Tag Archives: conflict

Technique

How to Avoid Nine Ways to Ruin Your Novel

2 Comments

Oh, you don’t want your book to totally suck? Huh. Well, maybe this is the right post for you—how to avoid those nine ways to ruin your novel.

No conflict

Even in literary fiction (actually, especially in literary fiction), we read to experience life through the characters. There really is no better way to relate to a character than to root for them, to really understand what they want and need and hope that they’ll get it, to feel defeat at their setbacks and catharsis at their final victory.

They need to want something, and that something needs to be worthwhile, worth struggling for 300 pages. Conflict is necessary, on every level. Your characters should want something (“even if it’s only a glass of water,” to quote Kurt Vonnegut) in each scene and in the book overall.

Need more conflict? Read more about plotting to add it on a macro level, or tension & suspense to add conflict to each scene and page. Or skip straight to 37 ways to add tension & suspense to your book!

No Emotion

I’m going to be saying this a lot, but readers read to connect with someone else’s life experiences. Humans are emotional creatures, and tapping into those emotions is almost like a powerful short circuit button for authors: show your characters’ emotions so vividly that your readers can’t help but experience those feelings themselves, and you’ll have your readers laughing, crying—and hooked.

Need more emotion? Read more about adding emotion to your novel!

No Effort

Like most people, I can be pretty lazy. Sometimes I hate hate HATE editing, especially the drudgery of scouring my work line by line for every little “JUST.”

Yeah, that’s lazy. Lazy writing can go even beyond that, though: not just using but relishing cliches, the automatic, trite phrases that have been used so often that we don’t think about them and they barely retain their meaning anymore.

Another culprit in this area can be telling—rather than digging in deep to really show what the character’s feeling and thinking and doing, we deliver a distant summary, holding our readers’ at arm’s length (when, once again, they want to experience this character and his life and his feelings!!)

Ready to put in more effort? Learn the difference between showing and telling (or bad telling and good telling)!

Too Much Effort

Wait, what? After she tells us to put more effort into our writing, now she says that too much will kill it? Crap for crap.

Okay, chill. When I say “too much effort,” I mean trying too hard to look like a good writer. Instead, you just end up sounding writerly. Or as agent Ann Collette tweeted in her Today’s Twelve roundup of queries:

And what does that mean? Ann elaborated a little:

Get it? Get it?

How can you make sure you’re not overwriting? Um, some no-nonsense critique partners? (Sorry I’m not more help. It’s a toughie!)

Starting Too Early

Beginning your book long before you begin your story is a major problem. (Beginning too late is less common, but it can be as difficult to overcome. Or not.) Without the conflict to help readers develop that emotional connection to the characters, readers are left floundering, frustrated and . . . bored.

There will be a lot of events that impact your story that happen before the story actually begins. This is called backstory, and you have to be very careful about how you place it in your present story, to inform without bogging the reader down.

Want to get your story going? Be sure to start in the right place, and brush up on backstory!

Not Trusting the Reader

You don’t have to overexplain everything every single time you introduce a new concept (everything) or character or setting or . . . or . . . or. Resist the urge to explain! The exposition of explanation bogs you down, and constantly re-explaining things is frustrating to your readers.

Not everything requires two paragraphs of explanation. Some things are better left mysterious, drawing out the reader’s curiosity. Other things do require a short, simple, direct explanation. And once you’ve explained something, you don’t have to rehash it every two chapters. If you’ve taken such a big detour that readers need the reminder that Agatha was killed and pretty much everyone suspects Agamemnon, your book has gone off the rails (or just gotten on them).

Explaining everything multiple times, constantly bringing the readers (via the characters) up to date on events they’ve already witnessed, and other failures to trust the reader are annoying. Repetition repetition repetition…. See what I mean?

This is a fine line for me, and I have a tendency to go too far the other way. I have a good memory (in general), so pulling facts from several chapters back out of my brain isn’t too hard. That might be a bit much to ask of everyone though.

How can you learn to trust the reader? Again, outside readers are often the best gauge!

Characters We Don’t Care About

Coincidentally, the first syllable of “characters” is “care.” Readers don’t have to love or even like your characters—but they do have to care about what happens to them. For the kabillionth time, we read to experience. Underpinning that experience is caring. Even if we’re rooting for the character to die a thousand deaths, we care. We want to read on. We want more.

But if we don’t care about the character? We don’t really care about finishing the book.

Want to get readers to care about your character? Read more about creating sympathetic characters—even unlovable ones!

Giving Up

The worst mistake you can make with almost any novel is to give up. Your book will never match the glorious vision in your head if you give up. If you want to let little black marks on the page defeat you, give up.

But if you want to be a writer—an author—this is the one weakness you can’t afford. You can fix everything else on this list—I know, I’ve done them all!—but there’s no way to fix giving up.

Just say no to giving up.

Is your persistence flagging? Read more about perseverance in writing and just keep swimming!

What do you think? What are the best ways to ruin your novel?

Photo credits: book heart—Jennuine Captures; baby with book—David Wuertele

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Nine ways to ruin your novel

12 Comments

Some books totally suck. Here’s how to make sure your book is one of them.

No Conflict

There are people out there who’ll tell you that you need tension on every page, or tension in every scene.

They’re wrong.

The less tension, the better. Conflict is for aggressive people, and passive-aggression sells books. Besides, everyone knows people read just to enjoy the words you put on the page. Give them more words to mull over, less forward movement and action. If your character wants something, either have him/her give up, or give it to them quickly. Nobody wants to feel compelled to keep reading that way.

No Emotion

All emotional writing is purple prose and should be eradicated. The stark contrast between the words on the page and what the character is most obviously feeling will not only move your readers to tears, but it will probably also win the Pulitzer. No, they’ll have to create a whole new award for your awesomeness, and name it after you.

If at all possible, convey emotion by naming the emotion. If not, assume your reader will understand.

No Effort

True genius springs forth whole from your Zeus-like mind, after all. Editing is for lesser talents. Rewriting? Only if you wanted to feel the genius of your words flowing through your veins again.

Remember that every word you type, write, say, breathe or think is holy. Anyone who attempts to defile your glorious paean with “suggestions” or “critiques” is beneath contempt. Crush them with your superior intellect.

Too Much Effort

If one adjective is good, why not three? Five? Seven? Description is what brings novels to life, so we’ll need reams of it, as florid as possible. You should be the next Shakespeare, so try to emulate his style (except for the blank verse bit). You should be inventing new words every few pages, scouring thesauruses so you never repeat something so common as “said,” and giving your characters vocabularies to rival Noah Webster’s. People read to learn, don’t they?

Starting Too Early

The birth of your main character is probably too early. Nothing before age five or so, but from there, just pick up wherever it interests you. I mean, if you find it interesting, you know all your readers will. They’ll be just as riveted by those opening scenes of first-grade follies in your thriller as you are.

Not Trusting the Reader

Every time you introduce a new concept or setting or character, make sure you take a minute to explain as much as you can about this person. Their life histories, current relationships, current SO’s opinion of them (especially if that SO is too far to bring him/her on the scene), home, hobbies, pets, etc.

But readers don’t have great memories, we know, so be sure to remind the reader of two to three of those facts every time we meet this character/setting/everything again.

Characters We Don’t Care About

We have got to have more avant garde literature out there. Blah blah blah sob story blah blah blah orphan—whatever. Let’s get really experimental. What about a character everyone will hate as the main character? People will sing your praises for decades. Nobody could ever come up with something so original. Again with the new award to honor your awesomeness!

Give Up

The best novels are the unfinish

 

 

 

What do you think? What are the best ways to ruin your novel?

Photo credits: Why did you do this to me look—Julia Roy; Cat asleep reading—Gerry Brague

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Stock conflicts to make your conflicts richer

4 Comments

I’ve seen this technique a few times on television shows, and I’d love to think about how to apply it in my fiction.

My kids love the cartoon Phineas and Ferb. The main characters’ older sister, Candace, always tries to get her brothers in trouble for their crazy inventions. She is also 15 and majorly boy crazy, especially for a boy named Jeremy.

Whenever the writers need Candace to do something or go somewhere that she might not otherwise, all they have to do is bring Jeremy into it, even indirectly. Whether she’s shopping for a gift for him, trying to impress him or going to see him, he’s one sure way to motivate Candace.

Jeremy is also great for her internal conflict. She often has to choose between her two biggest goals—be with Jeremy or bust her brothers.

Another example I’ve noticed recently is in Psych. Shawn runs a psychic detective agency with help from his best friend, Gus. However, Gus has another full time job: he’s a pharmaceutical sales rep. His car—the only transportation they have—is a company car (which is comical in its own right). Gus’s job and using the company car are both stock conflicts in the series. If the writers need to add more conflict in the scene or between the main character and his best friend, Gus’s job is their go-to choice (and girls, when they’re both single).

Naturally, in a series (book or TV), you have more opportunities to develop and use these stock conflicts, but I think they can be useful in standalone novels—as long as you keep the conflict fresh.

What do you think? How have you used “stock conflicts” in your work?

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

What keeps you reading? Romance edition part 2

1 Comment

On Monday, we talked about the draw of uncertainty in romance. There needs to be an element of uncertainty or conflict between the hero and heroine of a romance for readers to be truly vested and interested in the outcome. Predictability is anathema to a story question.

But sometimes, there isn’t conflict between our leads. Sometimes, the romance between them blossoms and grows without too many problems. I think the potential problem here is obvious—even the description sounds boring.

When the course of true love actually does run smooth, we still need conflict. External conflict is good—but if the story is, at its heart, a romance (or possibly a romance hybrid, like romantic suspense), that external conflict really should impact the developing relationship in some way.

Rather than continuing to speak in the abstract, let’s get concrete. A story where Lucy meets Gary, they fall in love and live happily ever after doesn’t sound compelling. Monday, our example was of Lucy meeting Gary and neither of them could tell—and perhaps weren’t sure themselves—whether they would get together, or how the other felt about him/her.

Today, our example is more along the lines of Lucy meets Gary, and Gary is a cop investigating a murder. It’s possible to write a story where the external plot basically has nothing to do with Lucy and Gary’s relationship. I wouldn’t advise that if you’re trying to write a story with the romance as a main plot. Instead, search for ways for the external plot to intersect with the romance plot.

To my mind, there are two basic categories of this intersection: where the external plot pits the hero and heroine against one another, and where the external plot simply gets in the way of their relationship.

For an example of the external plot pitting the hero against the heroine, we’ll go back to Lucy and Officer Gary. Lucy and Gary meet, and they hit it off—until Lucy has information about Gary’s homicide case that she just can’t tell him. Kaye Dacus did this subtly—the police officer hero didn’t have to directly confront the heroine he was investigating—in Love Remains. I do it in at least one of my manuscripts—the heroine has information about the criminals the hero is tracking, but she’s trying to protect him from those criminals, so she steers him away from them at every opportunity.

Alternatively, you could have the external plot simply getting in the way of their relationship. Officer Gary’s murder case interrupts Lucy and Gary’s first date. He stands her up when questioning a witness takes too long. He has to prove his commitment to the relationship by finding a balance between his work life and Lucy. (This isn’t a great example, because that’s kind of life when you’re with a cop, and PS catching a murderer is pretty important, but you get the idea.)

Finally, another way to add a level of conflict to what would be a smooth-course romance—possibly as a subset of the second type of external conflict/love story intersection—is to forbid the romance. This one is a bit harder to do in a contemporary, but many historical settings have rigid rules of fraternization and marriage. However, we can borrow a contemporary example from Shakespeare—their families are enemies, or simply do not understand one another’s cultures. Another contemporary example might be having the hero or heroine already dating someone else, especially someone close to the “real” love interest (best friend, brother, roommate, etc.).

I use this technique in a pretty specialized way in one of my manuscripts: the hero is a priest—or at least the heroine believes he is. (And yes, this is the same MS I mentioned three paragraphs ago. Seriously—read the excerpt and it’ll make more sense.)

What do you think? How do you use external conflict (or like to see it used) to add conflict between the hero and heroine in a romance?

Photo by Paul Morgan

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Enter late and exit early in dialogue

2 Comments
This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Dialogue

I’m not even going to pretend to point fingers. I’ve fallen into this trap myself. “Hey,” I think, “I’m good at dialogue. Dialogue makes scenes go faster. Dialogue is a great way to show conflict and characterize and keep things moving. We’re supposed to show not tell, right? And readers like dialogue. So I’m going to show the entire conversation.”

And two thirds of the conversation is the exact sort of boring warm up we talked about last week.

Just like we need to do in our overall stories and in our scenes, we need to enter a lot of dialogue late and leave early. Skip the greetings and the small talk, and get out of there before the conversation dies out.

I found one way to avoid this in Don’t Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden. I’ve mentioned it before:

Flat-out editing can help—especially for phone calls. (Eesh. I hate those!) Roerden uses the example of a phone call from a novel where the protagonist is in her car, realizing she needs to get a clue from her husband. She’s already thought about the context—when they heard it, what bit of information it is exactly—so why show that in a phone conversation? Indeed, after the words “she called him,” the author skips right to the husband’s answer: “‘Yeah, I’ve got it right here. . . ‘”

We can do this in other types of conversations as well—jump into the scene once the dialogue gets to the good part. Like Elmore Leonard, we want to leave the boring parts out!

What do you think? Do you try to enter late and exit early in dialogue? When would you not do this?

Photo by Trevor Devine

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Setting as conflict

1 Comment
This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Power in settings

In my opinion, the best way to truly make setting a character is to have some conflict for the characters arising from the setting. It may sound specialized, but the setting probably provides opposition to characters’ goals in some form in almost any work of fiction.

In its most obvious form, setting can provide the main conflict of the story, as in disaster fiction. This use of setting always makes me think of movies like Twister, The Day After Tomorrow, or 2012.

The disaster genre uses setting very effectively on a macro level. A natural disaster—be it hurricane, tornado, earthquake, fire or flood—stands between our heroes and their goals. Often, the heroes’ goal is just staying alive, and, uh, dying really puts a damper on that.

Of course, natural disasters aren’t really characters. They may be the main antagonist in a story, but they’re still no villain. However, we have to establish that the disaster is truly a threat, if not evil (just like with human antagonists). And (also just like with human antagonists), the best way to do that is to show the antagonist in action: someone getting caught by the disaster, or its after-effects or foreshadowing.

Showing the natural disaster’s capabilities can be one form of the other end of the spectrum, a scene-level conflict arising from the setting. This type of setting-conflict is more common, and probably appears in almost any book. It can be something as simple as a traffic jam that makes our characters late for the big meeting.

Sometimes I find myself relying on setting for little conflict like this maybe a little too much, however. A traffic jam or two might not push our readers past their capacity for the suspension of disbelief, but if every time the star-crossed lovers are supposed to meet, the Interstate suddenly backs up, maybe the state DOT should get involved.

Even on a minor level, a simple setting change can increase the tension and conflict in a scene. One dramatic example of this comes from the movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a movie about unwitting married assassins. When they’re assigned to kill one another, they discover their true identities and both question their flagging love and failing marriage.

In one particular scene, they “DTR” (define the relationship). John (Brad Pitt) begins “Let’s call this what it is,” meaning Let’s admit our marriage is a sham. It’s an emotional turning point for the characters—asking is this marriage worth fighting for anymore?

In the original scene, they had this conversation in a parking garage. I’ve seen this version—it falls flat. There’s no tension. It slows down the action side of the story.

Do you remember where they have this conversation in the final cut of the film? They’re hiding under a storm drain grate with the bad guys a few feet away. The characters are not only in a far more tense situation, they’re also forced to be physically close as they confront the reality of their marriage. The dialogue is identical to the originally shot scene, but in this new setting, the tension skyrockets.

What do you think? Do you try to use setting to create conflict? What’s your favorite setting-conflict (that you’ve seen or created)?

Photo by Adam Stanhope

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Tension fix: Dumpy dialogue

This entry is part 19 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

This is very related to yesterday’s point on getting information in there while keeping the tension. Sometimes the dialogue that’s used to convey that information is losing readers and we can’t find any secret agent monkeys or secret bad guys to help out. (And sometimes the dialogue is just dull. Fix that first, and then see if the scene needs more tension.) Now what?

I’ll turn the time over to two of the books I’ve been reading for this series: Don’t Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden and Revision And Self-Editing by James Scott Bell.

Bell can start us off with a point we’ve touched on: “Your Lead should be dealing with change, threat, or challenge from the get-go. At the very least, whenever she is in dialogue with another character, that inner tension is present” (97). Bringing out the inner conflicts can add subtext to even the dullest small talk. (But please, make sure that the small talk isn’t so small that it can’t support subtext 😉 .)

Roerden adds several techniques specifically for increasing tension in dialogue, since mysteries may require a lot of talky investigation. (And really, how many people would poison a PI’s potato chips?) She mentions bypass dialogue, borrowed conflict, simulated disagreement and flat-out editing (179-184).

Bypass dialogue is when two characters speak but don’t communicate. Naturally, this can be boring, but it can also be used to increase tension: make sure that the speakers have opposing agendas and different priorities, even if they’re friends. (“Transforming allies into temporary adversaries not only increases tension but also builds the reader’s empathy with your protagonist . . .” [180]).

You can also borrow conflict from a background source (a bit like yesterday’s fix). Roerden uses an example from a novel, a reporter interviewing a couple with a tennis game on TV in the background. When she asks about the victim, the husband suddenly swears. The reporter thinks she’s onto something—but he’s just upset about the game.

Simulated disagreement is a bit more tricky—obviously, the name refers to when two characters seem to disagree without actually doing so. In the example Roerden cites, two female characters are trying to relate a creepy occurrence (which we’ve already seen dramatized) to a male third character. He has no real reason to disbelieve or oppose them, but he repeatedly interrupts them (increasing the tension) with stories of his own. One of the women (his wife), gets on his case for interrupting, further heightening the tension.

Finally, flat-out editing can help—especially for phone calls. (Eesh. I hate those!) Roerden uses the example of a phone call from a novel where the protagonist is in her car, realizing she needs to get a clue from her husband. She’s already thought about the context—when they heard it, what bit of information it is exactly—so why show that in a phone conversation? Indeed, after the words “she called him,” the author skips right to the husband’s answer: “‘Yeah, I’ve got it right here. . . ‘”

CLOSING CAUTION: Overusing any technique or tension fix can be gimmicky or hackneyed—and can actually undercut the tension. Mix up your tension techniques to keep your readers reading without getting bored.

What do you think? Any good examples of the above fixes? Any other tension fixes? (Next week, we’ll look at suspense fixes, so let me know if there’s another tension fix you’ve used successfully—and if you’d like to guest post about it, just let me know!)

Photo credits: fraying rope—Govind Chakravarti; acorn hanging by a thread—Karen Dorsett

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Wrapping up the suspense: Act III

3 Comments
This entry is part 10 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

Eventually, all suspense and tension must be released—since anticipation is the source of suspense and tension, it’s probably not fair to readers not to eventually satisfy that anticipation. Naturally, this will happen to some extent throughout the story as we build up anticipation for events along the way. But the overarching suspense of the story reaches its ultimate payoff in the last part of the story, in the final act.

In fact, Raymond Obstfeld refers to Act III as The Payoff in Fiction First Aid. Here, we have to satisfy all that suspense we’ve worked so hard to build—and that payoff had better be commensurate with the anticipation, or our readers will feel cheated.

Obstfeld says, “The key to a good payoff is not to give the reader what you think they want” (55). That’s not to say that the hero and heroine shouldn’t get together in a romance (they should), or that the hero can’t catch the villain in a thriller (he should). It does mean that giving the reader exactly what you promised all along and only that is not enough to reward the suspense you’ve created for that goal.

This is a common reason why we don’t like the way a book ends. I read a book last year where the entire book was about the heroine learning about others and herself—but at the end, she went back and did the same thing she’d been planning to all along (and it was rushed). All along, I was promised some revelatory, life-changing experience, but in the end, the character didn’t change.

After spending hundreds of pages with these characters being thwarted in their quests, yes, they have to see some measure of success in the end (unless this is a tragedy, I guess). But that hard-won success probably shouldn’t just be the exact thing they’ve looked for all along. Take Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indy is reluctantly dragged into looking for the Holy Grail, which he doesn’t really believe exists. What does he find in the end? (Yeah, he finds the grail—but is that all?)

A good payoff is both unexpected in some way and commensurate with the suspense the author has created.

What do you think? How else do we see suspense in Act III?

Photo and baking credit: Heartlover1717

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!