In my years working as an editor, agent, packager, and novelist, I’ve noticed that other novelists often give in to certain instincts when they’re writing—Instincts that work to the detriment of their fiction. If you’re aware of these instinctive weakeners, you’ll more likely be able to avoid them. Here are the three worst offenders:
INSTINCTIVE HABIT #1: Beginning a section with a character awakening or going to sleep.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read sections (in my book THE MARSHALL PLAN FOR NOVEL WRITING, I refer to the block of text that has traditionally been called a scene a “section”) that begin with the alarm clock going off or the phone jangling. (Why do phones always “jangle”?) Starting a section this way is a bad idea because a section shouldn’t begin when the day starts; it should begin with its viewpoint character beginning his or her pursuit of THIS SECTION’S GOAL.
In some writers’ defense, we do sometimes see a novel beginning with that phone jangling, and the call is from someone telling the awakening character that something awful has happened. This kind of phone jangling is better because it presents the crisis that should begin any novel . . . but it’s still a cliché and should be avoided.
Why is showing a character going to sleep at the end of a section just as bad? Because sections shouldn’t end with a character ending his or her day; they should end with a character meeting failure at the end of his or her pursuit of the section goal. I suppose that if your character’s section goal is to make peace with his spouse, but all he succeeds in doing is making matters worse between them, then going to sleep on this note is all right. But that’s really the only way such a section ender is acceptable.
INSTINCTIVE HABIT #2: Starting a section with a weather report.
How many times have we read in published books, “The sky was a purple-and-gold tapestry as Marjorie got into her car . . .” or “The rain had let up when Bill emerged from his office . . .”? Delivering weather reports is one of those habits writers seem to fall into naturally—Instinctively. Perhaps weather reports feel “writerly”; I’m reminded of Snoopy’s “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Well, the weather doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as your PEOPLE do. Many readers would say the weather doesn’t matter at all. I myself, when reading a novel, skip weather reports in my eagerness to get back to the characters I care about. So start a section with the person you’ll be telling us about. Do it in the first sentence: “Bill rounded the corner of Prescott Avenue and saw the inn standing cold and alone on the corner of the park.” THEN, to let your reader know how things look in general, you may give us a report on the sky or the weather, but do it using action, and do it only if those aspects of the character’s world have changed. For example, to use description of the weather in action, you might say, “The inn cast a black shadow in the deepening twilight.” But if nothing about the weather has changed, don’t tell us about it at all. We’ll assume everything’s the same.
INSTINCTIVE HABIT #3: Pulling punches when describing confrontations.
So often, even in the work of published writers, I find that when it comes time to describe an especially unpleasant confrontation between two characters, the writer pulls back. He or she may suddenly lapse into summary mode instead of giving us a play-by-play of the action, or not milk the clashing for all it’s worth. Some writers will even contrive to have the confrontation happen OFF STAGE, and tell us about it afterward, through conversation or through a character’s thoughts.
These are all bad ideas. Readers read for those confrontations and that unpleasantness. They WANT to be a fly on the wall during those conflicts and clashes, so to pull your punches here is to cheat your readers.
Why do writers fall into this habit. I strongly believe, based on my experience with hundreds of novelists, that the writers who give in to this habit dislike conflict in their own lives and tend to avoid it. So it’s perfectly natural that they would try, consciously or not, to avoid it in their writing.
Think about your own nature. Are you a person who avoids “unpleasantness” or important confrontations? Do you avoid raising painful issues with people you care about? If you’re one of these people, you know it, and you’ll have to make a special effort not to do this in your fiction writing. If you’ll forgive me for saying so, you’ll be better off if you make an effort not to avoid important confrontations in your life as well.
But that’s really none of my business.
Be aware of these three instinctive bad habits all writers tend to fall into at some time or other. By consciously avoiding them, you’ll measurably improve your writing.
