July 2024

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• Writing Advice
• Editing Advice
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Writing Advice

Last month we talked about SCENE GOALS, and the yes, no, yes, but, and no, furthermore ways to end a scene. The fact of the matter is a yes, but or no, furthermore is only meant to be a tangent, a diversion, from their goal. It is not meant to end the goal-seeking altogether. Being constantly defeated, almost anyone would eventually give up. And then where would your story writing be. Stuck in a corner.

Here’s how to write yourself out of it. Sometimes give your character a break and reward them for a small bit of growth – give them hope the light at the end of the tunnel is actually getting closer and might not be the headlight of an oncoming train.

While some people can stubbornly never learn a lesson in life, keep doing the same things and getting nowhere, the heart of a story must be that the characters are AFFECTED and CHANGED by the situations they deal with. They GROW – sometimes it’s as simple as becoming less reckless and thinking before they act, because they’ve learned that going off half-cocked has serious repercussions. Sometimes it can be negative change – being betrayed because they’ve been so open with someone, the reaction is to close themselves off, become cynical, disbelieving.

How to know when your character is ready for a reward

Small, positive changes can be rewarded anywhere in the story: seeing a person fall and picking them up when they would have previously walked right past, because this person they see has made the character feel differently about their “kick them before they kick you” policy.

Logistically, if you’re at the black moment in your beat sheet, and it’s time for the final lesson in the main developmental conflict – the character’s gets hit the hardest ever right in their wound, and they go down for the count, withdraw, breakup, etc. But to give them the rope to haul themselves out of the dumps and recover, the best endgames of stories have planted handhold points all along the way. When a character reflects on those seemingly innocuous moments, that someone despite current appearances in the heat of the moment hasn’t ever actually lied to them, they can accept they’ve grown and changed in a way that makes the idea of more change less daunting than it seemed before.

Excellent examples of this are in the movie You’ve Got Mail.

 JOE
    Oh, right, a snap to find the one single
    person in the world who fills your heart
    with joy.

             NELSON
    Don't be ridiculous.  Have I ever been
    with anyone who fits that description?
    Have you?

             JOE
    On to the next.

             NELSON
    Isn't it a beautiful night?

Hold on Joe.

EXT. KATHLEEN'S STREET - DAY

Joe, on his way to Kathleen's apartment building, carrying a
bunch of daisies, wrapped in cellophane.

It’s that Hold on Joe that shows us everything the audience needs to know what he’s thinking. He has been with someone who “filled his heart with joy” – Kathleen Kelly. So, in the very next scene we see that he is renewing his attempts to get close to her – but this time, he’s paying attention to what he’s learned – about her and about himself and he changes his approach to be more open, the honesty still has a way to come, but he’s now just looking for the right moment to be honest and maybe not get hurt or hurt her anymore.

As the author, you have to show these incremental changes. So somewhere in the story, you need to have them face a MIRROR challenge. In You’ve Got Mail, again, there’s a perfect mirror moment. Earlier in the film, he’s been an absolute boor and said terrible things to her at the literary social. Then in his emails to her, he suggests a wish that he could give her his “ability” to say exactly what she’s thinking when she’s thinking it, but warns that she, like he, might feel awful afterwards. Then when he is the recipient of Kathleen’s perfect wielding of that ability – saying exactly the rude thing she would never otherwise in the coffee shop, he understands exactly how it feels on the other side of one of his pointed barbs, and recognizes that he should change.

But it wouldn’t have worked without all those steps – those mirror moments when the shoe is on the other foot. So, you as the writer, need to see the moments in your story where the character needs that mirror shoved in their face and see “that’s exactly how you are.”

And the sign of growth is when this situation that has elements of the one(s) that upset their balance in the beginning, but now, when they try a different tactic to deal with the situation, they can see a different outcome.

Particularly stubborn characters may need people to reflect off of in order to grow. This is why you see someone getting a “pep talk” from their best friend, or going home to “lick their wounds” results in a conversation with their mom or dad, or a sibling who expresses support for the character’s changes that have become visible even to them.

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Editing Advice

Last month, we discussed FILTER words creating distance between readers and your characters. This month, I’d like to talk about the wording that creates the PACE in your scenes.

He went about his day in short, well-defined bursts. 7 am: shower, dress, eat. 8 am: catch the train to the office. 8:30 am: grab a coffee at the shop on the first floor. 8:45 am: walk into the office. Say hello to Bess at the desk. Then slip inside and log on by 9:00 am. Today some new barista stalled Henry’s progress, getting two orders wrong in as many minutes.

Can you feel the staccato pace of this guy’s day? That pace is not only expressed in the ideas in the sentences, but in the brevity of the sentences themselves, helped along by even the choice of punctuation. The long sentence at the end also slows the pace to a crawl, mimicking the way that the barista messing up the orders has now messed up the orderliness of Henry’s preferred way to start his work days.

Sentence length affects pace

The shorter the time it takes a reader to consume and comprehend an idea from a sentence, the more quickly they will feel time passes. The longer it takes a reader to figure out the ideas being shared in a sentence, the slower they are able to figure out what’s going on in a scene and thus the more time they will think has passed.

Fight scenes are, for this reason, full of declarative, single idea sentences. If you were to combine both/all combatants’ actions in the same sentence, you would create a “ballet” style flow, a give-and-take that may not “clang” with any suddenness; it will feel to the reader as if the combatants are “dancing.” With short sentences, you get blow-parry-retrench and that will let the reader’s inner eye see quick movements.

Affect pace (and characterization) when writing dialogue

Scenes with dialogue “move” faster than scenes of description. And the fewer dialogue tags you need to explain who is saying what, the faster the dialogue will unfold for the reader, and it will seem more like people arguing, or even bantering. However, if the characters are thinking about what they want to say, or wanting to convey a particular/polite attitude, you can put dialogue tags, and action phrases or sentences, in the midst of the dialogue to represent hesitations or the slow thought processing without ever using the filter words “he thought” or telling us his exact thoughts. Take a look at these two dialogues.

“Come in,” Jackson said. He gestured at the chair. “Have a seat, and let’s talk.”

Jackson gestured at the chair. “Come in. Have a seat, and let’s talk.”

The first dialogue feels slower, even suggesting that the coming conversation might be easy, relaxed. Including the dialogue tag after the first couple words not only lets the reader know who’s speaking, but by putting it after the first bit of dialogue, it suggests that he didn’t say everything at once. And interspersing the actions amid the dialogue, too, takes the place of “he paused,” showing instead that Jackson paused between his thoughts.

The second dialogue might make the character entering the office feel like Jackson might not be happy about something. Jackson’s directing with gestures before even speaking. Then his words are polite, but clipped phrases, and the ideas quickly follow one to the next.

So your homework this month is to look at your sentence lengths and your dialogue and see if the pacing of details and the pacing of the dialogue can be more closely matched with a few careful changes.

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Service Availability

I am fully booked through August. However, if you are looking for editing in September or October, contact me through my website to reserve your slot today.

~ Lara

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