The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (11 page)

It isn't always easy to figure out the logical but unanticipated disaster. You can do it, though. You must, if you're going to play fair with your readers and keep your story moving forward with tension and suspense.

In your anxiety to build
your story in a straight line, with tight scene plotting, you may run the risk of plotting action so tightly that your characters never have time to catch a breath.

Are your stories like that? Did anyone ever frown and admit that your story confused them... just a little? If so, the chances are good that your story problem lies in your failure to provide time and structure for your characters to breathe... and think.

Most writers build components into their yarns to provide this kind of pacing time. Sometimes they may call such a part of their story a "valley." But ultimately this name for breathing time in a story is not very helpful to the writer. Long ago, I heard literature professors talk about high points in fiction as "peaks," and the quieter points as "valleys." And the terminology confused me for years until I finally figured out what they were trying to say.

When they spoke of "peaks," they were talking about
scenes
. For scenes, as discussed in Chapter Twenty-two, represent the high points of excitement, conflict and reader involvement.

When they spoke of "valleys," they were talking about quieter times in the story when conflict was not onstage in the story now—when the character had time to feel emotion, reflect on recent developments, and plan ahead.

We call the "valley" parts of your story the
sequels
.

Sequels, however, are more than just the quiet times in your story... more than little spots that provide breathing time for the character and the reader. They are those parts of your tale in which you show your character's reaction to the disaster that just took place... then planning what he is going to do next to try to get his quest back on track.

You must not forget to provide such sequels.

Think for a moment about times in your own life when something really bad—some disaster—befell you. What was the pattern of your response?

If it really was a disaster, the first thing you felt, perhaps only for an instant, perhaps for months, was
emotion
.

At some point, however, you stopped feeling blind emotion, and began the process of
thought
.

And at some point you told yourself, in effect, "I've got to get going again... I've got to make some
decision
."

This pattern, emotion-thought-decision, is the kernel of the structure of the sequel.

In planning your story's next development after a scene-ending disaster, you must put yourself in the mind and heart of your viewpoint character: imagine her feelings, in all their shadings and ramifications; then go through with her the painful transition into thought, the wondering "What shall I do next?"; finally, imagine with and for her what that new,
goal-motivated decision
ought to be.

Having done this, you will have planned her sequel.

Now, having planned—imagined—her sequel, you ordinarily will write it. How much emotion will you portray? How many pages will you devote to her feelings, before she progresses to thinking? That will depend on the nature of the disaster that just befell her, what kind of character she is, what kind of story you are writing. In a romance, your written delineation of her emotional response may take many pages; in an action story, you may have such plot pressure on her that she must respond in some new action almost at once, without the luxury of taking time for much feeling; with a sensitive heroine you may have to devote pages to her feelings, while with a gruff woman of the world, it may be more realistic if she shrugs off the hurt almost at once, and gets on with business.

The same is true in terms of how much page space you will give to the thinking portion of the sequel. A college professor may take many pages to think logically about what to do or where to go next; another kind of character may make an impetuous decision almost at once.

As you take your character through these parts of her sequel, you may often be inside her head, with no one else around. Or she may talk to a friend or confidante, and "talk out" most of her sequel. In either case, since this is the feeling-thinking part of the story, and not so exciting as the scenes,
you are allowed to summarize
. Thus your character may look back on earlier parts of the story, or of her life. You may have a sentence such as, "She worried about it for four days, and then on Thursday..." As you work through your character's reactions and planning almost anything goes in terms of timing.

At some point, however—perhaps sooner, perhaps later—your character must make some new decision in order to get the plot moving forward again. So you move your character to her next decision, her next goal.

And what is that new goal? It's the goal she carries into her next scene!

Scenes end in disasters, which require sequels. Sequels lead inevitably to new decisions based on new experience, and these new decisions involve a new goal. The moment the character acts on this new goal—and encounters new conflict—you are into the resulting next scene.

Thus the major structural components of fiction—scene and sequel—link like the strongest chain. In the scene you provide excitement and conflict, ending in disaster, in the sequel you provide feeling and logic, and the character's decision, which leads directly into the next scene.

In imagining your story, you probably ought to plan every sequel. In writing the final draft of the story, it may be that you will sometimes leave out a sequel in order to speed from one scene directly into the next. Such decisions are based on story type and tactics, and your "fingertip feeling" for how fast or slow the story should be at any given point. The key here is to remember that scenes move swiftly and read fast sequels tend to move slowly, and read like story "valleys." It follows, then, that if your story feels slow to you, you may need to expand your scenes and cut, or even eliminate, some of your sequels. While if your story seems to be going at an insane pace, with no characterization or logic, you may need to trim some of your scenes a bit, or expand your sequels to provide more breathing room.

If the idea of sequel is new to you, it may help you to study some stories by other writers. Work to pick out the sequels. Notice how the author is often inside the head of a character alone, feeling and thinking about the plot action or other story people. How is the emotion shown? How are the thoughts presented? How does a writer get from random feelings to increasingly linear thought to some firm—if desperate—final decision that will lead to new action?

Try to make every such analysis a learning experience. If it helps, make some notes in your journal, or elsewhere, about how sequels are handled. The analysis will help you enrich your own skills in handling these vital components of story.

"Wait a minute. I don't know
what's going on here."

Did you ever read a short story or novel that gave you this feeling partway through? Worse, did you ever
write
a story where you suddenly started feeling that way?

It's a pretty bad feeling when it comes during a story you're reading. But it's far worse when it happens during your writing of a story. In that case, it probably signals potential disaster.

Of course all of us experience times during first draft when things do not seem to be going well—when all our careful planning seems to have failed us, and the plot no longer seems to work. Sometimes we can muddle through and fix things later. But even if we make a good fix and later sell the story or book, it's not fun to go through.

It just doesn't pay to wander around in a fog when you're supposed to be putting down a story that makes sense. At best it wastes time. At worst, it wrecks your project. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to minimize such times of confusion.

First, you should always begin with a brief statement, as precise as possible, about what your planned story is essentially about.

Second, you should remember always to follow the story, which is to say, the line of conflict growing out of the lead character's goal.

Third, you should beware of late-blooming ideas that seem to come from nowhere during your writing of the project.

Some writers would protest the first advice, saying they "write by inspiration," or "do the story to see how it's going to come out." I hope you're not one of those. The more planning you do before starting to write, the better. Some writers do a detailed outline or proposal; others make elaborate notes on the characters; some make do with a scribbled page or two out of a legal tablet, sketching in a synopsis of the plot. Whatever the individual procedure may be, however, there is a central idea in such planning:
Be sure you know what your story is about before you start
.

This is easy to say and hard to do. One of the reasons its hard is that all of us tend to imagine a lot more story than we can ever put down in the finished product, the limits of space and time being what they are. Another reason such summary is hard is that the creative imagination likes to freewheel, and detests being forced to boil its ideas down to the ultimate direct simplicity. "If I write down the idea as succinctly as possible," some will cry, "then I won't need to write the story!"

Pardon me while I disagree. As a teacher over the years I've seen far too many stories—shorts and novels alike—founder in midstream because the author simply lost her way—forgot what the original wonderful idea was, in its essence. Writing a novel, for example, is a long and arduous task, and during the composition no writer can keep all the projects aspects in mind all the time. We forget a subplot for a while, or we get overly fascinated with a minor character, or we simply get tired and lose creative focus.

In all such cases, the existence of a brief statement of the story, written when the original vision is clear, can be a lifesaver. I urge you to avoid the fog by producing a story statement.

How long should it be? Absolutely no more than 150 words, and preferably shorter. What should it have in it? The following:

Dwight V. Swain, noted author and teacher of writing, has written that a sample story summary containing these elements would read something like my following example:

Hungry and needing money (situation), out-of-work Joe Smith (name and identity) must get a job at Acme Tool Co. (viewpoint character's main goal). But can he get the job when old enemy Sam Jones (primary opposition) tries to waylay him at the plant gate to prevent the job interview? (villain desire and plan).

In this example, of course, we have an idea for a short story of perhaps only one or two scenes. Writing the kernel of a complex novel is much harder. It can be done, however! And boiling off all the secondary aspects of a novel to reveal its skeleton may provide just the tiny reminder you'll need in the throes of a several-hundred-page project.

Before I wrote the first novel in my Brad Smith espionage series I summarized it like this:

Called back to duty by his former CIA masters, aging tennis star Brad Smith goes to Budapest to try to help a young woman tennis player escape that country. But can he get her out when the CIA plot is foiled, he is alone, and the UDBA is onto his mission?

Now, of course the plot of this 75,000-word novel contained many more questions than this. But precisely because subplotting in this project was so complicated—and there were so many characters ultimately involved—having this "kernel statement" helped me remember what the central thrust of the novel was supposed to be.

Let me urge you to take this sort of step yourself, always.

Having done this, you will be more ready to take the second step that will keep you out of the fog, and that is of
following the story
.

It sounds absurd, doesn't it, to say a writer should follow the story? But stories are often screwed up because the writer forgot... or lost... this principle. The story is where the conflict is. The conflict grows out of the central viewpoint character's quest after a central goal. If you remember this, you won't get as confused about where your story should go next. You as the author will continually ask yourself:
What is the goal? Where is the conflict?
And write those segments .

Sometimes the temptation is to follow some minor character "because she's interesting." Watch out for such feelings on your part; more often than not, they signal that you've lost the thread of conflict... allowed your primary character or characters to get passive. You fix this by giving the main character some new thrust—a plot stimulus—to rekindle the flame of conflict and plunge him into the struggle anew.

Examine your own thinking as you plot and write a story. Are you following the line of conflict? Keeping the main viewpoint character stimulated, involved, moving ahead in his quest? I hope so! If not, look back at your basic statement of what the story was to be about. It contains the basic goal, and the basic conflict, which together define the story question. Get your story moving again, and on the right track, by following that line of struggle.

At some point, of course, you will have done most of the above work as well as you could during one or two drafts. At that time, you will try to lean back from the project a bit and consider ways you might improve it.

This is a necessary and vital part of revising any story of any length. Sometimes flaws are seen and corrected. More often, new angles are detected and worked into the story with a resulting enrichment. For all of that, you should always remember to be a bit leery of any major, far-out plot or character "inspirations" that seem to come out of nowhere at this late stage of the creative process.