Authors: Lisa Cron
Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence (19 page)
Clearly, as far as the writer is concerned, these two characters are in the midst of an intense, conflict-driven turning point. It’s easy to picture the writer as her fingers fly over the keys, sure she’s giving voice to Kate’s growing anxiety and Jake’s measured frustration. And sure enough, we feel anxiety and frustration, too, because we have absolutely no idea whatsoever what Kate and Jake are actually talking about.
Let’s deconstruct a similarly vague sentence to give us an even better idea of what, specifically, vague looks like:
Jane knew Wally had a reputation for doing horrid things, so when he commented on her appearance in front of everyone, she refrained from smacking him.
On the surface this sounds like a perfectly reasonable sentence, that is, as long as the
next
sentence goes on to answer the questions this one raises. Unfortunately, what tends to follow is usually another sentence just as full of vague generalities. With that in mind, let’s take a good hard look at what that sentence
doesn’t
tell us:
Not only don’t we know what kind of horrid things Wally has done, we don’t know what Jane would
see
as horrid. For instance, perhaps Wally sets stray cats on fire. That would be pretty horrid. And it would tell us something about Wally. Or maybe Wally hangs out with poor kids from across the tracks, which Jane and her stuck-up posse think is absolutely unforgivably horrid. That would tell us something about both Wally
and
Jane.
And given that this happened in front of “everyone,” how did they react? Well, that depends on who they are. Are they steel workers? High school students? Strangers in the subway? And even if we knew
exactly
who they are, we couldn’t so much as guess how they’d react to Wally’s comment, because we have no idea what the comment was.
But before we get to what Wally said, there’s that word, “comment.” Wally “commented” on her appearance. Comment as in diss? Comment as in a come-on? We don’t know. All we know is that Jane had a strong reaction to it. Did he ask if she put on weight? Did he tell her that if she doesn’t want him staring at her breasts, she shouldn’t wear a skin-tight, low-cut baby T-shirt that says “Juicy” in rhinestones across the front? Or maybe her desire to smack him stems from the fact that he talked to her at all, given that she’s the senior homecoming queen and he’s a geeky grease monkey. We don’t know what the truth is, so even if we try to make an educated guess,
we have no way of knowing whether we’re right
. So, regardless of what we come up with, it’ll feel like picking a number out of a hat—and be just about as satisfying.
The same confusion comes up around the smack. Did Jane refrain from smacking Wally hard across the chops? Or would it have been a playful pat on the butt? Or is
smack
slang for
kiss
, ’cause what he actually said was, “Babe, you look gorgeous,” which was music to her ears because she’s had a crush on him from the moment she heard he sets cats on fire, since as it turns out, that’s her secret hobby, too? The possibilities, as Buzz Lightyear would say, go to infinity and beyond. Which puts chances at next to nil that the reader would come up with the right answer:
Jane knew Wally liked to eat worms so he could gross everyone out by barfing them up during show and tell, so when he called her a sissy in front of the whole kindergarten class, she decided not to punch him in the stomach and give him the pleasure.
The problem with generalities is that because they’re utterly ambiguous, they don’t have legs. Because they don’t tell us specifically what is happening now, we can’t anticipate, specifically, what might happen next. So much for the delicious dopamine rush of curiosity that keeps us reading.
The point is, generalities are not capable of producing specific
consequences
, and so the story has nowhere to go. Instead, more vague
things happen, compounding the confusion, until the reader realizes that she has far more questions than the story will ever answer and heads to the refrigerator for a snack.
Writers are rarely aware they’re being vague, although as we’ll see in the following list, sometimes they actually do it on purpose. They tend to entrust their story to generics for three main reasons:
1. The writer knows the story so well, she doesn’t recognize when a concept that’s very clear to
her
will come across as utterly opaque to the reader. So when she writes, “Renee looked at Osgood in his tight jeans, tousled hair, and ratty Converse high tops, and smiled knowingly,” she has absolutely no idea that it leaves us thinking,
What do you mean, knowingly?
What’s behind that smile? Her knowledge that Osgood’s really a pretentious poser rather than the guileless hipster he pretends to be? That he’s her dream guy and tonight’s the night she’s going to tell him? That she’s pregnant with Axel’s baby, but Osgood will never be the wiser? It doesn’t even occur to the writer to tell us; because
she
knows exactly what “smiled knowingly” refers to, she assumes we do, too.2. The writer
doesn’t
know the story well enough, so when Renee tosses her head and gives Osgood that knowing grin, it’s because the plot needs her to. If asked about it, the writer might look at you quizzically and say, “Wait, you mean she needs more of a reason than that?”3. The writer knows her story very well and is quite aware she hasn’t told the reader what’s behind Renee’s knowing smile, because she’s afraid if she does, she’ll “give too much away.”
This oft-misguided fear is something we’ll be talking about in depth in
chapter 7
when we discuss “reveals”—and so, uh, I don’t want to give too much away here.
Whether it stems from the writer knowing too much or too little, or actually doing it on purpose, being vague is never a good idea. So to help you zero in on wherever vagueness may have crept into your story, here’s a rundown of where the usual suspects tend to lurk.
1.
The specific
reason
a character does something
. Like most things, it can start off so promisingly: “Holly ducked into the alley, glad to have avoided Sam for the millionth time.” Sounds great, right? Trouble is, unless we know at that moment in the story
why
Holly has been avoiding Sam, it will fall flat. It could be because he’s been stalking her since 1967 or she’s secretly in love with him and doesn’t want him to see her on yet another bad hair day or she owes him money. Who knows? Each of these specific possibilities suggests a very different scenario, any one of which would help us make sense of what’s happening in the moment and allow us to anticipate what might happen next. Without a specific, we have no clue.2.
The specific
thing
a metaphor is meant to illuminate
. Here’s an interesting fact to add to what we already know: not only do we think in story and in images, but as cognitive linguist George Lakoff points out, although we may not always know it, we also think in metaphor.
8
Metaphor is how the mind “couches the abstract concepts in concrete terms.”
9
Believe it or not, we utter about six metaphors a minute. Prices
soared
. My heart
sank
.
Time
ran out
. Metaphor is so ubiquitous we rarely notice it’s there.
10
Ah, but literary metaphor is something else again—it’s intended to convey new insight. Literary metaphor isn’t hidden; its point is to be recognized as such. To quote Aristotle’s perfect definition: a “metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else.”
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The trouble is, sometimes the writer gets so carried away with crafting a beautifully written, evocative metaphor, he forgets to tell us what, exactly, the “thing” it’s being compared to actually is. Here’s an example:Something deep inside Sam was about to tear; he felt it pulling apart at the seams. He pictured it like a clumsy teen’s well-used softball, the stitching now a grimy gray. Once that stitching pops, though, it will become something else, as the cover peels off revealing something ugly and strange, something you would never suspect had always been at the heart of that once gleaming, achingly hopeful softball.
It’s evocatively written, but because we have
no idea
what the “something ugly and strange” actually corresponds to in the story, or what point the author is trying to make other than that something vague and unspecified inside Sam is going to rip like a softball, it is also uninvolving. Metaphors have resonance only when we know, specifically, what they’re supposed to illuminate. Otherwise, although it definitely sounds like it’s meant to tell us something really important, we’re left thinking,
I know this has great significance, but I have no idea of what
. Nor should we have to spend even a nanosecond decoding a metaphor. It should be “gettable” when reading at a clip, and its meaning instantly grasped. What’s more, metaphors need to give us new information and fresh insight rather than simply restating something we already know, no matter how poetically.
3.
The specific
memory
that a situation invokes in the protagonist
. Here’s another great start:
The minute Sam threw the stinky old softball at Holly, he knew it was a mistake. If only he’d learned his lesson during that unforgettable eleventh inning at Lake Winnatonka Camp for the Clumsy during the summer of 1967—but sadly, no, he hadn’t.
We’re left thinking,
Wait, what lesson? Why was it unforgettable?
Because without the specifics—what
actually happened
back in 1967—we have no idea what Sam should have learned from it, how it applies to what’s happening now, or what it’s meant to tell us about the dynamic between Sam and Holly. Because the reader has no point of reference, the best she can do is make up something. This is even more maddening than it sounds, because she’d then have no way whatsoever of knowing whether she was right. And worse, since the chance of her actually envisioning the specifics the writer left blank are about as likely as either of us winning the lottery, she’s now imagining a decidedly different story than the one the writer actually wrote.
4.
The specific
reaction
a character has to a significant event
.
Let’s follow Holly and Sam a bit longer:
Sam was terrified that if Holly spotted him following her again with the softball in his pocket, she’d not only nix their spaghetti dinner rendezvous that night but would finally take out that restraining order. He was so worried about it that he didn’t notice she’d stopped to tie her shoe, and he tripped over her. Now she knew he’d been tailing her, there was no getting around it.
The next day Sam went to work, hoping his boss was in a good mood, because he wanted to ask him about that promotion.…
And we’re left thinking,
Hey, wait a minute, wasn’t Sam worried about what would happen when Holly found out he was following her? What conclusion does he draw? What’s the result? The consequence? How does he feel? Say something, anything!
What’s worse, because we knew Sam was extremely concerned about it, the fact that he’s not reacting an iota makes us wonder if he’s made of flesh and blood after all. Hey, maybe aliens really are among us.
I know this example seems extreme, but it’s astoundingly common. Why? My guess is that since the writer clearly told us how much Holly meant to Sam, she figured we’d know exactly how Sam felt, so why should she have to waste time spelling it out? But although we can indeed imagine how Sam feels in general—say it with me—the story is in the specifics.
The point is, characters need to react to everything that happens for a specific reason we can grasp in the moment. Of course, there may be a deeper reason as well that we won’t fully understand until later. In fact, the “real reason” for a reaction may be the opposite of what it looks like now. But what there can’t be, if you want your readers to stay with you, is
no
reaction. This is especially true when we’ve been led to believe that a character will be hugely affected by something that then doesn’t cause him to bat an eyelash. It’s one more reason to always keep in mind that the story isn’t in what happens; it’s in how your characters react to it.
5.
The specific
possibilities
that run through the protagonist’s mind as she struggles to make sense of what’s happening
. This is ripped straight from the pages of our generic story:
Holly realized Sam had been stalking her all these years.
Why on earth would he do that, and what’s up with that softball?
she wondered, racking her brain for an answer, but not coming up with anything that would explain it.
This time we’re left thinking,
Wait; can you at least tell us what the options were? What went through Holly’s brain as she racked it?