Writing Excuses notes, Season 6

Yeah, I can't think of a lead-in this time. So here we go--Writing Excuses course, notes for Season 6.

1. 30 pages for first act, 60 pages for second act, 30 pages for third act

Proportions, people. This isn't a rule, but I thought it was a useful guideline to keep in mind. Note that it's a ratio, not saying that every book should be 120 pages. Expand as necessary, keeping the ratio intact as much as possible. 30 pages gets you to the first boss. The 60 pages after that get you to the edge of the cliff. Last 30 pages gets you the final showdown, climax, and resolution.

I particularly like this because it mirrors your beginning and ending, and it should be useful in figuring out how fast to move your story along. It is something to keep in mind during your second draft or later, however, not the first draft. Remember that the first draft is what you want to say, the final draft is how you want to say it.

2. Personality as a plot device

Since your readers are more interested in your characters than the plot itself, generally speaking, you need to have interesting personalities, and they need to be involved in the plot. For instance, the use of Jack Sparrow's personality in Pirates of the Caribbean. Using him to get things moving provided more entertainment than if someone normal had figured out they needed to flip the boat upside down. He may be the comic relief, but he also moves the plot, meaning his personality is actually a plot device.

Another example would be Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. His personality works to get the reader (or viewing audience, if they're watching it) emotionally involved in the plot.

Moral of the story: If you feel like things are getting a bit boring, consider adding in a vibrant personality to mix things up and drive your plot a bit.

3. Have a purpose for each description.

I am plenty guilty of skimming descriptions of places in books. I mainly do it because I won't remember them, anyway. I'm not a visual thinker, so I don't care what a room looks like except to know that it's a crowded bar. I will not remember what color the bar stools are or what the drink special of the day is. That is, I won't unless those details matter. So make your details matter.

Why are you telling the reader the color of the bar stools? Are they bright pink, just like everything else in the bar, which also has a rhinestone-studded wall spotted with Marilyn Monroe posters? Those sorts of details tell me about the atmosphere of the bar, and about the owner, if you want to involve them, too. Give specifics in your details, because they stick out (notice, not just posters, but Marilyn Monroe posters, and I may even describe one in particular) and make a place more unique and real. Those details also need to tell the reader something about the characters or plot (or place, if you're writing a story about place). Otherwise, they are a waste of space.

A couple of examples, along with what the description does. First is something I wrote, the next is a quote from a book.

There’s this diner I go to at least once a week. It’s a small place, and not much to look at. A yellow sign at the front that used to be white reads “Chris’s Diner,” but it’s hard to read because someone’s spray painted their signature over it. The food’s decent, though, and I pass it on my way to and from work. Most days when I go in, it’s because I’m too tired to warm up a can of soup.
I work in retail; I am too tired a lot of the time. It takes more energy than a bowl of cereal and a Subway sandwich to get me through the day. What I love about Chris’s Diner is that every time I walked in, Chris looks up from behind the bar and smiles as he says, “One of those days?” Then he goes back to cleaning the counter.
My table is next to a window with a view of the parking lot. The plastic seats are red and the seat across from mine in the booth has a small tear in it that Chris has tried to fix with some duct tape. Whenever I ask him if he is going to buy a new seat anytime soon, he always says he will replace it when the high school football team wins state.
The day I was fired from my job was “one of those days,” as Chris would put it. It was a particularly windy day and I kept my hands in my jacket pockets with the collar turned up as I fought my way into the diner. The wind made it difficult to open the door and difficult to close it, too.

What does the description do? Here, I was using it to ground my story. I wanted my audience to get a good idea of this diner, because it was my setting. I wanted it to be a real place. I don't expect my readers to remember all the details, but I do expect them to come away with and retain the impression of a locally owned diner that has a laid-back aura. It also should give the reader an impression of the owner as a human reflection of the diner itself. It's about the effect, not the visuals.

In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, "tarried" in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it might have been mistaken for a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield. (Sleepy Hollow, something I highly recommend. It's a short story, easy to knock out for Halloween if you feel like it.)

There are a lot of details here, which means the reader is going to forget almost all of them. Who cares that he is from Connecticut, unless the reader has some emotional connection to the place? One would be lucky to even remember Ichabod's name, given this paragraph to swallow. That wasn't the point, however. This deluge of description served the purpose of making Ichabod Crane look highly absurd, and that is our first impression of him. He is a character we are not going to take seriously. If Washington Irving had wanted us to know that Ichabod Crane was a tall and physically awkward schoolteacher from Connecticut who lived in Sleepy Hollow about thirty years ago, he could have said it just like that. It took up less than one sentence. But he didn't say it that way, because he was building an impression. First impressions in books are a big deal, just like in real life.

Plus, he got in some really cool comparisons while he was at it.

4. Don't run a story into the ground.

Resolve, but end the story so that the reader ends it themselves. It's like not explaining a joke. Nothing is funny if you have to explain why it is funny, and stories are better if they leave you when the group gets back to the car instead of also driving the reader home and breaking out lunch.

If we saw Snow White start holding court with her prince, that would be running it into the ground. We don't care. Perhaps this is why so many sequels are worse than the first movie?

Epilogues sometimes work, and that's because they're a "where are they now?" follow-up. The epilogue is not trying to tell a story, and they don't give us more than the bare bones of what happened to people. Only use an epilogue if you feel one is needed.