Critique Observations: Nothing Is Happening

Here's the third installment of Critique Observations, thoughts gathered while editing and shared to help you improve your writing.  The first installment is HERE.  The second installment is HERE.

The opposite of too much happening (Car Crash) in the opening pages of a story is, naturally, nothing happening at all.  Sometimes it's just a matter of a "slow start"; other times, I will read 30--or even 75--pages, and nothing really ever happens.

Let me explain.

Of course things "happen" in a story.  Otherwise, there would be no words on the page, right?  But I'm talking about "happen" in the sense of plot.  And if nothing is happening, then nobody is ultimately going to want to keep reading your story.

REASON ONE: TOO MUCH DESCRIPTION AND BACKSTORY

Sometimes nothing is happening because the author is spending too much time describing things--the setting, the characters.  And sometimes nothing is happening because the author is constantly interrupting the narrative with "what happened before".

I'm not going to offer one of my Authoresseque examples here, simply because it would be too LONG.  Instead, here are the things to caution against:

• We don't need to know the color of every character's eyes, the shade and texture of their hair, and what they're wearing.  Choose details carefully, and only offer what is needed to help the reader form a picture in his mind while he reads.  Trust your readers to "visualize" your characters in their own way, with a little (not a lot) of guidance from you.
• We don't need to know every single item on the mantlepiece.  The color of every flower in the garden.  The exact weather pattern.  Give us only what we need to place your scene somewhere we can feel grounded.  Don't belabor the things that are AROUND your characters.  
• Use backstory SPARINGLY.  Use it JUDICIOUSLY.  I can't tell you how many times I've encountered manuscripts that give bits of story, then insert fat chunks of this-is-what-happened-a-year-ago, then back to the story, then another fat chunk of this-is-how-they-became-friends, and so on.  Backstory needs to be carefully--and sparingly--woven into your narrative.  It should feel natural, unassuming.  If it feels like it INTERRUPTS the story, then it's either misplaced, too much, or both.  Your pacing will die a quick death, and your readers will get bored or frustrated (or both).

REASON TWO:  TOO MUCH MUNDANE DETAIL

I'm just going to say it:  We don't need to be told about every time your main character wakes up, goes to sleep, showers, shaves, eats, or poops.  WE JUST DON'T.  I think this is probably an easy problem to fall into if you're less experienced as a novelist.  In one of my earlier manuscripts, my main character apparently took an inordinate amount of showers, which one of my astute critique partners pointed out.  It happens, right?  And then we learn that it's not necessary to bring the reader through EVERY ASPECT of a character's day.  This is a novel--it is not a journal.

To wit:

Amanda woke the next morning with a vestige of last night's headache still throbbing in her temples.  She stretched one arm, then the other.  Then, sighing, she swung her legs out from under the covers, slid from the bed, and shuffled to the bathroom.

Frowning, she wondered why she'd left the bathroom light on.  Perhaps she'd peed in the middle of the night without remembering?  She hated when she couldn't remember things like that.

While her shower water heated up, Amanda swallowed two Ibuprofens and used the toilet.  When steam finally curled its way from behind the shower curtain, Amanda wriggled out of her sleep tee and slipped into the shower.

I wish this hot water would wash away my memories of last night.

Amanda stood for a long time with her head under the spray of the shower.  The sound of the water on her skull was soothing, repetitive.  It made her feel like she'd disappeared into another world.

Finally, she shampooed her hair and slathered it with conditioner.  The soothing scent of lilac enveloped her while she bathed, then carefully shaved her legs.  Just in case Petronius would be there this afternoon.  Because, after all, that's why she bought the minidress in the first place.

No.  She wasn't going to think about Petronius.

She was starting to run out of hot water when she finally turned off the shower and swathed herself in her favorite, dove gray bath towel.  Probably she was running late, but it was hard to care.  The Ibuprofen hadn't kick in yet, and moving quickly would only worsen the headache.

(You get the idea.)

In short, we don't need MOST of the above.  We've got to stop loving our words, and snip things ruthlessly in order to get to the clean heart of our story.

Snipped, snappier version:

In the morning, Amanda's head was still throbbing lightly.  She swallowed a couple of Ibuprofen and stood with her head under the shower until the water started to run cold.  Shivering, she wrapped herself in a towel and grabbed the minidress from her closet.  And groaned.

Petronius would see right through her.  The dress was his favorite color, and hugged Amanda in all the right places.  Who was she kidding?

(And there's me, writing women's fiction.  Probably I should stick to YA science fiction.)

REASON THREE: THE PLOT HAS NO REAL DIRECTION

And this is the most insidious reason of all.  A novel needs to move from plot point to plot point.  If your novel is rambling on, the reader is going to get the vague (or not-so-vague) sense that the story isn't going anywhere.  And maybe it isn't.  Because a well crafted plot has specific "arrival points", and the narrative and dialogue in between should be moving toward each of those points.  Otherwise, you just have a lot of "blah blah blah" that doesn't more forward.

I've noticed in some manuscripts that there is no true INCITING INCIDENT.  This is the THING that happens to your main character that produces the CHANGE that propels the story into...well, a story.  If this THING had never happened, the story wouldn't have happened.  Often, the inciting incident is placed at the end of the first or second chapter.  (Hunger Games is my favorite example--Primose Everdeen's name is called at the end of chapter one.  It's the THING that makes the story truly begin.  If Prim's name hadn't been called, then Katniss would never stepped forward and said, "I volunteer as tribute!".  Peeta would have gone to the Hunger Games with a different female tribute, and Katniss would have gone back to the fields with Gale.)

If there is no inciting incident in your novel, then there's no CHANGE to propel your main character into the story.  It really does start to read more like a journal of sorts ("and then he did this, and then he did that"), with no apparent reason why we're being told any of this.

There are different methods to plotting, and I'm not going to discuss that here.  I encourage you to do your research to see what works best for you.  (I prefer Blake Snyder's beat sheet, and I won't write a novel without it!)  The main thing is that you DO plot.  Even if you're a tried-and-true pantser, you STILL have to, at some point, work out your plot points so that your story has structure.  Whether you do that before or after your first draft is up to you.

And there you have it.  Your story will be engaging only if THINGS ARE HAPPENING.  Not random things, but well-crafted things that move logically toward each plot point, drawing the reader forward with purpose.

You can do this!  But you're going to have to stop having a love affair with your words.  They're only words--delete them, and there will still be billions of other words to choose from.  I promise that you will never run out of words.

If your story is suffering from Nothing Is Happening Syndrome, it's time to roll up your sleeves.  Writing words is easy; writing well is hard.  Strive for the latter, and your stories will shine!

Critique Observations: Car Crash Openings

Here's the second installment of Critique Observations, thoughts gathered while editing and shared to help you improve your writing.  The first installment, on rambling dialogue, is HERE.


It's an ongoing misconception, the idea that tension equals action.  While it's certainly true that a good action scene is tense, and that tension moves a story forward, it does not logically follow that the opening pages of a novel need to throw us into the middle of an action scene.  Here is why.

1.  We don't know the main character yet.  As such, we cannot invest in this character's life.  If this life is in danger from page one, we don't have a reason to care.  While a near-death scene at the opening of a novel might seem intriguing, it only serves to slap us upside the head with something we're not ready for, and can't possibly care about (yet).

Example A--The Wounded Hero opening:

I raise my head from the dust, the metallic zing of blood in my mouth.  Even this small motion brings sharp pain, and I groan as I try to rise.  I fail.

Cheek pressed against the cold earth, I close my eyes and try to remember why I'm here.  Vague memories of acrid smoke and sharp metal assault my brain, but nothing makes sense.

So your first response might be, "Oh, this is tense!  He's hurt!  Wonder what happened!"  But in the long run, this is a risky way to start a novel (particularly if you are inexperienced; I'm sure the masters-who've-been-writing-for-decades might pull something like this off).  For all we know, this guy-with-a-bleeding-head might be a jerk.  A loser.  Someone we aren't going to care about at all.  Do I want to commit to reading 400 pages about him?  Probably not.

This doesn't mean we have to begin with Once upon a time, there was a man named Blake who wore his head in a long, red braid and worked as a spy for the Intergalactic Government.  But we do need to get to know Blake a little better before we blast him with shrapnel.

The answer is, simply, to back up the story a bit.  Sometimes just a tiny bit.  Give us the tension that's building before the explosion or the accident, and offer us a few pages to get acquainted with your main character.  If the Bad Thing is your inciting incident, it doesn't need to show up until the end of chapter 1 or chapter 2, anyway.  So let things build for a while.

The suns were at their zenith as I made my way to the landing dock.  This month's shipment was already days late, and operations would slam to a halt if something didn't show up soon.

Not to mention the part about starving to death.  Dead soil didn't do much in the way of growing food.  

Okay, nothing bad has happened yet, but you can feel the possibility that something might.  The shipment's late.  It sounds like our protagonist doesn't know why it's late.  And he's clearly worried.  A few pages from now, we can slam him with whatever lands him on the ground with blood in his mouth.  And by that time, we'll know--and hopefully like--him.

Example B--The OMG-I'm-Going-To-Die Hero opening

Janet is just reaching for her iPhone when the car skids to the right.  Gasping, she braces her arms on the dashboard.

In the next instant, the world blurs.  Dana screams as she frantically tries to regain control of the car, and Janet goes numb.  With sickening suddenness, the motion stops, and there is nothing but glass, thousands of tiny shards, everywhere.  Glass, and the scent of gas.  Glass, and sharp pain whenever Janet tries to breathe.

In all seriousness, this type of opening was so common during the Baker's Dozen slush reading this past year that Jodi and I dubbed it "car crash", regardless of whether or not the accident took place in a car.  And I continue to see this type of opening in the projects that come across my desk.

This opening scene has the same inherent problems as Blake's scene above--we don't know the main character, so we can't care that she might be dying.  (And of course, she's not dying, since the story is just starting.  Or she is dying, because the story is paranormal.  But that's so overdone that we can smell it a league away.)  The answer is the same, too--back up the story so that we get to know Janet and her life a little bit before we catapult her into a 3-car collision.

2.  We need to understand the world/setting before we're plunged into action.  It's bad enough not knowing who our main character is before we yank his arm off or wake him up in the E.R.  But if the world we're dropped into makes no sense, it's not going to do anything but confuse us.  And we won't want to read more.

Example C--The World Is Chaos opening

Mira touched the molten glass with one tentative finger.  The c'vku in the air glowed, hissing more loudly the longer she stayed in contact.  She closed her eyes, trying to remember what step twelve was, when the floors and wall began to vibrate, the pitch growing higher as the vibrations increased.

Too late!  She had begun the Weaning Declaration too late!

Dead crows--thousands of them--fell from the ceiling as Mira screamed, clawing her way toward the holy portal, the molten glass stuck to her finger.  The universe tipped, spilling her north, then south, then in directions she couldn't keep track of.  When the scent of lava pushed its way up her nostrils, she knew that her failure had been complete.

(Okay, that was fun.)

But seriously, I have encountered openings with this level of confusion.  I'm certain that, in the mind of the author, everything is crystal clear.  But foisting a world upon a reader in the midst of chaos is not going to draw him into your world, or into your story.  We need a setting that we can understand, regardless of how fantastical your world may be.  We need to feel grounded before you pull the rug out from under us.

Example D--The There Is No World opening

The pain in my legs is unbearable.  I try to move first one, then the other.  But each movement, no matter how small, wracks me with pain.

Slowly, I lie back and force myself to breath slowly, deeply.  Then, as the pain subsides a little, I try again to move myself into a sitting position.  Pressing my hands against the floor, I throw my weight into my shoulders and try to pull myself backward.

That's when I see the bone protruding from my left shin.

Not only are we given an injured main character whom we don't know, but we have no setting at all.  No light or dark, no inside or outside, no sights or smells or sounds or anything else to give us a clue where--or when--we are.  This character exists in a vacuum, which probably makes him the least likely to grab our attention.

In conclusion, I offer a plea: Don't mistake tension for action!  Don't succumb to the well-meant but faulty advice to "start with action".  You need to start with TENSION.  You need to hint at CONFLICT.  But you don't need to blow things up and shoot things and gouge eyes out and kill people.  Not on page one.

I love the opening of Divergent by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books, 2011).  It draws us into the world and offers a deliciously subtle hint of tension:

There is one mirror in my house.  It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs.  Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.

I sit on the stool and my mother stand behind me with the scissors, trimming.  The strands fall on the floor in a dull, blond ring.

When she finishes, she pulls my hair away from my face and twists it into a knot.  I note how calm she looks and how focused she is.  She is well-practiced in the art of losing herself.  I can't say the same of myself.

There you have it.  Nothing is exploding.  Nobody is dying.  The writing is clean and spare, and in only three short paragraphs, the characters are coming to life.  So is the world.

Craft your openings carefully, dear writers.  War and mayhem can come later, when we care whether or not your main characters survives.

Happy writing!

Critique Observations: When Dialogue Rambles

I've been meaning for quite a while to begin a series on trends I've discovered while editing opening chapters.  Today's is the first installment of Critique Observations.

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Dialogue is hard.

In my earlier novel-writing days, my husband was very involved in the first-pass editing process.  One of the things he was best at was calling out dorky dialogue (his term) and making me see that what I'd made my character say was, in fact, nothing like what a real person would say.  Mr. A's presentation was especially effective because of the way he read the excerpts--in dorky voices.

Belly laughter does a world of good when someone's pointing out your writing faults.

One of his all-time favorite VERY BAD lines of dialogue is from the first draft of an MG fantasy.  And here it is:

“Strange, for silence so long unbroken to be disturbed twice in succession.”  

Go ahead.  Read it out loud.  TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THIS MER-GUY WAS SAYING.  I dare you.

Mr. A. keeps this little gem scribbled on a piece of paper amidst his collection of bills and junk-that-needs-sorting.  Whenever he decides to clean out his cubby, he comes across the paper, finds me, and reads it out loud in his best mer-dude voice.

And I laugh all over again.

Dialogue is about more than making your characters' speech understandable, though.  And I've found that, by and large, many of my clients get tripped up on dialogue for several reasons:

1.  The dialogue is unnatural.

Like my example above, lines of dialogue can come off stilted, clunky, overly-formal, and just plain wrong.  As writers, we often have the tendency to infuse our dialogue with a flowery, writerly type of writing that ends up sounding like--well, like a writer writing words.  This is especially evident in fantasy, when we think our characters need to Speak A Certain Way in order to fit the world we've created.  It can happen anywhere, though, in any genre.

One of the best ways to fix this problem is to READ OUR DIALOGUE OUT LOUD.  If it doesn't feel and sound natural coming out of your mouth, then you've got some work to do.

Here are some examples of BAD DIALOGUE.  Read them out loud.  

"I absolutely do not know what you are talking about," Glenn said.  "I would never do anything like that--not ever.  I can't imagine myself stooping so low, becoming that desperate."

Griselda held up the glowing orb.  "It is not yet time for me to reveal the depths of this orb.  Indeed, it is not in my power to choose, nor to reveal, this time.  Look upon this with eyes wide open, small ones.  Look upon it and shudder."  She smiled.  "The end of everything is upon us."

In the first example, Glenn is being too formal ("do not" instead of "don't") and redundant.  Here's a better version:

"I don't know what you're talking about," Glenn said.  "I would never stoop that low."

In the second example, the magical Griselda sounds like she's reading cue cards for a B-movie.  It's a fine line, indeed, between making our fantasy characters sound intriguing--and making them sound ridiculous.  Perhaps this version reads better:

Griselda held up the glowing orb.  "I cannot tell you what I see.  I hardly understand it myself."  She smiled.  "But let's not fear the end of everything.  Not yet."

2.  The dialogue is too much at once.

This is closely related to #1.  Writing entire paragraphs of dialogue spoken by one person isn't going to read naturally.  People don't speak in one-minute soliloquies!  Natural, back-and-forth dialogue gives speakers equal time, with responses on the shorter, not the longer side.  Sure, sometimes a character will have a big explanation to give.  But it's still better to break up that explanation with some interjections from other characters, and certainly with a beat or two.

Example:

"Mother wasn't always this way," Eva said.  "Years ago, when I was small, she smiled all the time.  Laughed a lot.  But the depression started setting in while I was in high school.  Sometimes I would come home and find her curled up on the sofa, weeping softly.  That's not an easy thing for a sixteen-year-old, you know?  And there have been so many doctors over the last few years, so many failed attempts at drugs with side effects I can't begin to describe to you, that I've lost count.  It's no wonder Dad gave up and left.  He was never strong enough to deal with anything that rocked his boat too hard.  So that leaves me.  I'm the only one here who gives a damn about her.  And I'm not about to abandon her."

It's simply not believable that Eva would stand there and spout that entire chunk of text while her listener(s) stand listening raptly.  At the least, the text needs to be broken up with some beats.  What is Eva doing?  Pacing?  Opening and closing her fists?  Passing gas?  And what about her listeners--are they responding?

Nobody talks in huge chunks of text.  (Well, I'm sure there's the odd exception--the talkative person in your life who doesn't seem to need oxygen to keep going.  But even if you're writing a loquacious character, the chattiness needs to be believable!)

"Mother wasn't always this way," Eva said.  "When I was small, she smiled all the time, laughed a lot.  But the depression set in while I was in high school."  She bit her lip.  "Sometimes I would come home and find her curled up on the sofa, weeping softly.  That's not an easy thing for a sixteen-year-old, you know?"

Raymond brushed her arm with his fingertips.  "Yeah.  I know."

"There have been so many doctors over the years--so many failed attempts at drugs with side effects I can't begin to describe.  It's no wonder Dad gave up and left."  She was on a roll now.  "He was never strong enough to deal with anything.  So that leaves me.  I'm the only one who gives a damn about her."

3.  Dialogue that rambles without purpose or direction.

This is also a common problem.  We must never forget that dialogue isn't just about making our characters talk to each other.  It needs to serve a purpose and move the story forward.  If your dialogue isn't doing those things, then it needs to go.

The purpose might be two characters getting to know each other, or the revealing of important information, or even an argument.  But if you continue on with banter that isn't focused on moving the plot forward, your pace will utterly stall.  It's all "blah blah blah" with no reason for existing.

Rambly dialogue:

Flippy poured the tea into Noonie's cup.  "I hope you like oolong."

"I love it!"

"So do I," Flippy said.  "Though it's hard to find my favorite blends locally."

Noonie reached for the honey.  "I know.  This is such a po-dunk town.  I want to leave."

"I've been wanting to leave for a long time."  Flippy waited her turn for the honey.  "It reminds me of when we were in high school."

"Oh, my!"  Noonie stirred slowly.  "Those were the days."

"Yes.  Those were certainly the days."

"Would you like some milk?" Flippy asked.

"No, thank you," Noonie said.  "Honey is all I need."

Flippy sighed.  "It would be so lovely to be able to buy local honey."

"I was just thinking the same thing!"

"Maybe..." Flippy tapped her fingers on the sides of her teacup.  "Maybe we do need to go back to our high school dreams.  Just pack up and leave, like we said we would."

"You haven't changed much, have you?"

"I suppose not," Flippy said.  "Well, except for these extra inches around my middle."

Noonie laughed.  "I guess that's part of growing older."

"Certainly not my favorite part."

"No," Noonie said.  "Mine, neither."

Clearly, Flippy and Noonie have some plans to make.  But all the banter about tea and honey and fat middles isn't doing anything to forward the conversation--or hold our interest.

Don't get me wrong--characters do have to interject little personal thoughts and funny asides and whatnot.  The trick is to do that without losing the thrust of the scene.  In short, AVOID BUNNY TRAILS.  We don't need to be privy to every, tiny detail of Noonie and Flippy's conversation.  It's a given that we're only being shown a portion of it, anyway--the portion that is vital to our story.  Their tea party will likely continue off-page.  We need to see only the part that will move the plot forward.


Flippy poured the tea into Noonie's cup.  "I hope you like oolong."

"I love it!"  She reached for the honey.

"I've been thinking about our high school days," Flippy said.  "All our big dreams."

Noonie smiled.  "You're going to try to talk me into leaving this po-dunk town, aren't you?"

"We always said we'd pack up and go.  But all we did was grow old."

"I did more than that," Noonie said.  "And I think you did, too."

"I grew thicker around the middle, is all.  Cream?"

"No, honey's enough for me."

"None of this is enough for me."  Flippy tapped her fingers on her teacup.  "Let's do it.  Let's get out of here."

And there you have it.  With a disclaimer:  I'm not claiming that my above examples of good writing would win any awards.  But they are definitely better than the bad examples the precede them.  It's the CONCEPT I want you to walk away with, and not the burning desire to write a Flippy and Noonie scene just like mine.

As you continue to edit and revise, turn a sharp eye toward your dialogue.  Is it natural?  Is it necessary?  Does it read like a real person saying real words in a real situation?  It may not come easily at first, but after a while you will get your groove, and the words of your characters will spring to life.

Just remember:  DIALOGUE NEEDS A PURPOSE.  Once you give it one, it will zing!  And your story will unfold as naturally during your characters' speech as it does during exposition.  A worthy goal, yes?

Onward!