WORD POSITION
Careful attention to how your sentences, paragraphs, and scenes end can help you build a story that stands up down to its last words. Four tips:
01) Because the end of a sentence is the power position, a sentence that has a punch to deliver should deliver it last;
02) The end of a paragraph is more important than the end of any sentence in it, so put your strongest sentence at the end of the paragraph;
03) There should be a rise in emotion or significance at the end of each chapter (in a novel… each scene in a short story). How much of a rise depends both on the type of fiction and on the tone and pace desired;
04) A story or novel can end one of two ways:
a) Forcefully, with a big climax and conclusion;
b) Quietly, almost anti-climactically.
MAKE YOUR PLOT SING
Writing the moral in your story:
01) Don’t confuse a genre theme with your book’s theme;
02) Focus on the one lesson your protagonist must learn during the book;
03) Create plot events that force the character to choose between an old and a new belief;
04) Match the magnitude of the events to the distance of the inner journey;
05) Choose events strong enough to force your character to make new choices;
06) Create suspense about each choice and each outcome. (The "right" choice may lead to a disastrous outcome.);
07) Secondary characters have their own journeys; be conscious of their effect on your plot.
ENDINGS
Don’t try to beat the reader over the head with the moral of the story. Instead, make an effort to hide the moral within the conclusion - to
suggest the meaning of the novel rather than state it plainly.
SURPRISES
WHAT A STORY!
Four keys to a great story:
01) Conflict - should be clear but not simplistic, and you should be able to list the major conflicts plus who’s on each side;
02) Surprise - if the story unfolds exactly how the reader expects, it can be a disappointment (see next section for more details on surprises);
03) Focus - there should be a dominant, sympathetic character for the reader to follow throughout the story, particularly in the case of complex plots;
04) Pace - tied to the number of new plot developments per chapter.
SURPRISES
Avoid clichés, unless you intend to have a magician pull an eagle out of his hat rather than a dove.
The way surprises create tension is obvious, but tension can also come from characters being faced with moral dilemmas. (Will he do the right thing, or won’t he?)
If you want a surprising story, you need two things:
01) Red herrings;
02) Foreshadowing, but not too much.
If John is going to get the girl at the end, there should be a Stephen or a Frank (or else some fantastic opportunity) that could take her from him. These are red herrings, the hand that distracts while the magician’s assistant replaces the dove with the eagle.
Now, if you want your magician to replace the dove with, say, a roc or a dragon, you have to foreshadow this surprise - possibly by introducing the intermediate step of exchanging the dove for an eagle. That way it’s not such a huge leap for the reader to believe in his skills. But if the roc is screaming backstage or the dragon is breathing fire through the curtains (too much foreshadowing), the surprise is lost.
In addition to building tension, surprises can also further characterization, create curiosity, or point up the plot. Just be sure any surprises, foreshadowing, and unexpected plot twists are explained by the last page.
A story with
no surprises also has two requirements:
01) Set up, or clearly point to, a conclusion which arouses our interest;
02) Create complex characters.
Either way, surprise or no surprise, the reader has to believe in the character’s ability to perform the actions attributed to him. That’s why character complexity is important, but it is crucial in a story with no surprises.
REWRITING THE STORY
REVISION
When deciding what to revise, you can ask someone else’s opinion or make the decisions yourself, but either way the following questions should be answered as exhaustively as possible:
01) Whose story is this? Have I made it clear which character(s) the reader should be most concerned about?;
02) How are the major characters different by the end? Has there been a change in his situation, character, or knowledge of life? If not, put some in, and write them down clearly;
03) Are the changes meaningful? What does it say about life, about people, about your particular setting?;
04) Trace the events that cause each change - write them down and study them. Does it seem that these events are sufficient to produce this change? If not, add scenes which accomplish this;
05) Are these events all necessary to produce this change? If not, cut some scenes;
06) Are these events plausible as a producer of these changes, or as occurring to these people? If not, make major plot changes;
07) Do these events plus changes add up to the meaning you intended your story to convey?
THE FOUR STEPS OF MANUSCRIPT CPR
01) Get out the highlighter - mark all the material that still speaks to you, then cut it out and throw the rest away;
02) Is it really love - keep anything which still evokes the original impetus of the story;
03) Regroup the seeds - consolidate previously unrelated material into one story;
04) Expand, then contract - expanding a thin story is more difficult than thinning out an overweight one, so incorporate all your research and notes into your first draft.
WEILDING THE SCALPEL
There are four good reasons to cut:
01) Redundancy - people don’t like to be told something multiple times; expending time and effort reading while learning nothing new is irritating. The author loses authority as a storyteller if he doesn’t seem to trust his own words to make his point the first time;
02) Over-explanation - redundancy is saying something more than once; over-explanation is saying something unnecessary in the first place. It insults the reader’s intelligence;
03) For pace - words not repeated for emphasis or which add no new info are just padding… they slow the pace. Never write, "She said angrily" when you can use an exclamation point; never write, "He asked" when you can use a question mark;
04) For literary effect - deliberately omit connections to let the readers figure them out for themselves. Surprise is thus greater, and reader involvement is deepened by focusing on the climactic or revelatory moments in your story.
Two final caveats:
01) Do not apply these guidelines to dialog. Dialog characterizes as much by form as by content (though, of course, if your character is terse, keep dialog to a minimum too.)
(PERSONAL NOTE: I would add that if you already have a scene showing something crucial to the story you should avoid explaining it in dialog, and vice versa.)
02) Some very successful books are badly padded - case in point, Tom Clancy.
TEN STEPS TO PLANNING YOUR SECOND DRAFT
02) Set the total count - the number of words required to tell your story the way you want. The optimum word count is around 70,000 words;
03) Count chapters - for maximum readability, chapters should be approximately 2,500 words each, which translates to around 28 chapters;
04) Separate scenes - short scenes have a fast pace, long scenes are slower. Starting a story slowly, with long scenes, then shortening the scenes to increase the pace will increase tension. Optimally, the bulk of the story should have 3 scenes per chapter;
05) List your scenes - prepare a written list of all scenes in your current manuscript, comparing each to the traditional markers of good scene construction. (PERSONAL NOTE: This can be done on index cards, which can then be placed on a wall as a storyboard, to be rearranged as needed.);
06) Add and subtract - reorder your scenes as necessary to comply with the story you want to tell and the pace you want to achieve. Cut anything that no longer fits;
07) Eliminate repetition - don’t repeat yourself. (See how annoying it is?);
08) Consolidate - combine scenes and characters whenever possible to enrich your story’s texture;
09) Build bridges - create bridge scenes as necessary to advance your story. (PERSONAL NOTE: As it is only necessary to show what is essential to making the point clear in the end, be sure all your bridge scenes work to that end.);
10) Count to three - keep the classic three act structure in mind. The first third of the story should be devoted to character development and exposition, to bring the fictional world to life. Roughly 50% should be the conflict section - plot driven, heavy on action, and faster paced, building to the climax. The remaining 15 to 20% of the pages should be for the final resolution - but remember, once the monster dies the move’s over; don’t create an anti-climax by drawing out the end.
If you found these articles helpful, please tell your friends, and check out the short stories on Dwayne's
AUTHOR PAGE, (
http://www.smashwords.com/books/search/Dwayne%20Bearup/10all )of which were written with this helpful little book nearby.
01) Start with 250 - that’s the ideal word count for the story summary (which is the first step in an outline.) Multiple twists or sub-plots can require as many as 500 words, but any more than that and you’re summarizing the plot, not the story. (Stories are simple: boy meets girl, Russian family survives the revolution, etc. Plot is what an outline relates.);
