Just Get On With The Story?

If you ask a reader whether they want answers immediately, or do they want to wait a while, chances are they’ll want to know right now.

But that doesn’t mean you should give them what they want.

They might complain if you seem to be taking too long getting to it, but the more you build up the tension and suspense, the higher you raise the stakes, the more they'll enjoy the journey.

But human existence is all about knowing what’s best for you and not doing it. Or knowing what you shouldn’t do and doing it anyway.

We can’t help ourselves. 

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Inventing New From Old

What people like to read about is something new and different. Something they haven’t experienced before.

What people also like to read about are things they recognise and are familiar with and know well.

Herein lies the problem for writers.  Go too far from what people are used to and they don’t want to risk wasting their time on something they may end up not liking.

Stick to what’s been done before and get treated like a hack and imitator.

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Handling Story Problems

A story is about a character dealing with a problem of some kind.  But is it just any problem?

What makes the task a character faces interesting to the reader?

Is it the risk involved? The difficulty? Does it vary depending on genre?

If Mary decides to start selling cupcakes, it is certainly no easy task running a business in the current financial climate. But will her journey towards financial success be story worthy?

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Guidelines Not Outlines

Some people like to have detailed outlines before they start writing. Others prefer to wing it and enjoy the process of finding out what the story’s about as they go.

Both styles are perfectly fine and workable, it comes down to a question preference.

If you have a method that works for you, that’s the one you should use.

The problem for some people is that working it all out beforehand is too constricting AND leaving it all to inspiration is too vague. Neither approach works.

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Focus On What Matters

Characters in stories tend to be single-minded. Either they’re driven by some internal need, or circumstances force them, but they rarely live a carefree existence going from one thing to the next as they please.

There’s a reason for this. Once a reader is interested in what a character’s doing, they want to know the outcome. Of that story.

If you go off in various tangents, even if you intentionally do it in an attempt to generate tension or suspense or mystery, there’s a good chance you’ll just annoy or frustrate those readers.

But there’s a problem here. In order to make a story dramatic and layered, you actually need to go off in different directions, to pull the reader off the main road every now and again.

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Emotions Belong To Readers

When it comes to using emotion in a story, the person whose emotions should be most important to you is the reader.

An emotionally invested reader is more likely to go wherever the story leads, and also more likely to make allowances for parts of the story they aren’t too sure about.

You can still keep readers engaged through intellectual curiosity or general drama and action, but grabbing them emotionally is always going to be the most intense experience for them.

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Differentiating Through Dialogue

While there’s nothing wrong with making characters sound different by giving them specific accents, it’s not something you can do for every character in a story. Not unless your tale takes place at the United Nations.

And while giving them vocal tics is useful, yeah? It helps identify them quickly, yeah? It also gets old just as quickly, yeah?

Rather than using how people speak to make them stand out, it is much easier and more effective to use what they say rather than how they say it.

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Choosing Character

There are two basic types of character: the ordinary person and the special person.

The special person is really good at their job, has skills most people don’t, or maybe even possesses powers beyond those of regular folk.

The ordinary person is like you or me.

Once you decide which type your main character is, the important thing is to get the reader to see the character as someone worth reading about.

Both types have certain drawbacks which, while not a problem, need to be addressed.

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Beginnings And Their Endings

My view has always been that great first lines are overrated. Famous opening lines tend to become famous after the fact. Once a book becomes acclaimed or well-loved, the opening takes on a significance that it didn’t have to start with. Nobody read “Call me Ishamel” and thought, Genius!

First paragraphs are overrated too. Orson Scott Card has a theory that the first paragraph is a freebie, and I’m inclined to agree with him.

The first paragraph can be in a different POV, be generic or introductory, set the tone, or be the lyric from a song. It doesn’t really matter and readers don’t really expect it to be consistent with the rest of the book.

Ever since somebody came up with Once upon a time...  readers have understood that.

First chapters, however, are important.

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An Awesome Idea

For this year’s A to Z Challenge I will be doing a series of hints and tips on how to get from the start to the end of the writing process. I will be keeping these posts relatively short (for me). And a big thank you to Arlee Bird for creating the A to Z Challenge. Cheers, Lee!

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Some people can sit down with a blank page and start writing. Come to think of it, we can all do that. But some people actually like what they end up with. And by some people I mean not me.

What most of us need before we start writing is an idea. A good one.
 

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