Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery by Diane Holmes

“Be Original.”

Most writers have heard that advice. And most writers think they’re original, but they’re not. The words are rearranged, but everything is just one or two degrees off exactly what we’ve read before. The expected. The usual. The awful ordinary.

Why aren’t we original if we’re trying so hard to BE original? Maybe it’s because our love for the story archetypes or forms is too great and we hold on way too tight, confusing the minute details of the story with the love we feel.

There is a delicious goodness, a savory warmth to all our different novel forms. Some forms become genres or types, because we revel in their goodness so much. We say, “More of that!” And in our desire to give and receive “more of that,” we recite familiar terrain.

• Characters say the same things in the same situations.
• Settings are delivered with expected bows and wrapping.
• Plot twists come and go like dancers on a wind-up music box.

Always the same dancers, same song.

And all of that comes from attempts to be original. (“Hey, these are MY characters in My story! He didn’t say, ‘Stop or I’ll shoot you!’ He said, ‘Don’t make me cause your death!’ It’s original.”)

Yeah. So forget original. All that comes of that is we’re original in the same ways. And frankly, original does not mean interesting. You can be original and boring. No one wants that.

This is your call to be something more. Be captivating.

It turns out that the greatest originality is not what’s in YOUR writerly mind, but in what happens in the mind of the reader.

When you’re trying to be original, the focus is on you, the writer. The reader is unmoved, because the reader isn’t being “original-ed.” But when we talk “captivating,” now the reader’s involved. Because it’s the reader who is captivated. The reader is caught up breathless, suspended over the lexicon of imagination on paper and busy story-making in her own mind.

How to Be Captivating – A Lesson from Dick Francis

Opening sentence of Decider by Dick Francis

OK, so here I am, Lee Morris, opening doors and windows to gusts of life and early death.

#1 Take the readers into unchartered waters.

Holy cow. What an opening. Is it original? Yes. But more than that, it’s captivating, fanciful, poetic, and full of Lee’s point of view. And better yet, I don’t know where this will go. I’m off balance, in uncharted story-waters and eager to find out more.

They looked pretty harmless on my doorstep: two middle-aged civil Englishmen in country-gent tweeds and flat caps, their eyebrows in unison raised inquiringly, their shared expression of embarrassed anxiety.

“Lee Morris?” one of them said, his diction clipped, secure, expensive. “Could we speak to him?”

“Selling insurance?” I asked dryly.

Their embarrassment deepened.

“No, actually. . .”

Late March evening, sun low and strong, gold light falling sideways onto their benign faces, their eyes achingly narrowed against the glare. They stood a pace or two from me, careful not to crowd. Good manners all around.

I realized that I knew one of them by sight, and I spent a few extended seconds wondering why on earth he’d sought me out on a Sunday a long way from his normal habitat.

During this pause three small boys padded up the flagstoned passage from the depths of the house behind me, concentratedly threaded a way around me and one through the pair beyond and silently climbed like cats up into the fuzzy bursting-leaf-bud embrace of an ancient spreading oak nearby on the lawn. There the three figures rested, becoming immobile, lying on their stomachs along the old boughs, half seen, intent secretive, deep in an espionage game.

The visitors watched in bemusement.

“You’d better come in,” I said. “They’re expecting pirates.”

#2 Follow Hidden Logic

There is so much that is captivating here! There is a logic that comes from Lee’s mind, and yet I cannot guess it in advance. I’m entertained in the best way; I’m busy learning the character, experiencing the unfolding of (yes, original) situation, and caught off-guard by character’s unusual wit.

#3 Infuse the scene with your genre’s tone, attitude, and sensibilities; don’t swing genre props at the reader like a mallet.

And yet, this fits well within an established genre: mystery/suspense. The story opens as the protagonist opens the door to death. Something is out of place (the two men) and therefore not quite right. His boys are playing an espionage game (the game of lies), and soon there will be pirates (the game of villains and violence).

And it has all intruded on this unsuspecting, innocent day.

How wicked.

How terribly… captivating.

• Evil villain laughing maniacally = 0
• Tortured victims of serial killers = 0
• Burned out ex-cops = 0
• Jack-ass boss/politician/reporter/ex-spouse = 0

So, today, is your writing captivating? Tell me what you did to captivate your reader.

—

Diane is Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University.

“Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it.  Learn.  Pitch.  Sell.”

Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery by Diane Holmes

The 20-Minute Test – Why We Need It

Novelists are often oblivious to what makes a story work (or worse, almost work, but not quite) when it’s their own.

We only know what we’re trying to do, how hard we’re working, and the hundreds of techniques and plot/character details we’re trying to pull off in any given scene.

This blind spot is a key reason we (a) re-write ad nauseam, (b) rely on critique partners who are equally blind, and (c) are constantly waffling between trust in our skills and the sure certainty that we suck. And it’s why we don’t know if we’re not selling because our writing “isn’t good enough to get published,” or because we’re still looking for that right agent, editor, or reader. The ones who get us.

It doesn’t take long for career writers (those who treat writing as their profession–unpublished or published) to lose their ability to be readers. Oh, we read, all right. But we read like writers who read. We are aware of every technique, every word, every cog turning. It becomes a rare event to read “ravenously, emotionally, viscerally.”

And the loss of our reader’s compass at the time we need it most (determining if your character, your scene, or your entire story works) requires a clever solution. My clever solution is named Scott.

The title of this post is what my husband said to me when I asked him why he liked one debut TV show vs. another TV show. Instantly, he had an answer. (He’s fully prepared for a pop quiz at any moment. Twenty-two years of being married to a fiction writer has *so* prepared him to provide discussion points.)

The 20-Minute Test – How it Works

Stories take place inside the reader’s mind.  Vivi Andrews over at Damned Scribbling Women calls books “a living space” for the reader. Every action, every event, and every line of dialogue implies a “world” to the reader.

And herein lies the AHA technique. We may not be able to fully judge our own writing, but we can certainly re-read a scene asking the following questions.

1. Based on this (action, event, dialog, thought, decision, outcome, etc.), what will a smart reader expect to happen next?
2. What will the smart reader know about the story?
3. How will the smart reader expect that to play out to the end of the book?

And here’s the test: If the reader’s expectations are pretty much correct, you have just bored your readers by providing a “living space” they’ve already visited.

For the reader, your story doesn’t work, because they’re reading a new book (your book) for a new experience.

As Alyx Dellamonica says, “I also consider a book not quite good if its story or protagonist bore me, even if the prose is beautiful.”

Alyx and Scott would get along great.

Don’t bore the readers with an obvious trajectory, because while you’re busy writing, they’re busy unfolding the story in their mind’s “living spaces” and hoping they can’t out-think you in 20 minutes.

—

Diane is Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University.