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.

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.

Poet Tricks for Novelists

Doesn’t orange juice taste good any time of day? Aren’t bouquets welcome without a special occasion? Isn’t poetry’s something every writer should know about? That includes novelists.

Techniques that novelists might borrow from poets:

~ Artlessness.

In “Adam’s Curse” (about life outside Paradise”), Yeats wrote: “A line will take us hours maybe;/Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,/Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”

Work hard enough to make it sound as if you never worked at all.

~ Big Ideas.

Wallace Stevens observes in “Sunday Morning” (about alternate spiritualities) that “Death is the mother of beauty.”

Emotion and suspense drive novels. Using irony and imagery, you can add beliefs, as well.  Layering gives poetry substance. It never hurt a novel, either.

~ Brevity

“My sky is black with small birds heading south,” notes Edna St. Vincent Millay in a sonnet about love—and its aftermath.

So much emotion in so few words. In such simple language. What Emily Dickinson called, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off…” Couldn’t every writer seek that kind of explosion?

~ Passion.

Dylan Thomas’s villanelle insists, “Do not go gentle into that good night/…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

In novels, rhyme generally distracts. But characters frenzied over philosophy, morality, love, and, hate—that’s the stuff that fiction’s made of. Because intensity distracts readers from the mundane, unheroic, patternless amorality of everyday life.

~ Propulsion.

Emily Brontë celebrated the heath she loved with “Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,/Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.” For novelists, rhythm often involves risk. But take no risks, and you might be good. You’ll just never be great.

Tip: Read some poetry. This could be an investment that pays off.

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.

Voice: Vocal Cords and Chords

While vocal cords don’t literally deliver voice in fiction, they do symbolize the mechanism that lets what’s inside strike a chord with reader needs, beliefs, and expectations.

Chords—three or more harmonious notes heard as one—can impart pleasing complexity. Writers who can alternate between funny, poetic, and insightful often entertain more than those who only offer one thing.  A wide range adds complexity, as does leaving plenty of room for reader chords: for what their inference and imagination can add.

No finite boundary exists between your voice and what readers absorb, because no one approaches a novel without expectations and preconceptions.  This is so subtle that you can lose sight of the reader while writing.

Novels aren’t just author, narrator, characters. Readers participate, because each of them differs in optimism, vocabulary, tolerance for ambiguity, fondness for digression, loathing of short or long sentences, and so on. In Every Day, David Levithan reminds us that “The sound of the words as they’re said is always different from the sound they make when they’re heard, because the speaker hears some of the sound from the inside.”

Of course you need your gut to tell you what matters. But that’s not the whole story. Unless you’re journaling, your concern with reader response matters at least as much.

Tip: “Who Are You Writing For?” isn’t the main question. It’s the only one.

You can focus more on your readers by reading aloud or considering these questions:

~ Does a fondness for tautness or rhythm interfere with the accessibility of the prose?

Making syntax more important than the reader is self-indulgent.

~ Do you use the concept of “voice” to rationalize long-winded or awkward passages?

Making syntax more important than the reader is self-indulgent.

~ Do you provide the details that readers need—when they need them?

            Readers want details to serve the story rather than the author.

~ Do you use your fiction primarily to instruct or persuade?

            Learning along the way is great, but readers choose novels for pleasure.

~ Do you use your own emotions to deepen those of your characters or to grind axes?

            Writing fiction can be therapeutic, but that’s not its main purpose.

W.H. Auden put it really well: “All I have is a voice.” Indeed. But that voice is not only for self-expression but for reaching, touching, and perhaps transforming others. After all, as Zora Neale Hurston put it, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” Unless your readers “hear” you, that’s a lot like silence.