Are you familiar with the term "scene break"?
She got in her car and headed out.
#
Two hours later she pulled into the parking lot.
Unless something significant happens along the way, what else does the reader need to know?
caw
This.
Are you familiar with the term "scene break"?
She got in her car and headed out.
#
Two hours later she pulled into the parking lot.
Unless something significant happens along the way, what else does the reader need to know?
caw
I struggled with this when I wrote a travel novel and needed to shorten it. I asked myself three questions: What's the primary plot? (Travel from point A to point B). What's the subplot? (MC's personal journey from emotional point A to emotional point B). What do I want the reader to take away from this story? (A greater message about the state of things) If a scene did not directly show one of these three things, I left it out.
The "rule" (which is really a guideline) is that you include only that which either illuminates character or drives the plot. Everything else is omitted or glossed over. Maryn, who writes fat, then deletes or condenses
A good rule of thumb is that every scene, heck, every sentence, needs to contribute to the story. Now, there's wriggle room in terms of what does this. Plot and characterization are clearly important to story, but if you write speculative fiction, world building can be important too (at least where it influences your character and plot). Readers of SF and fantasy sometimes enjoy "connecting scenes" that simply show the reader a bit of the world as the character walks from point A to point B.
Leave in: The important stuff.
Leave out: The boring stuff.
More seriously, I'd vote write it all so you aren't dithering as to whether to include something or not, then edit judiciously.
I understand all the points being made but see like on her mission to find her son she has to drive a two hour trip. I'm just not sure how to get her from point A to point B without making the reader think it was only 2 mins down the road. She's stressed and she's speeding because there is something that going to happen if she doesn't find hI'm in two days but I can't figure out how to let the reader understand with going over every detail
And so on.Thirty minutes passed, while the countryside flicked past her window, a steady stream of billboards, barns, and broken-down fencing. Her hands were icy on the steering wheel--she couldn't seem to get warm, even with the heat at full blast--but her breathing steadied and her mind calmed, though her thoughts had a tendency to go bolting off in a panic every ten miles or so. But...[and here maybe you detail what she's figured out so far about her missing son].
She stopped for gas at an old Sinclair station, with one of those faded green plastic dinosaurs smiling inanely in the parking lot. [something happens at the gas station...she gets a phone call? Has a revelation?]
Wednesday morning came. Feeling fresh and clean after a shower, so-and-so got in her car and made the two hour drive to such-and-such a place.
I wondered if I'd ever see her again. Three months later I was coming out of the methadone clinic....
Elmore Leonard's advice rings true - Leave out the parts that people don't read.
If it doesn't advance the story, it's not needed.
Jeff
The way I look at it, you write only what is absolutely relevant to the story. I hate when I have to wade through pages and pages of description that is completely irrelevant to the story.
The way I look at it, you write only what is absolutely relevant to the story. I hate when I have to wade through pages and pages of description that is completely irrelevant to the story.
How are the books you like written? Study them and apply what you learn to your writing.
Advancing the story and keeping it all relevant is something that usually becomes clear when you start editing, especially for those writers that do little planning and just let the story unfold as it goes.