The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes - Jack M. Bickham [35]
As you take your character through these parts of her sequel, you may often be inside her head, with no one else around. Or she may talk to a friend or confidante, and "talk out" most of her sequel. In either case, since this is the feeling-thinking part of the story, and not so exciting as the scenes, you are allowed to summarize. Thus your character may look back on earlier parts of the story, or of her life. You may have a sentence such as, "She worried about it for four days, and then on Thursday..." As you work through your character's reactions and planning almost anything goes in terms of timing.
At some point, however—perhaps sooner, perhaps later—your character must make some new decision in order to get the plot moving forward again. So you move your character to her next decision, her next goal.
And what is that new goal? It's the goal she carries into her next scene!
Scenes end in disasters, which require sequels. Sequels lead inevitably to new decisions based on new experience, and these new decisions involve a new goal. The moment the character acts on this new goal—and encounters new conflict—you are into the resulting next scene.
Thus the major structural components of fiction—scene and sequel—link like the strongest chain. In the scene you provide excitement and conflict, ending in disaster, in the sequel you provide feeling and logic, and the character's decision, which leads directly into the next scene.
In imagining your story, you probably ought to plan every sequel. In writing the final draft of the story, it may be that you will sometimes leave out a sequel in order to speed from one scene directly into the next. Such decisions are based on story type and tactics, and your "fingertip feeling" for how fast or slow the story should be at any given point. The key here is to remember that scenes move swiftly and read fast sequels tend to move slowly, and read like story "valleys." It follows, then, that if your story feels slow to you, you may need to expand your scenes and cut, or even eliminate, some of your sequels. While if your story seems to be going at an insane pace, with no characterization or logic, you may need to trim some of your scenes a bit, or expand your sequels to provide more breathing room.
If the idea of sequel is new to you, it may help you to study some stories by other writers. Work to pick out the sequels. Notice how the author is often inside the head of a character alone, feeling and thinking about the plot action or other story people. How is the emotion shown? How are the thoughts presented? How does a writer get from random feelings to increasingly linear thought to some firm—if desperate—final decision that will lead to new action?
Try to make every such analysis a learning experience. If it helps, make some notes in your journal, or elsewhere, about how sequels are handled. The analysis will help you enrich your own skills in handling these vital components of story.
25. DON'T WANDER AROUND IN A FOG
"WAIT A MINUTE. I DON'T KNOW what's going on here."
Did you ever read a short story or novel that gave you this feeling partway through? Worse, did you ever write a story where you suddenly started feeling that way?
It's a pretty bad feeling when it comes during a story you're reading. But it's far worse when it happens during your writing of a story. In that case, it probably signals potential disaster.
Of course all of us experience times during first draft when things do not seem to be going well—when all our careful planning seems to have failed us, and the plot no longer seems to work. Sometimes we can muddle through and fix things later. But even if we make a good fix and later sell the story or book, it's not fun to go through.
It just doesn't pay to wander around in a fog when you're supposed to be putting down a story that makes sense. At best it wastes time. At worst, it wrecks your project. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to minimize such times of confusion.
First, you should always begin with a brief statement, as precise as possible,