some point, though, you’d better notice how everything fits together. If you don’t, someone else will.

Tip: Leave your audience saying, “I don’t know how she does that. But, wow, that was among the best tricks I’ve ever seen.

The cheers will make the whole thing worth it.