Spring forward/fall back:

       

Instead of opening your scenes with narration, use what I call (for want of a better term) the “spring forward/fall back” narrative device. A span of time usually passes between chapters and scenes. That’s the reason for those white-space breaks in the text. When you push the story forward to another point of action in a new chapter or scene, you should get the new scene going and then recap events that occurred in the interim, if you need to, quickly summarizing what happened since the end of the previous scene. In other words, you “spring forward,” then “fall back” briefly, and then pick up the action again. You do this to skip some boring stuff—or at least some less than compelling material that isn’t worth dramatizing. You’ll see professional novelists doing this all the time.

Note of caution: If your recap is long and detailed, then you shouldn’t have jumped so far ahead in story time. You should have just maintained the chronology of events and kept moving. A “fall back” recap that runs too long isn’t a recap anymore; it’s a flashback, which isn’t a device you want to use at or near the opening of a new chapter or scene.

Paul Thayer

Your Book Editor

Grand openings

Chapter One is extremely important. Do I really need to tell you this? In both commercial and literary novels, this is where you have to hook readers and reel them into your story. It should include a motivating incident (a.k.a. the catalytic event); the problem or at least a hint of the problem that the main character has to deal with; the main character’s response; and the conflict (internal or external) that the problem creates for the main character.

When you consider your main character’s response, you should ask yourself, “What is this person’s goal(s)? What does he or she want? Everybody wants something. I want to be paid for writing this blog, but I’m not holding my breath. The goal can be explicit or implicit, the latter being an intimation, a glimmer, or a hint that readers with an I.Q. higher than room temperature will sense.

Why is at least an inkling of the protagonist’s goal so important? Because without a goal the protagonist will take no action and experience no conflict as he/she strives to reach the goal. And without conflict your story will be snore fest.

In short:

Goal  ➔ Conflict  ➔  Struggle  ➔  Drama  ➔  Emotions  ➔  Readability

Before you introduce the components of scene-setting, you should have an attention-getting first line in order to pull readers into your story. This is one of my favorites from John D. MacDonald’s Darker than Amber:

“We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.”

How could you not be sucked into a story that begins with that line?

From a much newer novel, Head Games by Craig McDonald, the first line is:

“We were sitting in a backroom of a cantina on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, three drinks in, when Bill Wade reached into the dusty duffle bag he had tucked under the table and plunked down the Mexican general’s head.”

The severed head of a dead Mexican general? That gets your attention. Notice how much scene-setting info the author includes in this first line. He tells us that there are at least two characters in this scene, probably male, where the scene takes place, and what happens. The sentence does double duty—grabbing the reader’s attention and dropping him into the fictional scene.

You can find many notable first lines by googling that subject. Here’s one good site:

http://americanbookreview.org/100bestlines.asp

I have read far too many uninspiring openings written by inexperienced novelists. Often they begin with backstory. They set up the story by downloading a ton of info to readers instead of getting right into the action of the story. In other cases the writer makes a minimal effort to get the story moving by beginning with a dull bit of commonplace action, soon followed by backstory, something like this:

“When Julia woke up, her bedroom was still dark. She shuffled to the bathroom and looked at her tired face in the mirror.”

Then the writer has to tell us why she’s tired, what color her hair and eyes are, how old she is, where she was born, where she went to college, where she lives now, where she works, what guy she has just broken up with, why she’s anorexic, why her mother hates her (or vice versa), her favorite color, the name of her best friend, and how she and her BFF bonded at age six after that day in the bathroom. Etcetera. I’m exaggerating so you get the idea.

This doth not a compelling opening make. Beginning a story with the main character waking up in the morning is one of the worst ways to start a novel. It’s beyond cliché.

Writing a reader-grabbing first line, first graf, and first chapter takes a lot of thought and experimentation. I urge you to read the beginning of a truckload of novels, analyze them, and determine what works and what doesn’t. Before long you will get the hang of it.

Tip: If reading the first page induces a coma, that’s not the way you should write.

Paul Thayer

Your book editor

Use a singular noun with a plural possessive

            To avoid ambiguity you should usually use a singular noun with a plural possessive when only one of the things possessed could belong to an individual.

Example:

Four pilots crashed to their death (not deaths).

Mr. Smith knew most of them by their first name (not names).

See the plural possessive their in both sentences? That should clue you in.

Another example:

“Let’s go put something in our stomachs.”

People have only one stomach (although some look as if they have at least two), so you must use the singular word stomach. See the plural possessive our?

Paul Thayer

Your book editor

Scene Conclusions

 Each scene should have a strong opening and a strong conclusion. A scene should end neatly and completely, rather than just dropping off. Make sure that you’ve given each scene wrap-up a sense of completeness and closure, so that readers don’t feel that they need to hear or see something more. Often just adding a sentence or two will do the trick. An ending written from the perspective of the viewpoint character (VPC) is the best thing to do. If you can include a cliffhanger, an emotional punch line (in dialogue or narration), an important question, a hint of interesting action to come, or some especially lyrical writing, so much the better.

Here’s how my client Brent Ghelfi ended one scene in his published novel The Venona Cable:

Rykov started back down the hall, motioning for his men to bring me along.

     “You’ll leave Lefortovo in only one of two ways,” he said, not looking back. “Transferred to another prison. Or dead.”

The lines that close the curtain on a scene don’t have to be complicated or fancy. Here’s another example, this one from Brent Ghelfi’s published novel Volk’s Game:

      I push him into the street and toward his flat. He wobbles off. He’s ruined for the night, and maybe for good. I set off in the other direction. Time to see Gromov now, while the anger is still fresh.

See what I mean?

Scenes: show, don’t tell

Instead of beginning a scene with omniscient narration, which is like voiceover in a movie, begin with a framed scene, allowing your characters to interact. In other words, SHOW your story instead of TELLING it. To show your story, you need to write dramatic scenes. Then your readers can sit back and watch the action and listen to the dialogue and the other “sound effects” as if they were watching a play being presented on a stage. That’s how you should think about writing fiction: You are presenting a stage play in novel form. When you do that, your readers will experience an emotional response. That’s the only way to engage your audience. People read novels for emotion, not information.

What do I mean by "framing" a scene? You must settle your readers quickly into each scene by doing the following:

• Identify the setting and give the reader a sense of where we are.
• Let the reader know how much time has passed since the previous scene.
• Indicate who your point-of-view character is and describe his/her frame of mind.
• Mention everyone who is present so that a character doesn’t suddenly pop up out of nowhere or so that character’s dialogue doesn’t come as a surprise to the reader.
• Subtly place any props your characters need, so when they reach for a briefcase or gun or chair, the reader will already have that object in their vision of the setting.

Offer these required elements in a different order each time for variety.

Remember that you must plan a scene before you write it. I have read too many first novels that have scenes that have obviously not been planned. To plan a scene you must first ask yourself, "What is the purpose of this scene" and "What do I want to accomplish in this scene?"

Every scene should serve a purpose. To keep this in mind, tape this list to your monitor:

The SCENE’S PURPOSE is to:

• Move the main plot line ahead

• Present necessary information

• Introduce or develop characters

• Create atmosphere or develop setting

• Introduce or worsen a problem

• Solve a problem

• Set up a later scene


The scene should serve at least one of these purposes. Also be sure to note the primary action that will occur in the scene.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com 

Scene construction

Many of the scenes I see written by first novelists lack structure, development, and purpose. They seem to be the result of the writer’s thinking, “Oh, I guess I’ll start a scene here” and “Well, I guess I’ll end the scene now.” That’s not what you should do. Ya gotta have a plan, Stan.

To construct a fully fledged scene you have to begin with the proper scene framing (see my previous post about scene framing), and you have to include enough action to produce a well “rounded” scene. Scenes are the building blocks of your story. Each one should relate a significant, self-contained episode that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, just as the novel as a whole should have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

This is the basic, age-old dramatic structure that Aristotle first called the “narrative arc.” Instead of using the terms beginning, middle, and end, we can describe the narrative arc of a story as the Complication, the Crisis, and the Resolution. Novelists need to think of each scene as a ministory with a similar narrative arc.

Just as important is determining the purpose of the scene. If a writer doesn’t know what purpose the scene will serve, then it will likely lack structure and the proper development. To help guide you in writing a scene, keep this list handy:

The SCENE’S PURPOSE is to:           

            • Move the main plot line ahead

           

            • Present necessary information

            • Introduce or develop characters

            • Create atmosphere or develop setting

            • Introduce or worsen a problem

            • Solve a problem

            • Set up a later scene

The scene should serve at least one of these purposes.

Also, during the planning stage of your scene, ask yourself these questions:

·      Who will be the viewpoint character?

·      What other characters will be in this scene?

·      Where will this scene take place?

·      When will it take place?

·      What is the primary action that will occur in the scene?

·      What will generate conflict?

Do all these things, and you will have an effective scene that will encourage readers to keep reading your story.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com