The following are the notes Lucia Zimmitti promised us at our October meeting.
The Ten Most Common
Problems in Fiction Manuscripts
Intro:
 |
Lucia Zimmitti speaks
at our October 13, 2012 meeting |
Fiction teaches. Story teaches. Humans have always learned
from storytelling; not only the facts of history, but how to connect with
others, how to empathize, how to relate to each other. We cannot overestimate
the power and the importance of story to our brains and psyches. And whether or
not you are seeking traditional publication, you write because you want someone
else to be moved by your work (even one person). You want someone to connect with
you through your work, to validate you by loving what you’ve written, what
you’ve created (and this may be a subconscious desire at this point). And
that’s why it pays to know what readers want, and to learn how to craft
fiction, whether your target audience is a group of ten or ten thousand.
Often learning what not
to do gets us to where we want to be more quickly than learning what to do. You must read copious amounts
(this can’t be stressed enough…some experts say reading is more important to
improving your writing than writing is) and you must write, write, write. And
when you revise, it’s helpful to know
where many writers fall down so you can avoid those pitfalls and potholes at
your own desk. Don’t worry about “mistakes” or “problems” while you’re writing
your first draft. You must allow your right brain (the creative side) free rein
while you’re getting the early bones of the story on paper. Banish the very
idea of “correction” while you’re breathing life into those first attempts at
telling the story. Only use the following guide to identify potential
problem-spots in your manuscript after the first draft has been born.
The Ten Most Common
Problems in Fiction Manuscripts
(in no particular
order) occurring in the manuscripts that cross my desk:
1) Breaking the promise to the reader. The first chapter
holds out a promise to the reader (in tone or content or theme), and when
writers break that promise by revealing a very different story somewhere
mid-way into the manuscript, readers tend to feel mislead. This doesn’t mean
you shouldn’t surprise your reader: you
should. But you should surprise them within the framework of the story,
within the story you’ve implied that you’re setting out to tell.
2) Agenda-driven/didactic/obvious lesson or moral. Story
must be king! Stories certainly do teach, but they teach subtly or
peripherally, not directly. When readers feel the author has an agenda and is
trying to persuade the reader s/he should see things the author’s way, the
reader tends to put the book down. Readers don’t pick up fiction to get
preached at or to have their opinions manipulated (again: their opinions might
change after reading a story, but that has to happen naturally, through the
story itself, not because the author is clearly trying to convince readers of a
certain thing).
3) Imbalanced in terms of head-talk and action/dialogue, as
well as in description and story movement. In other words, the character thinks
too much and acts too little. Or the author spends too much time on static
description and not enough on dynamic, interpersonal interaction between
characters. Also, there is too much exposition/backstory (and that slows the story’s
pacing and often bores the reader).
4) Not enough tension/conflict/struggle. The characters are
coddled. Things come too easily for the characters. Put your characters in a
proverbial tree and throw rocks at them until the end. Don’t save them with a
doorbell, either! (I see this quite often when there’s a scene that’s promising
to be emotional and deliciously tense: authors will have the doorbell ring at a
crucial moment, thereby tamping down the tension, just when readers hoped it
would be ramped up.) Characters need obstacles, antagonists, something to push
against, something to challenge them and force them to grow (or to show that
they can’t grow). Characters need messy situations to prove their mettle. Don’t
clean things up so tidily that they can’t ever engage in meaningful struggle.
5) MC’s <MC = Main Character> goals are too big/too
small/too muddy/feel unattainable. Goals focus the story. What’s at stake for
the MC? Don’t let readers ask themselves, “So what?” as they read. (And that’s
the reader’s default setting, so you must work against it.) The MC must want something,
and something else or someone else must be standing in the way (or perhaps
something within the MC stands in the way). And that thing the MC wants must be
achievable, yet not so small that it feels insignificant.
6) Unlikeable MC, or one that is too perfect (and becomes
unlikable that way). You need to create relatable, flawed MCs with
situation-specific motivations that readers understand (even if they wouldn’t
necessarily undertake the same behaviors themselves). Readers need to relate to/identify
with the protagonist (or need to fear the MC’s circumstances). ALSO: Beware of
secondary characters that outshine the MC! It’s so easy to fall into this trap
because the secondary characters are typically fun to write; it’s the MC that
has the storyline issue, the throughline resting on his/her shoulders, and so
when you write him/her, you may be feeling that weight on your shoulders, too.
But when you write the secondary characters, you find yourself having fun,
giving them quirks that really make them pop. You don’t need to have boring
secondary characters, of course: just work hard to make the MC the most
compelling, interesting character of all.
Character development
exercise:
(Read the following Raymond Carver poem, “Late Fragment.”)
And did you get what
you wanted from this
life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself
beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
<Now, using that poem as a starting point, write from the
point-of-view of a character…a new one or one you’re already working with.
Either extend the poem and see where it leads, or put your character in the
position of questioner or answerer. Let yourself go, without judgment or
self-editing or self-censoring, and see what bubbles to the surface. You may be
able to use some of what you’ve written in your work-in-progress...a new idea may
shine brightly from it, or perhaps even a chunk of narrative. But even if that
doesn’t occur, you will have worked your writing muscle in a meaningful way and
pushed yourself to see your character through new eyes and in a new framework.>
7) Voice problems/POV (point-of-view) problems (i.e., a kid
that sounds adult as a voice problem; head-hopping as a POV problem). Typically, you should choose one
point-of-view and stick to that POV throughout (or at least for a whole
chapter). That means you shouldn’t be able to get the direct thoughts of other
characters—you should only be able to get inside the head of your MC. There are
exceptions, but those are infrequent and usually are made for bestselling
authors. Readers like connecting with one character (or, if you switch POVs,
then only switch at the character break). Readers want to get immersed in one
character in a way they can’t with the others. This is why first-person or
third-person limited POV (not
omniscient) are the typical options for today’s readers.
8) Dialogue used as filler: it doesn’t move the story along,
doesn’t reveal character. It breaks the cardinal rule of dialogue (letting one
character tell another something s/he already knows). Readers love dialogue:
not only does it give them a chance to experience the characters in an
immediate way, but it allows for lots of white space on the page, thereby
letting their eyes “breathe.” So be sure to use healthy doses of dialogue, even
if you’re not a fan of writing it. But never let one character tell another
something s/he already knows (that’s not authentic), and don’t fill up the page
with filler phrases like “um” or “dunno” or chit-chat about the weather (unless
that’s important to character development by revealing something about
situation or character reaction).
9) Unnecessary scenes and/or chapters. If the scene/chapter
doesn’t reveal something new about character or propel the story forward, it
should be cut (no matter how much you like it…actually, if you like it too
much, it might be one of those ‘darlings’ we’re supposed to kill; when you love
one isolated piece of the whole too much, you are probably blinded to the fact
that it may not be working for the good of the entire work). Otherwise, that’s
the place where the reader is likely to disconnect. Each scene must work for
the advancement of the whole. (Never delete anything permanently, though: put
the scenes/chapters you think may not be necessary into a graveyard document…keep
them safe. That way, if you realize you want to use all/parts of them, you
won’t have to re-create them.)
10) No surprise in the story. The events are totally
predictable. Readers (and moviegoers and TV watchers) crave surprise. When
books don’t give us that surprise, we tend to feel letdown, tend to feel like
we invested our time and energy and didn’t really get something that we
couldn’t have dreamed up ourselves. Whether you’re an OP (and outline person)
or a NOP (a no-outline person…see James Scott Bell’s book that I mention below
for further discussion of those terms), you want to leave the story open to
elements of surprise as you write. Hemingway said he never knew the end of the
story while he was still writing it, or else the reader would, too. Jane Yolen
said she treats writing like driving: she only looks at what she can see in her
headlights, even though she knows where she wants to go (but she doesn’t know
everything she’ll see along the way).
Exercise for infusing
surprise into your work:
When you’re working
on your story and feel bored/stuck/uninspired, stop writing. Flip open an
encyclopedia or pick up a newspaper (something away from the computer is best).
Or open a book of poetry to a random page. Commit to the first thing you see
(don’t ‘cherry-pick’ for something that interests you). Now think about it from
the framework of your story and see if it can inject surprise, if it can be
worked into the story
For instance, free-write for fifteen minutes (more if you’re
moved to) on the following line:
“Whoops...there seem to be triplets here...,” the
doctor says.
Another example, a line loosely adapted from a Philip Larkin
poem:
Most things will never happen; this one will.
Write with that in mind for fifteen minutes, without judging
or trying to “steer” the output in any way. This exercise can help you discover
something new about your story, something you had hidden in your subconscious
because you were only looking at the story in a linear way, or in some cases,
it can even trigger a whole new story.
NOTE: The above common problems in fiction manuscripts are
all discussions of craft in the department of story. It should go without
saying that poor writing in general will hobble even a great story idea.
However, “bad” writing in people actively pursing the craft is less common than
you might think. Usually when adults voluntarily pick up a pen to write, it’s
because they want to write, which means they’ve had positive reinforcement over
the years (school, friends, etc.), and writing, at least at the level of
putting sentences together, comes relatively easily to them. But here are some
things to watch out for in your own mss all the same (again, only at the
revision stage): Monotonous sentences (all are the same in structure/length);
inadvertent repetition (the echo effect); prose that is overly simplistic (too
spare) or overly ornate (over-dressed to the point of distraction, it asks the
reader to admire the sentences, rather than the story); accidentally switching
verb tenses (there isn’t a “right” verb tense—past and present are both fine.
You just must choose one and be consistent with it throughout [with the
exception of flashbacks, of course, where you’d deliberately switch]).
Recommended
reading:
The Lie that Tells a
Truth by John Dufresne
Plot and Structure by
James Scott Bell
The First Five Pages by
Noah Lukeman
Story by Robert
McKee
Bird by Bird by
Anne Lamott
On Writing by
Stephen King
Happy Writing, everyone!
All best,
Lucia Zimmitti
lucia@ manuscriptrx.com
