Where Is Your Story Headed?

When asked if he knew the ending when he started a story, E. L. Doctorow said of his process:

It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Taken in isolation that quote can seem very freewheeling and unfettered. The romantic idea of novel writing often has this sort of outlook: just set off and every time you come to a fork in the road just choose whichever path seems most appealing.

Sounds great but this is a somewhat disingenuous view of storytelling that can lead to dead-ends and pointless detours. Even the most improvisational of writers usually know the ending they’re aiming for (even if they’re not always consciously aware of it).

It’s not often you get in your car without having a destination in mind.

But at the same time, just because you know where you want to go doesn’t mean you know what you’re going to find when you get there. What it give you, though, is a framework to help create a cohesive narrative rather than a random sequence of events that might come together through happenstance and good luck.

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The Long and Short of Writing the Middle

For most of us writing the middle of the story is the most difficult part.

The middle is where insecurity tends to rear its ugly head. Is this story going anywhere? Are these characters going to hold anyone’s attention? Is it believable what I’ve got them doing?

Regardless of whether you’ve planned things out meticulously or are winging it, these insecurities usually boil down to one of two concerns:

1) Is it too short?

2) Is it too long?

It may appear that feeling the bulk of the story is rushed or that it is too drawn out are completely separate and opposite problems, but in fact they stem from the same root cause: what you’re writing isn’t holding your interest.

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What a Story Needs to Begin

When it comes to time and place, a story can start anywhere and anywhen.

I know this to be true because I read a lot of books and I’ve read plenty that open at all different points in the tale. From the day a character was born to his last words on his deathbed and everywhere in between. I’ve read books that took their time establishing the world in which they were set, and I’ve read those that have started in the middle of action with no preamble.

Many have been great. Quite a few have been terrible.

What this tells me is that where and when you start isn’t a deciding factor. Of course it makes a difference how well a scene is executed, but that is true of any scene in any part of the book.

So then what are the important things that should be included in the opening pages and why?

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Choosing a Title for Your Fiction or Nonfiction Book

  

Starting the year with a guest post from one of my favourite bloggers, Nutschell over at The Writing Nut. The writing group she formed, the Children's Book Writers of Los Angeles (CBW-LA), has released a collection of writing exercises and short fiction based on those exercises.  And through January 50 percent of the proceeds will go to help aid in the Philippine Relief Efforts! 

Take it away Nutschell...

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The Best Way To Improve Your Writing

There’s only so much you can get out of preparation. 

If you want to teach someone to swim there’s certainly no harm in explaining the basics to them and giving them an idea of what to expect, but when it comes down to it there’s no substitute for getting in the water.

In fact, explaining nothing and giving them a shove is often the best method. Certainly the quickest.

Will they panic and flail around making things worse? Most likely, yes. But they’ll figure it out. They won’t drown (even if it feels like they’re going to). 

With writing—and pretty much everything else—preparation only gets you to the edge of the swimming pool. The rest you can only learn by diving in.

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The Logic of Illogical Characters

 

It is often suggested that when writing fiction you don’t want to tell your audience the answer is 4, you want to put 2 and 2 in front of them and let them work it out.

This is a powerful way of getting them involved in the story. If they’re putting things together in their head then they’re participating in the narrative, which is what you want.

But the way logic works once people are involved is not always the same as it works in mathematics.

Sometimes 2+2=5, and when you put that in front of your audience they will want to know what the hell you mean and demand an explanation. And there’s nobody more involved than someone wanting answers.

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Using Deadlines To Get That Story Finished

If you happen to be feeling very motivated and enthusiastic about your story, then sitting down and writing it isn’t going to be a problem. 

When you’re writing as fast as you can and all synapses are firing you really don’t need any particular structure or technique to your process. You write until you can’t write anymore, and then you get up the next day and do it again.

In a perfect world with plenty of free time and no distractions there would be no excuse for not getting those words onto the page. But things don’t always work out that way and most of us find plenty of reasons to give up and watch TV instead.

One method you might find useful if, like me, you’re not always delighted by the prospect of sitting at the computer with no end in sight, is to set yourself deadlines. Not just one, but many. 

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Consideration Of Theme In Story

When someone asks you what the theme of your story is, it can be a hard question to answer. This doesn’t mean your story doesn't have one, it just isn't overt, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, theme isn’t something you want front and centre.

  

That is, the reader doesn’t need to know from the outset what themes you’re going to be looking at. And even if by the end they can’t really put their finger on exactly what the overarching theme was, they just have a feeling that they can’t quite put into words, that’s fine. In many ways that sort of response is preferable to being too obvious or predictable.

However, for the writer, it’s important to know how theme is created, how you can shape it and what the mechanics are. 

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A Good Liar Makes A Good Writer

Stories are filled with unlikely occurrences. It’s hard to avoid unless you’re writing about very mundane events. But no matter how fantastical things get, and how willing the reader is to suspend their disbelief, it’s the writer’s responsibility to make what’s happening on the page feel believable.

And there are plenty of attributes of the good liar that can prove useful in doing this.

A lot of which comes down to not what you say but how you say it.

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Putting Ideas In The Reader’s Head

If Jack and Diane were about to have a baby so they bought loads of baby clothes, but then Diane suffered a miscarriage and was no longer able to have children and they ended up selling all the baby stuff, that would make for a sad story most people would sympathise with.

But if I put the story in this form: 

For Sale: Baby shoes. Never worn. 

...the impact of what happened is much sharper.

The difference, other than the impressive brevity, is that in Hemingway’s famous six word story, the realisation of what happened occurs in the reader’s mind.

Even though there are no details and no specifics, the part of the brain that puts two and two together and comes up with four adds that feeling of accomplishment to the emotion being expressed, magnifying it.

In short, if you can get the reader to work out the cause of what characters are feeling, then they are much more likely to share that feeling.

It is, of course, far easier to just tell the reader what’s going on. If the subject matter is an emotive one (like dead babies) then they’re still going to have some kind of emotional reaction. But we are so used to things unfolding in predictable patterns that we often become detached and distanced from what we are being told. We see it coming and we’re able to ease past it.

It’s the way we interact with each other. Most of the time we know what someone’s saying before they’ve finished saying it; and we’re already planning our reply. We’re very good at it because we get a lot of practice and nine times out of ten we guess right. But when things don’t turn out the way we expected it pulls us out of the noise and hubbub of everyday life and we pay attention to what’s being said—Wait, what did you say?—and then you’re much more likely to react on a deeper level.

In term of story, the emotional parts where characters are facing difficult situations and choices often get treated in a simple and straightforward manner because the subject matter speaks for itself. If Amy is going to have an abortion, the situation is already so infused with meaning and preconceptions that it may seem pointless to add anything. And if you do it can end up feeling heavy-handed or clunky.

You may think leaving it to the reader to form their own opinions is part of good storytelling, but there are few writers who write to encourage people to keep thinking whatever they want to think.

In most cases, the writer has set out a sequence of events to elicit certain reactions. Not necessarily to push a particular political agenda (although that can certainly be a possibility), it can just be to have the reader root for this character against that character, have them hope A falls in love with B or be on board with the idea that aliens ruling over us isn’t acceptable.

These are things the writer wants to happen, not just by chance but by design.

You can hope the reader falls in line with your way of thinking, and some probably will, or you can lead them to where you want them to go. Without them realising it.

Kind of sneaky, but pretty much the basis of all good fiction.

For example: 

Amy turned up at the clinic exactly on time. She didn’t want to have to wait around, thinking about how painful the procedure was going to be. But it was over very quickly and she didn’t feel a thing, not for many years. 

A little bit of wordplay to wrongfoot the reader and it stops being about my views on abortion, or even yours. Instead, you’re focused on Amy’s experience. You can still make a judgment on what happens and how she handles it, but for that moment when it isn’t clear what was said and then all of a sudden it is, everything else is removed from the equation and you get a pure blast of the here and now. This is what happened to Amy.

When you get the brain working on putting the pieces in place, even if it’s fairly obvious where they go, there’s less room for distraction, opinions and daydreaming. You fix the reader’s mind on those words on the page.

That’s the power of coming at things from an unexpected direction. Not to be vague or mysterious, or to try and drum up curiosity, but to lift the moment out of the narrative stream we’re so used to and give it the reader’s full attention, even if only for an instant.

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