Today's Screed
Kinda a gallimaufry today:
Plots. Please try to avoid the Idiot Plot. An Idiot Plot is one that only works because all the characters involved are idiots. If the only reason something happens or doesn't happen is because otherwise it would be a very short book, come up with some other explanation.
Let me give you an example of an idiot plot, this time from the movies. How many of y'all have seen
Tears of the Sun with Bruce Willis? Our boy Bruce plays Lt. Waters, a Navy SEAL who is sent into Nigeria to rescue an American doctor during a civil war. The doctor refuses to leave without taking her patients with her. What stops Lt. Waters from calling his boss on the aircraft carrier on his satelite phone and saying "Give me three CH-46s at the LZ"? Nothing other than that if he did it, the movie would have been only about twenty minutes long. That's an idiot plot.
What stops the characters in your novel, on seeing mysterious lights in the house next door, from calling 9-1-1? Motivate them. Eliminate "because I'm the author and I say so" as a reason things happen.
Sometimes, though, you'll have to have characters behave in basically stupid ways. You have two choices there: either build their characters to show that they're stupid people (reading stories about stupid people isn't terribly enjoyable, at least for me, but maybe there's a market), or get the action going so fast that the readers don't have a moment to say, "Hey, wait a minute! Why don't they just go to the bus station and buy a ticket?"
Next thought: On plots. Plots are simple things, like a piece of string is simple, but they are complex, like a three-strand four lay
Turk's Head made with that same piece of string is complex. When you're thinking about plot, and about the shape of your book, consider the classical unities.
These come from Greek drama, and are unity of time, unity of place, and unity of action. In a Greek play (formal as sonnet, those things were), all the action takes place in twenty-four hours (that's unity of time), it all takes place in one location (e.g. the square in front of the temple -- that's unity of place), and everything that happens deals directly with the climax (that's unity of action, and it's a darn good idea, chums).
Your novel probably won't take place in just one location in twenty-four hours. Still, it's probably a good idea to use the minimum number of locations, and the minimum time. If your character flies off to Miami to learn something he could have just as conveniently learned in New York, leave him in New York. If a whole chunk of your novel can be replaced with the words "What with this and that some five years passed," you may have to refine the focus of your book or replace that part of the novel with a chapter break or a line break.
Let us take for an example
The Lord of the Rings. The time covered is almost exactly one year, and an action-packed year it is. Yet it starts in the Shire and it ends in the Shire. The hobbits are center stage on the first page, and they're center stage on the last page. You could do worse than to follow this template.
Let me give you another aphorism: The oldest engines pull the heaviest freight. If you were going to write a modern literary novel, you might consider taking
The Trojan Women, and setting it among the Mormons of Mesa, Arizona, one afternoon in August, 1965. Vietnam is just ramping up. It's hot.
You've done your research on time and place and modes of speech ... and off you go.
By the time you've done the book won't resemble the original at all; you'll have something totally your own. Yet it will have a structure, and the structure will be sound, and your readers will appreciate it.
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Other random thoughts: On words.
Beware the word "Somehow." You can use it in dialog when the character doesn't know, but you should avoid it in narrative. "Somehow" means the author doesn't know either. This is bad. The reader is trusting you to know what's going on and to guide him to the climax of the book. "Somehow" makes the reader look at you askance and ask "What's the matter with this guy?" It's as if he were following a guide through trackless wilderness, when the guide suddenly gets a puzzled expression on his face and says "Beats the heck out of me."
Example: Our hero is trying to sneak into a warehouse. The door is sliding shut. Then the narrative:
Somehow the door failed to close all the way. What? Why didn't it close? Figure this out, author, and come back when you know. Did a mouse get jammed in the gears? Either come up with something reasonable, or give the guy a different way into the warehouse. If you do nothing else, delete the word "somehow." You still have the same action, but without the moment of doubt.
Next: Choose only necessary detail. You aren't constructing a full world. You're giving your reader a blueprint with which he'll construct his own world, which will be consistent with his own needs and experiences. If the room the reader imagines and the room you imagine differ, what of it? Give the reader three points and he'll do the rest. Just be consistent, and choose the important things. If it's necessary that there be a clock in the room, mention it. If it doesn't matter whether there's a clock, don't mention it. The reader may put one there, or not put one there, and it won't matter to the story. The room will be the right room for
him.
Readers assume that everything you mention is important. They'll hold those things in their heads. Give them a payoff for everything you mention, a reward for their effort. You can't keep writing checks against your literary account without adding literary capital.
On sentences:
There were and
It was are weak openings. Not all sentences need to be strong: contrast and rhythm demand that sentence strength vary. Nevertheless, be aware of this fact, and use it as a tool. You are the author. All the words are
yours. Be conscious of what you're doing.
Anything that doesn't add to your story subtracts from it. You know what you're doing with your tale; later on students and critics may come by and try to guess, but you know.
Take charge. This is your world, you are the master. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!