Tag: risk

Pace Beyond Plot

Every novel has a rhythm, and pace is the speed at which a novel’s events unfold. But “pace” also has an implied meaning in the market. It tends to get equated with lots of action. So what does pace mean for a non-plot-driven novel? What really matters is that the book is compelling and keeps readers turning the page. Pace can go beyond plot. I like to think of it as character-based pace instead of plot-based pace. Pace that works for the non-plot-driven novel, using techniques that enhance plot-driven novels as well.

1. Mysteries of Character

Intriguing characters have secrets, not just the kind they keep from the reader, but also important things they don’t realize about themselves. The resistance we find in characters often springs from unrecognized inner fears and conflicts. As for the resources that characters must summon to overcome the obstacles in their lives – these, too, may not be known until they’re needed most. Treat these aspects of character as the mysteries they are. Spool them out, don’t try to solve them too soon, have there be consequences, keep readers on edge.

2. Unreliability

Unreliable narration uses character mysteries as a driving engine. Broadly speaking, we see two different kinds of unreliable narrators: a character’s deliberate unreliability, as in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and unreliability due to personal blind spots, as in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. The manipulative narrators in Gone Girl add to the pace because we’re anxious to find out what’s actually happening and we worry about what they’ll do. In The Goldfinch, the character’s failure of self-knowledge creates tension because we’re concerned about him. While a classic mystery poses secrets at the level of plot, unreliability poses secrets at the level of character that keep us reading forward.

3. Surprises of Self-Perception

Literary agent and writer, Donald Maass, suggests that predictability is what makes a novel a slog, and not just on the level of plot: “Relationships can unfold predictably too. Inner lives can plod down an obvious path.” See Getting Ahead of Yourself and Your Reader on Writer Unboxed. Instead, Maass looks for inner shifts in self-perception, awakenings, new understandings – the ah-ha’s of interiors. Changes that in turn have implications for plot. His answer to pace is to bring about inner changes and address the implications before readers arrive on their own.

4. Relationship Stakes

The plot of many novels centers on solving, or failing to solve, a relationship. But even if you don’t have a relationship plot per se, your protagonist’s inner fears and resistance to change will affect their relationships. Readers feel the cost of those issues most acutely when critical relationships are put at risk.

5. Deepening to Intensify

Depth and good writing are key to creating pace with lower levels of action. We need to know that a moment holds stakes for your character, but that doesn’t need to mean a “tell.” You can use revealing gestures to expose a character’s true feelings. You can summon up a vivid memory tied to the senses or captured in a fragment of scene. You can expand meaning with metaphor, either ones that carry power on their own or that build on imagery from earlier in your book. If you bring energy to your writing, it will read with energy, which in turn will contribute to pace.

6. Rhythm of Language

Finally, think of what it means to hold a reader spellbound. You’re weaving a spell with your rhythms and words. While shorter, choppier, even fragmented sentences can work well for the pace that goes with action, mixing in some longer sentences can be good for character-based pace. Long sentences sink us in time. The moment seems to enlarge – a place for increased focus and sharpened perception. See Tension in the Telling.

The action may slow, but we can be captivated nonetheless.



Action and Reaction

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Action drives so many of our stories these days. Films that leave us breathless, but also strangely unaffected. Dialogue reduced to pithy quips. Even novels, like a kind of sugar high, can kick up our adrenaline with action, but still fail to move us inside. Readers need to understand the main character’s feelings for there to be real stakes in the action. At the same time, if we get feelings without enough action, readers can start to detach. Compassion fatigue can set in. Characters have a tendency to get stuck if they’re not destabilized with outside events. Stories need both: external action and internal reaction. An ideal place to accomplish this is in scene.

1. Discovery

Scene is where things happen, not just for readers, but for us as we’re writing. Scene gives writers the opportunity to discover both action and reaction – to convert character issues into plot, and the reverse. For example, try confronting your main characters with things they’ve avoided. You may not know for sure how they’ll react until you write the scene. When you discover something in the moment of writing, the freshness of that discovery – its power to surprise and enliven – will be captured in the writing for the eventual reader as well. Even if you outline the overall plot of your novel, try to write scenes with openness toward what could happen, to encourage these discoveries.

2. Drama

Scene carries the immediacy that heightens drama and generates tension. The stakes are higher in scenes than in summary, because we have the sense of not knowing what could happen next. In summary, the writer cushions the blow. Scene gives us the most potential for rawness and risk.

3. Propulsive Power

A scene has natural propulsion – its very nature is to move forward in time. The clock ticks. We know where and when we are. Internal reactions can be interwoven in scene without losing pace. In contrast, extended interiors and summaries can shift us into a kind of timelessness. That’s part of the magic of writing, and something at which literary novels can shine, but scene helps to keep our stories on the move, while including both action and reaction.

4. Staging and Showing

Scene allows us to show reactions through staging: how close the characters stand, where and when they move, how they gesture, whether they touch. We can choreograph our scenes with a view to exposing interiors in an external way. Scenic elements can be used to augment a character’s internal thoughts, or even to reveal feelings of which a character is not yet aware. Telling details also come into this – how the point-of-view character sees and otherwise senses things in scene will be colored by his or her feelings.

5. Vivid Voicing

When characters do simply think their reactions, try to bracket phrases such as “I feel” and “she felt” in early drafts to see if you can convey those sentiments in a more vivid and original way. The rendering of thoughts can be a place for voice to shine. Don’t just tell us the character is happy – have the voice itself be happy. Use fragments, silly metaphors, goofy words, whatever seems authentic. And remember that moods can change. Be your own emotional continuity expert by keeping track of your characters’ preoccupations and the evolving feelings they bring to each scene.

6. Question of Grounding

A useful and revealing question to ask yourself is whether you see your novel as grounded in scene, with internal reactions and summaries interspersed, or whether you see your novel as grounded in the protagonist’s head, with scenes interspersed. I’m not going to say to do one or the other. But I’d like to suggest that if you see it as grounded in scene, then what might need more attention are your internal reactions; and if you see it as grounded in the main character’s head, then what might need more attention are your scenes.

In the end, hard work on action-reactions will bring you closer to the truth of your characters. And keeping a strong connection between actions and reactions will act to intensify them both. The actions will carry more import and the reactions more potential for exposure. The stakes will continue to mount.



Creative Courage

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I love to ski, but seem to come to it with more injuries every year. Right knee, upper back, right wrist, left foot. I got a cortisone shot in my heel this time, determined not to miss out. My sister puts it somewhere between crazy and brave. Poised above an icy run at the top of Jackson Hole, for the first time I hesitated, thinking of how disastrous a fall would be, wondering whether I’d lost my courage. If writing were a sport, I’d be even more covered with bruises. Does the rough and tumble of experience wear you out, or does it somehow set you free?

In writing, rejection is a constant. Think about what endless criticism does to a person. Does it build you up or drag you down? Of course, it drags you down. You have to look elsewhere to find reasons to believe. Experience can be a burden – you begin to know all too well what could go wrong. I’ve read countless writing blogs and taken classes premised on what NOT to do, an approach which I find paralyzing. Creativity thrives on courage, the kind of boldness that propels you down the hill.

When I ski, there’s a moment when every turn feels out of control. When I have to embrace the sensation of falling. But then I feel my weight in my feet and the edge of my blades in the snow, and my trust in myself rushes back. Again, and again, all the way down. An embrace of risk for a fleeting sense of triumph.

What writers need is a trick to learning life’s lessons without giving up. Experience is important, but I also think you need to mix a little ornery in your attitude. To keep your ears open but still stay a bit deaf. A touch of writerly defiance – to blend some crazy in your brave. To believe in your own artistic vision even if the world tells you not to.

Unlike writing, skiing is a physical sport. There will be things we can’t do as we get older, but that’s all the more reason to cultivate courage inside.

The skill you’re building isn’t just writing, it’s resilience.