While shallow stories can be enjoyable, we often strive to add depth to our storytelling. Deeper stories can “say” more to readers, evoking more emotions and leaving a bigger impression.

We have many options for how we can deepen our stories, from creating layered characters or heartrending emotional journeys to exploring complex dilemmas. But a primary way of adding depth to our story is by using and expanding our story’s themes.

Themes are meant to communicate to readers by provoking them to consider a certain view of the world (such as what to value, believe, hope for, aim for, etc.), so themes inherently provide plenty of opportunities for us to say more to readers. Themes that interact on some level create even more depth, as they take a simplistic belief (“love is powerful”) and turn it into a more purposeful idea (“love is powerful when we learn to trust others”).

Today, let’s look at how we can set up themes that resonate with each other, and thus add up to a deeper story than possible with just a standalone theme.

Themes 101: What Creates a Theme?

First, we need to understand how our story can (and likely will) contain multiple themes. For that, we need to know what creates themes within our story and how the different aspects and elements of our story each contribute to the impression of “what our story is about”:

• Story Themes: What’s the premise of the story? Who’s supposed to win or lose—and why?
• Character Themes: How does the protagonist change over the course of the story? What do they learn?
• Plot Themes: During the plot’s turning points, what do the characters attempt? Do they succeed or fail—and why?
• Choices Themes: What choices are the characters making? Do the results match the Story or Character Themes (choices that agree with the themes should succeed and vice versa)?
• Villain Themes: Are the villain’s beliefs reinforced or disproved by plot events?

How Will Our Story’s Themes Interact?

Obviously, with all those different sources of themes, our story will likely share multiple messages with readers (whether intended or not). Those messages can interact in various ways, as they could:

• conflict with one another,
• each be independent (and essentially ignore each other),
• align despite being unrelated,
• echo similar ideas, or
• resonate with repetition and deeper similarities.

How Can We Make Themes Work Together?

Let’s look at a few options for integrating multiple themes, from techniques that inherently result in the least resonance to those with the most:

Option #1: Multiple Independent Themes with No Connection

As long as the ideas from our story’s various themes don’t undercut each other, there’s nothing “wrong” with unrelated themes.

For example, a story could be about both justice and love. Perhaps the main plot focuses on the protagonist ensuring a killer is brought to justice, while a subplot focuses on the protagonist resolving a relationship issue.

While those themes don’t echo or resonate with each other, they also don’t specifically interfere with each other. They are simply each standalone themes, and for some stories, that approach works fine.

SPECIAL TIP FOR UNCONNECTED THEMES:
Watch Out for Conflicts

Avoid using multiple themes that conflict or interfere with each other, except for cases where an exploration of that conflict is part of the story’s premise.

For example, a theme about “the value of friendship” expressed through the protagonist relying on their friends would struggle to cooperate with a second theme of “the value of rugged independence.” Those themes undermine the messages of each other, so our storytelling would be weaker unless an aspect of the story focused on the protagonist deciding how to prioritize or embody each of those ideals. That exploration of the conflict would create a connection between the themes (pushing it into the Option #2 approach below).

Option #2: Multiple Independent Themes with Some Connection

Sometimes with unrelated themes, we can reference the ideas of one theme in the story elements that explore another theme.

As an example, given that same story idea from Option #1 above with the themes of justice and love, the ideas or lessons learned from one theme could inform the resolution of the story events of the other theme. With our above example, the protagonist’s desire for justice could carry over to be related to the relationship issue, such as if a too-strict adherence to justice prevents the protagonist from being sympathetic with their love interest. Or a lesson learned from the relationship could help the protagonist understand and track the killer, such as through stretching their empathy “muscles.”

While the themes themselves in this Option #2 don’t connect directly, the story elements exploring each theme can overlap. Those overlaps can create echoes adding depth to the story, as the theme’s ideas are revisited in other circumstances, or as they examine the story world from unrelated-but-parallel perspectives.

Note that the examples above illustrate that the only difference between Options #1 and #2 is whether we choose to create overlapping references. In other words, virtually any Option #1 story could become an Option #2 story if we consciously make a few narrative tweaks, such as by having one theme’s ideas mentioned in another theme’s story elements or by having one theme inform the other, and so on.

Option #3: Multiple Somewhat-Related Themes

Some themes can be different-but-similar to other themes, exploring ideas along comparable or related lines.

For example, a story exploring the theme of love could also include themes of related ideas: trust/distrust, friendship, rejection, etc. (all touching on a character’s emotional journey with relationships). To go deeper into that example, a protagonist may experience relationship love in one aspect of the story, but a subplot may explore their pain of a parental rejection, or them learning to accept that rejection, or them learning to appreciate those who do love them despite that rejection.

A few other themes with somewhat-related ideas include:

• survival / learning to trust yourself
• love / learning to trust others
• justice / survival
• justice / oppression

In other words, themes with related (or opposite) ideas can often resonate with each other, as the lessons learned from one theme can often carry over and help in the exploration of the other theme. Or from a reader perspective, what the story says through these somewhat-related themes add together to create a bigger cohesive “message” or perspective, such as “learning to trust yourself can help you survive.”

Option #4: Multiple Explorations of the Same Theme

Some stories allow us to explore a single theme idea from multiple perspectives or circumstances.

For example, a story about trust could explore that theme in various ways, as the plots/subplots and other story elements could all focus on the benefits of learning how to trust. Or a story about the power of love could explore romantic love, friendship love, sibling love, parental love, etc., all in different aspects of the story. Or a story with multiple protagonists could explore the theme of romantic love through each character’s relationship.

Final Thoughts: The Benefits of Connecting Themes

Note that Option #4 is not “better” than Options #2 or #3 for creating connections across the thematic elements of our story, especially as that style won’t work for most stories. The point is to identify our various themes and see what they have to say (if anything) about each other. While echoes and resonances may happen more automatically with Option #4, as long as we ensure that we create or emphasize those resonances with Options #2 or #3, all three of those approaches can work equally well for using thematic echoes to deepen our story.

That said, the unconnected themes of Option #1 can also work for our story just fine, depending on the story we’re trying to tell. However, those unconnected theme ideas are almost like the thematic version of episodic storytelling, as they don’t add together to create a bigger idea. Yet for some stories, that style is a good match for our storytelling goals.

In contrast, themes with some level of connection – whether Option #2, #3, or #4 – help the story feel not only deeper, but more epic, as the echoes and resonances weave on a single, common canvas to give readers the sense of a bigger story with more meaning. With Options #2, #3, and #4, the more we’re able to create those connections between the various themes of our story, the deeper and more layered our story will feel, as our story will “say” more to readers. *smile*

Have you thought about how stories contain multiple themes, and therefore how those themes interact may affect the sense of depth (or “epicness”) of a story? Have you struggled to know how to make themes interact in helpful ways? Does this post give you ideas for working with themes? Do you have any questions about themes or how they can interact?

PRO TIP: Your characters’ traits, experiences, and personal biases will influence how they approach the story theme, so it’s important for you to know these driving factors in your cast members.

For this reason, we’ve structured the entries of One Stop for Writer’s Theme and Symbolism Thesaurus so you can explore these aspects for your characters and make smart decisions about their thematic statements. View an example here.

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post How to Deepen a Story with Thematic Echoes appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Every genre and medium of storytelling uses tropes—common themes or story devices. However, the frequency of certain storytelling ideas, such as “the chosen one,” makes them so common that readers get sick of them, and every type of trope can seem cliché or predictable.

Yet tropes are so common that we can’t avoid using them, so it’s better if we can learn how to benefit from them. How can we avoid the problems of tropes and instead use them to help strengthen our story?

Wait, Why Can’t We Just Avoid Tropes?

Think of story tropes as a storytelling pattern. Some patterns are big and can encompass the entire story (coming of age), and some patterns are smaller and play out over a scene or two (a double cross).

These storytelling patterns, or tropes, can focus on:

• characters (hero’s journey, unlikely allies, unreliable narrator, reluctant hero, etc.)
• settings (going into a dark basement, vaguely European medieval surroundings, etc.)
• plot elements (road trip, love triangle, blackmail, trapped in an elevator, etc.)
• and so on…

Any storytelling idea that’s been used more than once becomes part of a pattern, from “secret admirer” to “cellphone battery is dead.” Virtually every idea, twist, obstacle, etc. falls into a pattern, which means it’s part of a trope.

At this point, even the many ways that authors attempt to subvert a trope have themselves become tropes. Think of a “damsel in distress” trope where the damsel isn’t really in danger at all.

Countless numbers of tropes exist, to the point that a whole website is dedicated to them. In other words, tropes are unavoidable.

How Can We Avoid the Weaknesses of Tropes?

The pattern aspect of tropes is part of what makes a trope a trope. Audiences can fill in the details of a trope without the story having to spell everything out because they recognize the pattern.

Not surprisingly, that pattern recognition can also create the sense of predictability, cliché, and other weaknesses. However, the worst negative effects of tropes occur when we rely on them to carry the work of the story.

Taking some of the bullet points above, here’s what it means to rely on tropes to carry the story:

• For characters, we set up an “unlikely allies” trope, but we don’t develop why these characters are working together despite the unlikeliness.
• For setting, we set up a “vaguely European medieval surroundings” trope, but we don’t develop any unique storytelling or worldbuilding details.
• For plot, we set up a “blackmail” trope, but we don’t develop the stakes and motivations of the parties involved.

In all those cases, the tropes would weaken the story, regardless of the strength of our other story elements, because we’d be relying on the trope formula to do the work. Our lazy writing would expect readers to recognize the trope to the point that we merely kick off the pattern and wait for the formula to do the rest. The story itself is just going through the motions.

How Can Tropes Strengthen Our Story?

Given that inherent pattern recognition and predictability, how can we possibly make tropes strengthen our story?

Tropes and their patterns tap into universal experiences and emotions. Readers recognize and are familiar with the patterns of those experiences and emotions from other stories they’ve been exposed to, even if they’ve never come across them in real life. With that common background, tropes can help readers instantly grasp complex relationships, emotional flips, and storytelling turns.

So while tropes can be shortcuts to lazy writing, their patterns and expectations can also be shortcuts to relatability and understanding for readers. As long as we’re then building on those shortcuts rather than expecting them to do all the work, our story will be stronger. In other words, rather than relying on tropes to the extent of shortchanging unique details or character/story development, we can use tropes to improve readers’ connection and provide opportunities for deeper development.

Example: How Tropes Can Strengthen Our Story

Let’s say we want readers to feel more connected to a minor character. Here’s one way we can use tropes to shortcut a starting point for the character’s development (which we then build on) and strengthen the character’s connection to readers:

1. Recognize what tropes/patterns the character represents: The character is an intelligent precocious child, and thus readers will expect a know-it-all who’s always a step ahead of everyone else.
2. Lean into the trope in a way that adds relatability: Make the child more relatable by showing them as an outsider or dismissed in some respects.
3. Recognize the trope’s expectations (and common subversions): Readers will believe that when cornered by the bad guy, the child will come out on top.
4. Subvert the trope in a way that adds opportunities for depth: Instead, the child doesn’t realize the bad guy is manipulating them, because…they are still a child. (Note: Sometimes this step isn’t even on the page because the opportunity is what’s important, not the subversion.)
5. Use the opportunity to add character and/or story development: In the reveal of the child being manipulated instead, use the opportunity to deepen their character development, such as by exploring their feelings of outsider-ness or being dismissed, or maybe their precociousness is a result of feeling like they’re not allowed to make mistakes, and this was a big mistake.

In this example, between the child being a victim of the bad guy’s manipulation and deepening their character development on the page, readers will feel doubly sorry for them and thus more emotionally connected to them. As a result, the story will feel deeper and stronger.

Focus on the Opportunity for More, Not the Subversion

There are plenty of advice articles out there about how to twist or subvert a trope:

• Change the context
• Gender/role reversal
• Layer tropes to come up with something unique, etc.

That advice can be great and good to know, and in fact, I’ve written one of those posts. But like mentioned above, many subversions have now become new tropes.

So if we can’t avoid using tropes, and if there’s a limit to how much we can subvert tropes, how can we make them benefit our story? Strengthening our story with — or despite — tropes is less about the specifics of subverting them and more about how we can take something potentially cliché and use it to add depth and development to our story.

We can use the shortcuts that tropes provide to give us a quick starting point to build on for more depth in our story. We can use the shorthand of trope relatability to give us room to focus on development beyond or outside of the trope.

In other words, rather than spending our time trying to think of a never-before-thought-of twist for our story’s tropes, we may be better off to accept that tropes aren’t bad—but they are just a starting point. If we instead spend our time using our story’s tropes as a launchpad for adding uniqueness and depth, our story will be stronger. *smile*

Have you struggled to understand tropes before or been stumped for how to twist the tropes in your story? Does this post help you see how embracing them as shortcuts might allow us to add more depth in other ways? Do you have any questions about tropes or their weakness and how to use them?

Check out the Character Type and Trope Thesaurus.

Use this resource to familiarize yourself with the commonalities for a certain kind of character while also exploring ways to elevate them and make them memorable, more interesting, and perfectly suited for the story you want to tell.

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post How to Strengthen Our Story with Tropes appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

For strong storytelling, we need to focus on what’s important and relevant to current story events. That means we shouldn’t info-dump a bunch of irrelevant backstory just because it’s interesting or it’s something we enjoyed developing about our character, as we instead need to keep this story moving forward.

Yet two advanced writing techniques may seem to go against this advice by focusing on showing readers events in the past: flashbacks and dual timeline stories. What are these techniques, when might it make sense to use them, and what’s the difference between flashbacks and dual timelines?

Backstory 101: Use When Necessary

While we do need to be careful with backstory (due to potentially causing pacing issues, etc.), in most stories, it’s essential to include at least some pre-story information. Well-crafted backstory gives readers the context of a character’s issues (like a backstory wound) and emotions, informing readers about what makes the character tick. Backstory often creates a character’s pain and motivation—helping readers comprehend the why.

That said, our goal shouldn’t simply be to include backstory whenever we think readers “need” information. Instead, the most important advice for integrating any style of backstory is that the information must be relevant to the current story events and readers’ understanding of the story.

In general, backstory should be shared:

• only when readers need the context for understanding a character’s current choices and emotions (that why information), such as when their actions or behaviors seem out of character or confusing – and –
• only when that technique is the best way to have readers understand why the character is doing what they’re doing.

Advanced Backstory: Flashbacks vs. Dual Timelines

Normal Backstory:

In normal usage, we may allude to backstory in just a phrase or paragraph. Rather than spelling out the details of a character’s history, we may include just a hint, just enough for readers to understand.

For the first time in years, she prioritized her needs over those of her coworker.

That opening 6-word phrase is enough to allude to a past that’s held this character back from standing up for herself. Over the course of the story, readers can get similar hints if necessary to better understand her backstory wound and thus fully understand the story’s stakes and obstacles and her choices and motivations.

Backstory through Flashbacks:

However, sometimes it’s necessary to give readers more information. Maybe during this scene, readers need to know why this is the first time she’s willing to set boundaries. Maybe they need to see for themselves what happened in the past to understand why she was so traumatized and stuck in her mindset—and thus get the importance of this scene.

In that case, rather than contriving a way to share the information within the current story, such as having the character tell someone else about the past event, we may decide to show readers the event itself in a flashback. A flashback gives us a few paragraphs—up to a full scene—to show (rather than tell) a past event.

As her coworker prattled on about yet another emergency that he’d caused—and that required her to give up her weekend off to fix, for the twelfth weekend in a row—she remembered all the hundreds of other times she’d sacrificed for others at her expense. At the front of her mind was the teenage memory of her father demanding that she spend their entire Disney World family vacation watching her infant brother.
Some of the time, sure. All of the time?
At the announcement, she had stared into her parents’ faces, watching for a hint of a wink or smile. They were joking, surely. Her heart dropped as the reality sank into thoughts. No castle, no rides, no fun.
No way.
“But that’s not fair!”…

Dual-Timeline Stories:

Many books consist of multiple stories that interrelate to create one story, such as romance stories that feature both love interests or any story with multiple protagonists. For those, we may alternate scenes or chapters between the characters.

However, what if those stories happen at different times? As an example, what if the story we’ve been using above is a case of generational issues? What if we want to explore not only this woman’s story of learning to set boundaries, but we also want to explore her mother’s history of failing to do the same until she’s inspired by her daughter’s growth?

In that case, a dual-timeline story may make the most sense. With just flashbacks, we’d struggle to create an understanding of not only this woman’s history but also her mother’s story of past situations and choices. Instead, we could create dual stories set at different times so that both timelines are fully shown and not told.

A dual-timeline story gives us any number of scenes necessary to tell a complete story that happened in the past that is somehow relevant to the “present” story. Like any multiple protagonist story, we could alternate chapters or sections, one set in the “present” and one set at the earlier time (but still worded in our usual verb tense).

For our example, we may alternate chapters with the mother and daughter facing similar challenges in asserting themselves. The story set in the past may seemingly end with the mother giving up. Then soon after the daughter finds her backbone in the present, the mother’s story may resume by jumping forward in time to show her inspired to the same, finally leaving her abusive husband.

This time jump at the end is not necessary (or even particularly common) in dual-timeline stories (and in fact, it’s possible to feature the same protagonist in both timelines), but this structure fits with this example. Either way, the dual-timeline story comes together in the end, at least on a thematic level, to illuminate a single story idea.

How Is a Dual-Timeline Story Different from Using Multiple Flashbacks?

Depending on the story we’re trying to tell, the story arc set in the past of a dual-timeline story may also inform the “present” story the same way that any type of backstory provides context to readers. For our example, the alternating chapters could echo each other with similar challenges or show the daughter learning unhelpful coping habits from her mother, explaining more about why she is the way she is.

However, it’s important to understand that a dual-timeline story is not the same as a story with a bunch of flashbacks.

Multiple Flashbacks:

• Only need to be related to current story events
• Can be—but don’t need to be—related to each other
• Are triggered by events in the current story, not the previous flashback
• Don’t need to tell a story in whole
• Aren’t leading up to their own dark moment or climax

In other words, the flashbacks aren’t there to work together to tell a separate story from the present story. Instead, the flashback scenes exist solely to illuminate the current story.

Dual Timelines:

• Each should have their own obstacles and stakes.
• Each should progress as a complete story, with their own independent structure of acts and turning points (dark moment, climax), etc.
• Each scene set in the past should follow the cause-and-effect chain of the previous past scene, not the preceding present-story chain.

In other words, even if we cut out every present-setting scene, the story set in the past should still make sense and be a complete story. The past-timeline story exists for its own reasons, and the dual-timeline structure simply allows the two stories to add meaning to each other.

Need More Understanding or Examples of
Flashbacks vs. Dual-Timelines?
Check out Jami’s companion post!

When Should We Use Each Technique?

If we need readers to know aspects of the past to understand the context of the present, our default should be to use our normal backstory techniques, including hints/phrases, characters sharing stories, etc.

• Use Normal Backstory to share tidbits of necessary context relevant to current story events with readers.

If we want to use our usual showing techniques to share a specific past event with readers, such as to create a deep point of view (POV) experience, we may want to use a flashback.

• Use Flashbacks to show a past defining moment(s), event(s), or scene(s) with the POV character to readers.

If we want to explore a story idea that integrates the experiences of two different timelines to create a single understanding, we may want to use a dual timeline.

• Use Dual Timelines to show two stories set at different times that work together to illuminate each other.

Final Thoughts about Backstory Techniques

With the right writing techniques, we can ensure our backstory elements don’t slow down or interrupt our current story or feel like information dumps to readers. At the same time, appropriate use of backstory techniques can make our story and characters—and our readers’ connection to those—stronger and more compelling. *smile*

Want to learn how the new Fallout TV series juggles both flashbacks and dual timelines? Visit my companion post!

Have you struggled to understand how to weave backstory information into your story? Have you used flashbacks or written a dual-timeline story and have other insights to share? Do you have any questions about these techniques or how to approach backstory, flashbacks, or dual-timeline stories?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post Flashbacks vs. Dual Timeline: What’s the Difference? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

We’ve probably seen advice warning that any time our story revisits information, we risk the idea feeling repetitive or redundant to readers if we’re not careful. Not surprisingly, the same risk can apply even across books in a series.

Yet when we write a book series, we usually need to repeat some information from book to book. Depending on the type of series, we might need to repeat character introduction or worldbuilding information, or we might need to touch on events from previous books, and so on. So how can we avoid the repetitive/redundant risk when presenting information in a book series?

Series 101: Types of Series

To understand our options for how to handle repeating information, we first need to determine the type of series we’re writing. In general, books are designated a series because they share at least one element:

• Shared Setting: These series take place in the same “world” but each feature different point-of-view (POV) characters. The characters of book two may or may not have been introduced in book one. The events of book two may or may not be dependent on the events of book one.
• Shared Character(s): These series feature the same POV character(s). The events of book two may or may not be dependent on the events of book one.
• Shared Story Arc: These series follow a story arc over several book installments. Each book usually features at least some of the same characters. Sometimes a story will end with a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next book. These books need to be read in order.

Which Category Best Fits Our Series?

We need to determine which category best fits our series, as the writing techniques that work best for handling repeated information vary for different types of series. For example, when series books are standalone, we use different techniques than when the books must be read in a certain order.

What if the books can make sense out of order but are connected enough to make events of one book affect the next book?

In this case, the series usually has less focus on the overall Shared Story Arc than the other shared elements, so the standalone techniques of the Shared Character or Shared Setting categories will likely be the most helpful to us. However, it’s also possible that that our series may change category near the end.

Some series can be read in any order until the last book(s), when the minor Shared Story Arc threads referenced throughout the series grow in importance to create a series-level story. For these series, to get the most out of the final book, readers should be familiar with the rest of the series first. In this situation, we can use the Shared Character/Setting techniques in the earlier books, and then when that Shared Story Arc finally takes over as the main focus of the book, we can change to use the Shared Story Arc techniques in the later book(s). We should just let readers know that they’ll get the most out of the last book(s) if they read the other books first.

Want to learn the Techniques for Series Based on Shared Setting
or the Techniques for Series Based on Shared Character?
Check out Jami’s companion post!

Techniques for Series Based on Shared Story Arc

The most important aspect of Shared Story Arc series is that if we intend to write the books with an assumption that readers have read previous books, we need to include that information in our marketing materials. For example, our book description/back-cover blurb should mention that this is book number-whatever in our series, and readers should start at the beginning of the series.

So if readers will read the books in a certain order, does that mean we shouldn’t bother repeating information at all? Unlikely.

Even within a single book, we still need to give readers hints about small details they may have forgotten since the earlier reference. For example, we might mention how a minor character is related to the story if they haven’t been on the page for several chapters, such as using a tag like “her brother.” (She couldn’t go to George for help, as her brother still hadn’t forgiven her for the last catastrophe.)

With a series, there’s usually months or years between the releases of our series’ books, or even if we release the series in a bundle, readers might not binge them all at once. So just like our techniques within a single book, we often need to find ways to trigger readers’ memory of earlier information.

Assuming we’ve let readers know that it’s essential to start the series at the beginning, we can focus on repeating a minimal amount of information with these 3 techniques…

#1: Use Just Enough Information to Trigger Readers’ Memory

In standalone series, we need to share enough information to get new readers up to speed, and that means re-introducing characters, the story world, and treating previous events as backstory. However, in story-arc series, we can shortcut a lot of repeated information by sharing just enough to trigger readers’ memory.

For example, rather than re-establishing why our protagonist is estranged from their family, we might just allude to the fact that they’re estranged from them. Or rather than sharing paragraphs of explanation to introduce main characters or the setting/story world, we might just state aspects of characters and the story world as facts and avoid the feeling of a re-introduction. In other words, focus on facts not explanations.

This memory-triggering process may look like one of these options, depending on the importance of the details:

• a short tag: her office nemesis,
• a sentence: She’d still never forgiven her coworker for stealing her idea, or
• a paragraph: She’d still never forgiven her coworker for stealing her idea. In fact, the more she’d thought about Andrew’s undeserved raise and promotion, the more upset she’d gotten. Soon, though, her plan for revenge would have its day.

The more important a fact, such as a major aspect of the story, the more strongly we should trigger readers’ memory with essential details in case they can’t remember. Do readers need to know the protagonist is traumatized by her father’s death in the previous book? Share how that trauma is affecting her currently, and thus include the fact of the death event along the way, much as how we’d treat any backstory.

If we need more than a paragraph or two to share the necessary details of important information with returning readers, we can try the next suggestion to avoid repeating ourselves too much.

#2: Use Different Circumstances to Mention Repeated Information

For important information, we need to ensure that readers remember enough that they’ll understand events. When our story requires us to repeat more than a condensed paragraph of information, we can avoid the feeling of too much repetition by changing the circumstances of our reveal.

For example, if we initially revealed the information in a shocking twist, a follow-up book may remind readers of the information via:

• a dialogue exchange,
• a different character bringing it up,
• internal monologue,
• an exploration of the aftereffects,
• a traumatic flashback, or
• being part of a conflict, etc.

Different techniques will fit best with different storytelling styles. The point is to change the circumstances so we’re forced to use different words, phrases, and descriptions to reduce the sense of déjà vu.

#3: Focus on How the Information Has Changed

In addition, we can emphasize how any repeated information has changed over the story’s arc. Or if the information itself hasn’t changed, we can bring it up by mentioning how characters have changed their perspective about it.

For example, we may explore how the POV character feels about it, how skilled they are at dealing with it, how they plan on taking advantage of it, etc. Revisiting the repeated information with some type of update can be a great way to ensure the repetition isn’t redundant, as readers are learning something new.

Final Thoughts about Avoiding Repetition in Series

With the right writing techniques, we can avoid—or at least minimize—the issue of readers feeling a sense of déjà vu as we repeat information in our series. When we find ways to change the information or how we deliver that information, we ensure readers are learning something new or seeing the information through a different perspective, and that gives them a reason to keep reading. *smile*

Want to learn techniques for Shared Setting or Shared Character series? Visit my companion post!

Have you written a series and struggled with how to revisit information? Can you think of any other techniques we can use to avoid a sense of repetition or redundancy? Do you have any questions about these techniques or how to approach repeating information in a series?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post Continuing a Series: Is This Info Too Repetitive? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

As a romance author, I’ve learned how to portray deep romantic relationships between my characters, focusing on techniques to make the relationship believable, healthy, and something readers will root for. Believe it or not, some of those same techniques can also help us portray strong friendships in our stories.

Let’s dig in… How can we show our readers a relationship—a friendship or more—that’s relatable and makes them believe the characters are close?

Introducing: Identities vs. Essences

For years, I’ve been a big fan of Michael Hauge’s approach to characters, and regular readers here will recognize the concepts he explores within Angela and Becca’s advice, such as Backstory Wounds and Fears. In that video linked above, Michael Hauge gives a quick overview of:

• How those wounds and fear elements create our character’s Identity, the persona/mask they’ve created to protect themselves from being terrified.
• How courageously overcoming those emotional obstacles allows our character to reach their potential, their Essence.

(If you’re unfamiliar with these Identity and Essence concepts or you’d rather read than watch a video, check out my post on showing our character’s internal journey for a full explanation.)

Basically, when our characters emotionally retreat, they’re fearfully hiding behind their protective Identity. However, that emotional armor usually prevents them from meeting their needs, internal goals, and/or longings.

On the other hand, when our characters take an emotional risk despite those wounds or fears, they’re stepping into their Essence. That step can also bring them closer to reaching those needs, goals, or longings.

Character Essences: The Key to Strong Relationships

Showing our character taking risks (especially those that require our character to be emotionally vulnerable) gives readers a glimpse into who they have potential to become, their true self. A character who’s willing to be vulnerable and risk-taking not only seems more heroic, but also more relatable. Readers may better understand what prompts their motivations, decisions, and actions—and thus feel a stronger connection to them.

Not surprisingly, just as readers can feel closer to characters who have shown their Essence, the same applies to relationships between characters. An Essence-to-Essence connection can be key to portraying a strong relationship.

Character Essences: Connecting in Romantic Relationships

In romance stories, if we want readers to trust and believe in the relationship, we need to show what the characters see in each other (beyond just the physical aspect of attraction). What makes them a good match?

To portray a deeper romantic relationship, we need readers to see the characters connecting on an Essence-to-Essence level:

• How do they fill in each other’s weaknesses?
• How do they build up each other’s strengths?
• How are they a better person with the other around?

In addition, in many romances, the love interest will recognize the other’s potential before the character does. In other words, the characters see through each other’s masks before they’ve even grown enough to risk taking them off.

For example, a hero who believes themselves unworthy of love might push others away in a gruff way. Their love interest can comment on their prickliness, teasing them about thinking themselves unlovable, which challenges the hero to rethink their Identity. If this observation comes before any deep sharing of fears between the characters, readers will believe the love interest is able to see the real potential of the hero, creating a sense of an Essence-to-Essence connection.

Most importantly, to portray a deep, healthy, believable relationship, that Essence-to-Essence connection should show the characters accepting and loving the other for who they really are.

Character Essences: Connecting in Friendships

A similar idea applies to friendships, “bromances,” and other close relationships between characters. If we want readers to believe that characters are close, we need to show an Essence-to-Essence connection between them, where readers see them being “real” or genuine with each other in some way. And most importantly, the characters must be shown to accept and care about each other for who they really are.

For example, to create a sense of a close relationship when one character is vulnerable with another, sharing fears or revealing wounds, etc., we can show the other character responding:

• in a supportive way,
• in a confrontational way, but make it clear the confrontation is done out of love, or
• in a non-supportive way, but make it clear the other character still sees and cares about the vulnerable character’s true self, and so on…

All those options (and others we may think of) show that the characters know each other on a deep level. Even if there’s conflict between them, readers can understand that the debate comes from the other character wanting what’s best for the vulnerable character, or especially in male friendships, that the characters’ ability to give each other grief and still be friends shows how close they are.

On the other hand, to create a sense of a close relationship when one character emotionally retreats from the other, such as being fake or putting on their “mask,” we can show the other character:

• calling them out on their b.s., or
• being supportive and understanding about why they might need to retreat for a bit, or
• relieving the character’s discomfort (such as by changing the subject), and so on…

Those options (or others we may think of) show a level of insight between the characters that can only come from a history of genuine interactions. So just like with the “unlovable” hero example in the romance section above, even though the character isn’t revealing their Essence in the moment, the other character still sees the real person.

Likewise, we can portray their connection with many of the same tools used in romance relationships. For example, romance readers love banter. In friendships, that banter may come across more like giving each other grief or teasing. They may share inside jokes, personal knowledge, common interests, protectiveness, rituals, or other things that show a history between them.

Final Thoughts about Portraying Relationships

An Essence-to-Essence connection doesn’t mean that the characters are always, 100% being genuine with each other. As with real-world relationships, the two-way street of a character relationship doesn’t need to be equal all the time.

Sometimes one character will be more reticent than the other, etc., or their behavior may be more teasing than supportive, and that’s okay. The point is to portray the relationship in a way that demonstrates that the characters can see each other’s real selves, even when the surface isn’t clear, and that they care about and accept those inner selves for who they really are. *smile*

Want an example of a bromance from the Disney+ show Loki season 2? Visit my companion post!

Were you familiar with Michael Hauge’s Identity vs. Essence concepts? Had you thought about the similarities in how we might portray relationships, from friends to romantic? Do you have any questions about Identity, Essence, or how we can use this technique to make readers believe in close relationships?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post Strong Character Relationships: From Friendships to Romance appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

As storytellers, we usually want to keep readers immersed in our story. However, we’ve probably all written lines that we worry will break readers’ suspension of disbelief, such as with story events that might feel too cliché, coincidental, or incongruent. Obviously, we can try to fix the issue by changing those elements, but what if they’re necessary for the story we want to tell?

In that case, we might simply hope that the strength of our surrounding lines or story flow will carry readers past that point without pulling them out of the narrative. But there’s another option that may help overcome a reader’s awareness: the writing technique of “lampshading.” Let’s explore what the lampshade technique is and how we can use it (and not abuse it) in our stories.

What Is the “Lampshade” Technique

Believe it or not, the lampshade/lantern/lampshade-hanging technique is just this: Purposely call attention to a cliché, illogical, or contrived element, often in characters’ dialogue. By calling attention to something that threatens a readers’ suspension of disbelief, we’re essentially telling readers, “Yep, the story world thinks these elements are odd too. Just roll with it.”

The TV Tropes site includes many examples, which point out how this technique isn’t new:

Sir Toby Belch: Is’t possible?
Fabian: If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

— Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

In addition to simply using self-awareness to point out issues, lampshading can sometimes also take the opportunity to answer or justify how the situation makes sense. For example, to defuse readers’ skepticism or criticism of an event, a character might share further information after the fact, such as explaining unknown motivations:

Lampshade: “Yeah, I’m glad we won, but why did Klaus suddenly decide to help us?” Susan threw up her hands. “That makes no sense. He never wanted our team to win.”
Justification: Paula pointed down the field to the opposing team. “See that girl? Cynthia broke up with him last night—ugly scene from what I heard. Maybe he wanted her team to lose more than he didn’t want us to win.”

Depending on circumstances, lampshading can create moments that come off as winking, hilarious, clever (or too-clever-for-its-own-good), meta, lazy, handwaving away weak writing, etc. So we need to understand when lampshading will help or hurt our writing and story.

Lampshading Might Hurt Our Story When…

Lampshading done well helps keep readers immersed in our story, but lampshading done poorly risks pulling readers out of our story even more than if we had just left our writing alone.

Situations where lampshading can hurt our story or writing include:

• Our story’s style is serious or sincere, so even mild or well-done lampshading risks a tonal change of being too-clever, meta, or jokey.
• Our story’s narrative is strong and/or readers of our genre won’t question the plot tropes/clichés, so lampshading risks an impression of “apologizing” for lines or elements that readers may not even notice if we don’t point them out.
• The questionable elements are part of a strong emotional moment in our story, so lampshading risks undercutting—or at least interrupting—the emotions we wanted to evoke (such as in the game-winning example above).
• Our story naturally keeps readers at a distance—less engaged or immersed—so any lampshading, especially meta, fourth-wall-breaking, or too-clever-by-half moments (unless, of course, that’s the kind of story we’re trying to tell), risks preventing readers from taking anything seriously (e.g., if our characters don’t seem fully invested and care about the story’s events, readers might not care either).
• The questionable elements are part of a major or important moment in our story, so lampshading, with its “don’t worry about it” and “just roll with it” attitude, risks giving readers the impression that the moment isn’t important.
• There’s no story at all without the questionable elements, so lampshading that emphasizes the issue can make the entire story feel weak or “fake.”
• Our characters’ reactions are believable within the story world, so lampshading risks an impression that we aren’t confident in our writing, worldbuilding, or characters.

Most importantly, as alluded to in that last bullet point, we don’t want to lampshade something simply because we’re not confident in our writing. Once per story, we might need to move the plot along with a contrived situation that we’re not entirely happy about, and maybe that event could use a lampshade, just to keep things moving. But lampshading due to self-consciousness can feel defensive, like we’re trying to avoid any-and-all criticism or essentially apologizing for our work. Instead, we should fix the problem so we can feel at least somewhat confident in our writing.

How to Properly Use Lampshading

Given all the above risks, we might wonder why we’d ever use the lampshading technique. However, done well, the technique can create a “we’re all in this together” bond with readers. In fact, lampshading can deepen readers’ immersion, preventing readers’ natural disbelief or skepticism about events.

So what are some ways to ensure we’re using the lampshade technique well? We can…

• Use the right level of lampshading (minor vs. major, explicit vs. subtle, frequency, etc.), matching the story and its needs.
• Maintain the narrative flow of the story through the lampshading (unless we’re not trying to be subtle with our use), as the more interruptive the lampshade is, the more noticeable it is.
• Keep any comments or reactions true to the character and/or believable for character and story world.
• Make characters react the way readers would react to the incongruent events, which can make our characters more relatable.
• Ensure the events surrounding the lampshading are still earned by the story, rather than using the lampshading to kick off a lazy-writing sequence of events.
• Anticipate readers’ thoughts of alternate plot directions, such as “why don’t they try XYZ”, and lampshade why that wouldn’t work to keep readers on the intended plot path.
• Maintain the “fourth wall” between the character’s lampshading commentary and the reader, such as by having the character comment about a character in a movie they’re watching (e.g., the boy and grandfather framing device of The Princess Bride).
• Ensure the lampshaded events add value for the reader, as they’ll be less interruptive if readers want to accept the events and move on from the issue.
• Keep the story’s style/tone and the target audience in mind with regards to frequency and placement of the technique, as even in stories where a winking, self-referential type of joke fits the tone, it’s possible to overdo, undercut important or emotional moments, or limit the appeal of the humor style (e.g., the lazy-writing complaints about recent Marvel movies).

Final Thoughts about Lampshading

The lampshade technique shouldn’t be used as a general Get-Out-Of-A-Plot-Hole-or-Lazy-Writing Card. Hanging a lampshade to flippantly dismiss real problems in a story doesn’t make them go away.

But when done well, lampshading can help us keep readers engaged with our story:

• At its least, readers see the lampshade as a fun wink rather than bad writing that causes them to disengage from the story.
• At its best, we can use it with a plot event that feels like a plot hole to readers—but that we know will have a strong, perfectly logical explanation later—to let readers know this “hole” is part of the plan and they should continue trusting us and our storytelling. It hints to readers that they’re still missing a puzzle piece to understanding the story so just enjoy the journey.

In short, lampshading done well is about keeping our readers’ trust, adding value that proves our story is worthy of their suspended disbelief. *smile*

Want to learn more about subtle vs. explicit lampshading or see examples? Visit my companion post!

Have you heard of the lampshade technique before? Did you know how to use it properly, or were you worried about the risks? Do you have any questions about the technique or how to use (and not abuse) lampshading?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post Writing Techniques: Use and Abuse of “Lampshading” appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Journalism writing often uses the 5W1H structure. The first few paragraphs of a news article should answer 6 basic questions (which start with 5 Ws and an H): Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.

While fiction writing doesn’t try to cram the essentials into the beginning paragraphs, those same questions are important for our storytelling. In fact, we can use specific questions from that structure to understand the big picture—or essence—of our story, plot, and theme.

Story vs. Plot

First, though, we need to understand that our story and our plot are not the same. A story is about our characters’ struggle, while a plot is the events that reveal the characters and choices explored in the story.

Let’s illustrate the difference with an example plot idea: An asteroid is coming to smash the Earth to smithereens.

Yikes! Okay, but what about it? Who’s doing the struggling against those consequences?

Without characters, that asteroid’s just going to do its thing, same as it would on an uninhabited planet. Boom, crash, the end. There’s no story there because there’s no story problem there—no characters attempting to overcome the obstacles of the plot.

What’s a Story?

To have a story, we need characters who face a problem. And it’s only when we decide who our characters are or the choices they’ll face that we’ll know what our asteroid story is:

• Plucky team of astronauts try to destroy the asteroid before it reaches Earth.
• Doomed world leaders debate how to help their citizens react in the last days.
• Estranged family members reach out to each other and heal wounds before the end.
• And so on…

Each of those character examples defines a story problem—they want to destroy, debate, or heal. In turn, the story problem defines the story, as the characters attempt to solve their problem.

What’s a Plot?

On the other hand, if the asteroid is only big enough to cause a few cloudy days, our characters would have no reason to make big changes or choices. That’s where plot comes in: Plot events are the triggers forcing choices and changes in our characters.

Story Questions vs. Plot Questions

Now back to that 5W1H structure…

Story Questions

As a story is about a struggle or an attempt to solve a story problem, we can begin to define the layers of our story with questions that focus on that struggle or problem:

• Who? Who is doing the struggling or attempting to solve the problem? (team of astronauts)
• What? What is the struggle or problem? What do our characters want? (destroy the asteroid)

We can further define our story with other questions, especially in certain genres such as historical or science fiction (When? 1892 or the distant future, Where? England or outer space), but the two bullets above are generally the most important.

Plot Questions

As a plot is about the events that force choices and changes, we can begin to define the layers of our plot with questions that focus on those events:

• How? How are the characters being pushed into action or choices? How are they trying to reach their goal? (an asteroid is coming to smash the Earth, so they’re trying to blow it up)

Note that it may seem like additional questions would help us further define the plot:

• What? What plot events will best reveal our characters? (an accident takes out the mission leader and the protagonist needs to step up)
• When? or Where? to describe the circumstances causing the story to take place now (explaining the reasons those estranged family members finally reach out to each other, when they technically could have healed the wounded relationship at any time)

But those are all just other ways of getting at the How, defining the triggers that force the changes and choices in our story.

How Does Our Story’s Theme Fit In?

Theme is usually said to be a story’s “message,” but what does that mean in practice? How can we define what the theme of a particular story might be, especially when…

• themes are less concrete or obvious (often found in the subtext or a single sentence)
• stories contain multiple themes (formed by story premise, worldview, character arc, plot events, etc.)
• stories often include unintended themes (which can undermine our intended themes)

In other words, we might not know what our story’s themes are—or should be. Even if we brainstorm from “theme idea” lists, those nouns or short phrases (war vs. peace, coming of age, love, survival, etc.) aren’t themes until we figure out what we’re trying to say about that topic.

Theme Questions

To figure out what we’re trying to say with our story, we can begin to define the layers of our themes with big-picture questions:

• Why? Why does our character participate in the story (in the big picture)? Why are we writing this story? (such as: our protagonist believes the world is worth saving, or we want to inspire others to not give up)

Our Why answers help us narrow down what we’re trying to say with our story, which then helps us define our intended themes. Our protagonist could learn to not take life for granted. Our plot events could present reasons and opportunities for our protagonist to give up, but they believe in the importance of their actions and make choices revealing their persistence. And so on.

From Journalism to Storytelling

Taking a page from journalism writing to identify the most important aspects of our story can help us see the big picture as we plan, draft, or edit our story. Using the 5W1H questions forces us to focus on the essence of our story, especially:

• Who are our characters?
• What do they want?
• How are they going to try to get it?
• Why is the story important (to our character(s) and to us)?

Those answers give us direction as we attempt to get our big-picture thoughts onto the page for our readers to enjoy. *smile*

Have you ever struggled to see your story’s big picture or to identify/develop your story’s themes? Does this framework of using specific questions to define our story’s essence make sense to you? Do you have any questions about story vs. plot vs. theme or how to apply these questions?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post Story vs. Plot vs. Theme: Know Your 5Ws and H appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

A well-structured story uses events (also called story beats) to move the narrative forward — with compelling issues, rising stakes, and an organic sense of cause and effect — toward a surprising-yet-inevitable resolution. At the same time, our story’s plot events force our characters to react, adapt, make choices, and decide on priorities, often resulting in new goals and revealing a character’s values and beliefs. The biggest events are “turning points,” which send the story in new directions and create the sense of change for a story’s arc.

In other words, story structure affects both plot and character (internal/emotional) arcs. So just as we must adjust the plot aspects of story structure when writing a shorter story, we also need to consider the character arc aspects of story structure with shorter stories. Let’s dig into the ways we might tweak story structure for shorter stories, especially when it comes to character arcs.

Story Structure & Shorter Plots

On a basic level, we can understand story structure as:

• story beginnings introduce characters and story problems,
• story middles add stakes and depth to both characters and story problems, and
• story endings bring issues to a satisfying conclusion.

In addition to those basics, the structure of novel-length stories fleshes out events — with inciting incidents, denouements, subplots, pinch points, or other complications — to increase the stakes, create more obstacles, explore failed attempts to solve the problems, etc. Those techniques are especially common in the middle of the story to prevent a “sagging middle.”

Those fleshing-out events like subplots and pinch points are usually the first plot aspects we trim for shorter length stories. Short stories simply don’t have the word count for subplots or other complications.

Character Arcs: What Are Our Options?

3 Types of Character Arcs

Character arcs in Western storytelling are defined by 3 categories:

• Positive Arc: (also called a Growth Arc) The character learns and grows, bettering themselves (such as by understanding how their previous choices were self-sabotaging), as part of their journey to overcome the story obstacles.
• Flat Arc: The character learns how to better the world around them (such as by understanding how they can take action) as part of their journey to overcome the story obstacles (think of many single-protagonist series).
• Negative Arc: (also called a Failure Arc) The character fails to overcome the story obstacles and reach their desires (such as by becoming disillusioned, corrupted, etc.) and succumbs to their flaw (think of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader).

Spectrum of Character Arc Depths

Each of those types of arcs can be explored at different depths. For example, in a positive arc, a character can grow and better themselves in a…

• simplistic way, such as being willing to trust someone else, or in a
• deeper way, examining how that emotional journey happens, such as exploring an emotional wound from their backstory that led to them having fears and false beliefs about the world (“trust just leads to being stabbed in the back”), and the character working to overcome their fears and false beliefs to be willingly vulnerable with their trust of another.

There’s no “best” approach, as different stories might work better with certain types or depths of character arcs, and different genres have different expectations for the emotion level of character arcs. In addition, the length of our story can affect the type and depth of our character’s arc.

Character Arcs, Story Structure, and Story Length

Mapping a Simplistic Character Arc onto Story Structure

Using a positive/growth arc as an example, here’s how a simplistic character arc can be mapped onto—and explored within—a story’s structure:

• What does the character long for and desire? (story ending)
• What choices are they making that keep them from their dream? (story beginning)
• What do they learn? (how they change throughout the middle)
• What are they willing to do at the end that they weren’t willing to do before? (story climax)

Adjusting Story Structure for Deeper Arcs

If our story has the word count and setup for a deeper emotional arc for our character, we could flesh that basic story structure out with:

• subplots that reinforce their backstory wound or fears from a different angle,
• scenes with failed attempts to overcome their fears,
• plot events that make them retreat into their fears,
• scenes with the character’s growth/epiphanies tying their arc into the story’s theme, etc.

5 Options for Adjusting Story Structure & Character Arcs of Shorter Stories

If our story isn’t novel length, we have several choices for how to adjust our story’s structure for a character arc in a shorter story. For example, we could…

• stick with a positive/growth arc but keep it simplistic rather than deep – we need a minimum of 3 spread-out sections (such as scenes, or perhaps just paragraphs in shorter stories) to explore the character’s issue, with at least: one to establish the longing, one to illustrate the struggle, and one to show the change.
• show a positive/growth arc with deeper emotions by tying the change very tightly to the main plot, so every plot event allows for exploration of the character’s internal arc.
• explore a deeper positive/growth arc—if the story is long enough for a subplot—by making the “subplot” actually the character’s emotional arc (or tie the change very tightly to the subplot, rather than the main plot as above).
• use a flat character arc, which is often easier to tie directly to the main plot, as the character learns how to take action and cause the change they want to see in the world throughout the plot.
• limit the number or depth of character arcs if we have multiple protagonists (like in a romance) by having only one of the characters complete an arc, or at most using only a flat arc with the second protagonist (such as by having one protagonist “change the world” by convincing the other protagonist in a romance that they’re perfect for each other).

Not every story needs characters to have an internal conflict arc. Not every story needs deep emotional arcs. But if we want character arcs in our story—and our story is less than novel length—we need to be more purposeful and deliberate with how we structure our story to make the most of our character’s arc with the word count we have. *smile*

Have you written shorter stories where you needed to adjust the story’s structure? How did you adjust the structure for the plot (reduced complications or subplots)? How did you adjust the structure for the character arc (changed the type or depth of the arc)? Had you thought about how your story’s length might affect story structure or character arcs before? Do you have any questions about how story length affects story structure or character arcs?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post Character Arcs: Making a Long Story Short appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Foreshadowing is a literary technique we can use in our stories that gives a preview or hint of events that will happen later. While many might think of foreshadowing for mysteries, this literary device can be used in any genre.

In fact, most stories need foreshadowing of some type to keep readers interested in what’s going to happen. That said, foreshadowing requires a balance. When used poorly, foreshadowing can make our story feel boring or predictable, but when foreshadowing is used well, readers will find our story more satisfying.

How Can Foreshadowing Make Stories More Satisfying?

While most aspects of writing contribute to readers’ sense of whether our writing is “strong,” foreshadowing helps create readers’ sense of whether we and/or our story have a plan, whether we’re going to take them on a worthwhile journey. In other words, foreshadowing can help create the sense that every element of the story has a purpose, that it’s all leading to a purposeful destination.

Hints of future story elements—even ones that just register with readers subconsciously—make story events fit into a sense of a bigger picture. While unexpected twists can make a story fun and avoid the feeling of being too predictable, foreshadowing can help a story hit the sweet spot of feeling inevitable-yet-surprising.

For example, imagine a final dilemma where a character faces a choice between two options illustrating the tug-of-war between aspects of their personality. If the story concludes with an unexpected twist as the character lands on a third option, the ending could feel like a cheat or an out-of-character decision – or it could feel like a brilliant way to resolve the story.

The difference between those reactions often comes down to whether the third option was foreshadowed at all, even in the most subtle, subconscious-registering way. A subtle foreshadowing can ensure that twist doesn’t feel like a cheat or out of character, and instead make it feel like the resolution was the point of the journey, adding to the sense of strong—and satisfying—storytelling.

Types of Foreshadowing

That said, before we can use foreshadowing effectively and find the right balance between leading readers along the storytelling journey and “spoiling” events, we need to understand more about foreshadowing as a writing technique. Different types of foreshadowing will fit our story at different times.

Some foreshadowing is direct and tells readers where the story is going. Other foreshadowing is more about subtle hints that are so indirect as to often be recognized only in hindsight.

Examples of Direct Foreshadowing

• mention of a future event
• show characters worrying about what might happen
• a character declares that something won’t be a problem, which often hints to readers that the character will be proven wrong later
• show or allude to tension that readers figure will eventually have to snap
• a prophecy of what the future will bring
• If we’re writing in normal past tense rather than the default literary past tense, we can directly say what’s to come, such as: He didn’t know it yet, but that would be his last night at home.
• a flash-forward (often in a prologue or preface) showing events to come
• mention of emotions or thoughts of what a character longs for (even subconsciously), clueing readers into what their internal arc or internal goal will be

Direct foreshadowing tells readers the what, but readers still read to learn the how.

Examples of Indirect Foreshadowing

• show a lower-stakes version of the final conflict early, hinting at how the situation will play out later
• show a prop or character skill in action earlier that will be important for the success of the final conflict (depending on how obvious the earlier incidence is, this type of pre-scene might be more direct than indirect)
• show a threatening object, hinting that it will eventually be used (i.e., Chekhov’s Gun) (depending on how obvious the appearance is—background vs. close up, etc.—we might consider this a direct technique rather than an indirect example)
• allude to something in a throwaway phrase, often burying the detail in the middle of a sentence and/or paragraph, letting readers skim over and forget about the hint
• toss out a seemingly normal statement that will resonate with more meaning in future events later
• use similes or metaphors to hint at hidden traits or situations
• show a suspicious event, but have the viewpoint character believably decide there’s an innocuous reason, so readers don’t know the character assumed incorrectly until later
• use symbolism, such as how crows and ravens around a character often foreshadow their death or how weather often symbolizes a coming change
• use imagery and settings to create a certain mood appropriate to the later story, such as dread or creepiness

Indirect foreshadowing uses subtlety, subtext, and/or misdirection to hide the story’s future, with the truth becoming clear only in hindsight.

3 Tips for How & When to Use Foreshadowing

Tip #1: Usually, Foreshadowing Should Be Avoided When…

• we’ve already foreshadowed the event, as we don’t want elements to feel repetitive
• the event is unimportant, as the payoff won’t be worth the setup (exception: using it for non-anticipatory reasons, such as the setup and payoff of humorous details)
• we’ve already foreshadowed related events, as readers don’t want to know how everything will play out

Tip #2: Direct Foreshadowing Can Be Beneficial When It…

• establishes reader expectations, as meeting reader expectations makes our story more satisfying
• makes events seem credible, as by establishing the possibility, readers will be prepared to accept the events
• uses foreshadowed motivations to make characters seem more logical, as they’ll seem less like puppets to the plot
• increases a story’s sense of foreboding, tension, or suspense, as readers might not know what exactly is going to happen, but they know it’s going to be bad
• increases a story’s sense of anticipation, as readers will want to know what happens
• makes readers more invested, as they try to guess how the story will play out
• helps us delay events until best for the story and reader anticipation, while still letting readers know that more interesting stuff is coming in the story soon
• makes readers feel like they have a relationship with author-us, as readers interact with our writing to guess outcomes

Tip #3: Indirect Foreshadowing Can Be Beneficial When It…

• gives readers a sense of closure or gives our story the feeling of tying up loose ends
• creates a sense of the story being deliberately woven together with a surprising-yet-inevitable ending
• makes readers feel more satisfied, like seeing the final piece of a puzzle fit and finally glimpsing the bigger picture
• provides a richer experience for readers by creating layers and parallels
• avoids making the ending feel contrived or solved by waving a Deus Ex Machina wand, and instead makes events feel natural to the story
• gives readers the satisfying feeling of “Wow! I can’t believe I didn’t see that coming” rather than the angry or betrayed feeling of “WTF? That came out of nowhere”
• increases emotions, such as making a tragedy more tragic by having the character (and reader) realize the tragedy could have been prevented if only they’d known earlier how X was significant
• prevents readers’ frustration when they’re purposely kept in the dark with lies, instead making them think they could have guessed with truths that are simply hidden.
• gives repeat readers something new to enjoy, as they put together new connections on a reread

Use Foreshadowing, but With Purpose

Whether we’re using direct or indirect foreshadowing, the idea is to set up details, events, and concepts in our story that we later pay off with consequences, growth, change, etc.

Foreshadowing—setups and payoffs—creates echoes in our story that make our story feel more crafted, more purposeful, more deliberate, and more confident. All of that makes our story feel more meaningful to readers—and thus more satisfying. *smile*

Have you read stories with foreshadowing? Did the technique work for you (and why or why not)? Have you written stories with foreshadowing, or have you struggled to know how to use it (or find the right balance)? Can you think of other situations when foreshadowing would be beneficial or harmful? Do you have any questions about foreshadowing?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post “No, Don’t Tell Me”: How & When Should We Use Foreshadowing? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Until relatively recently, most stories were written with an omniscient point of view (POV), which follows the story and characters from an all-knowing distance. But over the past several decades, storytelling techniques have trended to a closer POV, focusing on one character and their experience at a time. In fact, for many genres, the expectation now is to use Deep POV for third-person stories, relating the story from within the POV character’s head (much like how we’d write first-person stories, just with different pronouns).

With the trends and expectations pushing toward a deeper POV, we might wonder if that means we should never drop out of Deep POV. What if we keep the POV “close” to one character’s experience, but relate some of the story from a shallower perspective that’s not so deep inside their head?

When might we want to use a shallower POV—and why?

Choosing POV: What’s the Point?

The POV we choose shapes readers’ perspective of the story, story events, and whatever message we’re trying to share. For example, the POV we choose affects a reader’s view of the cause-and-effect flow, narrative momentum, immersion strength, emotions of arcs at the scene level, what characters notice about situations, priorities of various story goals, etc.

So the question of when we should use Deep POV—and when we shouldn’t—comes down to which option will shape readers’ perspective the way we want. Will Deep POV help or hurt our intentions for the reader experience?

Because Deep POV usually creates a sense of immersion and emotional connection between the reader and the character, it’s gotten more popular over the years. However, for some situations, Deep POV won’t deliver the experience we want readers to have.

Deep POV, Immersion, and Emotional Connections

In general, the deeper the POV, the deeper the immersion—the sense that we’re not just reading words on a page but experiencing the story, right down to tandem visceral responses along with the POV character. Yet we also need to keep in mind that anything that takes readers out of the story disrupts that sense of immersion.

With Deep POV, readers also tend to feel a stronger emotional connection to the POV character, as they experience the story as the POV character. The story is told 100% subjectively, as readers learn of only the POV character’s thoughts and emotions, not those of the other characters. Readers are more likely to prioritize the same goals as the POV character and forgive any mistakes, as they have a deep understanding of the character’s secret longings and foibles. Yet sometimes that deep understanding of the POV character isn’t what we want for the story.

Obviously, this experiential style of POV requires a lot of showing rather than telling, in order to bring readers along the character’s journey, step by step. That’s why advice to increase our levels of showing often go hand-in-hand with the advice to use Deep POV, but showing isn’t always best for our storytelling.

If we understand how Deep POV, immersion, emotional connections, and showing are all linked, we can start to predict when Deep POV might not serve the experience we want for our readers.

When Might Deep POV Hurt a Reader’s Experience?

Here are five situations when we might want to use a shallower POV to create a better reader experience:

Situation #1: Avoid Reader Boredom

We’ll start with the most superficial situation: Telling vs. Showing. The advice to show more than tell often makes writers think that showing is better than telling. However, telling isn’t bad or something to be avoided.

For example, we wouldn’t want to use a lot of showing and Deep POV in a scene if the result would be boring, such as when it would be better to skip forward with a transition of time and/or place. Sure, the POV character might need to bring another character up to speed, but if that repeats a bunch of information the reader already knows, readers shouldn’t have to experience that repetition along with the character.

Tip: Briefly switching to a shallower POV to allow for a transition, perhaps with a telling-style summary of what the reader missed, can prevent reader boredom.

Situation #2: Share Future Knowledge with Readers

Most stories are written in “literary past tense”—rather than normal past tense—which means that story events are described as though they’re happening in the story present. However, some stories use normal past tense, which means that the events have already happened within the story itself.

Think of how in some stories, the narrator already knows how everything turns out. They might even interject with lines like: “I didn’t know it yet but…” or “If she’d only known, she would have…”

While many of these stories are told by a narrator sharing a tale from their past with a framing device, some instead simply use the technique of a shallower POV to include those types of lines. The story might briefly shift to a shallower POV to give a preview of events yet to come, as the story’s future already exists due to the use of normal past tense.

Whatever technique we use to include those types of lines, normal past tense adds distance to our storytelling, as those “If she’d only known” lines remind readers that they are reading a story. And unless our character is a fortune-teller, Deep POV doesn’t work for sharing future story knowledge.

Tip: For some stories, the normal past tense and a shallower POV for some lines makes sense if sharing future knowledge with readers is what we intend.

Situation #3: Limit an Emotional Connection to the POV Character

Wait…don’t we want readers emotionally connecting? Yes, but with some stories, we want to encourage readers to emotionally connect with the story itself or with other characters, not with the POV character of a scene.

For example, some stories include scenes from the villain’s perspective. Those scenes are sometimes written in a Deep POV style when the author wants to hide the villain’s identity, but in many other instances, the villain scenes are written in a slightly shallower POV than the rest of the story, as the author doesn’t want to encourage an emotional connection between readers and the villain.

In other stories, perhaps with a large cast of POV characters, it might make sense to encourage readers to connect to the overall story more than to any one character. Or those stories might start and end scenes with shallower POV to help ease the transition from one POV character to another.

Stories with an unreliable narrator might want to avoid readers feeling too betrayed when they learn their connection to the POV character wasn’t as close as they thought. So they might include selected details from a shallower and more objective perspective to give readers subtextual hints of the truth.

Tip: For some situations, we might want to discourage, or at least temporarily lessen, a reader’s emotional connection to a specific POV character by using a shallower POV in certain sections.

Situation #4: Tell the Story Beyond a Character’s Ability

Obviously, there are some stories where Deep POV doesn’t make sense at all, such as when the story we want to tell ranges beyond characters’ knowledge. However, there are some situations where most of the story is in Deep POV, but the POV character temporarily loses their ability to share the story experience with readers.

For example, if we want readers to know that our POV character is experiencing a dream, we might include a few lines with a shallower POV to transition into the dream. We might do something similar if a character is drugged or unconscious (or nearly so).

Or think of a scene where the POV character is emotionally numb, perhaps near catatonic. In that case, we might pull back the POV a bit so readers aren’t stuck in that numb situation with the character and we can give details that force the story’s narrative forward.

Tip: In some situations, we may want the storytelling to still feel like Deep POV, while we bend the “rules” of the technique a bit to move the story forward with a few shallower POV lines or details.

Situation #5: Maintaining Immersion Requires a Shallower POV

Above, I mentioned that Deep POV usually increases a reader’s sense of immersion. However, there are some instances when a Deep POV that creates a strong emotional connection with the POV character would overwhelm readers.

Think of a story where the POV character experiences such intense situations and/or emotions that the reader could feel uncomfortable. For example, extreme grief or sexual assault could make a reader pull back from the immersive experience to protect themselves from mental or emotional trauma.

In other words, some story situations can trigger readers to break immersion themselves. So if we want to maintain immersion, we might choose to use a shallower POV to prevent readers from feeling the need to pull back.

If readers already have the context for what the POV character is going through, the emotional connection can remain with a sense of sympathy, rather than the sense of empathy that a Deep POV might entail. As I’ve posted about before on my blog: The reader’s “flavor” of the emotion can be more powerful, intimate, and immediate than what they would experience if the author tried to tell them “here’s what this emotion feels like.”

Tip: In some situations, readers will feel a stronger emotional connection if we give them room with a shallower POV to experience their own reaction to events, rather than trying to match the reader’s emotional journey to the character’s experience.

Not Sure of the Best POV Choice?

As with most things writing-related, there’s no one “best” choice for our story’s POV. We need to keep in mind our goals for the story and the experience we want readers to have. The issue is also made even trickier by the fact that we’re not always writing in the POV style that we think we are.

One of the best things we can do to address all those concerns is to learn more about our POV choices, as well as the pros and cons of each style. By being informed, not only will we be able to make better POV choices, but we’ll also make sure any shifts from Deep POV to a shallower POV (or back again) are smooth enough to not cause speedbumps for readers. *smile*

Have you read stories that are primarily Deep POV but include some shallower POV sections? Did the technique work for you (and if not, why not)? Can you think of any other situations where a shallower POV section might make sense for a Deep POV story? Do you have any questions about shallow vs. Deep POV?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post Point of View: Is Deeper Always Better? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

By Jami Gold

Want to draw readers into our story? Of course! To do so, we often attempt to make the stakes bigger. Typically, that’s a decent approach.

But imagine opening a book and the first paragraph of the story introduces a character hanging off a cliff by their fingertips. Ooo, jumping into the story in medias res, straight into the thick of some action. That’s good…right?

Or maybe not.

After all, readers don’t know who this character is and have no reason to care about their fate. For all readers know, this might be the villain who’s trying to escape justice and when saved here, will return by the end of the story to cause more problems for the real protagonist. Or maybe they’re a superhero who can fly, making this situation no big deal. Or maybe they’re faking their dilemma and have their feet solidly planted on a ledge. Or…

In other words, stakes alone aren’t enough to pull readers into our story. So how can we make our stakes matter? Let’s look at the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once for 3 lessons on how to make our stakes—and our story—matter.

The Brilliance of Everything Everywhere All at Once

There are countless reasons why Everything Everywhere All at Once is a fantastic movie—earning its glowing reviews and 95% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes—but since we can’t take up multiple posts, we’re just talking about how some of those reasons apply to stakes. (I’ll be avoiding specifics so as not to spoil the story too much, but the movie is available for sale now, so if you haven’t seen it yet, definitely check it out.)

The movie starts with small, family-drama type of stakes. None of the characters of the movie’s family are getting along with each other, and we see the context to understand why and sympathize with each of them.

Then out of the blue, the main character, Evelyn, is confronted with ridiculously huge stakes: the entire multiverse (not just the Earth, galaxy, or universe, but multiverse!) is at risk without her help. But she has no reason to care about those stakes—they’re too big and impersonal. As seen in the trailer, her hilarious response is: “Very busy today. No time to help you.”

Later in the movie, however, the tropes of huge, world-ending stakes are upended. Rather than the Climax being a battle for the fate of the multiverse, the movie reverts to being about small, family-drama-sized stakes.

The Change of Stakes Shouldn’t Have Worked

Shifting the stakes from “save the world/multiverse” to a question of whether these family members can come together with meaningful connections—such as sharing a mutual hug with real love and understanding—could have felt like a “bait and switch” to the audience. On many levels, changing the stakes from big to small shouldn’t have worked. As writers, we’re taught to raise the stakes, and the easiest interpretation of raising stakes is to make them bigger.

However, as the many positive reviews of the movie attest, rather than leaving audience members disappointed at the stakes being so small again, many who never cry in movies are left weeping because even though the stakes are small, they’re also extremely strong. They matter to the characters and to the audience.

3 Tips for Making Stakes Matter

What makes the movie’s stakes so strong? How did the movie make the shift from huge stakes to small stakes work?

Here are three lessons to take away from how the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAaO) used stakes:

Lesson #1: Stakes Must Have Context

If we think back to the introduction above for why a character hanging off a cliff wouldn’t necessarily make readers care, we can see how dropping readers into a supposedly high-stakes situation in a story’s first paragraphs meant that they wouldn’t have any context for understanding. They wouldn’t know whether the character was one they should root for—or root against.

In the movie EEAaO, the first act introduces the family members in ways that make the audience understand and sympathize with their struggles. The audience learns every characters’ goals, motivations, and initial conflicts. That information gives the audience the context for watching new conflicts and struggles and understanding what’s at stake.

Similarly, in our stories, whenever we introduce a new conflict or struggle, we need to include enough context so that readers understand the consequences of failure.

Lesson #2: Personal Stakes Mean More

Going back to our cliff-hanging example, readers picking up the book and seeing that situation on page one also wouldn’t know what the character risked by hanging off the cliff—was it life or death? Or just an inconvenience?

In EEAaO, Evelyn rejects the initial “call to adventure” because the stakes of the fate of the multiverse are too big for her to relate to in a personal way. She doesn’t fully embrace her role in the story—shifting from reactive to proactive—until she feels a connection to the situation. Audience members have similar reactions: The whole multiverse dilemma feels like an interesting story, sure, but the reveal of Evelyn’s personal connection to the stakes feels like a gut punch.

In our stories, if the stakes (consequences of failure) don’t matter to the character, we’ll struggle to make them matter to readers. So we want to ensure that readers understand not just the consequences of failure but why those consequences matter to the character.

Lesson #3: The More Readers Care about the Character, the More They’ll Care about the (Personal) Stakes

With our cliff-hanging example, even if we included context about the situation and made our character care about the risks, readers still wouldn’t be drawn in as much as they would if the dilemma happened several pages later. Humans tend to care more about what happens to friends and family than to strangers, so readers need a chance to get to know characters and relate to them before really caring about their situations and stakes.

In EEAaO, the stakes in the movie shift from small and personal to too-big and impersonal, then big and personal, and finally back to small-ish (but still much bigger than in Act One) and personal. This shift works because we’ve grown to care about all these characters so much. We’ve seen—and related to—their struggles and pain, and we don’t want to see them give up, fail, or be hurt.

In fact, one of the major themes of EEAaO’s story is an exploration what makes things matter. The family members each confront the fear that nothing they do matters, that life is just a collection of empty experiences. By the end, they each discover how becoming closer to each other—caring about each other—is what makes those seemingly pointless experiences, and life itself, matter.

For our stories, not every story or genre lends itself to deep point-of-view or other techniques to create emotional connections between readers and characters. But any amount of connection we create between readers and our characters will help strengthen our story’s stakes.

Stakes Don’t Have to Be “Big” to Be Strong

If we take away nothing else, the movie proves that stakes don’t have to be big to be strong. As I’ve talked about on my blog before, to strengthen our story’s stakes without going “bigger,” we can check:

• Do consequences of failure exist for each of our characters’ goals?
• Does the character(s) have something to lose to create a risk?
• Are the negative consequences expressed on the page (do readers fully know how they’d affect the story)?
• Are they personal to the character(s) (or do they become personal as we raise the stakes throughout the story)?
• Do the stakes force characters to make sacrifices or difficult decisions that reveal their depths to readers?
• Is the character(s) shown as caring about those consequences?
• Have we set up readers to care about the characters?

If a character cares about a stake, and readers care about the character, we don’t need a multiversal threat to make a stake strong enough to pull readers through our pages. *smile*

Have you seen Everything Everywhere All at Once? What did you think of the movie? Do you have any insights to add to this discussion about stakes? Do you have any questions about using stakes?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post “They’re All Gonna Die!” Wait, Why Does That Matter? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

• Does our story have a good sense of cause and effect?
• Does it feel more proactive than reactive?
• Have we evoked enough emotions in our readers to make our story compelling?

Analyzing our story’s balance of scenes versus sequels can help us answer those questions and fix any issues we find, but first, we must understand Dwight’s ideas well enough to be able to apply them to our writing. Once we understand the differences and purposes of his scenes and sequels, we’ll be able to tell if our story has the “right” balance.

What Are Dwight Swain’s Definitions for “Scenes and Sequels”?

Step One in understanding Dwight’s ideas is to know how he defines scenes and sequels…

His definition of “scene” has nothing to do with the school-type description of an event happening in a specific place or time, or the storytelling definition of a mini-arc that ends with a line break. Instead, Dwight Swain’s idea of a scene focuses on goals, actions, and obstacles:

• Goal: What the protagonist wants at the beginning of the scene.
• Conflict: The obstacles standing in the way.
• Disaster: The outcome, what happens that prevents the protagonist from reaching their Goal.

Likewise, his definition of “sequel” has nothing to do with the next book in a series. Instead, Dwight Swain’s idea of a sequel focuses on character reactions and choices:

• Reaction: How the character reacts to the Disaster.
• Dilemma: The choice the character faces because of the Disaster.
• Decision: What the character decides to do next (new Goal or new attempt to reach old Goal).

In other words, scenes tend to be more plot or action-oriented (proactive), as characters take action to move the story forward. Sequels tend to be more character or reaction-oriented (reactive), as characters absorb and apply the lessons learned and decide “now what?”

What Do They Look Like in Our Story?

When we put those ideas together, our story grows into a cause-and effect chain of a scene (with the Goal, Conflict, Disaster elements) followed by a sequel (with its Reaction, Dilemma, Decision elements). That sequel is then followed by another scene with its Goal prompted by the sequel’s Decision.

In simplistic terms, all that could something like:

She headed into her meeting with her boss, armed with notes for how she planned to get a raise. Or a promotion. Either way, she wanted to come out ahead. (Goal)

“Have a seat, Nancy. I know you wanted to talk with me, but I’m afraid I have some bad news to share first.” (Conflict)

Her boss took a deep breath. “We have to let you go.” (Disaster)

What? No. Her head shook with her unspoken denial. (Reaction)

She couldn’t lose this job. It was her path to everything she wanted. (Dilemma)

No, there had to be another option. She’d make her boss see that. (Decision)

“Is this because of the new direction from corporate? If so, I have a different suggestion…” (new Scene with an adjusted Goal)

Obviously, this example is sparse and lacking in narrative description and transitions. In our story, those steps would usually play out over much longer passages than just the two lines listed for each here, but this example gives us a look at how the progression through the steps works in our writing.

By using scenes and sequels in sequence, we create a cause-and-effect chain that creates narrative drive in our story. Using both also ensures a mix of proactive action and reactive emotion to keep readers engaged.

We Need a Balance of Scenes and Sequels

If we’ve heard the advice to ensure our character is proactive rather than reactive, we might assume that sequels are bad for our story. However, from a reader perspective, our stories are about far more than just “the things that happen.”

Our stories are about emotions, and how our characters react to events shapes how readers emotionally react to our story. If we don’t show our character reacting to setbacks, readers won’t care about those setbacks either.

So from both a character perspective and a reader perspective, sequels are how we tie the straightforward plot events to the emotions of both our character’s internal/emotional arc and to the overall story arc. They’re the heart of our story and absolutely essential.

Think of them this way: Sequels give our story depth, as they’re where we can express the “why” in our story:

• Why should readers care about story events?
• Why is the Goal important to the character?
• Why do their motivations matter to story?
• Why does the setback of the scene’s Disaster matter to the character/story?
• Why should readers root for the character or their Decisions?

The better we show why things matter (whether those “things” are events, goals, etc.) in our story, the more our story will matter to readers, drawing them into our storytelling.

What’s the “Right” Balance of Scenes & Sequels?

All that said, a “good” balance doesn’t mean 50% of our story should be made up of these sequels. In most genres, while the action and narrative of scene might run for several pages or most of a chapter, a sequel might be anywhere between:

• a single sentence or two of a character reacting to a Disaster setback and recommitting to the Goal
• several paragraphs (perhaps even a page or more) of a character debating their options for a new Goal

In other words, the “right” balance is not about the percentages. Instead, it’s about whether the sequels we include:

• create a sense of cause and effect by showing our characters’ reactions and decisions for the next step in the story narrative
• avoid a sense of “navel gazing” or redundancy, such as by ensuring introspection ends in a Decision
• result in the right pacing for our story (longer sequels tend to slow pacing down and vice versa)
• encourage readers to relate to characters through their motivations, emotions, and/or decision-making process
• create our character’s internal arc by exploring the lessons learned (with epiphanies, etc.)

For example, in the sparse example shared above, we could easily flesh out the scene—perhaps adding whole conversations with coworkers wishing our character luck along her way to the boss meeting, for instance—creating a much longer passage. At the same time, we’re more likely to leave the sequel a similar length as given above because that length does the job we need it to, as far as showing a reaction, providing insights into the character, and ending with a trigger for the next scene. However, a bigger turning point or plot event might need a longer sequel to explore all the fallout and changes.

Our story’s context and genre determine the “right” balance. But once we understand scenes and sequels, we’ll be able to fix most non-plot-related problems in our story by improving our use of sequels. Yes, really. *smile*

For more about how to use sequels with our scenes, check out this post on my blog. Do you have any questions or insights about Dwight Swain’s concept of sequels and how the right balance can help our story?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

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