Here’s a situation that editors encounter frequently: manuscripts with a large cast of potentially interesting characters, sparkling dialogue, and the glimmer of ideas churning just beneath the surface.
But after a little while the scenes become repetitious, the characters and their machinations turn formulaic — and reading becomes a chore.
Books that keep readers awake
A good book, whether it’s a novel, memoir, biography, history, or narrative non-fiction, must take readers somewhere new and end up far from where they started. Readers want to identify, engage, and be inspired by what happens to people they can care about.
Scroll down for DIY tips to thicken a plot
Story as transformative journey
The idea of story content as a transformative journey goes back to the earliest Greek and Roman classical literature. In Homer’s Odyssey, written around 850 BC, Odysseus, also known as Ulysses, has to win the Trojan War, escape the Lotus Eaters, defeat the Cyclops, avoid the Sirens and overcome many other deathly metaphorical temptations to return home to his faithful wife, a wiser and better man.
Similarly, in the third century BC, Apollonius of Rhodes wrote about Jason and his Argonauts, who had to defeat Amazons, the Harpies, the Clashing Rocks, and then harness the fire-breathing Oxen to win the Golden Fleece.
George Lucas told the same basic story in his six Star Wars films.
The names and places are always new, but the core story line doesn’t change. The hero or heroine of any good story, whether it’s a novel, memoir, or narrative non-fiction, must endure a series of symbolic events that precipitate a life changing degree of development and change.
How an editor can help
When I’m working with a promising but incomplete story, I suggest specific line-by-line additions for new plot development that add depth, pacing, and flesh out the details that accelerate big changes in the lives of the major characters.
I may also suggest deletions when dialog or an action is repetitious or digressive. This can be painful. “It was like drowning your kittens,” one writer said mournfully. “But it was the right thing to do.”
An editor shouldn’t advise you to sweeten up a Hollywood climax. An unhappy ending is OK, if the reader can say “yes, that’s life” and put the book down at the end with emotional satisfaction.
If you’re interested in working with a developmental editor, here’s my advice on finding a good one.
If your book is getting rejected
If your manuscript has been receiving rejections accompanied by vacant stares and long yawns, check out these red flags and solutions.
Remember: Readers need plot! Or they doze off.
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DIY plot thickening
Red flag #1: No compelling leading character
You need characters with whom the reader can get involved. Don’t give readers only big losers or unattractive predators. They need to feel either joy or empathic sorrow at what happens to the person they carry around in their head for days.
Take care not to introduce too many characters. Diluting the reader’s focus of engagement is one of the biggest problems I see in early drafts. Pick a couple of core characters to expand and reduce the rest to essential supporting roles.
Red flag #2: Repetition
Circling around the same behaviors and actions again and again is the bane, the curse, the kiss of death for any story.
We need variety: not just the same experience or emotional desire over and over, but progressive challenges, successes and failures, gradual changes, and ultimate maturity or at least hope for the future. Or not. Again, failure and tragedy works too, if it’s honest, credible and moving.
So make your points and move on. Get out the red ink and prune down to just what moves the plot toward a meaningful ending.
Red flag #3: No change
The main characters should develop dramatically for better or worse, winding up in quite a different situation than they were at the beginning regarding their identities, relationship, thoughts and feelings. This substantial transformation is what the story is about. It’s the promise, the takeaway for your reader.
Be ready to add substantial new scenes that introduce difficult challenges that alter the characters’ lives, and provoke their evolution.
Red flag #4: No ending
The ending must represent the climax of a series of events, each of which show incremental change, step-by-step, with significant action and interaction reaching a meaningful conclusion. This is the kind of ultimate engagement, identification, information and inspiration that a reader wants and deserves.
Before you start writing or revising an existing draft, figure out the end. You can revise and modify this as you go along but it’s extremely helpful to have a good sense of what happens to each chapter that is moving the characters towards their big change.
Avoid an ending that relies on an abrupt stop action, interrupted dialogue, or cliffhanger. These may work for an occasional chapter ending but will not ultimately give the reader a satisfying close to the book.
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What about you?
Are you working on a story that isn’t quite there yet? Try some of the troubleshooting tips here, and see what happens. Any questions? Fire away! And please weigh in with your thoughts and ideas here in comments.
Nice posting and very good points. Another thing about editing and looking for week, sagging, boring spots in my povs was head hoping between my three characters. Sometimes in the same chapter! I’ve been working on that all week and have finally fixed it. I think. If anyone feels like giving some friendly advice to any errors they spot in my book i’d be grateful. The story is on Wattpad.com look for Soul Tear (fantasy, adventure, horror.) Thank you so much to anyone that decides to help.
If not I’ll keep hacking away at it.
I learn a ton from your posts, use the info for my own writing and share it with my writing students. I wish you tweeted some of your advice. Failing that, do you do private coaching?
After reading your insightful contribution, i have no option but to stop working on my project and go fetch for my self good book to educate me on how to write a good book. A nice blog you have, keep it up.
Being a new author, looking for new ideas, I am always struck with the universality of plots and characters written about over the ages. Cyclops and Sirens–Vampires and Zombies, just time relevant name changes for characters to challenges protagonists.
I remember the joy of being unexpectedly scared s***less of sharks after “Jaws”. Someone had found a new entity not previously thought of by most to strike terror in our hearts. Would love to discover or devise that “next” such heretofore unnoticed thingy to be feared.
Yes – Exactly!! This was all that was wrong with my second novel, which never went anywhere. Not for lack of trying. My third novel came out and it was still in a drawer somewhere.
So I applied almost all you mention here, and pulled the protagonist kicking and screaming out of his inertia… but I made that part of the story of his growth. I left in the bitter sweet ending, but I also added a thrilling chapter or two (yes, guns, car chase, the whole bit) and I made the heroine dither and duck and weave, to counterpoint the main character’s maturing. What do you think happened? I showed it to my publishers and they sent me contracts. Yay!! Camera Obscura will be released in a few months, all because I took a scalpel to it and a lot landed on the cutting room floor (a lot). In addition, my editor at BeWrite showed me language and plot strategies that really lifted that novel from the doldrums. He he – you are so right. It works.
Another good article. I’ve tried to remove some of my unnecessary characters, as well, I’m re-working my ending (manuscript). Thanks for your edit, Alan.
Sheila,
I’ve heard of Sloane Crosley’s best-seller “I Was Told There’d be Cake” and admire the great title. Haven’t read the book, though. As for Inkubate, they started up recently as one of several middle-men type websites posting new work by writers to attract agents and publishers. The results are not yet in, but my general advice is buyer beware and read the fine print.
As for that great photo, it was taken by my wife Cheryl at Brighton Beach, but the folks in the frame are of no relation to us…
Does the “building towards the end” include a series of unrelated, yet sort of related essays as in, say, Sloane Crosley?
Alan, have you heard of Inkubate? If so, what is your thought? (by the way, you’d be so proud of my hard-er work and improvements!)
Love, love, love the photograph! Related?
Note: website will be up by early September
After Alan went through my manuscript, I found, rather he found, that it had many of these problems. I’ve spent a long time correcting them and now it is much stronger. That’s the power of a good editor, taking my perfect manuscript and fixing it.
Just FYI, the Trojan War is long over by the start of the Odyssey and is referred to only in flashbacks, and the most famous section containing Odysseus various adventures en route home only actually occupies 3 out of 24 Books
When one is writing non-fiction, and the characters and situations, especially for me, are dictated by real life, one can’t help but be inspired. Joy! Despair! Conflict! Challenges! More than enough for one book…
A non-sparkly plot is the number one thing that tweaks my nose when I review books. My nose nearly tweaked off my face when I realized my own writing had the same problem.
There are too many books out there with scenes that lack conflict. The first rule of writing a compelling scene is to create conflict. Even if the conflict is only brimming under the surface, or even if it’s just the inner conflict of one of the characters. Conflict drives a book forward.
Michael,
To go a step further, I’d say the conflict you describe should appear on page one. Many readers, agents, editors, and reviewers don’t read beyond the first page (or less), unless you get their attention with a conflict. And it’s usually best to be explicit.
I remember a screenplay/creative writing class years ago, where the rule was you had to introduce the PROBLEM (conflict) within the first 5-15 pages. Imagine reading entire chapters without knowing what the obstacle or problem there was.
And the problem/conflict doesn’t have to be obvious or explicit, the mind can pick it up.
Remember the first 5 minutes of “The Social Network”.. it was some of the best dialogue written for screen.. the intensity and smarmy wit is perfect, and serves to introduce the CONFLICT (Mark Zuckerberg is a robotic social retard).. and he even notes to his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend HOW IMPORTANT it was to be in the most important clubs… social networking = power = wealth is the subtext here… Later on, we track his rise and fall in an attempt to develop a social life (like a the tin man, looking for a heart).
Dense. Powerful.