Less Back and Forth

One common issue in story structure concerns the balance between the ongoing story and the background pieces that fill out the characters’ past. Since authors tend to insert background work early in a novel, the problem is made more acute. So much time can be spent in the past that the present-day plot never has a chance to generate the momentum needed to pull the reader through the book.

While the imbalance can be be addressed partially by paring back the background stories, I find as an editor that most of it is worthy of inclusion. It is important to make characters as distinct as possible, and limning their childhood, for instance, is a solid way to do that. So how can these two imperatives work in better harmony?

A first step is reviewing the background pieces, especially entire chapters. How many do you have? Using a rough count, add up the number of pages devoted to background as well.  Then count the number of present-day chapters during that same early stretch, along with its aggregate number of pages.

If the count is roughly equal, one method of lessening the drag of background pieces is seeing if you can combine them to create fewer of them. This is particularly effective if you are trading back and forth, one for one, between present and background chapters. When you make longer chapters by ganging them up, you are jerking the reader back into the past fewer times.

That raises a new issue, of course. Aren’t I creating more emphasis on the past by allowing the reader to dwell there longer? That can be addressed by several strategies. First, increase the length of your present-day chapters, ganging them up if necessary, in order to maintain a preponderance on that side. Because you generate more tension in chapters in which readers don’t know the outcome, you can create stronger momentum in the present-day chapters by making sure they end on a tense note that the reader wants to see resolved. You leave them hanging, in other words. When you create a tense chapter ending, the reader will have a strong desire to return to the present.

Once you have done that, return to the background pieces with an eye toward cutting them down. You’ll find that the background chapters want to be more compressed, not covering a flashback second by second, because you know the reader is waiting for you to get back to the good stuff in the present.

Exercise: An efficient way to parcel out background information is use a ladder theory. That is, who is highest on your ladder in terms of importance? They should get the greatest volume of background work early on. If you have stories about supporting characters, they can be pushed back later in the book. Just look for stretches where their roles in the present become more important.

“The past is always tense, the future perfect.”
― Zadie Smith

Copyright @ 2024 John Paine. All rights reserved.

Uncomplicated

While hiding one’s feelings helps in real life, such as during a domestic negotiation, it defeats what you are trying to do as a writer: connect with your readers. If they do not know how a character reacts to an obstacle, such as a fight with a partner, they are not allowed to participate vicariously. Instead, they are kept at arm’s length.

A routine element of my editing practice is writing suggestions to insert what a character is feeling at a given point in the manuscript. The responses, which I read in the next draft, reveal a great deal about how guarded the author is about revealing emotions in general. When I pen 100 or more of these suggestions, which is quite common, an author’s natural tendency to shield himself can reach neurotic proportions.

Writing down feelings in the first-person narrative voice can help, but only if you use the immediacy of the voice to be direct. Let’s say a wife upbraids her successful husband about a secret he has been hiding. How does he react? Here is one response: “I always wanted the warm fuzzy stuff from her, and now here I am being challenged to meet the most threatening pieces of my life.” The language is down to earth, but the author is being too fancy. Do you know any wives that are “warm and fuzzy”? And what are pieces of a person’s life? Lay it on the line, with a variant like: “She was always so docile—that’s why I married her—and now she was threatening to expose me.” Now the reader can feel worried.

Another trap I see commonly is naming the emotion. “I had no clue about the fragility she imposed on me until I felt it.” You might think at first that the sentence is awkwardly constructed, but in fact the problem is using the abstraction “fragility.” When a person is feeling fragile, she is about to scream, have a nervous breakdown, break down in tears, etc. Emotions surge forward from the primitive part of our brain, and primitives, I imagine, spoke plainly.

The same logic applies to loading up a sentence. Often a promising start is made, but then the author feels he must pile on to make the emotion authentic. That’s why a sentence like “My frightened distraction about being discovered overrode being embarrassed” doesn’t work. Sticking all those big words in the same sentence puts up a veil between me and the character. Break it into two simple sentences—using “discovered” and “embarrassed” as the verbs.

Exercise: Literary really means: more honest. If you want to describe how a person feels during a domestic fight, remember a fight you once had. It didn’t have to be with your spouse; a parent will suffice. Remember what you said, or better yet, what you wished you had said when you relived it afterward. If the emotions sting, or burn, you’re on the right track.

“It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.” —Gao Xingjian

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

 




 

Too Much Speculation

Dystopian fiction proposes a number of futuristic scenarios that are grim and gripping by turns. As an follower of coming trends, I am fascinated by the logical extrapolations that these authors make. What would happen if Google glasses were changed to a chip that was implanted inside someone’s head? What if virtual reality games were sold as vacations? These and myriad other examples of technology gone wild place the reader in a context that is unfamiliar only to a degree.

In terms of story structure, I regard these hypothetical devices as background material, akin to research. That may seem like quite a downgrade in status, considering all of the imagination that goes into devising and then integrating the speculative technology into the lives of the book’s inhabitants. Yet consider the issue from this point of view. No matter how dynamic a futuristic tech device is, the reader will not become actively engaged unless a character uses it.

That is why an author needs to be careful about how much tech they front-load in a novel. A reader opens the story looking for a story line, above all. You can throw out as many jaw-dropping concoctions as you like, but if your main character does not have a crisis to confront, I might as well be reading a tech e-zine. After a certain time your reader, realizing that the novel is filled with furniture but no soul, will give up.

The word vicarious is useful in this case. Yes, as a reader I do want to go on a virtual journey. I want to participate vicariously. But unless I identify with a character, realizing that their struggles are not so different from my own, taking the trip is an intellectual exercise devoid of emotion.

The dystopian author’s problem is the same faced by writers of historical fiction. A reader does want to inhabit the time period of long ago, but if all I’m getting is material like how a crinoline skirt was filled out, I’m going to quit. I could read that in a history book. You need characters first, top of the list. Get us engaged with them, and then bring on all those terrific ideas.

Exercise: Read through the first 50 pages of the manuscript. That’s when the sale of a book is made. How much of the material is devoted to explanations of devices? Is anyone in danger because someone is using them? Does the reader understand, from the main character’s point of view, why you started the book where you did?

“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.”
― William Faulkner

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

Motivation, Not Motivational

Certain types of novels, such as those in the inspirational or sports categories, have a bent toward moral instruction. That’s because we all can be better than we are. We know that, and as a result we enjoy reading about characters who reach heights they never thought they could attain. 

Anyone who reads widely, however, tends to react negatively to motivational dogma. The message is true, granted, but we have read or heard the same thing so many times, we shut down out of boredom. It’s not enough to fill only the heart.

You probably aren’t going to discover any new words of wisdom that haven’t been used by a legion of past writers. The Bible, for example, is pored over by thousands of ministers for every Sunday’s sermon. One reason philosophy isn’t a hot topic these days is because so many incredibly smart people have already tried to explain human existence. 

So, how do you write such a tale without reaching for well-worn platitudes? You can start by picking a distinctive concept. An inspirational author I have edited for years combs news articles to come up with new ideas for her novels. She seizes upon a topic like borderline personality disorder and then asks herself: how does a self-destructive woman find a way to hope? Once you discover a unique prism through which to view familiar subject matter, the hoary can become fresh.  

Along with a new concept must come unusual characters or an unusual mix of characters. A hero who knows what’s right but keeps doing wrong is more compelling than an acolyte who absorbs wisdom like a sponge. A heroine who keeps being talked into partying by a friend she knows is leading her down the wrong path is more fun to read about than a repressed loner who keeps hearing the same advice from a careerist friend. When you add nuances—trying but falling—you create a character that reminds readers of their own well-intentioned failures. That’s putting the reader in the lead character’s shoes. 

The same is true of the villain(s). If all he does is scheme about killing everyone in the world—the chuckling devil incarnate—you might as well be writing about Batman and Robin. If the lead villain is conflicted, though—perhaps a woman who actually liked dating the hero before she cheated on him—now she has a chance at redemption because she’s not all bad. I can root for that, even if she ends up cleaning out all of his bank accounts in the end. 

Exercise: Look through your notes for those on motivational themes. Have you heard that stuff a thousand times? You’d be better off putting one of those decrees into action. The mentor shows the protagonist the right way rather than your preaching about it through the thin guise of a character’s voice. Write out a scene about it—minus the platitudes. 

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

The Quality of Connections

A shifting link between characters marks the most promising relationships in fiction. On the one hand is the dramatic imperative for conflict. If the characters aren’t fighting over something, readers will quickly lose interest. On the other hand is the human need to matter to someone else. Many protagonists are mavericks, but if what they are doing doesn’t affect others, they might as well be battling shadows in a cave.

When you are outlining a novel, or even while a draft is developing, the choice of what type of tension you want determines how much room you will have to expand the relationship. In this post I’ll focus on a romantic connection. Let’s say an office guy and gal are hot for each other from the get-go. In that configuration your basis for development is limited. They should just find an unoccupied conference room and go for it. But how much interest will the reader have in repeat visits to that room? There are only so many interruptions at a frustrating moment you can use before the gambit becomes tired.

The ripping off of clothes is most satisfying after the characters first have had to strip away what’s inside. A woman whose husband has died, for instance, carries a longing for the partner that blocks her ability to become involved with another. She sizes up the different things the new potential partner does in terms of what her beloved did. Certain conflicts may be more heightened than others. If her dead husband used to make her laugh, and the newbie is a serious sort, she’ll be looking for an ironical comment that doesn’t come, and she’ll be disappointed that the newbie didn’t see the humor in the situation. She may keep that negative reaction under wraps at first—why dampen the delightful sensations of attraction for that?—but when eventually she complains to him about it, who is going to change?

This example is only one of a panoply of choices you can make deliberately before Romeo ever meets Juliet. How can you set up the obstacles in such a way that they remain problematic? How can you make them unique—i.e., fresh to the reader? Going one step further, can you draw up a hierarchy of friction points? Then you can knock off the minor ones earlier, saving the real beasts for later.

Exercise: Draw up a list of qualities for both characters with the maxim “It must irritate the partner” uppermost in mind. Now consider what qualities each of them hold most dear. Flirtatiousness, for instance, is something a partner can learn to live with as long as what he holds most dear, faithfulness, is never in doubt. But at what point in the book does he finally have no doubts?

“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

 

Not for Always

For any novel that depends on plot elements to move a story forward, it’s useful to keep in mind that a plot event is not necessarily an advance set in stone. It’s easy to see why an author might make this mistake. Once a plot advance is written, it’s down on paper. Check it off the list of outline notes. Yet what is done can be undone by sleight of hand.

Let’s consider the example of an accountant coming upon odd entries in a company’s records. A scene is written for the first discovery, perhaps another scene for a more extensive search, and something looks very suspicious. At some point the accountant will report the findings to a superior. You have the reader on the hunt. Finally, the crooks will be punished. Yet what happens if the superior is the embezzler, and the accountant the next morning is found floating in the river?

The character scored only a temporary win. What does that mean in terms of overall story dynamics? You still derive the benefit from those scenes building up the hunt. Plus, the knowledge is still a suspense element even though the accountant, in this case,  is no longer in a position to build it further. That’s because you have imparted evidence to the reader—but not to other characters who are in a position to right the wrong.

A plot gain can also be reversed. This is true especially when tracking a character’s  emotions. The pathway to blissful sex for the rest of a character’s life is a common aim thwarted in the romance genre. Great sex early on, yes, but then the stud muffin makes a typically stupid male error, the heroine is offended, and the reader is frustrated for another 50 pages. Lest the more literary types scoff, think of a daughter’s yearning to be accepted by her mother. What seems like a victory could be snatched away the very next day—because the problem all along has been that the mother is unstable.

So that plot element is not off the list at all, if you don’t want it to be. Story tension is like musical tension: a crest is succeeded by a trough and a new way to find the next climax. You can design a plot advance so that it becomes a setback when experienced by a minor character, such as the accountant, but becomes a watershed when discovered by your protagonist later on. You can go back to the same well, only the guise—and more important, a reader’s emotional involvement in a character—is different.

Exercise: Review the manuscript for great ideas that seem, in the long run, to have been cut short. Who is the event assigned to? If you repurposed an event to be private rather than  “a plot event,” could it become a cog in a larger wheel? You can create progression in an idea merely by how it is perceived successively by the protagonist.

“Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.” —Thor Heyerdahl

Copyright @ 2024 John Paine. All rights reserved.

Living the Dream

No one, no matter how happy, fails to look over the fence at greener grass. That is the human condition: to wish for something we are not. The desire to become someone else, even if only temporarily, is one of the main reasons people tell stories. All of those characters are, thankfully, not you.

That motive conflicts with another main reason to write: self-regard. You have to think that you have something special—the ability to write, if nothing else—that sets you apart from the hoi polloi. So if you’re going to write about the human condition, all the interesting stuff that’s happened to you sounds like a good lode to mine.

I would venture to say that most writers are better off striving for wish fulfillment rather than self-exploration. It is true that having a rough life makes for interesting stories, but how many people really have it rough? I’ll go beyond that and ask another question: how many people who have endured hardships have the talent or the perseverance to write about them in a way that inflames the reader?

That question strikes at the heart of the matter. Writing about yourself is like writing in a journal. You try to capture past incidents in words, however imperfectly. Because the material chimes inside of you, causing deep feelings associated with remembrance, you don’t realize as clearly how it would impact someone else. It is a shortcut, in other words.

Longing to inhabit another’s shoes takes more effort. You have to draw up defining characteristics: who is that person like? You have to keep asking yourself how the person will react in a given situation. What would he say to that? Would he respond at all? You walk around during the day, after the writing session, thinking about what you have written. And at a more advanced stage, the character starts telling you what he wants.

Where are your personal feelings in this construct? They’re inside everything the character does. You’re still the same egotistic maniac. Yet you are pouring those drives into an ideal, someone larger than yourself. That being may be just outsized enough to capture the reader’s interest.

Exercise: If you have a character that is largely autobiographical, you might use two guidelines to judge how effective she is. First, are her plot events progressing in an arc that is intrinsic to the circle you’re completing inside the book? Put another way, are you sticking in stuff just because it happened to you? Second, are her feelings interesting, or are they as mundane as you, gazing over the fence, are?

“If a poem is each time new, then it is necessarily an act of discovery, a chance taken, a chance that may lead to fulfillment or disaster.” —A. R. Ammons

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

Cap the Gushing Well

Anyone with a modicum of experience in romantic attraction knows that devotion goes only so far. This is particularly true during the courtship phase of a relationship. If either party shows an inclination toward slavery to the other, the one being worshiped tends to edge away. This reluctance stems not so much from feeling unworthy of such adulation as the fact that faithfulness quickly becomes tiresome.
 

I raise this point because in my profession, I am often exposed to a paradox. Most men I know in real life are akin to statues. You can say just about anything to them and they don’t flinch. That stoicism intrigues the opposite sex, who see mystery when most times it is a void. A guy just will not admit he has feelings, even to himself.

Now let’s look at books. I find myself frequently telling male authors not to make their romantic swains too steadfast. It’s a puzzling phenomenon, since I know how many books have been written about men’s inability to commit. I know guys are the reason we have the term “midlife crisis.” So I’m not sure why writing a novel brings out the tender side in my sex. 

Love at first sight may actually happen, but it is not interesting to read about. When I bring this to a male author’s attention, what tends to occur is the opposite of what I am advising. I use the word “fun” a lot: make the romance fun. You know, do a cartwheel on Fifth Avenue. Delight your new amour with your spontaneity and cheer. Yet the revised scene I get back is deathly serious. The author doubles down on the character’s fealty. Entire paragraphs are written about how incredibly sensitive the hero is—not like a statue at all. 

Do us all a favor. Develop a sense of humor. Lighten up. You’re in the business of entertainment. Rather than going inward, think of fun things your character can do outwardly. Have him buy ballet tickets on the spur of the moment. Have him suggest they go out for an ice cream cone. Heck, have him direct their walk past a local playground to watch all the little kids running around. But whatever you do, get him off his emoting ass.

Exercise: Guys are good at writing action scenes. If you know this is a strength of yours, pursue the course of romance this way. If a guy feels attracted to a gal, have him do something embarrassing to prove he isn’t. If he feels the gal is attracted to him, have him remark on it—and then write out her reaction. Don’t pine away for the reader’s benefit. We’re waiting for the fireworks.

“The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless.”
—Dorothy L. Sayers

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

Get in, Get out

Narrating a story from within a character’s head requires judicious balance. Unless the thoughts the character is having are arresting and provocative, inward commentary can clog up outward story progress. Yes, we do want to know a rebel’s take on corporate stooges, for one idea, but too much posturing can start to feel like more of the same. Enough snide asides already. Go ahead and punch the guy in the nose.

Trying to write a book that is both character- and plot-driven runs the risk of ending up with a “mid-list book,” in publishing parlance. You do need to rise above the level of Willie-walked, Willie-stared type of writing, but you also can’t fall in love with thoughts you manage to write down on paper. So how do you move the story along and also achieve a satisfying depth of characterization?

A good place to start is asking the question: What type of thoughts do I have? If you really have the gift of writing out entire skeins of thoughts, like the literary authors you admire, then interior activity is its own reward. But if your characters tend to think about what is immediately in front of them, you’d better think about pruning them. Those thoughts are essentially functioning as gilding on the related plot events.

Like anything placed in juxtaposition, such commentary tends to compete with  what is happening. Oh, she said something mean, so what did he think of that? It’s like watching tennis. After a few pages the scene becomes loaded with so many thoughts, the pacing drags. The writing becomes enervated—because not enough is happening to support the gilt.

You need to push the envelope. Being snarky is safe. Thoughts that are related to action should function as the build-up for a truly disturbing plot event. The thoughts become actualized, in other words—and someone ends up being damaged. That’s why we read novels. They take readers beyond what they would dare to do. 

Exercise: Review a chapter with an eye out for interior work. You have to be honest with yourself. Do you find yourself start to feel annoyed with the commenting character? Do you feel the scene is dragging? Not every action requires a thought. Try to trim a third of them and see how the balance strikes you now.

“The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
—James Joyce

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

Lacking Philosophy

An interesting question came out of a book club last week: what is the difference between commercial, mid-list, and literary fiction? The basic premise is easy enough to explain. The more the book is concerned with exterior events, the more commercial it is. That’s why a good thriller, for instance, contains lots of plot twists. The more the narrator’s thoughts predominate, the more literary it is.

Yet a deeper question underlies the distinction: should you try to be literary just because those are the types of novels you enjoy reading? I tend to sound a note of caution on this subject, for several reasons. The first is any person’s ability to make deeper sense of our existence. Such thinking goes beyond an older person’s accumulation, over a lifetime of experiences, of knowledge about how the world works. I am older, and I don’t believe I have ever elicited someone dropping their jaw about a profound remark I’ve made. Most forms of wisdom are practical, not of the sort that makes you remember a novel.

The second reason is also commonplace: a writer’s belief that they are special and thus have special things to tell the rest of us. I see this with virtually every doctor-cum-writer I have ever read, to give an example of this cocksure quality. The fact is, success makes a person regard the world as their oyster—when that success may be based on an entirely plebian advantage, such as selling buttons with a new number of holes. Using a novel as a soapbox does not mean it achieves more depth, but merely self-satisfaction.

A third addresses a quality that most writers would give their eye teeth for. That is the ability to write limpid prose. We all love to read books whose words flow effortlessly, that contain terrific metaphors and juxtapositions. I always think of John Updike in this regard: how could his every sentence have such clarity? In this province of authors lies most literary lights. They flat-out have more talent purely at writing, whether taught or bred in the bone. Yet many of these authors write mostly second-rate books. The mill churns as a career winds on, and shallow books like Updike’s Brazil are the outcome. Perfect pitch but where’s the soul?

Many young writers bemoan their lack of true hardship in their childhoods, and as trite as that reasoning is—just write if you’re going to do the damned thing—it contains a kernel of truth. Many good writers are deranged. They are damaged human beings. The ability to go beyond and find a truth that truly shocks us requires the journey. How did you get so whacked out you went there? That willingness to discover belongs mainly to what the I Ching hexagram would call: Youthful Folly. It’s no wonder that writers become alcoholics. They spend the rest of their lives trying to recapture the brilliance of a world they could still mold.

“It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.” —Aldous Huxley

Copyright @ 2024 John Paine. All rights reserved.

Faintly Despising

Authors have all sorts of reasons to start a book. The most common one is that a topic piques their interest. A fascination with Irish mythology, to cite one example, can lead a writer to study the myths of the Ulster Cycle. A parallel interest in writing something that will sell, like his kids’ favorite, Harry Potter, can give birth to a YA fantasy set in the Emerald Isle. Off he plunges into the great unknown that is a novel.

Many moons can pass before a draft of a manuscript is finalized. The author decides she wants to get it published—and then runs into the gauntlet known as “agents.” She is mystified that everyone sends back a form-letter rejection. At some point she may consult a professional like myself and ask what went wrong.

I read it and it’s instantly apparent that the book doesn’t meet the requirements of the genre. The author often doesn’t know what genre he’s writing in. As I talk to such authors, I frequently discover that he has an inner critic that dislikes the genre in general. “Oh, kids books” or  “What’s the big deal about Harry Potter, besides those amazing sales?”

A telling example of this bizarre attitude occurred at a book reading I attended. The author had become captivated with a futuristic gadget and wrote a slim dystopian novel based around it. In his prefatory remarks he said dismissively, “I didn’t even known what dystopian was until my agent told me.” Right away I was on guard. And sure enough, when he read aloud his excerpt, the material was dialogue-dominated gibberish. I know dystopian novels very well, and his sounded like “worst in class.”

I won’t bother advising here that an author study her genre before starting a book. That goes without saying. I do want to raise a question, though. Why, if you’re not willing to fully commit to providing what genre readers expect, bother writing the novel at all? No one is forcing you. Why spend all those hours on an enterprise that is doomed from the start by your own disinterest?

Life is short. The creative process is intoxicating, yes. But you also need to husband your time. Write a book that you can’t stop pouring your heart into. That’s the only way anyone reading it will respond.

Exercise: How do you pick out outstanding examples of a type of novel? It’s as simple as typing into an Amazon window “the best [children’s fantasies].” If Harry Potter is not to your taste, check out the alternate authors on the list. One of those may write in a style that you feel chimes with your own. So see how he does it.

“Criticism is prejudice made plausible.” —H.L. Mencken

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

Shifting Gears Too Fast

Most authors know that a novel should contain a series of obstacles the protagonist must overcome. These obstacles gain greater meaning if they are placed in context, including the relationships of the affected characters and their backgrounds. A major factor that affects the balance between plot and context is chronology. When should the story forge into the future, and when should it delve into the past?

A novel has a starting and ending point, yet an author may choose to begin somewhere in the middle. Let’s use the dissolution of a marriage as an example. While you can open the book when the couple first met, that starts the story off on the wrong foot. That’s when they’re happy together. To show the dissolution, a novel would better open at the point one partner first suspects the other is having an affair. That could be one year, five years, twenty years into the marriage. The bloom is off the rose.

If that point in time is chosen, the question then becomes: how long should you stick with the immediate crisis before providing the context? After all, couples break up all the time, so you have to define why the reader should care about your couple. That requires background. If you jump back in time too fast, though, you may not have added up enough present-time issues to make the present crisis gripping.

Several methods of flipping back and forth in time can be used. The more standard one sets up a present issue, then goes back in time to record the couple’s history in an extended run from start to the present. The more difficult feat is jumping back and forth more frequently, creating juxtaposition. No matter which is chosen, however, you still have to give the reader enough reason to care about the crisis that opened the book. The sole exception is a murder—the end point of a novel that dwells in the past.  

In most cases, length of coverage determines reader interest in an obstacle. If you spend five pages narrating the present problem, then jump back in time for 20 pages to cover the course of the marriage, think of how that affects the reader. You’re trading a brief spurt of immediacy for four times that amount in stuff that already happened. Is your reader going to wait that long?

Exercise: You’re better off setting a target at the beginning: I’ll go 30 pages, maybe 50. That length forces you to plunge into the opening crisis to a depth that will truly draw the reader into the book. We can meet a few key players, get a sense of how they rub each other the wrong way. Once you establish the promise of plenty of friction to come, now let’s find out how they arrived at this unfortunate state of affairs.

“Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.” —Willa Cather

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

The Weight of Novelty

Many novels focus on a chosen field in which the author has developed expertise. This allows readers to explore an unfamiliar realm, expanding their knowledge of the world at large. The areas in which such fresh discoveries can occur encompass a wide range. The world of technology is frequently probed, as is the sphere of medical advances. An author is cautioned, however, not to rely too much on the gee-whiz factor. 

The compulsions that drive the human species, even the cell phone–bearing version, have not changed much since we descended from trees. That is the continuing paradox of civilization. How can we still be ruled so completely by our base instincts? Those same urges govern the reading experience as well. Love, death, and their spinoffs such as titillation and fear of physical harm bring out the animal in us. That’s what we crave.

In a world populated by barely hairless creatures, an author who strays too far into intellectual abstraction runs the risk of being arid. A degree of drama can be achieved by performing a risky operation, such as one that will bring hearing to the deaf. The afflicted patient can be made sympathetic, the procedure can be described masterfully, and the suspense of waiting for the results provides tension. Yet the outcome does not provide that much of a bang. After all, what if the operation failed? The character was already used to being deaf. She’s not going to die because an impossible dream wasn’t realized.

In other words, you cannot let your own fascination in a subject rule your plotting. It may be cheap, but the fact is, if you put that deaf character in an isolated house where a madman outside will use his knowledge of her deafness to torment her, you’ll achieve greater suspense. A reader understands being vulnerable. We all fear the unknown assailant, especially in a world where young men can so readily stray beyond social bonds.

You can explore how great it would be to achieve an uber ability. You can really make us understand that patient. But you have to harness the opposing sides of our nature. That’s a tough feat to pull off, achieved by literary, not scientific, acumen.

Exercise: You have to be chary about explanations of difficult scientific procedures. Even readers of Michael Crichton have only so much patience. If I start feeling like a baffled student in high school chemistry lab, I’ll skip the rest. Readers aren’t necessarily stupid, but if you think of holding them by the hand as you walk them through dense material, you’re on the right path.

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” —Gertrude Stein

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine 

Invitation to Participate

As an editor, I have to search for ways to motivate authors to bring their characters fully to life. In the early stages of an edit I will try different tactics. On a large scale, I might suggest composing character sketches. On a granular level, I might edit one scene with a dozen prompts that say: What is the character feeling now? Authors have varying abilities to respond with anything that truly reveals character. So sometimes the editorial prism itself has to be altered in order to produce results. Here is one method that works.

Most authors understand that a unified point of view in the narration can produce greater personal depth. Simply being with a character more allows a reader to get to know them better. An author can use that principle in different ways. If a lead character does not control the point of view of a scene he is in, the scene can be rewritten to use his POV. If you do that for even a half dozen scenes, the reader is going to see things his way more often.  

A narrative that contains indirect quotations most likely indicates that the author is standing outside her own story. Unless your protagonist clearly has a distinctive voice, indirect quotes should be changed to dialogue. The immediacy can draw a reader to a character. The words are not cloaked any longer by the author reporting on the scene. They are given directly, the way words emerge from within all of us. As a plus, a reader can often imagine that she would say the same thing in that situation. I cannot tell you how many times a scene that seemed dead became sparked with personality after making this basic change.

Another technique is derived from the direct-dialogue principle. Words do not need to be spoken aloud to evince character. If a character has a thought that is almost exactly what he would say—“I wish that guy would go to hell”—you have penetrated inside the character’s mind. Many authors like to put these “quoted” thoughts in italic type, to set them off from the omniscient narration. The reader grasps the meaning, with the added benefit that he feels he is an insider as the action is occurring. Once an author becomes comfortable with this technique, the story can become filled with thoughts. Even better, the author can start to devise unspoken worries prior to a plot event that drive anticipation of what will happen. 

Exercise: Review the text with a single goal in mind: I am going to invite the reader into the story. When you see a sentence that strikes you as bland, or too neutral, your first thought should be the lead character in the scene. Could I convey the idea through her point of view? The plot point is supposed to matter to her, not you.

“People know things and have a remarkable capacity to act in their individual immediate interests all the time.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates

Copyright @ 2024 John Paine. All rights reserved.

Back and Forth

Balance is a keyword when alternating between background work and a plot. The line between past and present is always fluid in a novel, because an author frequently needs to reveal the characters' past in order to better inform why they are acting the way they are. This logic extends to larger dimensions as well, such as underlying premises for the plot. So how do you know when you’re visiting the past too much?

To answer that question, I’ll first make a remark about the different types of momentum generated by past and present. A past story already happened. By and large, it does not make the reader look forward in anticipation. The present, on the contrary, is driving toward what will happen. It generates more momentum because the reader does not know how things will play out.

Judged in those terms, the calculation becomes easier. What takes place in the background stories, and what takes place in the present? What I often find is that the back stories, filled with lore, of whatever degree you like, are more exciting. Only in the past can the equivalent of Excalibur be ripped from the stone. The forward-pushing plot, by contrast, can seem dull by comparison. Oh, the river’s too wide? Come on, let’s look for a ford. 

Part of the problem is due to how compressed the two types of narrative are. A background story is told in summary fashion, delivered in a tight package that highlights only the good parts. The present is looser, filled with such structural elements as dialogue, in order that the writing is not too tight, keeping the reader at a distance. But let’s flip the coin and consider the narrative summary’s drawback. To achieve its compression, it has to be told from more of a distance. The intimacy of following a character closely is surrendered so that the past is not competing directly with the present.

The reason balance is so vital is because you don’t want a novel too filled with inert, compacted material. Inert because it already happened and compact by the nature of the telling. You need the plot to carry such loads forward. Moreover, you need lots of plot, because each time the reader stops for a back story, the forward momentum has to be geared up all over again.

Exercise: Review the manuscript chapter by chapter. Draw up two lists, side by side: past and present. Summarize in a sentence or two what happens in each chapter, all the way through. When you’re done, look to see where the juicy stuff is. If there are too many on the past side, you should consider transforming some of them into events that occur in the present.

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.” —Virginia Woolf

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

Inside the Kinetic Robot

A major character is, in many novels, an engine driving a plot forward. The reader goes along for the ride. A major character is also a repository of the reader’s emotions. What happens to her concerns us, and that concern grows greater the more often she appears. A major character thus has a dual purpose.

Many fledgling writers seize upon the first and ignore the second at their peril. As a novel emerges, what a character has to do next is clearer than what he is feeling. Yet regarding characters solely in terms of their utility in moving the plot forward creates a problem. The reader doesn’t think in terms of plot function. She wants to participate in the plot’s events. The only way she can do that is by investing her emotions in the character. 

This is why successful novels have a strong central point of view. We’re not only along for the ride, the lead character is telling us how we should feel about the events along the way. If he evinces dismay, we become dismayed. This principle works even when a reader doesn’t like how the character reacts. If he gloats after stiffing an obnoxious cab driver, we may think, “Well, I don’t think I’d go that far,” but we still admire him for being outrageous. In either case, the principle is the same. The writer has put the emotion down on the page. We are invited to participate. 

Don’t assume we know what a character is like because of what she does. I do advocate showing, not telling, but not one in exclusion of the other. A person can react in a variety of ways to an action performed, and that reaction tells us what the character is like. A woman who saunters away after denting another car while parking is different from a woman who obsesses that the other driver will somehow know she caused the dent. We’ll be able to understand the emotions of either one. The difference is, we’re that much further inside your fictional world. 

Exercise: Take a scene, any scene, from your novel. Look solely for plot events. Who is causing the plot to move forward? If it’s a major character, what does he feel about what he’s done? Try to write a full sentence of reaction. Then try to write an entire paragraph, if the action isn’t too tense. What have you—and therefore the reader—learned about your character?

“Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.”  —Donald Hall

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

Inscribing a Character Arc

As the most important aspect of your novel, the lead character must be compelling enough to make readers care what happens to them. That means you must create compelling personal issues. Without obstacles, a character is bland or, worse, Superman. These issues can be tied up in the book’s plot, but you may find they are more moving if they’re a private concern. After all, any soldier returning from a war knows how to fire a rifle.

The two keys to making a personal issue matter to the reader are: it should keep occupying the hero’s attention as the novel proceeds; and it should be tied up by the time the novel is over. That means essentially that the personal issue is a subplot of its own, reaching its own climax. 

As an editor, I enter the picture usually after an author completes a draft. If I see the lead character is not distinctive enough, I will suggest basic issues that will round them out. Let’s say I suggest: give the soldier a mother who badgers them to write about their military experiences. A double whammy, right? The reader gets to see how they interact with their mother, and we learn how war affected them personally. 

Yet what I often get back after making these suggestions is a few scattered scenes. The mother shows up early—and the issue is dropped for a few hundred  pages, until she lamely shows up for a few paragraphs. Just sticking in a few inserts is actually worse than not doing it at all. You raise the reader’s curiosity but then leave her hanging. 

You need to be strategic about personal issues. The mother should appear at regular intervals, like any subplot character. The hero’s struggle with her badgering has to escalate over time, like any plot thread. If the soldier develops an interest in a partner, the mother will weigh in on that, too. You see what’s happening: I’m learning a lot about the hero through how they act with their mother. (By the way, for “mother” you can substitute “spouse,” “lover,” “friend,” etc.)

As for the book the soldier is writing? That also needs to ramp up as time goes on. Perhaps writing it causes lurid memories to return, causing them to become more unbalanced. Maybe a terrible secret that they’ve blocked out comes to the surface. As a reader, I don’t want diary entries. I want a kick-ass story that has a great ending. Just like any story element, the personal issue must be strategic.

Exercise: Planning really helps keep an issue vital as the novel goes on. Write down a list of things that could happen on that personal issue. Put the more crucial ones later, building up to them. Plug the scenes into the novel at defined intervals. Now see if it’s doing its job: making the hero stand out from the crowd.

“I don't want to be a genius—I have enough problems just trying to be a man.” ―Albert Camus

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine

The Blows of Pride

One of the first lessons a novelist learns is that the protagonist should face a series of obstacles. It is telling that so many react to that dictum by creating a series of external obstacles, resembling warriors in a video game to a greater or lesser degree. Even authors with a more literary bent will utilize characters embodying a social theme that oppresses from without. Less common are explorations of what drives a person to fail. Perhaps failure feels too tragic, and people write to feel good about themselves.

Failure comes in all sorts of varieties—because humans are so good at it—so I’ll focus here on it as a facet of divorce. A breakup is painful in direct proportion to its former promise. While a lucky half of all couples sail through life without it, I think most people have experienced the pain, either directly or as children. The pain of separation is sharp and bitter, and the bitterness never goes away, even if it dulls over time. 

Pride comes before a fall, and that is where failure can play a dynamic role in fiction. Pride can be built up through a series of scenes that show the keyed-on partners as proud to be married, whether that relates to their partner’s status or as parent of praised children. It can also be cultivated through the arguments of the spouses. Marriage is a series of compromises, and when one or both members in a couple refuses to bend, pride of belonging in one’s parental family is frequently the cause. So the parents can be brought into the novel to show what sparks such loyalty. Inherent in all of these interactions, of course, is the failure of the character to realize how blind their loyalty is.

The differences between a couple may be truly irreconcilable, but adding a tragic flaw is more dramatic. That doesn’t include such tawdry factors as workaholism. A tragic flaw stems from a more titanic goodness than that. Identifying what that is and then building the marriage scenes around it shows the poisonous root of the dissolution.

Equally as gripping are the waves of explanations a character makes, in private and to others, after the marriage falls apart. How does an author modulate the complaints to lay bare their shrillness? Does the character learn from the experience, or do they go on in life placing all the blame on the partner? A person can be consumed by bitterness just as easily as by joy. Where does that leave them at the end of the story, on the lonely rock they claim?

Exercise: You can use supporting characters to great effect. A mother’s dislike for her daughter-in-law is an obvious choice, but what about the friend that encourages the character’s growing dissatisfaction? When the divorce is final, what can the friend do to remedy the pain? Or, if the partner left for a new love, how does the newbie stack up against who was lost?

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” —Truman Capote

Copyright @ 2024 John Paine. All rights reserved.

Breaking the Law

One of the major goals in plotting a novel is righting a wrong. The nature of the wrong comes in many guises, and the steps toward remediating it may be as complicated as an author can concoct. Underneath all of the machinations, though, lies the principle of fairness. The meek shall inherit the earth writ large. 

Aiding the author’s efforts is the moral code that readers bring to a book. One salient truth that has emerged amid the decline of religious belief is that social norms and peer pressure exert a powerful ethical force. You need look no further than the acceptance of mask wearing during the epidemic: a lot of it was driven by what the people around us were doing.

That is why a character committing a crime has different levels of impact. If the person is a known villain, each new murder may not juice up the tension more. The exact opposite could happen, because the crimes become numbing. An act of evil committed by a good person, by contrast, can inject a tidal wave of uneasiness into the proceedings. 

At its base is the worry of getting caught, which we have all felt when committing a petty larceny of some sort. Never mind the shame. A life can be ruined by exposure, depending on the severity of the crime, and if we have come to identify with the character, it feels like our life that may be ruined. Or at the very least, our enjoyment of following that character.

The good character that commits a crime becomes charged with danger. That makes them more alluring, because we read books in part in order to dare to do things vicariously that we would not attempt in our real, boring life. The attraction to what has turned wild is combined with the character’s other qualities, the good side that assures us that the criminal behavior can be rectified.

Attention also needs to be paid to when is the crime committed. If it occurs early on, the book’s calculus is changed for the remaining hundreds of pages. First off, without enough circumstances forcing characters to commit a crime, the reader wonders how good they really are. Can I trust this person can, or wants to, turn things around? If the crime is committed later, it may be that the character has to fight back against the evil that has sprung up around them. Second, the character is on the run, so to speak, from that moment on, and is the book ready to free them from the familiar bounds of their loved ones or friends? Being a fugitive has plenty of tension, but how many near escapes can they undergo before the plot gambit becomes tiresome?

Exercise: When choosing a crime, try to pick one that suits the character. A likable person who tends to be devious may even earn laughs if they embezzle company funds. Or you can use contrast. A mild-mannered person who commits a horrific murder truly shocks us. You’re not writing for automatons; use their moral boundaries to your storytelling advantage.

Copyright @ 2024, John Paine 

Studying Details

When you read a well-written novel, you frequently encounter descriptions that arrest your attention by their penetration. The word picture makes you “see” the object so clearly. You wonder how they do that. When you look at your own writing, you find a belabored description you have written and sigh. It takes so long to get through all the words you have larded on that the picture feels turgid rather than vivid.

You may not be observing enough. Let’s consider where you are when you feel the need to describe something. You’re sitting at your desk, most likely. Can you observe the item in question from your desk? You struggle for long minutes, even an entire writing session, searching for what feels just beyond your mental grasp.

Those writers you admire are more focused on observing than you are. Writing for them is all-consuming: everything they experience could fit in their book. Sure, they’re brilliant. But they are also observing all the time. Whereas you—you’re missing the description of the sunlight because you’re complaining it’s too bright. You’re doing what people do: experience their lives interactively. But writers are weird. They’re the guys staring at you from a cubicle in the library.

I’m not advocating that you cultivate your weirdness. Yet you can be on the lookout. Let’s take the kitchen as one locale that every reader will recognize. A kitchen isn’t a place for writing. It’s for cooking or eating or gassing about the day you just had. But what if you took the time to look at common items more closely? Instead of nearly breaking your wrist to open that tomato jar so you can dump it in the sauce pan to get dinner done, just hold the jar in your hand first. Is it heavy? Have you ever considered that tomato sauce jars are heavy? As opposed to what other items you cook with?

The first thoughts you have will not be profound. You see “Ragu” on the label, and you know that’s too banal to fit your book. Stop focusing so hard. Stop trying to wrest meaning from the thing. Just hold it, let your mind drift, the same way you do when you’re at your desk writing. What associations do you have with tomato sauce? Did your mother cook spaghetti, and what are your stray memories of what she said while cooking? Or your kids, sitting at the kitchen table, irritable because they’re hungry? The more you dwell in your thoughts, the more your subconscious is bent from its habitual frenzy to revolve, in loops, around those associations. Now you can write something down.

Exercise: This post has been in large part an exercise, so I’ll add one more thought. You can be a little weird too. You can ask your spouse to watch the pot while you write down what you’re thinking. Do it right on the spot. Be an observer and then race to put it on the page.

“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.” —Marcus Aurelius

Copyright @ 2024 John Paine. All rights reserved.