Engaging the Reader

I was going through some of the early scenes in my novel recently and realized, sadly, that several of them are just really, really boring and probably at this point irrelevant. Time to wish them a fond goodbye and throw them out with the trash. There were others, however, that were just as boring but necessary to move the story forward.  Those I'll need to keep and revamp. What they're lacking is any kind of tension or emotion-- something, anything, to engage the reader and  make him want to read on. 

Donald Maass, author of Writing the Breakout Novel, says that most writers are aware that having tension on every page is the secret to great storytelling, but that few of us want to put in the time and effort to make it happen. In his Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook Maass shows how even a brief dialogue between buddies can be loaded with tension as in this passage from Harlan Coben's novel Gone for Good.

Another way to add tension to your fiction (or nonfiction) is to create reader anticipation for what's to come.  A few years ago I came across an exercise that was part of a piece by Eric M. Witchey in "The Writer" ["Step by Step: Get the emotion into your fiction].  In this excerpt Witchey illustrates how a writer can take a simple action and expand upon it to "create sympathy and reader anticipation by implying or explicitly revealing future dramatic events":
 

While developing the short story "The Mud Fork Cottonmouth Expedition," which appeared in Polyphony 4 from Wheatland Press, I was faced with my own flaccid prose:

Gordon parked the moped, and we started our hunt.

This line delivers facts, but the reader response is, "So what?"

Contrast that line with Witchey's expanded scene below. To flesh out the scene and develop the reader's experience, he forced his narrator (Rick) to interpret every detail based on attitude specific to his current emotional state.  In the revised scene that follows, "the two boys have just driven a moped to the river to hunt snakes.  Gordon wants to amuse himself.  Rick wants to impress the older boy. As you read, consider how and where the text creates sympathy and reader anticipation by implying or explicitly revealing future dramatic events:

               He pulled a little black pack out from under the seat of the moped.  It unrolled like one of Dad's wood-working tool sets.  Inside were tools and some cigarettes.  "Want one?"

              "Nah," I said.  I tried to sound like I might have said yes, but he laughed anyway.

               He flipped the lid on his Zippo lighter and lit it up.  "Keeps the mosquitoes away."

              "Yeah," I said.  "So, these moccasins.  How do you catch 'em?"

            "Different ways."  He followed a gravel trail behind the bridge abutment guardrail, past the concrete footings and down under the steel span that held up the pavement.  On the broken concrete below the bridge, he picked his way down to the water's edge and walked right into the river up to his knees. 

              "Come on," he said.

               I picked my way across the rubble.  "I'm coming." At the water, I hesitated. 

              "Afraid of leeches?" he asked.  "Smoke in the blood keeps 'em off."  He grinned around the edges of his Marlboro. 

              "Bull----."

              "So, what's keeping you?  It's easiest to walk in the water."

               It was my moment of truth.  I was about to put my brand new Converse tennis shoes into the water of the Mud Fork, water I shouldn't have been anywhere near, shoes that were supposed to keep me through the coming school year, with a guy who was smoking, and we'd got there on a moped, and I didn't have permission for any of this, and if the leeches did get me or if I drowned or if I even fell and got cut, I'd be grounded for freaking ever!

               Gordon didn't care.  He didn't have to ask.  He could smoke.  He had keys to the storage and a moped.  He turned and waded away in the brown water.

               I stepped in, and the water was up to my waist.  My feet sank into the muck on the bottom.  Pockets of iridescent oil rose to the surface of the water and trailed away from my legs.

In the same article (from a different story), Witchey gives us an example of another missed opportunity to create emotion, tension, and reader anticipation:

                        Marletta walked down the street looking for a place to hail Vincent's cab.

Here the character is involved in a goal-oriented action.  We know what she wants, but as readers, we are not engaged. There is no tension in that single sentence, no emotion. In the revised scene below, the author allows his POV character to interpret the setting based on attitude--Marletta's current emotional state--as she pursues her goal. Notice how the author creates tension and reader anticipation by implying or explicitly revealing future dramatic events:

      The pay-me pumps were a given in her business, but three-day old slush wasn't.  Slipping and bouncing buns on the concrete would total her fox vest and the silk-slink dress she used to display her goods.  Vincent's cab would be along in a few.  He was a clock-work kinda guy, but the slush under her bucking spikes didn't care.  She hobbled along under shop awnings, one foot in the melt by the building and the other slipping in icy slime.  She tried to sway with the slip from knees and hips in case Vincent drove up behind her.  A patch of salted sidewalk under an awning invited her, but it was Gustav's Deli.  She'd only have a minute there before Gussie came out with his broom.  Her faux Rolex said four-twenty.  About right.  Grabbing the awning crank mounted on the brick building, she stepped out of icy slime and stood in front of Gustav's window.  She opened her fox vest to the Canadian cold front and hoped her charms could convince Vincent to help her feed the kids.

Eric M. Witchey's fiction has appeared nationally and internationally in magazines and anthologies. He has published in multiple genres under several names. His how-to articles have appeared in The Writer Magazine, Writer's Digest Magazine, Writer's Northwest Magazine, Northwest Ink, and in a number of on-line publications. His fiction has won recognition from Writers of The Future, New Century Writers, Writer's Digest, and www.ralan.com. Click here for a short, mini lesson from Eric on the ABC's of how to get emotion into your fiction (from the series "Five Minutes on Fiction").

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29 Mistakes Beginners Make

A few years ago when I first started writing fiction -- and collecting all those books on the art, the craft, and the joy of writing it -- there was one thing I wanted to avoid more than anything else: making mistakes that only a beginning writer would make. As I read those writing books a familiar phrase kept popping up over and over again: Beginning writers tend to… (just try googling that string -- it's literally everywhere) followed by a warning that concerned the dreaded something or other that only beginning writers tend to do… Yikes! I decided to start a list.

This week I thought I'd share with you some of the things that beginning writers supposedly tend to do. The exercise, naturally, is to read over your work-in-progress and make sure you haven't done any of the naughty things on this list ;-)

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The Single Most Common Mistake:

Failure to recognize that the central character must act, not simply be acted upon, is the single most common mistake in the fiction of beginners. [John Gardner]

On Description:

Beginning writers tend to worry too much about overdoing it. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a student's work and asked for more detail about this or that – a place, a person – only to be told, "I didn't want to overdo it." Novice writers, just getting their chops, need to worry more about saying enough. [Chris Lombardi, GWW]

Beginning writers tend to use insufficient detail and abstraction where what is needed is concrete detail. [John Gardner]

Beginning writers tend to skimp on the elements of setting and time, probably out of dreary memories of long descriptions they have read… But when atmosphere is well created, we do not experience it as description; we simply experience it. [Janet Burroway]

Beginning writers use this formulaic sentence all too often: "__________ filled the air." The blank can be fear, panic, the scent of cheese, the blare of a marching band. It's part of a larger tendency of description without detail. It's telling and not showing: "…gradually the aroma of coffee filled the air." Nothing fills the air. Do not, under any circumstances, use the "______ filled the air" sentence structure. [John Dufresne]

On Character:

Beginning writers tend to forget about the "dynamics of desire" when they create fictional characters. They forget about that epiphany which needs to come "very near the beginning, where the sensual details accumulate around a moment in which the deepest yearning of the main character shines forth." [Robert Olen Butler]

Beginning writers tend to create passive central characters. Boy meets girl. Boy wants girl – good so far. Boy sits by phone waiting for girl to call – not so good anymore. You cannot write a successful story about a passive central character. And you wouldn't want to read one. [John Dufresne]

Beginning writers often try to write novels with a relatively passive protagonist who wants little or has largely given up wanting. I have met more than one writer who says that his character doesn't want anything -- he just wants to "live his life." That always brings to mind something Kurt Vonnegut said: "When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time." [Sol Stein & Kurt Vonnegut]

Beginning writers have a reticence to use the simple expression: she cried. Instead, we're pummeled with dubious and unnecessary euphemisms: Hot tears leaked from her eyes. Hot tears sprang to her eyes, trickled down her cheeks. Quick tears sprang to her eyes. A single tear ran down her cheek. Big tears, heavy as hail, poured down her cheek. Better: She cried. And there's no need to say She began to cry. You don't ever have to write the phrase She began anything. She either cried or she didn't. [John Dufresne]

Beginning writers tend to present a main character with a slew of characteristics, when one that is just right would do the job much more efficiently. [Sol Stein]

Beginning writers often have trouble motivating their character's actions. Unfortunately one mention on page sixty-eight isn't going to do it. This is one of fiction's major challenges: making readers understand a character's motives when those motives are not simple. The way you create such understanding is through patterns of incidents. No one occurrence will be enough. [Nancy Kress]

On Structure:

Beginning writers often pad their stories with unnecessary scenes. Study your scene list, trying to eliminate scenes or combine scenes. I've frequently been startled by how much a story can be sharpened by concentrating its events and emotions into the bare minimum of scenes. [Nancy Kress]

Beginning writers tend to use unnecessary flashbacks. While flashback can be a useful way to provide background to character or the history of events – the information that screenwriters call backstory – it isn't the only way. Rather, dialogue, brief summary, a reference, or detail can often tell us all we need to know. [Janet Burroway]

Beginning writers tend to lose sight of their own scenes, letting them drift into flashbacks like Arctic explorers into snowstorms, never to be seen or heard from again. [Peter Selgin, GWW]

Beginning writers tend to unravel the thread of the story instead of keeping it taut like the gut strings of a tennis racket. (Sol Stein).

Beginning writers tend to give far too much background, then compound this mistake by putting the background where it shouldn't go. (Evan Marshall)

On POV:

Beginning writers tend to shift viewpoint when it is both unnecessary and disturbing. In establishing the story's point of view, you make your own rules, but having made them, you must stick to them. Apart from the use of significant detail, there is no more important skill for a writer of fiction to grasp than this, the control of point of view. [Janet Burroway]

Beginning writers often avoid running straight at an image; that is, the needless filtering of an image through some observing consciousness. Vividness urges that almost every occurrence of such phrases as "she noticed" and "she saw" be suppressed in favor of direct presentation of the thing seen. [John Gardner] *More on "filtering" in the coming weeks…

On Dialogue:

Beginning writers tend to write dialogue that is too clear, believe it or not. When characters talk too precisely and respond exactly to what has been said, then the words are probably being put in their mouths by the writer. [John Dufresne]

Beginning writers think they know what a character needs to say, and so they don't listen to the characters. They don't want the character screwing up the plot they took so long to devise. And so the character isn't credible. [John Dufresne]

Beginning writers tend to have all of their characters talk the same – usually the way the writer does. (Russell Rowland)

On Voice:

Beginning writers often forget the importance of letting their raw voice lead the story. They start with the voice of the story, often some other writer's story, and hope it will yield powerful, original material. [Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall]

On Beginnings:

Beginning writers often [begin their stories] with strong feelings and ideas without having found the images to embody them. Don't begin with an idea, begin with people, preferably people in action. [Ursula Le Guin & John Dufresne]

On Endings:

Beginning writers sometimes say, "Well, I didn't want to tell what happened to the characters. I wanted to leave the book ambiguous and open-ended. I want readers to decide for themselves what happened." This is usually a response to a criticism that the story feels as if it "just stopped." Unfortunately, the "let-the-readers-decide-for-themselves" stance is usually a failed defense. Readers don't want to decide what happened to the characters. They want you to decide, on the dual grounds that you're the writer and that they've just read four hundred pages of your prose anticipating this very information you're now withholding. [Nancy Kress]

On First Drafts:

Beginning writers tend to want to dodge the drafting process and write the story immediately. [John Dufresne]

The novice writer sets unrealistic goals for what he may not acknowledge to be, but is in fact, the first draft. He undermines his effort by holding unrealistic expectations of his imaginative and organizing powers. And so he becomes discouraged when the people in his head are unrecognizable on the page. The beginning writer who has read a great deal is even more susceptible to this kind of dejection. [John Dufresne]

On Doing Writing Exercises (something beginning writers do well :-)

When the beginning writer deals with some particular, small problem, such as description of a setting, description of a character, or brief dialogue that has some definite purpose, the quality of the work approaches the professional. [John Gardner, The Art of Fiction]

When the beginning writer works with some sharply defined problem in technique, focusing on that alone, he produces such good work that he surprises himself. [John Gardner, The Art of Fiction]

Writing an exercise, the [novice] writer is in the ideal artistic state, both serious and not serious. He wants the exercise to be wonderful, so that his classmates will applaud, but he is not in the dark psychological set of the ambitious young novelist struggling to write down his existence as it is, with the ghost of the young James Joyce standing horribly at his back. [John Gardner, The Art of Fiction]

This bunch is just a sampling, I'm sure.  Email me and let me know if you come others in the writing classes you take and the books you read.  When we have twenty more, we'll post a followup. 

Leslie

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The following books are available to purchase online:

John Gardner, The Art of Fiction

John Dufresne, The Lie That Tells A Truth

Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing, The Elements of Craft

Nancy Kress, Beginnings, Middles & Ends

Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall, Finding Your Writer's Voice

Evan Marshall, The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing

Sol Stein, Stein on Writing

Russell Rowland, Gotham Writer's Workshop

Robert Olen Butler, From Where You Dream

Peter Selgin & Chris Lombardi, Gotham Writers' Workshop: Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide

Setting & Emotion

It's been tough getting back into my novel again after idling these last couple of weeks over the holidays. Not to mention taking the month of November off to write a new  novel for NaNoWriMo '09! There's nothing like the start of a new year, however, to get my engines revving again.  Unfortunately, I can barely remember where I left off.  


Thank goodness I made some detailed notes in my novel journal before quitting at the end of October.  Looks like I was in the middle of a scene where my protagonist enters a new and frightening situation--moving into a house with six people he's never met before--for him, his worst nightmare.  I was having some difficulty getting into my character's mind for this one, when I remembered a writing exercise on emotion and setting from a Gotham Writer's Workshop class taught by Brandi Reissenweber.  The trick, as always, is to tweak the exercise so that it fits the problematic scene in your own project that you're hoping to improve.  In my case, the "surroundings" my character enters into will not be vacant--there'll be six other characters to greet him when he walks in the front door.

Janet Burroway describes the relationship of character to place in her book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft: 

Below, Burroway refers to an example from the short story "Ralph the Duck" by Frederick Busch:

Happy writing!