A NOVEL Writing Site.com » Pacing

Writing Lesson 3.13-Adding Adventures

Melinda Evaul — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:00:03 +0000

We started the year with a post on Story Engineering. With two contributors in the midst of home renovations, it’s no wonder if our posts about plotting a story keep drawing analogies to architecture.

We’ve likened genre to architectural style.

We’ve said that themes and motifs provide a sense of form and function to the story you’re building.

Now let’s talk about subplots.

Whether you planned them from the outset or added them during the edit process, we might say that subplots are like additions to the original structure. We add subplots for some of the same reasons we add rooms to a house:

To enlarge or enrich
To make room to explore other ideas and activities
To open up different views

A good subplot grows seamlessly out of the main structure of your story, but an addition that’s merely “tacked on” will weaken your story structure!

A new room addition is built on a solid foundation that extends from the main structure. In the same way, any subplots you add to your story need to extend from the themes and motifs of the main story. Screen writers use this trick all the time. If the main story is about a corporate cover-up, there may be a subplot in which one of the characters is covering up some “little white lies” of their own. Deceit, in large and small ways, becomes a theme that supports both stories.

A successful addition must also be firmly connected to the original structure at several points. Whether you’re adding on to a house or adding a subplot to a story, the new and the old should relate to each other, flowing back and forth smoothly from top to bottom, beginning to end.

When you write “The End” be sure you cover everything. It’s as unsatisfactory to leave a subplot unresolved as it would be to leave a new room hanging out from under the cover of a roof. Either way you’ll come off “all wet.”

Exercise:

Watch a favorite movie or TV show. (Psych or Castle come to mind.) See if you can identify the foundation, structural connections, and satisfying wrap-up of the plot and subplots.
Read the synopsis of a classic story such as The Picture of Dorian Gray. Notice how what happens to the picture ties in with the main character arc. Do you think the picture is a motif, a subplot, or both?
Think about the main plot and subplots of the story you’re working on. How does one tie in and strengthen the other?

Writing Lesson 2.29 – Dialogue: To Attribute or Not to Attribute?

Melinda Evaul — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 09:00:47 +0000

“That is the question,” said . . . er . . . mused Jack.

As you prepare your entries for the upcoming contest, consider the way you use dialogue.

Have you read books where every snippet of dialogue ends with “he said” or “she said”? These phrases become boring and redundant. I’ve heard that our brain overlooks the “he said” phrases, but overuse can also make these words jump off the page and wave red flags. In an attempt to avoid repetition, some writers substitute “he explained”, “she replied”, “he shouted”, and a host of other words that sound even worse and are better shown than told. Author styles vary widely. I’m sure you’ve read other books where the conversation occurs with few attributions.

An attribution signals who is speaking.

For example:

Jack said, “Let’s climb up the hill to get the water.”
“It’s too steep. We might fall,” exclaimed Jill.

Phrases like “Jack said” or “exclaimed Jill” are called tags.

My personal writing style is to avoid using tags to tell who is speaking whenever possible. That is especially true when it’s clear to the reader. If Jack and Jill are the only two people in a scene, and the conversation bounces back and forth between them, we can follow their dialogue easily once the characters in the scene are established. Each person’s words become a new line or paragraph. I prefer to show an action or emotional response to distinguish who is speaking.

Short action phrases interspersed with dialogue are called beats.

Let’s assume you’ve established that Jack and Jill are the two characters in a scene, and the reader knows Mom sent them up the trail to fetch a pail of water. . .

They strolled hand in hand along the path. He dragged his toes through the dirt, watching the dust billow over his feet. The empty pail clanked an annoying rhythm against his leg. “I don’t want to walk so far in this heat. Let’s take a shortcut up the hill to the waterfall. We can wade in the pool for a while and still get home before lunch.”

Sunlight glistened off the shale-strewn cliff face. She shielded her eyes against the glare. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“Oh, you’re such a baby.”

She grabbed his arm as he stepped off the path. “Don’t go. It’s steep, and the rocks look slippery.”

Okay, that may not be the best dialogue you’ve ever read, but it suffices to make some points.

It’s clear who is speaking in the exchange.
The actions and emotions support the dialogue and add to the scene.
Action and emotional beats give the characters life.
The scene becomes vivid and real.
Skipping over attribution tags helps to establish the pace of the story.

If another person is traveling with Jack and Jill, we might need an occasional attribution so the reader understands who is speaking.

“Ah, let him go,” Humpty Dumpty said. “He’ll learn a lesson when he cracks his head.”

Enough with the nursery rhyme characters. You get my point.

Exercise:

Browse the dialogue sections in some books.
Make notes about attributions you find, or note how the author shows who is speaking without an attribution.
Polish your own dialogue so it sounds natural.

Writing Lesson 2.16 – Write Better-Read & Review

Naomi Musch — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 09:00:08 +0000

You may have heard it said that good writers are those who read. Chances are you already love reading. Each of us has our own tastes and preferences when it comes to reading. Some love action books, others prefer a sweet romance. And within each book genre there are many flavors, so that one action story may make one fan’s heart race but leave another’s flat. You weed through them.

Read, read, read! Reading builds your writing skills in powerful and sometimes subtle ways. You begin to pick up on the rhythm of good writing by expanding your sense of pacing, beats in dialogue, chapter endings or beginnings, and so on. Your vocabulary grows with more powerful verb choices. You discover areas of interest you yourself might like to write about someday. There are hosts of other ways reading can improve your writing, and over time you’ll figure them out.

Then, since you are reading good books, do this: become a book reviewer. Learn the art of writing book reviews. This will not only get you some good, and often free, material for reading, but it will make you really focus on what made the book work — or not.

On my blog, Write Reason, I have a section heading I call my Book Exams. These are books that I review for the casual and discerning reader. Then, strictly for the benefit of writers, I go one step farther by pointing out what writing skills or techniques we can learn from that particular author. Perhaps the author was very good at character development. I tell why. Perhaps they were really, really good at “world building”. I point out how. Maybe they had a simple yet beautiful way of writing prose.

Anyway, if I like a book, doing an “exam” causes me to look closer at the whys. By writing the review, I expand another aspect of my writing ability.

Exercises:

Visit authors’ web sites and blogs. Many of them, and I do mean MANY, offer the chance to win free books in drawings. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve won through blog drawings. It’s a great way to build your library.

Make friends with authors. They love to hear from you. New authors, especially, and those from smaller, lesser known publishing houses, are looking for ways to get word of their book out. Many have copies to distribute for review. You, of course, would have to follow through and do the review.

Start a blog. You can start a blog for free. There are many places – Blogger, WordPress, or others. Or, if you are on Facebook, you can post book reviews in your “notes” section. Go to your library or grab some books off your shelf, roll up your sleeves, and start writing reviews. After a while, when you’ve written enough of them, and perhaps even developed a small following, more authors or publishers will be willing to send you their books.

And homeschoolers, your parents might consider letting you write book reviews as part of your language arts program. Wouldn’t that rock?

Writing Lesson 36 – What Happens Next?

Michelle Van Loon — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:00:53 +0000

Today’s exercise works best if you can do it with at least two other people. You’ll all read the passage below from Hilda van Stockum’s wonderful book The Winged Watchman. (http://www.amazon.com/Winged-Watchman-Living-History-Library/dp/1883937078/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265747756&sr=8-1_)

You’ll each then take a piece of paper, go off alone for 15 minutes, and write your answer to the question: What happens next?

Come back together and compare your answers.

He was beginning to feel more at ease when a creaking board above startled him. There was something moving in the top attic [of the abandoned windmill]. What should he do, run down? He wanted to, but Father always said: “Face difficulties, don’t avoid them. That way you’ll conquer them.” Clasping the cat, whose warm purring gave him courage, he crept cautiously up the stairs. After each step he listened. There was no more noise; instead, it was so still that the cat’s purring sounded like the drone of a bomber. Moisture broke out on Joris’ forehead and the skin of his scalp prickled. He quickly mounted the last few steps. He did not know what he had expected to find, but all he saw was broken machinery. The mill’s windshaft lay abandoned on the floor, and the hole in the cap in which it had fitted was open, letting through clean daylight. A current of air swayed the cobwebs which hung everywhere in garlands. A roll of moldy sails lay tucked away, in the shadow, with coils of rope beside it. Joris was just beginning to laugh at himself for his fears when the sails heaved. Something was stirring under the roll. Probably another cat, Joris told himself. Again he felt the temptation to run. Why did that obstinate tyrant inside him drive him on? He’d explored as far as the top attic now, hadn’t he? Why should he have to poke his nose under the sailcloth? No one would know. He could sneak off…

But he’d know it himself. He’d always know, till the end of his days, that he’d been a coward at the last moment.

Drawing a deep breath, he moved forward and lifted up a sail. It was wrenched out of his hand as a dark figure dashed from underneath and made a bolt for the stairs….

What happens next???

Discuss among yourselves why you each made the choices you made as you crafted your resolution to the mystery. You’ll learn that you can give a group of writers the same plot and characters, and you’ll never end up with the same story twice!

(Note: If you can get a copy of the book prior to doing the assignment, you can skim through the first half of the book to find the passage quoted above – then discover how the author resolved the mystery. However, it’s better if you don’t know the story to try this assignment.)

For more writing help, visit Michelle Van Loon at www.homepagewriting.com.

Writing Lesson 14 – Maddening Middles

Naomi Musch — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:00:17 +0000

A Novel is More than a Beginning and an End

Here are some novel facts:

Most average novels run between 55,000-80,000 words.
A “long novel” is considered to be a novel upwards of 80,000 words and stopping at about 100,000.

No matter how you hammer them on the page, that’s a lot of words.

When, for the first time ever, we come upon an amazing idea for a story or for a character that won’t leave us alone and we think to ourselves I want to write a novel, the second thought that often pops into our heads is, but how will I fill up all those pages?

It’s not that we can’t think of a wonderfully tragic beginning, or a dynamically thrilling ending, but it’s all that stuff in the middle that has the power to stop us in our keyboarding tracks. I like to think of this part of the writing process as the Maddening Middle. It’s the part where the story really should begin to pick up pace rather than slump off into a bunch of disjointed scenes or sagging events. It’s where characters stop being “characters” and are shaped into actual people whom readers begin to care and think about even when they’re not reading. What a great challenge to the writer, to create such lives!

What makes up the middle?

The middle is more than the hefty section of the book where this and that happens to simply fill up space. It is the section that weaves all the threads of plot and pace and people together. There, everything that happens has to have a reason. Even small events that seem singular at first, must eventually bind their way into the scheme of the big picture and push the plot toward the story’s conclusion. Here, the writer uses action to expose the motives of the villain, the passions of the heroine, the flaws of the hero. Here, the reader eavesdrops on dialogue meant to set their hearts quivering with anticipation or dread.

Writing the middles is definitely the hardest part, but it’s without doubt the most lively and emotional place to grow the story. In the middles, characters often begin making decisions without the writer’s help. They begin to move forward and create their own dilemmas, their own successes. They become their own personalities…if the writer allows it, and she should.

So if this is such a dynamic part of the process, why is it maddening? Why all this trouble with middles? Usually it’s because of pacing.

What is pacing, and how do we accomplish it?

Pacing is moving the story forward at the right speed so that the reader will keep turning the pages without getting bored or side-tracked. It’s the process of revealing secrets and actions in a way that makes a book hard or even impossible to put down. It’s letting each scene unfold to its fullest, and then stopping when it does. This means we can’t simply tell the reader what’s happening in a scene. We have to lead them along, allowing them to experience the emotion and the action.

Imagine a scene without words, and only actions. How do the actions convey the emotions and thoughts of the character? If you know, then you can draw the scene out to its fullest.

It’s easy to want to rush through scenes instead of letting them play out. Sometimes when we write, we visualize the story like a movie reel unwinding in our heads, and like watching any good movie, we can’t wait to get to the best parts. So, sometimes we rush through minor scenes in a hurry to get to the big turning point or the climax.

But if we take the time to milk out the small scenes, not only will the story become more fleshed out, and the characters better developed, but we may also find that we don’t have to hunt for more “stuff and fluff” to fill those pages. In fact, we may find out that we can easily exceed a reasonable word limit for our novels as the people we’ve created begin to live out their lives fully in those middle pages.

EXERCISES:

Look closely at a scene you’ve written, and begin asking yourself a lot of “what-if” questions. Is this scene necessary? Does it move the story forward? What would happen if I wrote this scene from another character’s point of view? What if this action or conversation were to take place in a different location? Have I shown what the characters are feeling and thinking by their actions? In other words, have I milked the scene for all its emotional worth? For example: (nervousness/anxiety) He began rubbing his hands together as though he were working them over with an invisible paper towel. (Shyness/fear) She glanced at his waist, then over his shoulders; anywhere but into his eyes. (Anger/resolve) He planted his hands on his hips and hunched his shoulders forward as his lips tightened into a straight line.
Try one of my favorite exercises, one that happens to be useful for lots of reasons, including that of getting the feel for pacing. Grab a book that is one of your favorites and find a scene that will live in your memory forever. The scene should be at least two pages long. Usually an action scene is a good choice, or a scene where something is at stake and the emotions are high. Now copy the scene. In longhand. Word for word. Copy it out so that it feels like its coming from you. Let the words sink into you as you write them. Pay attention to what’s happening and how. Notice the senses used to help the reader feel what the author is trying to convey. Do this from time to time, as often as you can. It will help you learn how a good, fleshy scene is developed.