A few weeks ago I had a chance to review someone’s work… and found that it had significant problems with pacing.

What problems? The scene simply didn’t flow. The reason was obvious: it was a scene from early in the book, and the writer was busy setting the scene – and this involved filling in lots of backstory.

Most writers are familiar with this term, but if you’re not… “backstory” is the process of filling in various details from the past. These details can pertain to the plot or the viewpoint character. The writer feels that it’s important that the reader has these details to understand where the characters are now.

Usually, it’s not nearly as important to get these details in as the writer imagines. It’s far better to ‘drip’ in details that are absolutely necessary than to ‘dump’ them all in at once.

I decided to address this in an article about backstory: How To Weave Backstory Into a Novel. You might find it handy if you’re struggling with this issue.

Marg

Tags: Pacing
Categories: General Tips, Technique
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Time limits can be used to create almost unbearable tension for the reader. The TV series ‘24′ used it particularly well.

The heroine has to reach the hero before he boards that plane or he’ll be out of her reach forever. Or Detective Joe Bloggs has just twenty-four hours to prove Heroine’s innocence before his superior calls in the cops.

Bring in the ticking clock, and you heighten suspense. Will they make it in time or won’t they?

If you introduce a time limit, make sure that the reader is constantly aware that time is running out (but don’t always simply refer to a clock or her watch! Show other ways of time passing.) Stretch that suspense. Keep raising the stakes. Use obstacles to heighten the tension.

It’s a simple and time-tested technique. Give it a try.

Categories: General Tips, Plotting Your Story, Technique
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We all have strong feelings about different things – cruelty to animals; domestic violence; saving the environment and so on. Which is fine. What is NOT fine is allowing these strong feelings to intrude into your writing.

Note that I said ‘INTRUDE’. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t write on a topic that you feel strongly about: that you shouldn’t… er… use your powers for good. (Sorry, I couldn’t help that one.)

What I AM saying is that you should be careful that these strong feelings don’t have a negative impact on your scenes. For example, if you have a ten-year-old going on at length about climate change, sounding like a forty-year-old… then it’s probably YOU speaking; not your character. You’re using your story as a soapbox, and readers HATE that.

There’s nothing wrong with exploring issues in your book. Just take care that you don’t lecture your readers. Don’t harangue them. (Not even in the guise of dialogue between two of the characters. Your readers won’t be fooled.) Above all, don’t allow the ‘issue’ that you’re writing about to take over the book. You’ll achieve far more by being subtle.

Let the lesson you want to teach be absorbed naturally by the reader. To achieve this, you have to be a skilled writer. If you write well, then the reader will know exactly what you’re trying to say. They’ll FEEL it. They’ll understand it through the actions and reactions of the characters – not by being told what to think.

So put away your soapbox. Start thinking about subtle ways to get your message across. If it feels forced… then it IS forced. Keep working on it until you know it’s working – and don’t be afraid to get honest feedback.

Marg

Categories: General Tips, Self-Editing, Technique
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I’ve read several things recently that made me understand anew the importance of simplicity. They were:

• A business report. (Full of wordy phrases and buzzwords that were completely unnecessary and actually obscured meaning.)
• A novel. (So many passages of flowery description that I found myself skipping pages all too often. Finally gave up on it.)
• Novel #2. (Must have been a bad week… this novel failed to blend technical information into the scenes in a seamless flow; I felt that I was being lectured.)
• A scene I was critiquing. (Unecessary speech tags; repetitive sentences; telling-and-showing the same thing.)

In contrast, a well-written piece of work – whether it’s fiction or non-fiction; a report for work or a thriller – is, essentially, transparent. The words don’t get in the way of the message or the action. Rather, they allow the reader to make an instant connection.

Take another look at anything you write.

• Are you letting a sentence do the work of a phrase, or a phrase the work of one well-chosen word?
• Are you including too much detail simply because you’ve done the research and want to use it, regardless of whether it’s really needed?
• Are you getting carried away by the (ahem) beauty of your own words, so you’re reluctant to cut?
• Are you letting through bad writing because it’s just too much trouble to tighten it?

Simplicity in writing is a lot harder than it looks – but it pays off in satisfied readers and clients who understand exactly what you mean. And who knows? It may even pay off in book sales or a wage increase – and that’s got to be a good thing in today’s economy!

Marg

Categories: General Tips, Technique
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Hazel Edwards is shaking her head about how closely today’s swine flu pandemic mirrors the pandemic flu threat to Darwin that she wrote about in her book OUTBACK FERALS three years ago. Her book was fiction… but it’s a case of the book being almost prescient!

Hazel explains that in her novel ‘Outback Ferals’ the ferals were the pigs, not the locals! She researched the  infection details carefully with quarantine authorities. The implications of a pandemic threat were woven into the plot. Her facts were right, but the story about Kyle the young undercover, eco- scientist sleuth was fiction.

“Why is my fiction prediction becoming nightly news?” she asks. ”Perhaps it’s the fiction writer’s tendency to research, look at the possible conflicts and then say What if? It’s a reasoned guess based on possibilities.”

Read more about Hazel’s OUTBACK FERALS and swine flu here:

http://www.writing4successclub.com/public/675.cfm?sd=57

And if you have a similar story with a book or story you’ve written, please let me know!

Categories: Plotting Your Story, Technique, Writing for Children
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We all know that our job is to make things as hard as possible for the main character. If things are going well, we have to throw a spanner in the works. If things start going bad, we have to make them even worse. We want to see our characters grow and change - and meet all the challenges we can throw at them!

This week, something happened that made me resolve to keep notes on real-life experiences that I might be able to use in a book later. (Or indeed, in an anecodote like this one – take note, writers of non-fiction articles!)

We’re currently holidaying at a coastal location in NSW – to be precise: at Sawtell, which is around 15 minutes south of Coffs Harbour. We have 2 kayaks strapped to the roof of our 4WD, and we’re towing a 21.5 ft caravan. After a couple of days of sunshine, it started to rain.

And rain.

And rain some more.

One night the wind was so fierce that we raced outside at 11 pm to roll up the awning of our van, which was flapping and creaking and groaning with each gust of wind. We threw the poles and the chairs under the van, and ran back inside.

Then the rivers and creeks began to flood. At our campsite, the water began to rise while the rain poured down. Just on dark, we had no choice but to hitch up the van and move – with lots of willing helpers from our fellow campers! Rob (my husband) was winding up the legs of the van, and hitching up the van to the towbar, underwater.

And naturally, we didn’t give a thought to the chairs still under the van, or the drainage hose still attached, or the awning support – we just drove out over the top of them. Then we helped other hapless ‘vanners out of a similar situation.

In the end, no great harm was done, and we are now high and dry on a nice well-drained spot… and the rain has stopped. But it got me thinking…

What if someone in a similar situation ran over something important? Something essential to survival, or some crucial clue to… well, I don’t know what, but you get the idea! For us, the weather went from bad to worse, but in the end we were fine. (Even the chairs survived!)

But what if the tow hitch had broken, or the van was bogged and we had to leave it behind? What if someone helping us had got hurt? What if we’d… somehow broken a leg?

Ah, the possibilities! That’s the great part of being a writer. Being able to dictate what happens. Great stuff!

And there’s nothing like being there to be able to write a scene and show, not tell, what it feels like to be running around in pouring rain, trying to contact emergency services and not being able to because they have too many emergencies, and what the camaraderie of the caravan park fraternity feels like as we all stand around deconstructing the events when it’s all over.

I feel a book coming on…

Tags: Add new tag
Categories: General Tips, Plotting Your Story, Technique
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I started a new book last night. (Reading one, that is, not writing one.)

To begin with, all was well. I liked the sound of the plot (from the back cover blurb). I liked the sound of the main character (from skimming the first few pages). So I settled in for a good read.

But after a dozen or so pages, I found myself skipping over paragraphs. Then skipping over pages.

Being a writer and a writing tutor, I stopped to analyse why I was doing this. In a word: PACING.

The author was continually going down side paths exploring the character’s backstory. Worse, she shifted viewpoint to another character at the end of the first chapter (not a sin in itself, of course) just when the main character had a big turning point coming up. Often, this is an excellent strategy to increase the suspense. In this case, it was frustrating – BECAUSE she kept going down those side paths, telling me every little thing that had happened to Character 2 to bring him to this point. Meanwhile, I still wanted to know what Character 1 was going to do… so I turned over about a dozen pages to find out.

What happened then? Just as the main character was setting off to the venue where she was going to meet someone important and make a big decision, we had even MORE backstory.

Too much, in fact. I closed the book, turned out the light, and reflected on what I’d just experienced. I probably won’t re-open the book. A pity, because it had the making of a good story. It was just too slow… I didn’t need to know the character’s past in such detail.

A salutory lesson for all writers.

Tags: backstory,Technique
Categories: Plotting Your Story, Technique
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For many years, I’ve been a tutor for students undertaking courses in writing romance, crime or children’s stories. In that time, I’ve marked thousands of assignments. I’ve seen hundreds of plots, thousands of scenes, millions of words. And if I had to give writers one piece of advice after seeing all those millions of words, it would be this: always ask ‘WHY?’

Why?

Because I’ve seen too many characters forced into ridiculous situations by a careless author. I’ve seen potentially good plots twisted completely out of shape – because the writer finds it easier to force characters to do dumb things than to sit down and come up with a stronger plot.

Believe me, you don’t want your readers scratching their heads in puzzlement and saying ‘But why would she do a stupid thing like that?’ or ‘As if anyone would say that at a time like this!’
Once readers start saying stuff like that, your book’s a goner.

Suddenly, the reader can’t believe in the character anymore. She’s become a puppet in the hands of the author. (‘Oh,’ says Character, ‘You want me to agree to meet this guy I know is a psychopath in the middle of the night, in a deserted area of bushland? Without backup, without a weapon, and without letting anyone know where I’ve gone? Isn’t that a bit… well… stupid? Oh, I see, it’s necessary for the plot to work… Well, okay then.’)

Now come on. What would you do in this position?

First, you would probably never in a million years agree to go anywhere to meet a known psychopath.
If for some incomprehensible reason you did, you’d certainly leave messages with key people saying where you are going, who you are planning to meet, why you are going, when they should expect to hear from you again and what action they should take if they don’t.

And that leads us to the golden rule when you are planning action for one of your characters. First ask, ‘What would I do in this situation?’ Your common-sense response is probably what most people would do. Here’s a useful chart you can use to ask your characters WHY they’re doing or saying those things, while there’s still time to change it.

[An extended version of this article, with some suggested 'Why?' questions you should ask your characters, is in the members' section of the Writing4Success Club.]

Tags: Add new tag,character motivation,characters
Categories: Plotting Your Story, Technique
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Long-time subscribers to the Writing4Success Tipsheet know that I am a strong believer in ‘reading like a writer’ – that is, taking note of things that another author does well (or badly) so you can learn from it.

This week I interrupted my reading to jot down a good example of how to show accented English without twisting (aka torturing) your spelling.

This excerpt comes from SCARED TO LIVE by Stephen Booth. Stephen has the viewpoint character, Fry, noticing certain things that showed that English was not the first language of a character called Kotsev. I quote…

Kotsev’s English wasn’t quite perfect, after all. She was starting to detect a tendency to pronounce the past tense of certain verbs as if there were an extra syllable on the end. Liv-ed. Chang-ed. She put it down to a lack of opportunity to practise conversation with native English speakers. It was understandable too – since sometimes there was an extra syllable. Fry wondered whether she should correct him when he did it, or if he’d be offended. She decided not to mention it, unless he asked. It wasn’t a problem. In fact, she found it rather appealing.

Nice, huh?

Marg

Categories: Technique
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It’s very likely that at some stage, you’ve poured everything you have into writing an emotional scene – only to feel your heart sink when you read it through, because you realise that it simply isn’t working. 
You’ve done everything you can think of – but somehow, you know that it’s still not working. You just don’t know why! 

Well, I’m going to give you one more thing that you can check. This one particular mistake is something I have seen crop up quite a few times to spoil a scene that would otherwise work very nicely. In fact, it most assuredly deserves a place on any checklist for emotional depth. Here it is.

MAKE SURE THAT THE EMOTION YOU CONJURE UP IS CONSISTENT. 

You have to decide exactly what you want your readers to feel, and tweak everything in the scene to guide them in that direction. This means that you don’t distract them with OTHER emotions. Otherwise, readers are simply not quite sure what they’re supposed to feel – even if this ambivalence is sensed only on a subconscious level.

This is what you need to do:

1. Decide on the main emotion you want your readers to feel.

2. Take a moment to sit back, close your eyes and run through the scene in your mind. Where is your character? What has happened? What are they feeling?

3. Think about how you can draw the reader into the scene to feel this emotion.

4. Write the scene.

5. Read through your scene with a highlighter in hand. Strike out anything that doesn’t ‘fit’ with the main emotion you want readers to feel. Be ruthless: no randomly ironic thoughts, no inappropriate humour, no memories or strong images that distract the reader from the main problem and associated emotion.

That’s it. Spend a little more time before and after you write to plan carefully and then to check, and your problems might well disappear.

This post summarises the content of a longer article at www.writing4successclub.com – you can find the full text of the article here:

http://www.writing4successclub.com/public/479.cfm

Tags: emotional depth,emotional punch,writing technique
Categories: Technique
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