Category: Writing tips

What Does “Hang a Lantern” Mean, and How Do I Use It in My Book?

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photo by Kabilan Subramanian

To hang a lantern (or “hang a lamp”) is to call attention to an inconsistency in the story by having a character notice the inconsistency. It’s the writer’s way of telling the reader “I did this on purpose; it’s not a mistake.”

Detective stories are rife with lanterns;

“That’s weird; blank doesn’t usually blank.”

“Oh, it’s probably just because of blank.”

Little did they know, it was actually blank!

There are three reasons to hang a lantern. We’ll use a sample story so we can explore each one.

The inconsistency: Jimmy is not at the Laundromat this Saturday morning – but it’s already been established that Jimmy goes to the Laundromat every Saturday morning. The lantern: Sarah notices Jimmy is not there.

  1.  To create intrigue by pointing out clues

Sarah was at the Laundromat until noon, but there was no sign of Jimmy. Odd.

      2.     To surprise the reader by cluing him in without him knowing it

Sarah scanned the room as she made her way to an idle washing machine, then tried to hide her disappointment when she realized that Jimmy wasn’t there. Of course; he’d mentioned that he might have to work today. She just hadn’t realized, until now, how much she had been looking forward to seeing his crooked grin as he wished her happy birthday. [Sarah returns home later only to discover that Jimmy has planned a surprise party]

    3.       To explain away a plot inconsistency

Sarah’s mind wandered as she watched her socks tumble round and round in the drier. Jimmy had had to work today – some hot project that couldn’t wait until Monday – so she was alone with her thoughts.

In the first example, there’s no explanation for Jimmy’s absence; Sarah simply wonders where he is, which makes us suspect something fishy is going on.

In the second example, Sarah dismisses his absence as nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but focuses on how much she misses him. The writer tricks us into thinking this scene exists only to establish Sarah’s growing feelings for Jimmy – so we are pleasantly surprised when we discover that Jimmy’s absence was actually a sign of his feelings for Sarah.

In the third example, the writer just wanted to give Sarah some time to think, so got Jimmy out of the way for a while with a simple excuse. The parenthetical statement acknowledges that he doesn’t usually work on Saturdays, but offers a plausible explanation for an exception to the rule. This both explains away the inconsistency and lets us know that it’s not important to the plot.

Lanterns are also useful in trilogies and series. Say you leave a plot question unanswered in book one, because you plan to reveal all in book two – but in the meantime, you don’t want your readers to accuse you of overlooking it. Hang a lantern on it; have a character ask himself (or another character) that question, then leave it. Your readers will simply expect the answer in the next book.

A Made-up Word That Will Add Depth to Your Characters

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Kramer bursting through Jerry’s door. Garfield kicking Odie off the table. Michael Scott turning an innocent statement into an innuendo by adding “that’s what she said!”

What do all these things have in common?

They are all arsidities!

What the heck is an arsidity?

  1. A word I made up.
  2. The phonetic spelling for the pronunciation of the acronym RCDT: Recurring Character Development Theme. This is a phrase, object, or quirk that bears significance to a certain character or characters, and appears more than once in a single piece of work.

Wait a second, isn’t that called a “motif”?

Yes and no. A motif is a type of arsidity. A motif represents something – for instance, the sound of footsteps in A Tale of Two Cities represents the oncoming troubles of the characters, particularly Carton’s fate. An arsidity doesn’t always represent something, and is not always “important” – it is just a detail that adds depth to your characters and soul to your story. Arsidities help make a story and its characters more lovable, meaningful, charming, or funny.

More examples of arsidities:

The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) – “my precious”     

The Outsiders (Hinton) – “gallant” and “stay gold”

Ocean’s Eleven – Rusty, Brad Pitt’s character, is eating in almost every scene

Silence of the Lambs – Hannibal Lector never blinks

Star Trek – Spock’s famous “Live long and prosper” gesture; Bones’ “Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor not a [fill in the blank]”

None of these arsidities are vital to the plots of these books, movies, and TV shows, but can you imagine them without their arsidities? What a dull world it would be!

Do you use arsidities in your novel? How have they enhanced your character development, world building, and voice?

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Plot Exposition, Muppets, and Cannibalism: a Writing Lesson from the Movies

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There’s a scene in the Great Muppet Caper, in which Lady Holiday explains to Miss Piggy the backstory for the entire movie.
Miss Piggy: Why are you telling me all this?
Lady Holiday: It’s plot exposition. It has to go somewhere.

The Muppets are a classic in my family, and whenever we catch serious movies forcing blocks of plot exposition into dialogue for convenience, we roll our eyes at each other and quote Lady Holiday.

It’s a good rule of thumb to make sure you Show Don’t Tell by giving everything you write the “how can I translate this to the big screen?” test, but shoving all your plot into dialogue and all your character development into voiceover is cheating – and it will show in your work. Perhaps a better way to remember the rule is “Imply, don’t state.” Let’s switch to an example of Imply Don’t State done right in a movie.

The Book of Eli opens up in a forest, gray with fog, where lies a decaying human body. A skin-and-bones cat is picking at the carcass. A few feet away, a hunter waits, aiming a crossbow. He sees the perfect moment, shoots the cat, picks up the dead creature for his next meal, and leaves the human body.

This seemingly simple first scene conveys everything we need to know in one fell swoop. Something terrible has happened in this world. Times are desperate. And even though we don’t yet know the main character’s name, or where he comes from, or where he is going, we know he won’t eat human flesh, even if he is starving. He also doesn’t bury the body, but thanks to the previous fact, we know this is not due to a lack of respect for human life. Either he’s seen too many human bodies to bother burying one of them, or he has more important things to do. Or both. We also know that he has patience and skill with a weapon.

We learn all this in less than five minutes, without hearing a word of dialogue. And it’s brilliant. Approach your novel (or short story) the same way.

Help! My Short Story is Turning Into a Novel! – 3 Tips to Get It Back on Track

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Too wordy?

 

Those of us who write (or read) mostly novels are used to dragging out the story over several scenes and chapters. We set the stage, introduce characters, infuse the narrative with backstory, build plot, build plot, build plot, write very dramatic death scenes at the climax, then finish up with a brief but satisfying summary of what happened afterwards. The problem is, we approach short stories as if they are mini-novels…then wonder why we can’t make it work. Here are three things I’ve learned about writing the perfect short story:

1. Find the right place to start. Picture the whole story in your head, as if it were a full length novel, and identify the climax—the moment the hero makes his or her ultimate decision, and people die or escape or kiss or whatever. Write that scene. And only that scene. Now, read it. Does it make sense by itself? If not, add backstory in small amounts until it does. If you really have to add additional scenes, add them, but only before the climax, never after—and keep your red pen ready.

2. Build the story like a joke. Whether it is a comedy or not, think: Setup. Punchline. Open with a punchy first sentence and build quickly to your climax; your last sentence is your punchline.

3. Cut extraneous details. No more than three main characters, and that’s pushing it. Don’t describe whole landscapes; only what your character notices in the heat of their passion, fear, grief, whatever. If possible, don’t even include character names. Look carefully at every sentence, every word. If it can be cut, it should be—you will find the phrasing hits harder the more concise you are.

The Three Laws of Writing

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There are dozens of rules in writing – ones you should follow and ones you should break – but there are three basic tenets at the core of good fiction that you ought to know. I’ll expand on the Three Laws as we go along. For now, here’s an overview:

Law #1: Read good books. Garbage in, garbage out. If you want to write well, feed your mind with excellent writing. You’ll learn a lot just by osmosis. Start with the books that defined your genre. If you write fantasy, read Tolkien. If you write sci-fi, read Wells. If you write mystery, read Doyle. Then branch out and read in other genres; Dickens. Carroll. Bradbury.

Law #2: Show, don’t tell. You’ll hear this one a lot, because it’s true. But it’s not always explained well. Here’s a short example: “she was beautiful” is telling; “her large, indigo eyes peeked out from behind a mess of curling flaxen locks” is showing.

Law #3: Write from your gut. You’re trying to write a dramatic scene and it sounds cheesy. It’s happened to the best of us – because we were trying to be poetic instead of just writing from the gut. Hopefully, we haven’t experienced the same tragedies that we inflict on our characters, but we’ve probably felt, to some degree, the same emotions. You’ve never lost your entire family to Martian invaders in a single day, but maybe you had to put your dog to sleep. Latch onto that feeling. Try to remember every detail – how it felt in your chest and in your fingers, the thoughts you didn’t want to think, the things you wished you could say. Avoid using fancy words; just write as plainly and as honestly as you can, and from the rawness of your emotion, beauty will naturally emerge.

Is your work Three Laws Safe?