Composition: Harmony and Variety

In paintings or photos, balance creates attention and beauty. No single element should overwhelm any other, while those individual components echo, contrast, and complement. Finally, monotony of form, color, or anything else, muddies. Where’s the focal point?

These precepts also pertain to the novel, though, obviously, not in terms of color or shape. The fundamentals of fiction include:

* Action: Dramatization of cinematic scenes.

* Dialogue: Two or more characters conversing.

* Narrative: Transition and context grounding action and dialogue.

* Information: Backstory, exposition, facts, or intellectual stimulation.

Tip: Good fiction varies and harmoniously balances its components.

~ No one element should overwhelm the other

Unless sufficient narrative supports the action, you’ve dumped the reader in the stream without a life preserver.      Everything in fiction serves story. So even if this is an informative moment, it mustn’t overwhelm the characters’ journey. Still, too much action resembles a few crumbs of cake slathered with a quarter-can of frosting. In fiction and everything else, too much of a good thing remains—too much.

~ Individual components echo, contrast, and complement.

Fiction immerses readers when the whole’s more than the sum of its parts. The narrative adds irony or clarity to the dialogue. If the stage business simply repeats, such as “‘Get Out!’ Marge shrieked angrily,” you’ve neither contrasted nor complemented.     But, for example, if setting affects the action, or intensifies the dialogue, one element enhances another.      Contrast matters, too. When suspense is high, tease readers with an information break. Conversely, if you’ve just explained at length, appeal with humor, lyricism, or tension.

~ Monotony of form, color, or anything else, muddies.

Some writers treat dialogue like a faucet that stays off or on. Characters don’t say a thing for pages, but then talking floods everything else. A mess in either a novel or a painting.

Whether with fiction, photos, or paintings, audience satisfaction springs from balanced elements that each contribute without any one overpowering.

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

Ambiguity versus Blur

The distinction  between them is largely in the mind of the reader. Still, one might call it teasing, pleasing uncertainty versus irritating, dispiriting confusion. Gregory Ciotti (“How to Write with Substance”) offers a useful way to view this: “Write to express, not to impress.”

He goes on to suggest that you 

Brainstorm horizontally, revise vertically.     What makes for a boring novel is the same as what makes for boring non-fiction: the story grows horizontally instead of vertically.      Writing that is “too wide” tries to explain everything but ends up saying nothing. 

In other words, it’s okay (though not necessarily optimal) to play with every possibility as you begin. But once you start to consider reader needs, which is what revision’s really about, then it’s time first to narrow and cut, then to develop not with glaring clarity, but enough of it so readers can feel intrigued rather than lost.

Lack of context loses readers faster than anything else. To the novelist, it’s always obvious how the story moved from one room to another, from one mind to another, or from one issue, connection, or symbol to another. But how obvious are those to anyone else? 

The potentially worst sources of blur include:

* Failing with setting.

  This is a fertile breeding ground for cliche and vagueness. Be swift and original.

* Introducing a new character.

  Pay special attention to characters who echo others in terms of roles, names, traits,

  or obstacles.

* Jolting readers by abruptly altering time, place, physicality, symbolism.

   Provide clear but subtle transitions.

Great novels are rarely immediately accessible. Establish essential guideposts. Then seek subtext.

~  Subtext is the unspoken but revealed feelings and history and dreams of your characters.

~  Subtext is strong because it reveals truth—true emotions and true thoughts and unfeigned motivations.

 Subtext that runs through a story brings depth and dimension. It ramps up tension and conflict. It’s much deeper, more fundamental to a character’s traits or personality than is surface revelation. Because what underlies the text is not explicitly stated, the reader might have to look harder, listen closer.  ~ Beth Hill,  “Subtext—Revelation of the Hidden”

Tip: The optimal level of clarity is less obvious than it seems. Pun intended.

Compress it! Pace It!

For the fiction writer, repetition is a trap, and a tough one to avoid. Later events must be set up, new characters need to know what readers already do; and sometimes it takes a few mishaps—possibly in the same setting—to get the protagonist properly cornered. Writers often hope that so long as something’s slightly different, such as the same anger for the same reason but more intently, readers will find it new. Sadly, that’s rarely the case.

Nor will scene versus what’s known as summary/sequel/narrative entirely solve the redundancy problem. Summary can magnificently foreshadow or dispense information. But the high stakes that fiction needs frequently originate in scene rather than summary. Or between them.

Tip: Exploit the underused territory between scene and summary.

The mixture of narrative and scene creates the illusion of “live” fictional time, just at a faster pace. 

Because she hadn’t contacted him since returning to New York, Ed reared back when Anna tried to hug him.

That’s a really brief, somewhat oversimplified example of the landscape between a full-blown scene and an entirely collapsed summary. Yet the sentence illustrates a swift summary (the dependent opening clause) preceding the start of a scene (the independent final clause).

Combine scene with summary, and you can accelerate the pace, or speed at which events pass readers. Instead of revisiting what readers have already seen (she hasn’t contacted him since returning to New York), modify something. Did Anna start to call Ed? Did Anna run into her former fiancé? Did Ed’s voice mail quit functioning? Change helps pursue not only the original source of tension and perhaps something else entirely.

That’s because novelty is not only what readers want but what novelists need. Bypass the parallel or similar by shaking things up.  That’s a boundless source of tension, emotion, and originality, not to mention the potential for symbolism, suspense, and complex characterization.

What kinds of questions shake things up so that nothing ever feels exactly the same?

• If the location feels identical, how has the place changed?
• Could an email or phone call let you summarize part of a scene?
• If the character’s emotion is similar, how can you add a contrary nuance or dimension?
• Depending on your novel’s point of view, can you revisit a moment from another perspective?
• Can the scene end very differently this time? 
• Can you add a “ticking clock”?
• Can you develop rather than merely repeat any symbolism?
• What’s the effect of a similar place at a very different time?

These questions suggest ways to manage momentum. And in “5 Ways to Pace Your Story,” K.M. Weiland observes that

Pacing is like a dam. It allows the writer to control just how fast or how slow his plot flows through the riverbed of his story. 

Pace originates not just from syntax and rhythm, but also scene and summary. Explore the fertile territory between those last two.

Scene: The Big Picture

In a way, every scene resembles a bouquet. Individual elements compose both. The end result must offer a coherent whole with a clear yet unobtrusive focal point. When the elements complement each other, the totality becomes far more effective than a single contribution. It’s the difference between this:

and this:

No one would mistake a couple of flowers for a bouquet. With scenes, though, it’s less clear. Precisely what constitutes a scene?

A scene is a sequence of events that happens at a particular place and time and that moves the story forward. — Randy Ingermanson, “The Art and science of Writing Scenes”

Another slant on the scene comes from Jane Friedman:

A scene is a stylized, sharper simulacrum of reality.

Ideally, the scene integrates everything from both definitions. So a scene needs:

~ Tension.

Unless there’s substantial suspense, summarize instead.

~ Momentum.

The scene must contribute to character arc, or, again, wouldn’t summary be better?

~ Setting.

Although locale mustn’t dominate, characters need grounding. Always.

~ Artistry.

Along with drama, scenes need causality, propulsion, originality, and grace.

~ Credibility.

Only plausible characters and events evoke reader emotion. 

~ Focus.

Regardless of style or voice, tension is the crux of every scene.

Yet novelists conceptualize scenes differently. Drawn to setting or symbolism? You might disregard tension. Maybe you’re an action sort of gal. Will your characters be disembodied? Will you emphasize what they do and ignore why they do it?

Scenes work when novelists disregard personal predilection to provide the whole picture. Who wants a lopsided bouquet? 

Tip: Readers enjoy scenes that balance their elements—that complete the picture.

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.

The Kingdom of the Narrator

When someone says, “Tell me a story,” is it “tell,” “show,” or both?  And who delivers that story to children aged one to one hundred? The narrator, of course. Who, of course, sometimes “tells.”

It matters only to novelists, but the combination of characters and narrator keeps readers satisfied. Yet narrators often lapse into “telling,” which is indeed a terrible thing.

What’s a novelist to do? Accept that like any good character, the narrator has flaws and assets. In this sense, omitting essential narration is like refusing to grow roses because they have thorns. Your clumsy movements won’t hurt you, but so much gets lost. So much. Because the narrator contributes everything that characters can’t provide, essentials like:

~ Straightforwardness.

            Characters rarely tell it like it is. They rely on the narrator to do it for them.

~ Segue way.

Fiction jumps around. Readers can’t follow unless someone offers transitions for time, place, and focus. That someone is the narrator.

~ Significance.

            How can characters interpret what’s happening as it happens? That’s the narrator’s job.

~ Setting.

Characters know where they are. But like real people, characters don’t necessarily assess the environment or its impact. Don’t make readers miss out on that.

~ Secrets.

            If characters don’t know what they don’t know, how can they hide it from readers?

~ Synthesis.

            Characters are too busy thwarting obstacles to note how those interweave.

~ Synchronicity.

            Characters rarely look for the kinds of patterns that make novels cohere.

~ Symbolism.

To the character, a stain might just be a stain. The narrator, though, can suggest the meaning of this stain, or Soldier’s Moon, or chewed fingernail.

Tip: Don't let the narrator "tell" any more than necessary. Do let the narrator mortar the bricks the characters build. Novel readers need a narrator.

“V” Is for “Vivid”—Not “Verbose”

The internet revolutionized our assessment of “vivid” versus “verbose.”  

Do you ever skip description in a novel? I do, too. Obviously, merely describing how things look, sound, taste, feel, and smell is not, by itself, going to bring a location to life. Something more is required…Only through the eyes and heart of a character does place come truly alive.”  — Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction

Neil Gaiman illustrates this in American Gods:

The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.

That works. This does not: “The house smelled of must, dampness, and the sweetish smell of rot.” What makes one “vivid” and the other “verbose”?

1. Originality.

Particularly when dealing with anything familiar—like a decaying house—transcend same-old, same-old. What’s the best source of that? Your character’s perception.

2. Comparison.

This could be a metaphor, simile, symbol, or analogy. In all of these, successful comparisons arise from “an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar” — Aristotle, The Poetics.  Does the resemblance resonate at the deepest level? If so, readers instantly sense that a mockingbird or white whale or scarlet letter represents not only the literal but also a meaning beyond that.

3. Insight.

Setting becomes meaningful when it reminds readers what they didn’t know they knew.

4. Tension.

Setting should set up what’s ahead, and without “telling.”  In Kraken, here’s what China Miéville does with the sky:

The light was going: some cloud cover arriving, as if summoned by drama.

And Amy Tan with war in The Joy Luck Club:

But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people—men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.

Images of “clouds” or “war” abound on the internet. So even incorporating all five senses won’t necessarily produce something “that readers will not skim,” as Maass reminds. Unless setting intensifies response to plot and character, it often feels “verbose.”

Tip: Setting becomes “vivid” only when it’s as integral to a novel as its plot.

Purity and Impurity in Jonathan Franzen’s "Purity"

Depending on your definition of masterpiece, this novel might just be one. Pip needs love, money, and her dad’s identity—not necessarily in that order. Impurities and all, I want everyone to read it. So I won’t divulge any of its many secrets. Want the actual plot? Read this book!

It’s not perfect. In crystals, impurities alter the basic structure, adding color and fire; this describes Franzen as well. Some reviewers attack these distortions: self-indulgence, sexism, oversimplification, snobbishness, one-dimensional protagonists, and disconnected narrative threads.

There’s more. Tension can be as low as breadth is huge. The remarkable characterization occurs less from action than backstory. Lots and lots of “telling.”

Maybe. But here’s what else Purity offers:

~ Zingers.

 “Don’t talk to me about hatred if you haven’t been married.”

~ Analogy.

“It’s like having one red sock in a load of white laundry. One red sock, and nothing is ever white again.”

~ Insight.

“And maybe this was what craziness was: an emergency valve to relieve the pressure of unbearable anxiety.”

~ Irony.

“Stupidity mistook itself for intelligence, whereas intelligence knew its own stupidity.”

~ The “extra” in “extraordinary”:

“Fog spilled from the heights of San Francisco like the liquid it almost was.”

~ Voice.

“The tropics were an olfactory revelation. She realized that, coming from a temperate place like the other Santa Cruz, her own Santa Cruz, she’d been like a person developing her vision in poor light. There was such a relative paucity of smells in California that the inerconnecteness of all possible smells was not apparent….How many smells the earth alone had! One kind of soil was distinctly like cloves, another like catfish; one sandy loam was like citrus and chalk, others had elements of patchouli or fresh horseradish. And was there anything a fungus couldn’t smell like in the tropics?”

In an NPR interview, Franzen describes fiction-writing as expertly as he describes everything else: “It’s like having this dream that you can go back to, kind of on demand. When it’s really going well...you’re in a fantasy land and feeling no pain.”

You’ll need chutzpah to create that kind of “ fantasy land.” Here’s the thing about risk. Take none, and “good” is the most you’ll get. Defy “pure” convention, and you might fail; you might inspire loathing as well as adoration. Personally, I pray that Franzen keeps doing his own thing.

Tip: Too much risk is—risky. But none at all? No color or fire there.

Nature as Art, Art versus Nature

Nature hardly needs art to create breathlessness. Look closely. Define art flexibly. Isn’t every leaf or droplet “art?” The real question is whether art reproduces or imitates nature. Aristotle made this argument in response to his teacher Plato, who deemed everything but pure fact dangerous. What has this to do with you as a novelist? Everything.

Tip: Though nature is art, art itself originates in the imitation of nature.

Without that imitation, you get either:

Covering approximately 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, the Atlantic Ocean is the second largest ocean basin in the world, following only the Pacific. -- National Ocean Service

or

Look how very beautifully azure the white-capped waves go on cresting.

 Neither of those creates a sense of place like these:  

There was dull light all around, everywhere. When we walked on the crisp snow no shadow showed the footprint. We left no track. Sledge, tent, himself, myself: nothing else at all. No sun, no sky, no horizon, no world. ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

The light was going: some cloud cover arriving, as if summoned by drama. ― China Miéville, Kraken

The color of the sky was like a length of white chalk turned on its side and rubbed into asphalt. Sanded―that was how the world looked, worked slowly down to no rough edges. ― David Guterson, The Other

After all, as Eudora Welty observed,

Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else... Fiction depends for its life on place.

To achieve that, translate nature into imagery that someone else can understand. You'll need:

~ Precision. No vague or abstract description.

~ Originality. The imagery that only you can deliver.

~ Symbolism. Make it so instantly comprehensible that it requires no explanation.

~ Drama. Setting that’s disconnected from plot has no place in fiction.

Nature makes art all the time, but fiction requires the vision that you alone can offer.

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.

Flirting with Boredom

Fiction offers an unspoken contract: Writers try to anticipate what readers want, and generally satisfied readers forgive novelists for not always anticipating correctly. Maybe that seems unrelated to boredom or flirting. But boredom has everything to do with the eye of the reader-beholder, and novelists who refuse to flirt are doomed to boring others. Take no risks, and you’ll never say anything new or exciting.

Certain things are boring about 98% of the time:

~ Repeating. Once is great, twice not at all.

            Angry to the point of fury, she raised her clenched fist at him.

~ “Doubling.” Don’t clarify unnecessarily.

            Ann had made a decision, and she turned to go.

~ “Showing” and then “telling” (or the reverse). Pick one or the other.

            His deep sadness caused tears to fall from his eyes.

~ Judging. Save the editorials for your friends—or, better yet, your journal.

A person who wanted tropical sun and humidity, even in winter, was clearly nuts.

~ Lecturing. Save the info-dump for your nonfiction book, your friends—or your journal.

Aristotle, master of science, philosophy, poetry, and human nature, continues to affect us millennia after his death.

After you’ve eliminated boring habits, start flirting. Be playful. Inject sexual innuendo, and invite rather than fulfill. Fiction readers adore humor, sensuality, and the chance to reach their own conclusions. Of course novels flirt a bit differently than people do.

• Ground the story.

Setting for its own sake can bore, but setting that gives the characters a home intensifies the plot and highlights the themes.

• Tease.

Leave scenes incomplete. Sustain problems, mysteries, obstacles, and secrets till the last possible moment. Answers can bore. Questions rarely do.

• Differentiate essential material from tangential.

Learning about monarch butterflies sounds educational, except in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, where understanding them clarifies their symbolism, beauty, and value. Nothing boring there.

• Set up.

Maybe preparing readers for the climax feels meticulous or over-zealous. But the opposite feels like a miraculous rescue, i.e. no fun at all. Flirt with foreshadowing.

Tip: Seduce us by making us wonder what you’ll do with the details. After all, that’s where the devil resides.

Chicken Soup for the Pen

 Fiction writing can be a rough ride. You have no musicians to rehearse the symphony with or actors to make you grin and blush. Worse, you face an absurdly competitive market, not to mention your own super-secret fears that you should already have a book, an agent, a better draft, a more productive schedule, a less effective set of rationalizations, or whatever bums you out.  Maybe you need some sort of retreat?

Writing retreats happen in exotic places (Maui tops the list) or pedestrian ones (your local coffee shop). Retreats can involve coaching and critique or simply an escape from grass needing mowing, kids wanting feeding, or bills awaiting payment. Every so often, you need the metaphorical chicken soup as much as the critique. One balances the other.

The best retreats feed both mind and soul. This means that the menu must include some beauty, some spirituality, and at least a little awe. In fact, the power of an imposing environment can prove surprisingly useful in balancing a writer’s mind.

~ Humility.

     In 2014, it takes gumption to write fiction. Competition is fierce and reward scant. You need a healthy ego to write anything at all. But you also need a healthy reminder that unspoiled nature is so vast and incomprehensible that you’re like one grain of sand. That makes you feel so small. And that reminds you that you’re part of something huge. How much can one rejection or one missed writing afternoon really matter? The best writers combine confidence with perspective.

~ Faith.

     It’s discouraging to struggle with the same paragraph, have your critiquers request yet-another revision, receive one more rejection, or simply feel that no matter no long you sit before your laptop, the magic isn’t going to happen. That’s when an infusion of beauty can restore morale. This might be mountain snow reflected in a lake, a sliver of moon, or even a crimson leaf. Such things remind you that awful as it might seem right now, tomorrow’s another day. You’ll want to get up. You’ll want to write. You won’t be able to stop yourself.

~ Inspiration.

     Every writer achieves this differently. Maybe it starts with the characters. Perhaps the themes. Annie Proulx says it’s always the setting for her. No matter how disciplined you are, how open to plot, metaphor, or psychological insight, the realities of working, flossing, commuting, and clearing the kitchen can demolish energy and originality in insidious ways. Every so often you need something so glorious that it steals your breath. When you can breathe again, you’re ready to write.

Isn’t it wonderful that the internet, the burgeoning interest in creative writing, and the numerous credit and non-credit options out there mean that you needn’t write all by yourself all the time?

Tip: Find yourself hosts as generous and thoughtful as Patti and George who graciously sponsored a mountain miracle for writers.

Treat yourself to a writing retreat.

The Test of Time

A recent performance of Romeo and Juliet at American Players Theater in Spring Green, Wisconsin, confirms that Shakespeare remains as alive and well-loved as ever. Even the famous balcony scene, which could well feel like the most painful of clichés, still captures how the world feels when you’re first in love, with the moon too inconstant for a vow, and goodnight evoking a taste of death. All that stands the test of time.

This early play (1595—a decade before King Lear) blends romance, slapstick, violence, and wit. Each lover undergoes a developmental arc during the brief span between love at first sight and untimely death. Their tragedy affects not only friends and family, but all Verona—and everyone who’s encountered not only the play’s beauty, but its meaning.

Romeo and Juliet accomplishes this not just by lacing tragedy with comedy. Or with quicksilver action proving that major events—pressure points—change people so there’s no turning back. The play’s great strength is its capacity to reveal real people with real emotions, who remain utterly relevant even though we no longer brandish swords and have cellphones to get messages safely through. The play’s great strength is its continuing relevance.

In Good Prose, Pulitzer-Prize winner Tracy Kidder observes that “Revelation, someone’s learning something, is what transforms event into story. Without revelation, a story of high excitement leaves us asking, ‘Is that all?’”

No work can stand the test of time if readers wonder whether “That’s all.” Nor is this a genre issue. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is an early romance, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is science fiction, and Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger is magical realism.

What makes a work stand the test of time? How can your novel have a shot at achieving that?

~ Landscape.

A novel needs characters that inhabit a very particular environment. Readers must be able to enter it, too, and this world must control what characters dream and whether those dreams can come true.

~ Innovation.

Does the novel offer a spin, idea, location, or dilemma distinct from everyone else’s?         Does it possess something only you can offer?

~ Impassioned emotion.

Do the characters evoke at least as much compassion, irritation, or delight as real people? Do readers experience strong feeling about the characters?

~ Texture.

Does the novel have sufficient substance that one could reread it and reach different insights? Will no two readers interpret it identically?

Tip: It’s not a matter of what you write about, but how you write it.

Who Wants a Window Seat next to the Wing?

Anyone desiring a view will dislike anything blocking it. Aboard a plane or not, which obstacles do fiction readers encounter?

*** Author.

Are you standing between your characters and your readers? As Jonathan Franzen expressed it in The Writer, “I think the most important thing―it may sound strange―is to get inside the character to the point that there is a lot of anxiety and shame. The real struggle is to find a dramatic setup and a corresponding tone that make it possible to dwell in that anxiety and shame without feeling icky as a reader. That’s a big challenge. My approach to that―pretty much with all the characters―was that when it started seeming funny to me, I knew I was there.  If it seemed anguished or earnest, I knew I wasn’t there.” Restrict “anguish” and “earnestness” to your life: use your characters to ban those from the pages of your novel. If, however briefly, you point out “anguish” or convey “earnestness,” you’ve obstructed the view.

Don Maass agrees, observing in Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling that “When your readers (temporarily) believe something that you’re not (ultimately) saying, you’re writing fiction at the level of art….Call it withholding, if that helps. Conceptualize it as misdirection, if you like. However you think of it, make your readers think.” Just so. If you tell them what to think, how can they discover for themselves what’s hidden under that wing?

*** Characters.

Just as you don’t want your ego overshadowing the landscape, you don’t want your narrator over-explaining, pontificating, or overshadowing the action and scenery.

*** Narrator.

But. The narrator controls the altitude and intensity. If your narrator explains nothing, makes no connections, and delivers no insights, either your book will be 2000 pages long or frustrated readers will terminate futile attempts at guesswork and—find a novel that balances character and narrator input. Narrators who guide without belaboring the obvious actually make the characters more visible.

How do you give readers the view they want?

~ Get out of the way. You’re the author—not the wing.

~ Use your narrator to control pace and clarify what readers can’t infer.

~ Let the characters star—they’re why readers choose certain novels, and certain seats.

Tip: Give your readers a window seat on a plane with invisible wings.

Audience Appetite

The people who adore reading novels adore them passionately. But novel readers tend to gravitate just as passionately to a particular kind. Those starved for the straightforward will avoid complexity the way vegetarians avoid bacon. On the other hand, if you want a good chew, applesauce isn’t going to satisfy.

Where’s the spot for your own book on the huge buffet out there? Considering that question won’t just help you sell your book; it’ll help you write a much better one—with a better chance of selling, as well.

Italo Calvino observed that “Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature.” Calvino offers other valuable insights: “Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them,” or “A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.”

Isn’t this why some novels linger on the minds not just of individuals but of entire cultures? Why some fiction remains “true” even when everything else in the world has changed? But are “Overambitious projects” different in literature than in music, sculpture, philosophy, or science? Probably not.

Tip: The eye of the beholder determines what makes a “project” “overambitious.”

Can you visualize your ideal reader? Maybe it’s someone who’d choose the goodies that you would at the buffet. Maybe it’s a favorite teacher, your son, your critique partner, the guy from your lit class at West Point, or the cutie who delivers the mail. Picture the reader you want. Take your time.

Ready? Use your ideal reader to answer the questions every novelist faces. Like these.

~ Does it matter if the characters or plot seem a little familiar?

~ How much setting is too much?

~ Is there such a thing as too clear?

~ Is white space or *** a perfectly good technique? No matter how often?

~ If it starts to sound like poetry, is that a good thing?

~ Must the point of view be absolutely consistent?

~ Is it okay if most of the characters are “neurotic”?

~ Does backstory add insight, or is it just annoying?

~ How much dialogue is “just right”?

~ How “political” does a novel get to be?

There are no right answers! None. But you need to ask—and answer—such questions. Know your audience. That’s not just how you market adroitly. It’s how you write adroitly, too.

Every Novel’s an Adventure Story

Say a woman walks the Lake Michigan shore. Call her Evangeline, because she’s a bit 19^th century and fancies herself a scientist of sorts, a fossil hunter. The chill wind cuts right through her blouse; she’s not dressed for this walk. Evangeline continues on, anyway. Something magnetizes her about this rock outcrop, so different from the rest of the beach with its glittery sand, its heaps of polished stones in myriad colors and shapes. The smooth slabs here are cut into hundreds of tiny steps, a landscape so intriguing that she willingly endures stench from the dead smelt washed up in the many little crevasses.

The rock so captivates Evangeline that she nearly misses the sign describing it. Now it’s all clear. Silurian dolomite, from 440 – 350 million years ago, the sign explains—and rare on the Lake Michigan shore. She got that part right. Dreamily, she walks on, curling her toes around bedrock, mind fixated on the ice age, the glacier’s slow slide, the corals and maybe trilobites that formerly thrived in the warm sea that once flowed here. Her reverie’s so deep that she nearly misses the slab where you can see the tiny whorls the coral made. Finally, a fossil—a whole tablet of them. She’s made sense of the landscape. What more could she ask?

What more could a reader ask? Consider the elements of Evangeline’s journey:

~ Setting: Both gorgeous and captivating.

~ Conflict: Why does this differ from the rest?

~ Distraction: Is my eye on what’s important?

~ Momentum: Will I ever solve this?

~ Clue: This is what you’ve been looking at.

~ Ah-Ha Moment: The fun of finding the last piece for the puzzle you’ve played with.

Evangeline’s journey is the basic journey every novel reader experiences. Even if the protagonist lives centuries, even planets away from this search for fossils, each shares hunger for new adventures, and, ultimately, for clarity. Readers want that, too, and it’s so easy to make your reader’s happiness rival Evangeline’s. Here’s all you need:

·         Intrigue with premises, possibly false.

·         Breed hypotheses, possibly true.

·         Plant clues, for both protagonist and reader.

·         Make the protagonist heroic yet vulnerable.

·         Make the reader both worry over and feel confident about the protagonist.

·         Tempt with side trips and false alarms.

·         Increase the level of difficulty, for both protagonist and reader.

·         Mislead. Just enough so it’s not cheating.

·         Provide the missing evidence.

Tip: Not every novel’s about fossils. But every novel’s about finding mysterious, half-hidden treasures. Make the fictional journey an adventure, not just for the protagonist, but for the reader.

The Fate versus Free Will Contest

Life is so darn random. Billy Joel may claim that “Only the good die young,” but the truth is that the bad and good die haphazardly, and even more painfully, the very old or sick endure pain and the very young sometimes leave us before we can even name them. If there’s a “divine plan” here, it’s not one we can understand. Readers, however, must not only understand but applaud the moral causality driving your fiction. That comes from fate and free will intersecting instead of competing.

This is a classical concept, tracing back to Greek tragedy, which depicted terrible external forces meeting the protagonist’s own terrible tragic flaw. In Oedipus Rex, for example, he’s no more cursed by the gods than the ugliness of killing his father and marrying his mother, however unknowingly. This may seem irrelevant in our era of Facebook and reality TV. It’s not.

All great stories, regardless of period, begin with external circumstances so dire that protagonists are forced to overcome their personal shortcomings.  This doesn’t work if fate controls the whole deal. That defeats suspense. It also defeats a valiant protagonist struggle resulting in change that enlightens not only hero but audience, whether seated in amphitheater or IMax and perusing kindle or book.

Tip: Match external and internal equally.

If the hero is guaranteed triumph or doomed to misery, growth becomes impossible. If the hero can easily vanquish the politician, ex-husband, hurricane, or even asteroid, there’s no story.

Balance is difficult to maintain in every aspect of writing. Once dialogue flows, it’s easy to forget that you need narrative. When you focus on depicting setting, the plot might get away from you. The same syndrome affects plot and theme. But there maintaining equilibrium is more challenging still. Many writers let either internal or external struggle control particular scenes, if not the novel as a whole.

To avoid that, distribute power as equally as possible:

·         Give your protagonist—and antagonist—neither too much nor little opportunity.

·         Imitate reality. Why wouldn’t both protagonist and antagonist occasionally crave the path of least resistance?

·         Use obstacles to “grow” your protagonist. Every setback is an opportunity for change.

·         Change your antagonist also, into less “human” or perhaps more so.

·         Incorporate the internal during external trouble and—the reverse.

·         Seek overall balance between the trouble inside and out.

Whether you believe in fate or not, leave it out of your novel. Keep us guessing.

Great Fictional Expectations

Fiction must fulfill certain expectations.  It needs to feel original, fun, true-to-life, and causal rather than contrived. Otherwise, it’s not surprising—simply disappointing.  At some point, though, fiction must overturn expectations instead of merely meeting them. If readers can predict everything to come, why continue reading?

Readers derive the greatest satisfaction from characters that astonish while remaining believable. Readers enjoy situations that make sense yet yield plausible outcomes no one could possibly predict.

Sounds great, but how do you accomplish that? It’s easier than it sounds. Millennia ago, Heraclitus said that “Character is fate.” In other words, who a character is—at the deepest essence—determines what she or he is capable of—what it’s possible to do or achieve. This observation about human nature generates several choices in terms of plotting plausibly but unpredictably.

a.)    Create situations of such duress that character surprise themselves with their accomplishments, whether physical, moral, or psychological. Often, people can’t even meet their own expectations until circumstances demand that.  If characters surprise themselves, they surprise those reading about their fate.

b.)    Create characters of such complexity that they not only get themselves into complicated situations but also devise complicated strategies for ultimately achieving their goals. Characters shape destiny through their own choices.

c.)    Create an environment that determines fate, whether because of cataclysm, status or even the protagonist’s own dreams (or nightmares). This source of possibility contains more choices than you might think. Whether futuristic, current, or historical, whether urban or rural, fictitious or factual, the trick is how setting impacts every one of your characters—but particularly your protagonist. This is less about geography than a combination of culture, luck, and constraint. How does that generate the surprise of true character?

Tip: Probe the commonplace and familiar deeply enough to summon true yet nevertheless surprising truths.

Each of these solutions requires pre-planning. Genuine surprise arises not from gimmicks but understanding character, plot, and setting so comprehensively that your fiction works from a solid foundation of credibility to yield what feels inevitable, but only after the climax. The very best fiction surprises even its own author.