Category: Character development

What to Do When Your Scenes Are Too Short

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Mount Rainier – Kevin Bacher

Erin says:

I’m writing a book, and I’m having this recurring difficulty that is really bugging me. When I write my scenes (I’m on my first draft), they go by really fast. I see that published writers usually spend a lot more time in one moment, really diving deep. Even when I add a bunch of detail, it’s still like one paragraph for my character to make her way down a mountain in the rain. So I’m going to pose a couple of questions. First, it that normal for a first draft? Do any of you have that problem? Second, how would I fix this in my later drafts if it’s normal and okay, or fix it now if it isn’t?

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This is an interesting question, and the answer depends on a few different factors.

First, not every event (e.g. hiking down a mountain) has to be a scene. It can just be transitional and short. Or you can even cut it out and use chapter breaks and soft hiatuses to imply the passage of time.

But if every scene is coming out paragraph-length, then yeah, you may have a problem. Before you dig deeper, however, ask yourself this:

Is this really a novel, or is it a short story?

I’ve had this problem myself. I get an idea, and it feels like a novel-length thing with layers and depth and plenty of time to get to know and love the characters. But then I start writing at what I think is the beginning, and (a) the scenes are really thin and (b) is takes forever to get to the “good part.” These are usually signs that it should just be a short story.

In that case, start writing at the climax. Read more about that here. Then work in any backstory you need within that climactic scene, but remember less is more. Imply, rather than state, whatever you can. Here’s how to do that.

Bonus: You’ll find you can still fit lots of emotional layers into a short story.

Now, if you need way more backstory and world-building for the climax to make any sense, it may need to be a novel.

If it’s definitely a novel

Maybe this part of the story just doesn’t have much going on. So still ask yourself if you are starting in the right place. Will the story make sense if you open later in the timeline?

Typically it should start just before your protagonist is thrust into a new situation, the “inciting incident”:

  • OPEN: Lucy and her siblings move to the country to escape the WWII air raids.
    • INCITING INCIDENT: Lucy finds a magical land in a wardrobe.
  • OPEN: Luke buys some new droids.
    • INCITING INCIDENT: The droids turn out to be stolen and to be carrying dangerous information. (The opening battle scene works more like a prologue in this case.)
  • OPEN: It’s the day of the reaping.
    • INCITING INCIDENT: Katniss takes her sister’s place.

Each opening provides context, but then we’re thrust into the real tension and action right away.

If your book already starts in the right place

Now it’s time to dig deeper.

It sounds like you might just be moving your character from point A to point B—writing the action without the motivation. Adding details about the scenery will only go so far, and will start to weigh down the prose and bore your readers after awhile. You probably need to take some time to understand your protagonist.

  • What’s her background?
  • What kind of emotional baggage is she carrying?
  • What are her deepest wishes and fears?
  • What does she stand to gain or lose in this scene?

Now, since you can’t just dump all this information into your prose, how will these things affect her behavior? The way she talks? The way she dresses?

  • If she comes from a wealthy background, but has been on the run or down on her luck for awhile, she may have high quality clothes that are a bit worn.
  • If she had an abusive past, she may apologize frequently to avoid offending anyone she meets.
  • If she really wants to get to the bottom of the mountain, but is terrified of heights, her desires and fears will alternately push her on and hold her back.

And so on. These details become little clues into your protag’s past, and it can be fun for your readers to put the puzzle together while the main action carries things forward.

Beyond planting character clues like that, there’s always internal monologue. Some writers avoid it (and obviously most movies do), but I adore internal monologue and it probably takes up the majority of my pages. I love stepping into my characters’ heads and listening to them think, even in third person. Internal monologue can transform a paragraph about a woman hiking down a mountain into a scene about a woman’s struggle against the elements, fighting ever-stiffening joints, rivulets of rain mingling with frustrated tears as she draws closer and closer to her ultimate revenge upon the fire-breathing beast that ate her Chihuahua last month while she was out buying ninja stars at the market.

How much time should you spend on this stuff in first draft vs. later drafts?

It’s true you don’t want to spend too much time on details in your first draft, because they can slow you down. But if your issue really is character depth, you need to invest some time up front, because characters drive the plot, so if you make a misstep here, major rewrites are in your future. (Well, major rewrites will be in your future anyway, but understanding your characters will help minimize them.)

Erin, I hope something in here helps!

Got a question like Erin’s? Suggestion Box, baby.

6 Elements of Character Appearance that Go Way Beyond Eye Color

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black and white male mannequins

Image by DryHundredFear

A black fedora crouched low over his hooked nose and stiff blonde mustache. He hugged his fraying coat tightly around his body, as if he was afraid it would run off on him, like the second button had. But the really curious thing about the man was the half-carat diamond ring squeezed onto the little finger of his left hand.

Today’s topic comes to us from Alex T., who asks:

I was wondering how to pick how your characters look. I know it isn’t that important, but I’m a little stressed about it.

Oh, but Alex, you’re wrong! Character appearance, done right, is immensely important. It reveals character traits—there’s a reason mad scientists generally have unkempt hair.

Choosing your characters’ appearances is a matter of two things: deciding what you want to reveal about their personalities, and asking yourself the right questions.

  1. Physical Basics. Eye color, hair color, skin tone, build, age. Also known as the laundry list, this accomplishes very little for you. It allows your readers to picture a kind of doll, but not a person. Know these details (you can choose them based on the character’s ancestry and possibly class), but don’t focus on them. And for heaven’s sake, don’t write a whole paragraph just about the eyes.
  2. Distinguishing Features. Here’s where we get to the meat. Something noticeable about the character. A misshapen nose, a mole, a gap between the front teeth. This can relate deeply to their past: an old war injury, scars from an abusive relationship, laugh lines, or something they’ve been self-conscious about since birth.
  3. Type of Clothing. Clothing says a lot about your character’s personality, status, and even occupation. It can also do a lot for your setting. A business suit or space suit? Overalls or miniskirt? Denim jacket or a coat of purple dragon fur?
  4. Quality of Clothing. Is it old, new, designer, knockoff, handmaid, hand-me-down? And whichever it is, why? Does your character wish he had nicer clothes, or does he just not care? This says something about your character’s present and past. A man in expensive but old clothes may have lost a fortune. A girl in ill-fitting fashions from the last decade might be wearing something passed down from older sisters.
  5. Presentation. Is your character neat or sloppy? Pressed and buttoned or wrinkly and disheveled? A rich tomboy might wear expensive stockings covered in runs and grass stains. A poor but ambitious man might wear a second-hand suit that is always painstakingly pressed.
  6. Poise. Think about Heath Ledger’s Joker or Tony Shaloub’s Monk. Mannerisms make a huge difference in a character appearance and speak a lot to state of mind. Do they slouch, or stand straight, or point their nose in the air? Do they limp or shuffle or glide or skip? A confident person will stand tall and look straight at you. An anxious person might fidget and look at the floor.

One Final Rule of Thumb:

Don’t describe every detail. You are not reporting to a police sketch artist; you are giving your readers an impression. Pick a few key details and let your readers fill in the rest.

For instance, without looking back at the description at the beginning of this post, can you remember the color of the man’s coat? Black or grey, right? Right. Only, I never said what color it was. I gave you the color of the hat, but that detail allowed you to make an assumption about the coat, and probably the pants and shoes, too.

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Now that you know what your characters look like, here’s more help with describing them.

Writing in first person? Here’s how your narrator can describe himself.

Need help building your protagonist? Maybe you need to find his voice! Join us for Voice Week, September 22-26.

Got your own writing question? Drop it in the Suggestion Box.

mannequins

6 Elements of Character Description that Go Way Beyond Eye Color

9 Storytelling Blunders That Make You Look like an Amateur

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image of Riker facepalming

Image from Dark Uncle

 

You may be a grammatical black belt, leaping big vocabulary words in a single bound. But take care: you could still be making elementary mistakes that’ll leave your readers cringing, eye-rolling, and yes, even face-palming.

Protect your writerly reputation! Check out these nine storytelling mistakes that make you look like a total n00b—and learn how to fix them like a pro.

 

1. The Perfect Hero: Best We’ve Ever Seen

The problem: Your character is the Best at Everything, constantly impresses the other characters, and frequently breaks rules yet never gets in real trouble. This character is so cliché she has a name: Mary Sue. She’s amusing for awhile, but only as a daydream. She soon makes you look shallow and self-indulgent.

The fix: Give her fears and weaknesses. Trip her up. Relate to your readers by appealing to their vulnerability. As the Pixar geniuses remind us, we admire characters more for trying than for succeeding.

 

2. The Weak Villain: Foiled Again!

The problem: This mistake often goes with the one above. Your brilliant hero thwarts the villain yet again! Perhaps even single-handedly! But if your villain is that weak, you’re not challenging your hero, which means you have no conflict and therefore no story. It’s boring.

The fix: Give your villain multiple advantages over your hero. A bigger army, bigger guns, more political influence. Your hero should suffer greater and greater losses as he clashes with the villain throughout the story, until he reaches his lowest point, and finds some tiny advantage that helps him defeat the villain—probably an advantage you introduced near the beginning.

 

3. Instant Romance: Just Add Danger!

The problem: Contrary to action movie tradition, “we got shot at together” is not a valid basis for True Love, especially when your characters have only known each other for weeks, days, or even hours. Those stories can be titillating, but not moving.

The fix: Give your characters actual personalities, and something within those personalities that suits them for each other. Watch the first twenty minutes of Pixar’s Up or Wall-E to see how it’s done. (Or here’s more help avoiding shallow romance.)

 

4. Exposition: If You’re Just Joining Us…

The problem: Flat-out explanations for past events instead of hinting at them. You often see these in the subsequent volumes of a series to recap events from previous books, but you’ll also see it in standalone books to reveal heroes’ personal histories, or even to remind the reader what’s happened so far. It’s awkward and often boring.

The fix: This is a classic example of when you should show, not tell. Don’t say it, convey it. Here’s how to get rid of background exposition.

 

5. Laundry List Descriptions: Check, Check, Check

The problem: Describing every character with the same handful of features. Hair color. Eye color. And every article of clothing. You’re trying to give the reader a complete picture, but by the third or fourth detail their eyes are glazing over.

The fix: Pick a few details that inspire your readers to fill in the rest. What would strike you when you first met the character? What would you remember about him later? A unique mustache? A discoloration of the skin? An elaborately pocketed cloak? Focus on these details and give minimalist descriptions for the rest.

 

6. Surprise! It Was All a Dream

The problem: You coax your readers through some tragic or thrilling scene and then jerk them at the end by revealing it was only a dream. Unless you’re writing the next Inception, do not do this. It’s a poor attempt at increasing tension, which ends up feeling more like a broken promise.

The fix: If you must include a dream sequence, make it obvious from the beginning of the scene that it is a dream. Preface it with “I had another dream last night,” or fill it with surreal, dream-like qualities.

 

7. The Idiot Class: They’re All Like That!

The problem: Portraying a people group, often a religious or political organization, as nincompoops. In amateur YA fiction it’s common for all the adults to be idiots, while the kids cleverly fool them at every turn. Unless you’re writing farce, this makes you look shallow and bigoted.

The fix: A few fools are fine, but if you want to be taken seriously, include people with depth on both sides of the conflict. Don’t make your hero—or his cause—infallible.

 

8. Mini Morals: Holier Than Thou

The problem: The hero sidesteps from the plot onto a soapbox for some religious, political or ethical cause. It only lasts for a few lines of dialogue, but it’s spammy, like when you’re talking to a friend about your favorite movie, and he segues into all the reasons you should join the Church of the Lonely Potato. It’s annoying even if you already belong to the Church of the Lonely Potato.

The fix: If you’re going to have a moral or message in your story, the entire story should work to tell that moral, and you shouldn’t flatly state it at the end like in a Saturday morning cartoon. Instead, demonstrate it through the events and consequences of the story.

 

9. Pop Culture References: As Troubling as Justin Bieber

The problem: Modern pop culture references date your work and break your readers’ suspension of disbelief. In five years, is your Gotye reference going to make you look cool or out of touch? And blatant Blazing Saddles references do not help immerse me in your medieval dragon world, Mr. Paolini!

The fix: If your world isn’t connected to our modern world, avoid references entirely. If you’re writing about the future, you have more leeway, but stick with icons that have proven staying power (Bieber will likely follow Aaron Carter into obscurity, but The Beatles are safe territory). Bonus tip: reference your own made-up icons that are popular in your futuristic world.

 

Are you guilty any of these mistakes? What other amateur writing blunders make you cringe when you read them?

 

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riker facepalming

Whatever you do when writing your novel, don’t do these nine things.

What’s as Dangerous as a Fairy Tale Ending – and How to Avoid It

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Photo by Joe Penna

Photo by Joe Penna

Today’s topic comes to us from Jubilare:

“I worry a lot about the dysfunction of my characters being taken as an approval of dysfunction in relationships.…One can avoid idealizing the flaws, sure, but how does one accept that humans and relationships are flawed without sending out the message that people should be satisfied with potentially abusive relationships…without seeming to say ‘look at the nice romance you can have with people who have X dangerous flaws’?”

We have a tendency to write about seriously flawed people. Depressed addicts with childhood scars and abandonment issues. Let’s face it: they’re just more fun.

But through this, we risk giving our readers a skewed view of the world. Just as sugary-perfect princess endings can train little girls to believe their lives will be perfect once they get married, moving tales of troubled souls can lead readers to believe dysfunctional relationships are the only real kind; that the best they can hope for is to find poetry in the pain. Worse, they might even believe such relationships are romantic, something to chase after.

What guy doesn’t want to hold the manic pixie dream girl when she cries?

What girl doesn’t want to soothe the nightmares of the war-torn bad boy?

Now, some readers will romanticize dysfunctional relationships no matter what you do, just as some will find sexual innuendos, political statements, or religious dogma in places you never intended to put them. That can’t be helped.

But we have a responsibility to do what we can: both to faithfully represent reality and to give readers the courage to improve that reality.

Here are three ways you can do that when writing about dysfunctional relationships. Try using at least two wherever the need arises.

Know the signs.

Read up on the signs of abusive relationships so you know whether or not you’re writing about one. Also research the typical physical and behavioral struggles that come with your character’s flaws. Show realistic consequences; don’t pull any punches when it comes to the pain of living in an unhealthy relationship, even if your hero is the one inflicting that pain.

Show an alternative.

Use secondary characters to show a healthier version of the flawed relationship in question. For instance, if your hero’s parents had a horrible marriage, and he struggles with knowing how to treat the girl he loves, give him a happy aunt and uncle, or a best friend with a good marriage. Give him (and your readers) something to aspire to.

Include a victory.

Every story has a physical plot and an emotional one. A dysfunctional relationship is an emotional plot. Don’t just leave it as-is at the end: make your hero come to terms with these problems at the climax, have him make an ultimate decision, and lead him to at least a small victory in the end.

A note about victory:

Be careful how your hero comes by that victory. Real healing is difficult and painful; it doesn’t happen instantly. Her love alone can’t make him stop drinking. His love alone can’t pull her out of a clinical depression.

But maybe it can help them take the first step.

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Got a writing topic you want talked about? Drop it in the Suggestion Box.

Your plot is useless without this

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Image by Francisco Osorio

Image by Francisco Osorio

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A hundred strangers cling to one another as their runaway train thunders toward a dead end.

Across town, the only woman you’ve ever loved is strapped to a time bomb.

Save her, keep your heart from breaking. But a thousand other hearts get broken instead.

“My husband!” a woman screams as she runs up beside you, clutching a small boy to her chest. “My husband is on that train!”

Save the train, do the right thing, the city will throw you a parade. But all you’ll see through the floats and confetti will be the grief-ridden faces of your true love’s family and the knowledge that you’ll never see her again.

You inhale the deep breath you’ll need for the flight across town.

You’re frozen in mid-takeoff. You can’t take your eyes off the boy in the woman’s arms. He’s the age you were when your father was killed. Young, but you can see in his face he knows what’s happening. Because you felt the same.

Oh, snap. You curse and hammer the keyboard. You threw the little boy in to milk the drama, not to change your hero’s mind—but now you see there’s no turning back. This is going to mean rewrites.

For all the dramatic events that happen around your hero, there are equally dramatic events happening inside him. Events that move him to action. If you don’t keep track of what’s going on inside his head, you won’t be able to predict how he’ll react to any given situation, and by the time you realize it, you might be in a terrible plot bind.

Keep that from happening by mapping your hero’s emotional journey along with the plot. Here are a few guidelines to help.

Outline your hero’s history.

Three forces influence your hero’s decisions: logic, emotions, and morals. What makes sense? What feels best? What’s right? How each of this forces affects him is first determined by his past. So start by outlining his history with questions like:

  • What’s the most traumatic thing he’s ever experienced?
  • What’s the safest he’s ever felt and why?
  • What’s the worst sin he’s ever committed?
  • Which two people have the biggest positive and negative influence on him?
  • What does he want most?
  • (Here’s more help getting to know him)

Use his history to determine how he will react to each major plot point.

The severity of each situation relative to his personal demons will determine his decision. And every decision he makes will affect future events, which, in turn, affect him right back. As the story progresses and the stakes are raised, his decision process will change. Emotional turmoil clouds his moral judgment. Righteous anger clouds his logical judgment. It’s a tumbling system of cause and effect, playing on your hero’s weaknesses and leading to the climax.

Equip him for the ultimate decision.

At the climax, your hero must make one final decision between right and wrong. The forces influencing him are now one big mess of everything that’s happened so far. Of longing and pain and fear.

Make sure that mess includes the motivation for him to make the decision he is supposed to make. If you want him save the people on the train, kill off his father; plant the boy. But if you want him save the girl, you’d better plant something early on that will undermine his empathy for the boy and push him in a different direction.

And if you want him to find a clever way to save everyone (like they do in all the movies), you’d better give him a memory that inspires the answer.

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