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January 5 - November 2, 2021
Characters should have serious problems. But one character should not have every serious problem known to mankind.
The author here is replacing actual witty or profound remarks from the protagonist with a bit character who is so easily impressed that she appears mildly psychotic.
the author knows what kind of person she wants the character to be, but she is not doing the work to get the reader from here to there. Making another character laugh louder does not make the dialogue funnier. Characters like this often have the same relationship to the “Onanism” plot that blow-up dolls do to actual onanism.
Unless somebody actually figures into your plot, we do not need to meet the person. Like a small business, a novel cannot afford to carry dead weight, even if it is a close family member.
Remember: blonde, brunette, and redhead are not personality types.
your characters should have a greater divergence from stereotype than your average beer commercial.
writers must take the trouble to create the love interest some pages before the lovely prison warden’s daughter (lovely bank teller, lovely plastic surgeon, lovely martial artist, what have you) acts on her headlong passion.
It’s not necessary to make the best friend into a stud. But he must be attractive on some level, not just safe. We get enough of that kind of compromise in real life.
An antagonist should always be provided with a reason for his actions that we can understand without ourselves being psychopaths. And in stories that are not about serial killers or monsters, it is vital that the hero’s business rival, difficult boss, or cheating boyfriend should not be played by the Prince of Darkness.
The only way to avoid caricature is the hard way: making the bad guy’s insane behavior and motivations believable.
Criminals in fiction often seem only to have stolen, kidnapped, murdered, and committed unspeakable sex acts with the child’s beloved pet monkey because they are so looking forward to telling someone all about it. Try to find some more plausible way of revealing the villain’s evil-doing.
Bad parents are everywhere in unpublished fiction. Whole cities of abusive fathers and sneering mothers live in the pages of books that can’t be sold. While occasionally, and notably in the horror genre, this sort of material can be made good (Carrie; V.C. Andrews), most cruel parents in fiction are just as much fun as they are in real life.
Overly intricate schemes of the villain can read like knotty tax litigation. If the reader can’t understand your plot, he won’t enjoy it. If he is faced with the dilemma of deciding whether he is stupid or your book is stupid—well, we know how we’ll bet, because we are not stupid.
Avoid fight scenes at any point in the book in which the bad guy falls in a heap at the first blow from the protagonist.
Authors sometimes use the bad guy as an opportunity to vent about a despised group or belief. It is best to keep the editorializing from getting too heavy-handed, or your character will read like a walking mission statement.
words that draw attention to themselves by their rarity draw attention away from the story you are telling and remind the reader of the writer and his thesaurus.
There is nothing wrong with making the occasional reader occasionally reach for the dictionary. However, the only legitimate reason to do that is if the word you have chosen is the best word to express the idea. Generally, saying “edifice” instead of “building” doesn’t tell your reader anything more about the building; it tells the reader that you know the word edifice.
There are no excuses for using words you yourself do not know.
whenever you are particularly taken with a bit of your own cleverness, it is not a bad idea to stop and consider whether it serves your novel or you. Anything that draws attention to the author at the expense of her novel is bad parenting.
Overuse of exclamation marks makes them dwindle in significance until finally they carry no more urgency than a period—but one that graphically pokes you in the eye as you reach the end of each sentence.
Where the action is important, the exclamation points are like so many speed bumps: they pause your story to focus attention on the punctuation. In almost all situations that do not involve immediate physical danger or great surprise, you should think twice before using an exclamation mark. If you have thought twice and the exclamation mark is still there, think about it three times, or however many times it takes until you delete it.
For a novel to work, it needs enough detail to bring the story to life in the reader’s mind. In real life, the physical world effortlessly exists and is visible without anyone’s help. In fiction, unless you describe it, it’s not there.
When well executed, description is unobtrusive and lends substance to a novel. It is the body fat of prose: too much is unhealthy, but without any, you no longer have the thing—you have its skeleton.
These same authors tend to focus on the generic items that are nearly always present in the setting described, rather than noticing the few things that make the living room a particular living room belonging to a specific person—the well-thumbed spelunking magazine, the bloodied mace peeping out from under the couch.
If you have made a point in one way, resist the temptation to reinforce it by making it again. Do not reexpress it in more flowery terms, and do not have the character reaffirm it in dialogue (“Spruce as ever, Katz!”). This point is worth repeating: don’t reiterate.
“An aroused and angry elephant” gives us a specific and striking mental picture. “A large gray elephant” gives us two extra words.
Were a novel an aged and nuanced wine, advertising copy would be artificial grape-flavor concentrate: it is only by convention that we call it grape, and more than a little bit of the straight stuff can make you sick.
If you use a “while” or “as” phrase, be sure that the things that are happening simultaneously could happen simultaneously.
A metaphor or simile should be accurate in the comparison it makes, and appropriate to the mood and context in which it is used.
Another common problem is the ant-carrying-a-cheese-puff metaphor, where the metaphor dwarfs the thing it is meant to describe.
the paragraph break alone cannot do all the work. If each paragraph in your chapter refers to a different topic, the reader will soon give up trying to make the connections. The larger ideas contained in paragraphs should lead from one to the next as well. Every time you move from topic to topic, the transition should proceed by a logical association of ideas.
We will at this point remind you that the purpose of writing is communication. There is no substitute for saying something, and the reader should be able to discover what it is you are saying without having to call and ask you in person.
Confine your gross-out scenes to those points at which readers ought to experience dismay. If the horrifying torture in the dank basement is repellent, all well and good. If everything is repellent, the reader will depart for healthier climes.
Saying that something “defies description” conveys nothing but the author’s defeat.
Published authors use the word “said” almost exclusively when they wish to indicate that a particular character is saying something. “Said” is a convention so firmly established that readers for the most part do not even see it. This helps to make the dialogue realistic by keeping its superstructure invisible.
There are of course exceptions: “asked” is used for questions, “shouted” is used for a character who is doing so, and there will occasionally be a good reason to use a word other than “said” for plain speech. But spicing things up with “importuned,” “vociferated,” or “clamored” will sabotage any attempt to make conversation sound real.
“I love you, all right?” he said jokingly is miles away from “I love you, all right?” he said coldly. But avoid at all costs “I love you, all right?” he said lovingly.
wrong notes in manuscript dialogue can often be spotted by reading aloud and listening to yourself. While dialogue is not exactly like speech in real life, it will work only when it creates the impression of actual conversation.
They’re there to tell you who’s talking. Without speech tags, the reader soon loses track of who’s saying what.
Also remember to toss the reader an occasional reminder of where the conversation is taking place, and what is going on around it.
As a novelist you are always selecting what to leave out and what to put in, and just as you don’t mention it every time your hero blinks, you should generally leave out the information-thin social niceties. For similar reasons, while real conversation is liberally peppered with filler words like “um” and “well,” dialogue should use them sparingly.
Characters in unpublished novels often spend page after page happily telling each other things that both of them have known for years.
While some people value strangers because each one is a potential friend, we’ve always liked them because that’s one more person whose life story and innermost thoughts we won’t have to hear.
For similar reasons, characters should not make sudden about-faces in their attitudes. They should not, for instance, immediately capitulate when the protagonist “proves” that their worldview is idiotic.
When doing any kind of accent, whether regional dialect, foreign accent, or a characteristic like a lisp, it is important to remember that a little goes a long way.
No matter how good an ear you have, and how perfectly you’ve captured it, it soon becomes a task to read.
Remember: stupid people are no more or less phonetic than anyone else. Since the character is speaking, not writing, any errors in spelling reflect upon the writer, not the character.
fiction that hews too closely to the specifics of the author often lacks the alchemy that transforms a personal wish-fulfillment fantasy into escapism satisfying to others.
Generally, any point of view that lasts for less than a page should be cut. And if you have chosen a restricted third-person point of view to start with, you must accept the restrictions that come with that choice.
When every POV in the room is given equal time, you no longer have a novel; you have a focus group.
