Great novels don’t hook readers by accident. They strategically build up tension and feelings, then release them at just the right moment. This perfect timing isn’t about fancy writing tricks; it’s baked into how the story itself is built.

When a story pulls readers through the pages so smoothly they forget all about the clock, it’s not just clever words doing the work—it’s smart structure doing its job. That irresistible “just one more chapter” feeling happens when the story’s building blocks create a natural flow that keeps readers turning pages without even thinking about it.

Stories built on four-act structure (three-act structure minus the oversized, saggy middle) hit those sweet spots consistently. These natural turning points occur at the quarter mark, halfway point, and three-quarter mark, never allowing any section of the story to drag on too long.

Missing these points by a substantial margin results in a misshapen book with sagging or surging momentum. A lumbering, oversized Act 1 bores readers by taking too long to get moving. A missing midpoint creates that notorious bane of three-act story structure, the “mushy middle.” And a mistimed dark moment, one that hits too soon or straggles in too late, can make even a potentially explosive climax fall flat.

Applying story structure to your novel doesn’t imply blind adherence to some lockstep formula. What it suggests is the wisdom of tapping into a storytelling form readers already get—the same ups and downs that have made stories work since people first shared them around the fire.

That pattern shows up everywhere, from novels to movies to symphonies. “It is interesting to note that within the structure of classical music for several centuries known as sonata form, the first act of three was called Exposition, followed by Development and Recapitulation,” notes screenwriter Scott Myers. It’s no accident these sound familiar—they’re the same building blocks of the four-act structure we recognize in novels.

Act 1: Exposition As the story opens, readers discover the character’s situation and witness their internal disunity.

Act 2: Development The character reacts to the story challenge, which puts pressure on their internal issues, beginning the process of deconstruction.

Act 3: Development When their initial efforts don’t pay off, the character pushes for more proactive progress. They may already be reconstructing their internal balance.

Act 4: Recapitulation External forces (plot) and internal forces (character arc) come together to achieve synthesis, unity, and resolution.

The mix of plot and character through these four phases gives your story its momentum. Early on, readers feel they’re on a journey headed somewhere specific. Each act pulls them closer to what they think is the story’s destination. And those turning points between acts? They’re the rocket fuel that launches readers from one part to the next.

Turning Point 1

Between Act 1 and Act 2, about 25% into the story

Turning Point 1 inextricably tangles the protagonist in the story’s web. It’s that big moment when they have to deal with the main story conflict head on, whether they want to or not, as the story ship irrevocably leaves the dock for a specific destination or goal.

How does Turning Point 1 serve readers?  By now, readers have plowed through a good chunk of your book, about 20 to 25 percent. That’s a real investment of time. If your main character is still just poking around the story’s starting situation at this point, readers might decide there’s no real point to your story—and they’ll bail.

Books that suck readers in often hit that first big turning point earlier than the textbook quarter mark, often around 20% in. This gives readers that crucial “I need to know how this turns out” feeling before they have a chance to get bored.

Turning Point 2

Between Act 2 and Act 3, about 50% into the story

Turning Point 2, the midpoint complication, injects a fundamental plot twist that flips your protagonist’s strategy on its head. Whatever they tried in the first half of the book just isn’t cutting it, or something big has changed or come to light—and now they need a new approach. The early plan (the easy way) isn’t working anymore; now your character has to push beyond what they thought would be necessary or what they believe they can handle (the hard way).

How does Turning Point 2 serve readers? Stories can’t feel like a laundry list of “All the Stuff I Gotta Take Care of Before the Inevitable Climax.” The midpoint keeps your story from bogging down in a monotonous slog toward the same old goal.

Turning Point 3

Between Act 3 and Act 4, about 75% into the story

Turning Point 3 pulls all the conflicts together, creating your protagonist’s absolute low point, their “dark night of the soul.” With hope seemingly extinguished and success looking impossible, this moment sets up everything that follows, making the final resolution meaningful instead of simply predictable.

How does Turning Point 3 serve readers? This rock-bottom moment gives your character somewhere to push off from as they rally for the climax. For readers, it cranks up the suspense. Can your protagonist really pull this off? How? This turning point hits readers with that emotional gut-punch showing exactly what will be lost if your character gives up now. It turns readers from spectators into allies, cheering your protagonist on: Get back in there. Find your guts. Stand up and fight for what matters.

Irresistible Momentum

These turning points aren’t random checkboxes in some rigid formula—they’re powerful currents that pull stories forward. Each one catapults your story into its next phase with fresh energy and urgency. This natural momentum keeps reading turning pages late into the night, whispering “just one more chapter” despite their 6 a.m. alarm.

That’s the power of turning points: They transform your story from words on a page into a voyage readers can’t help but follow all the way to the end.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post Best Ways to Pace Your Story’s Key Moments appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Actions have consequences—that’s what makes a story tick. A story begins when events around a character push them into action. Those actions create new situations, and those situations push the character into even tougher choices. Watching this chain reaction unfold is what keeps readers glued to the pages.

When we call a story “entertaining,” we’re really talking about something deeper: the chance to step into someone else’s experience. We want to understand their choices and see how their decisions mirror our own journey.

We’re not reading strictly to find out what happens, but neither are we reading only to understand why. Instead, we’re fascinated by the ripple effect of how one dynamic feeds the other.

A satisfying story does two things at once. It sweeps us into an absorbing plot while simultaneously easing us into the vicarious experience of a character’s inner transformation. Plot events shape the character’s options, and their choices then create new situations—a self-perpetuating cycle of action and reaction that creates the story.

Are stories plot-based, or are they character-based? The answer is yes.
Story is the synthesis of both. Plot shapes characters, and characters drive plot. Stories draw their power from the interplay between the two.

Here’s how plot and character organically wind together in classic Western storytelling, act by act.

Act 1: Welcome to the Ordinary World

Key Concepts

Act 1: The first quarter of the story

Plot Keywords: status quo, the normal world, the ordinary world

Character Keywords: disunity, inauthenticity

The story opens on a character living in disunity and inauthenticity, although they don’t realize that yet. Something about their life is lacking, internally or externally or both.

The first act introduces the character, builds the story world and its time, place, and rules, and plants the seeds of change. This sets the chain of action and reaction that drives everything to come, creating the plot that the character will spend the rest of the story pursuing and wrestling with.

Act 1: This act is a story about how inauthenticity and disunity arrive in this character’s life.

Turning Point 1 (end of Act 1): This is how the character resolves to fix the problem created by inauthenticity or disunity.

Act 2: The Easy Way Out

Key Concepts

Act 2: The second quarter of the story from 25% to 50%; in three-act structure, this is the first half of Act 2, the part before the midpoint

Plot Keywords: reactive response, the easy way

Character Keywords: deconstruction

The character steps into this quarter of the story ready to tackle their problem, but they’re going about it all wrong. They’re reacting to their new reality without truly understanding it, chasing solutions that look promising but won’t really work. They’re still operating from old patterns and incomplete understanding.

This initial approach begins to crumble as they discover the problem runs deeper than they thought. Their responses slowly deconstruct their familiar worldview, forcing them to question what they believe about themselves and their situation.

Act 2: This act is a story about how the character reactively responds to the problem.

TP2 (end of Act 2—the midpoint): This is the moment the character realizes their reactive response isn’t working. The problem has grown more complex than they imagined, their old worldviews are deconstructing piece by piece, and they must find a new path forward.

Act 3: The Hard Road

Key Concepts

Act 3: The third quarter of the story from 50% to 75%; in three-act structure, this is the second half of Act 2, the part after the midpoint

Plot Keywords: proactive progress, the hard way

Character Keywords: reconstruction

The character enters this act with a new understanding: It’s time to stop reacting and time to start acting. They begin approaching their problem head-on, using newfound tools or information or wisdom, but success doesn’t come easily. The obstacles they face grow to match their increasing capacity.

As they make proactive progress toward their goal, they gradually reconstruct a new worldview to replace what was torn down. But this reconstruction comes at a cost—each step forward requires more from them than the last.

Act 3: This act is a story about how the character makes proactive progress toward solving their problem.

TP3 (end of Act 3): This is the moment when the character’s proactive approach seems to fail despite everything they’ve learned. Though they’ve been reconstructing a stronger sense of self, they hit what appears to be an insurmountable obstacle or dead end.

Act 4: Bringing It All Together

Key Concepts

Act 4: The final quarter of the story, from 75% to the end

Plot Keywords: final push, climax, resolution

Character Keywords: synthesis, unity, authenticity

This is where all threads converge. The character faces their goal and whatever stands in their way, and now they’re armed with something new: authenticity. The climactic breakthrough isn’t just about solving the external problem—it’s about achieving unity between who they are and who they need to be.

Act 4: This act is a story about how the character achieves synthesis, finding their authentic self and moving forward with a new sense of unity.

Climax: This is the moment when the character’s newfound authenticity or unity enables them to solve their problem in a way that would have been impossible before their transformation.

Finding Your Story’s Flow

Each story finds its own rhythm within the cycle of these four acts. Stray too far from their natural flow, though, and the story loses its power. A weak setup leaves readers adrift; without real struggle, victory rings false.

What matters isn’t following a rigid structure but creating a transformative journey. Readers come to witness your character’s evolution from disunity to unity—this is what lingers in their minds long after the final page.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post The Ripple Effect: How to Weave Plot with Character appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

In any discussion of story structure, the three-act model inevitably dominates the conversation. Even as plotting methods such as Save the Cat, the Hero’s Journey, and the Snowflake Method gain popularity, the classic beginning-middle-end form reaching back to the dramatic theories of Aristotle remains the essential core.

But here’s the rub: Three-act structure produces a disproportionately large act in the middle of a novel—the double-stuff cream in the three-act Oreo—leaving writers with a puffy, gooey act notoriously recognized as the most difficult section to write. Act 2 of a three-act story is twice the length of the other acts, forcing writers to combat the infamous “saggy middle” effect using a hodge-podge of plot tangents and pacing tricks.

But it’s not the writing that makes the double-stuffed Act 2 feel like such a slog; it’s the structure itself. The loss of momentum is a symptom of a missing component that flattens plot and character development: the midpoint complication.

The Frog in the Boiling Pot

A well-paced story thrives on rising action, tugging readers into a web of progressively escalating complications. This stream of gains and setbacks turns up the heat on the protagonist, like a frog in the proverbial soon-to-boil pot of hot water.

But when complications occur solely at the scene level, readers may not feel as though their hand has been thrust against the blistering heat of the pot. Their experience is more likely to resemble that of our oblivious friend the frog—they may never notice the relentlessly mounting heat. They may lose interest and hop out of the story pot long before it comes to a boil and the frog finally takes action.

While fans of slow-burn stories do exist, most readers prefer regular injections of momentum. And the exciting change they’re looking for—the stuff that sends plots skittering in new directions and forces protagonists to grapple with impossible choices—is driven not by incremental temperature increases but by large-scale structural movement: story turning points.

What Do Turning Points Do?

Turning points are a structural element of storytelling. A turning point is a pivot point between two acts, forming a joint between one limb of the narrative and the next.

It’s not that a turning point is simply a dramatic, landmark event. That’s missing the point. A turning point fills a specific role in the story: It turns the story in a new direction. It keeps the story living, breathing, evolving … changing.

Turning points work on the basis of stimulus–response. The first element is a stimulus: a significant action, event, or revelation in the plot. The second element is the protagonist’s response to that stimulus. Their reaction determines the tenor and direction of the entire next act.

Recurring, well-paced turning points keep the story from deteriorating into a dull, predictable march toward an inevitable climax.

And this brings us back to the downfall of three-act structure.

The Midpoint Complication

Without a fundamental opportunity for narrative and character change during the second act of a three-act story, readers and writers are likely to flounder. But dividing the second act to create four acts instead of three creates an additional turning point—and another opportunity for the protagonist’s choices to determine the story’s direction.

The midpoint complication, which falls between the two middle acts, offers the perfect story shakeup. It sends the plot in a new direction or complicates the protagonist’s choices with significant new information.

Four-act structure eliminates the long, sagging middle act of three-act structure, prolonging the initial strategy the protagonist chooses at the end of Act 1. The midpoint complication injects new energy into the quest. Readers can visibly see the tides begin to turn. The protagonist’s initial attempts may not be paying off yet, but the hard knocks they’re taking are building determination and resourcefulness.

The midpoint complication serves as a crucial pivot, channeling the story’s energy from reactive response to proactive progress, from the easy way to the hard way, from deconstruction to reconstruction. This form helps writers avoid the common pitfall of the sagging middle act, buoying readers from the first act through the last.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post The Missing Link in Three-Act Structure appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

It’s easy to surmise that propelling readers from one scene to the next relies upon a dramatic closing hook, the evocative or provocative impression at the very end of the scene.

Seemed like everyone was finding someone to pair off with. So when was he going to find a girl of his own?

Or—

Edwina looked the poor sod straight in the eye. “She’s not coming back, Edgar. Ever.”

But although hooks may tantalize, another underlying force is what truly launches readers into the next scene. This dynamic arises from the final step of scene structure: a new outcome—change.

Scenes are designed to move the story forward by creating incremental change at the plot or character levels. Effective scene structure intrinsically sets up a domino effect: The unexpected outcome of one scene sparks curiosity about how the character will cope in the next, kindling the impulse to turn the page.

This is how complete, fully formed scenes get readers itching to see how the seeds of change will grow.

Scenes Create Change

Let’s review the structure of the two most common types of scenes in a novel:

Action Scenes                                                      Reaction (“Sequel”) Scenes

Objective                                                                     Emotion

Obstacle                                                                      Deliberation

Outcome                                                                     Decision

Action and reaction scenes share an important factor in common: Their final phases are all about generating change.

In an action scene, change occurs when something (the “obstacle”) interrupts the viewpoint character’s progress toward their scene objective. This creates an unexpected outcome. Something unanticipated has just occurred, and the inevitable consequences loom just ahead.

One minute they were packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the muggy subway car. The next, the squealing of metal against metal sent the world sideways, and she was tumbling wildly into the dark subterranean depths.

In a reaction scene, the final decision phase reveals the viewpoint character’s change of heart or intentions or plans, telling readers to brace for consequences.

Gripping the zip-tie cuffs, Arjan squeezed his eyes shut against the thrumming pain in his skull. He could walk away from this life of deception and violence once and for all. Or he could seek his revenge.

A dramatic closing hook can focus and magnify this effect, using introspection, foreshadowing, or imagery to hint at the broader struggles, unresolved tensions, or profound transitions the scene has provoked. But that’s the thing—the scene itself should provoke those rumblings. When the scene clearly introduces change, even a glimmer of yearning or glint of optimism can ignite the spark that sets the next scenes into motion.

The Springboard Effect

The unanticipated outcome of each scene pushes the characters urgently into the next, riding the domino or baton-passing effect. Scenes shouldn’t be able to be shuffled about willy-nilly; plucking an effectively crafted scene out of the flow would break the chain of action and reaction that makes one scene lead directly into the next.

Readers rightfully expect the change created by one scene to be addressed promptly in the next. This propagates reader investment: hope or worry, anticipation or suspense.

For example, after a scene ending with Max vowing to leave Jonquil and return to his wife, readers will expect his next scene to begin addressing that tangle. He might be temporarily delayed by other concerns—a delicious way to add tension—but he shouldn’t blithely turn away without further thought. Didn’t that decision matter?

The domino effect of one scene tipping into and kicking off the next forges a chain of progressively escalating complications in the story. This chain is what writers are talking about when they refer to the rising action of a plot, the idea that the conflict (what does happen) and tension (what might happen) spiral to a peak at the climax. The first scene of the story sets off an unstoppable chain reaction, leading to a resolution that feels surprising in the way it happens yet inevitable by virtue of cause and effect.

Think of the scenes as opportunities to drop clues into the links of the story. This may seem like an obvious strategy for a mystery story, but you should exploit this effect in every genre. Scatter breadcrumbs or dangle questions at scene endings, then scoop them up promptly in the next scene, weaving the connective threads into a taut, vibrant storytelling tapestry.

Caveat 1: The Roadblock

Occasionally, a scene might run up against a revelation or cascade of consequences that creates a roadblock with no apparent route forward. This sort of scene—full stop, no way forward—is difficult to pull off if you haven’t planned the story before writing it. When the options are so limited that the character can find no way forward, the plot cannot organically advance—the story is muzzled.

Having the character sit around and wait for a deus ex machina (an outside force to swoop in and solve the problem) frustrates readers, who want stories where the characters solve their problems, not the author. Instead, use a reaction scene to break the deadlock, as the character discovers something new within themselves—an inner breakthrough of some kind.

Some scenes do warrant a note of finality, as a story thread winds to completion. But finality and completion signal endings, and if your story isn’t over yet, you’ll want to maintain the plot’s momentum. Most scenes, especially those at the end of chapters, benefit from a dynamic of change to keep readers turning pages.

Caveat 2: Top Spin

Cliffhanger, edge-of-the-seat pacing frequently leverages a screenwriting technique called top spin. In top spin, the scene cuts off at the peak of tension, just as something interrupts the character’s progress toward their immediate agenda. The scene leaps from this interruption or obstacle directly to the next scene, with no opportunity to show reaction or outcome.

Think of the way TV shows cut off at a cliffhanger before a commercial break, then pick up afterwards in the same stream of action. That’s top spin in action. Top spin creates an extremely strong narrative drive.

“Done well, the drama is then built around confrontation/crisis in a sequence that never seems to stop moving,”  writes John Yorke in Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story. “… Every scene ends on a question—partly ‘Where did that come from?’ but more importantly ‘How are they going to get out of that?’ By cutting away at the crisis point, a writer thus creates a sequence in which question is followed by (delayed) answer, which is followed by a question once again. … The technique of ‘come in late, get out early’ simply accelerates this process, forcing every scene to cut off at the ‘worst point’ of a scene.”

A brilliant resource in suspense stories, copious amounts of top spin are better suited to the screen than the page. Unlike movies or TV, which can only watch a character from the outside, novels draw readers into the character’s thoughts and perspective. A book that consistently chops off character reactions as soon as scene reaches its peak circumvents this quality, and readers may decide that the book reads more like a screenplay than a novel they can sink into.

Harnessing the Force of Change

Continuity between scenes depends on more than tacking on a provocative closing hook. The hand-off effect arises organically from scene structure, which generates a reversal or change for the viewpoint character. The allure of how the character will deal with this complication keeps readers turning pages long into the night.

Read more:

Goal-driven action scene structure, the building block of stories
Strategies for smooth scene openings

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post The Secret to Page-Turning Scene Endings appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Picture a protagonist who stumbles upon a mysterious artifact but shows no curiosity, or a group of friends who sit down separately at the summit of a hike under a breathtaking sunset, without a moment of communal awe.

Keeping your characters engaged with the story keeps readers engaged with it, too. Whenever something significant happens in the story, readers expect the characters to sit up, notice, and process its impact at some level.

The plot’s unfolding impact on the characters lends an organic quality to the storytelling. The characters’ reactions and their attempts to derive meaning from the events around them make the story seem kinetic, vital, living.

This meaning can’t be adequately conveyed by exposition; that would be “telling,” not “showing.” Instead, giving readers direct access to the context allows them to discover the meaning for themselves. This means exposing your characters’ interpretive process—their emotions, thoughts, and reflections about what’s happening around them.

Read more: 3 action-reaction misfires that flatten your writing

Writing Strategy: The Progress Report

Think of folding character interiority into a passage to create a “progress report,” showing the character’s ongoing impressions of what they know and feel so far while the action is still unfolding.

“Simply recognize that there will be a number of sharp twists and small setbacks during the conflict portion of the scene,” writes Jack M. Bickham in Scene & Structure, “and your viewpoint character will experience each of these turns as a stimulus; before he replies in most cases you the author have the option going into his brief internalization concerning what was just said or done. It is in these internalizations that you can remind the reader what’s at stake, and how things seem to be going in the opinion of the viewpoint character.”

When it seems time to check in with your viewpoint character’s sense of how things are progressing, ask yourself these questions:

• How does the character think things are going so far?

• Are they closing in on their short-term and long-term goals, or are they losing ground?

• What’s their mindset when they ponder their goals: anticipation, hope, determination, trepidation, gloom?

Building the Stream of Perspective

Progress checks don’t need to be purely analytical. Action beats also help convey a character’s emotions and show how they’re adapting to what’s unfolding.

Say the boss has just marched into the room with the announcement “All of that data is out of date.” You may be tempted to give your poor protagonist an action beat like Jason sighed.

Although that sigh is clichéd and a bit flat—a sigh alone doesn’t tell readers whether Jason is dejected, pissed, or what—your instinct to put a reaction right there is spot on. That’s where readers expect your protagonist’s reaction. That’s where readers want to see how the announcement matters to Jason.

So infuse that action beat with thought to turn it into a statement of intention: As the room exploded with protests, Jason tossed his useless notepad into the trash and groped in the bottom drawer for his whiskey flask. 9:36 p.m.—this was going to be a butt-burner of a night. Now readers know the protagonist’s state of mind: While everyone else is still carping over the problem, Jason’s already bracing himself to correct it. This progress check tells readers what he thinks is important at this point and what he’s planning to do next.

Progress checks like this are the connective tissue that sweeps a story from one point to the next. Keep this burbling stream of perspective turned on throughout every scene.

Opening New Avenues

At their most effective, progress checks serve as more than mere acknowledgments. They’re often insights of some sort, showing the character’s first glimmer of potential solutions.

• Uncovering new consequences

• Understanding another character

• Grasping a problem

• Fathoming the story world

Read more: The link between character thought and credibility

Don’t Wait to React

A major influx of realizations and new information for the viewpoint character often signals that it’s time for a dedicated reflection sequence or scene—but that doesn’t imply you should reserve all emotions, reactions, and thoughts solely for post-action review sessions.

Thought constitutes the most narratively significant part of your viewpoint character’s perspective. It offers readers the sense of an unfolding, real-time experience.

Lengthy passages of dialogue or action without enough interiority leave readers locked outside the character’s frame of reference. When thought is saved exclusively for a post-action analysis, it often comes across more like a narrator’s explanation than spontaneous character experience. Inner life that’s tacked on in flabby lumps after the action or dialogue is over can feel forced.

So stay in touch with the characters’ reactions on every page—sometimes every paragraph. Keep the spigot of your viewpoint character’s interior analysis flowing. Infuse every page with their opinionated judgments and personal perspective about virtually everything they encounter.

Crafting effective character reactions that move the story forward is an art. Taking the time to unlock your character’s perspective, however, makes the story moving and memorable.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post Breathing Life into Characters appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Goal-driven scenes are akin to the classic joke setup, “A _____ and a _____ walk into a bar …”        

A _____ and a _____ walk into a bar. The scene begins with the entrance of the protagonist and antagonist.

The first guy says …  The first guy, our protagonist, lays out what’s on his mind—his immediate agenda, or the scene goal.

And so the other guys says …  The antagonist throws a curveball, a turning point that disrupts the expected flow.

… [punch line]! Surprise! Something new is revealed or happens that makes everything collide in an unexpected way.

In a joke, we laugh because the poor first guy has encountered something completely expected. In a scene, we turn the page to find out what the first guy does next. It’s cause and effect, action and reaction—the foundation of every novel.

Here’s how goal-driven scenes work.

Goal Establishing a clear scene goal draws readers into whatever the character will spend the scene attempting to accomplish, usually some incremental step toward the central story goal.

Turning point But something doesn’t go as anticipated, and the character is halted by a conflict, obstacle, reversal, or complication. This interruption, the scene’s turning point, throws a monkey wrench into what readers and the characters were hoping for or expecting.

Change Things are different now, because the turning point has changed the character’s original plan or course of action. How will this scene affect what’s next?

1: Establish the Scene Goal

Scene goals are incremental steps toward the ultimate story goal. They’re the viewpoint character’s immediate agenda. What’s on their mind? What did they get up today to accomplish? Unless you’re writing some variety of mystery or thriller, this agenda should be made clear to readers right away.

In a renowned memo to the writers of The Unit, playwright and filmmaker David Mamet underscored the necessity of clear scene goals.

Every scene must be dramatic. That means: The main character must have a simple, straightforward pressing need which impels him or her to show up in the scene. This need is why they came. It is what the scene is about. Their attempt to get this need met will lead, at the end of the scene, to failure—this is how the scene is over. It, this failure, will, then, of necessity, propel us into the next scene.

Issue: Failing to get the character emotionally engaged with the scene goal. Scene goals are serious business. If your character isn’t invested, readers won’t be either. The scene will flop, bereft of stakes and dramatic tension.

To clearly establish a scene goal, show readers what the character plans to do and why it matters to them. Properly done, this process hooks readers into the scene, rallying them to root for the character and keep reading to see whether they triumph or fall flat in their efforts.

Issue: Forcing a new scene goal with every scene, or keeping the same scene goal throughout the story. Because scene goals represent incremental steps, they’ll evolve as the story progresses. In fast-paced sections of the story, your viewpoint character’s immediate agenda may shift every scene. The bigger and more challenging a goal, the longer it will take to accomplish, and some goals will require multiple scenes to accomplish.

2: Interrupt With a Turning Point

The turning point is the peak of a scene. It’s the whole point of the scene, its raison d’être.

At a scene’s turning point, things stop unfolding the way the character had hoped or expected. They now face some new problem, conflict, or obstacle.

While this point in a scene is often described in terms of conflict, it’s often not about conflict at all. Although conflict is fundamental to every story, it’s not a necessity in every scene. Framing the peak of a scene as a turning point, rather than outright conflict, allows for more nuance.

A scene turning point can take the form of a complication, obstacle, or reversal. These terms are mostly self-explanatory, but let’s touch on what’s meant by a reversal. Renowned screenwriting and storytelling master Robert McKee identifies two types of scene reversals:

1. Reversal of power The relative power of the viewpoint character and another character in the scene swaps.

2. Reversal of expectation The viewpoint character enters the scene expecting one thing, only to encounter a different outcome.

Some of the most common scene writing problems are related to trouble in this turning point phase.

Issue: Failing to directly relate the scene turning point to the scene goal. For example, if Camille’s objective is to covertly retrieve a secret code from her coworker’s files, it wouldn’t make sense for the scene’s turning point to be returning home to find her apartment flooded due to a burst water heater in the unit above. This is definitely a nasty setback for Camille, but it doesn’t have any bearing on the pursuit of the secret code; that plot thread is left dangling.

Instead, imagine Camille poised to steal the secret code form her colleague’s office when the receptionist rushes down the hall with word of an emergency call from Camille’s landlord. This turning point directly affects the scene goal of obtaining the secret code. Just as Camille anticipates snatching the code, she’s yanked away.

Issue: Centering the scene turning point on an entirely internal dynamic. The scene turning point of a goal-driven scene demands the involvement of the viewpoint character with another person, thing, or event. Internal conflict alone isn’t enough to sustain a goal-driven scene, though it’s a powerful catalyst in reflection scenes (a topic for another day).

Issue: Mistaking the most exciting moment of the scene as the scene’s turning point. Think of the turning point as the peak of significance in the scene, not necessarily the most intense or dramatic moment. It’s the apex of tension in regards to the thing that matters most to the viewpoint character. It’s a crucial moment in the pursuit of the scene goal.

Issue: Rushing through the scene’s turning point. As the peak of a scene, the turning point is the juiciest part to readers. Give readers time to appreciate it. Sink into character interiority, allowing readers to savor their entanglement in the turning point. Unravel the character reactions one sticky finger at a time. While there may be times when you want to sweep into the next scene for shock value or chop things off to create a cliffhanger, in general, readers relish the opportunity to appreciate the character’s predicament. (Contrast the writing at this point in the scene with the first and last phases, which could require only a paragraph or pointed sentence to effectively convey.)

3: Demonstrate Change

The final phase of a goal-driven scene is the outcome, a moment marked by unexpected twists or the heralding of change. This phase of a scene is sometimes referred to as the scene “disaster,” but that needn’t imply an actual catastrophe. What’s important is the implication of impending change.

At this point in the scene, the viewpoint character either achieves the scene goal or encounters an unforeseen development. It’s now clear that whatever readers and the characters expected the beginning of the scene, something else has come along to add new developments.

Issue: The outcome or change phase at the end of a scene should rarely create a resolution. Resolution leads nowhere; with matters settled, the story momentum stops cold. Instead, pump forward momentum into the story. Because of this scene, what must the characters do next? This creates an emotional springboard toward the next scene.

The Action-Reaction Dynamic

To sum it up, the structure of a goal-driven scene comes down to action and reaction. Goal-driven scenes are little vehicles for change, and protagonists are the drivers. They react, decide, choose, and act, concluding one cycle of options and turning down another avenue for pursuing the elusive story goal.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post Scene Mastery: Navigating Common Goal-Driven Scene Pitfalls appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

If the opening line of a scene is the doorway to the party, what follows is the welcoming handshake and introductions that draw readers into the mix. Effective scene openings extend beyond the fireworks of a provocative opening hook, ushering readers into the new space with no awkward stumbles or feeling out of place.

Here’s how to whisk readers effortlessly into a scene’s flow.

Go in Late …

The first technique is all about judging the point at which to enter the scene. Screenwriters have a saying: Go in late, get out early. Don’t overexplain on either end.

Since stories are about significance (why did the character make those choices, and how did it matter?), scenes should be constructed of significant stuff—stuff that matters, not all the characters’ dull daily duties.

Cut out the boring stuff. Short of a few scenes way back in the first act of your book while you’re establishing the character’s normal world, it’s almost never interesting to show a character waking up, getting dressed, drinking coffee, and getting ready for the scene. Get to the point. Readers come to your book for engaging story action, not the mundane business they’ve already slogged through themselves so they can sit down and read.

Transitions are a common tripping point. You can almost always do away with travel to the next location in the story (unless the journey itself is the point). Travel, arrivals, greetings, goodbyes—those are interstitial moments, not the story itself. None of that merits your precious word count.

Scenes dip in and out of the story at key points of conflict and tension, when things are popping that actually change what’s happening. Spend your time showing the characters doing things that affect the story line, not merely getting ready. It’s like a theatrical play—don’t show the stagehands changing the scenery, just raise the curtain on the next scene.

Aim to begin on the upswing into the conflict or juiciest part of the scene. Some scenes need a little more set-up, but you’ll be surprised how quickly readers catch on if you simply dive in.

This technique of going in late (or in medias res, in the middle of things) is often honed during revision. Write first, hone later. You’ll be surprised how much you can slice away without shaking readers’ ability to follow where the story moves next. Save anything you remove during revisions in your graveyard file, in case you need parts of it again later.

Test out shortened scenes on readers who don’t know your story. They may not know the details of the story, but can they slide into the spirit of the scene anyway? Could you prune away still more? You can always add removed content back a snippet at a time.

Bonus Tip: … Get Out Early

Speaking of petering out, the reverse of “go in late” holds true on the back end of the scene: Get out early. Once you’ve hit the peak—the conflict or surprise or complication—get the heck out of Dodge. Don’t overstay the scene’s welcome by dragging out the characters’ reactions (reaction/emotion, dilemma, and decision). This isn’t the time for lengthy debates …

… unless, of course, it is. If the characters and readers need time to grapple with the ramifications of what just happened, indulge in a full sequel scene.

Anchoring Scenes: The 3 Ws

Once you’ve chosen the right place to begin the scene, it’s time to invite readers in. Readers can’t sink into immersion until they’re oriented in the story. Whose view are they seeing this scene from? Where and when are they?

Within the first page of every scene—preferably within the opening paragraphs—ground readers by establishing the 3 Ws.

1. WHO the viewpoint character is (and WHO ELSE is present in the scene)

2. WHERE the scene is taking place

3. WHEN the scene is taking place, or a sense of how much time has passed since the last scene

1. WHO Nothing in a scene makes sense until readers have context for what they’re reading. Whose experience is this? Establish the viewpoint character unambiguously within the first paragraph or two, ideally within the first two sentences.

Readers usually assume that the first character named in a scene is the viewpoint character. Positioning the viewpoint character in the opening has the added benefit of launching them into motion, doing or speaking or considering or noticing. Now viewpoint character has agency in driving the scene.

Also near the top of a scene, establish who else is present. Ideally, this should happen within the first page or so. You want to avoid the sort of confusion when some character pops off on the last page with a snarky observation, only readers didn’t even realize they were there. A glimpse of each character is sufficient, even a collective mention such as The others armed themselves with plastic forks and swarmed the defenseless box of cake on the counter.

2. WHERE A scene will feel like a snippet acted out in front of a green screen on a movie soundstage if readers don’t know where it’s unfolding. Don’t infodump the details in a steaming lump at the front of the scene. Parse it out.

The things the viewpoint character notices should reflect their personal mindset: their knowledge, priorities, taste, immediate agenda, hopes, fears … What is the viewpoint character doing here in this scene? They’re not sitting around and blinking around at a static world; they should be actively engaged in something that’s obviously headed somewhere interesting.

3. WHEN Pull readers across the chasm between scenes by seeding the next scene opening with cues as to how much time has passed. Unless the timeline is integral to the plot, it’s not necessary to be overt about this. In slower stories or sections, a mention of late-afternoon sun or a brisk autumn breeze gets the job done. The shorter the story’s overall timeline, the more granular you’ll need to be with these references.

Many books benefit from timestamps at the beginning of each chapter (22:58:07 11/12/2093, Bridge of the Atlantis) to help orient readers. Caveat: Not every reader notices or absorbs timestamps, and even those who do are unlikely to parse out the number of days or weeks between dates to grasp the relative passage of time (with the exception of something like the breathless hour-by-hour countdown of a thriller).

Revising Scene Openings

Pro revision tip: Make a single revision pass dedicated exclusively to tightening scene openings. Don’t get sucked into editing past the first few paragraphs. Try starting at the end of the manuscript and working backward scene by scene, forcing you to tackle each scene in its own right rather than in relation to the previous scene.

First, check to see that you’ve started each scene as late as possible, just before things get juicy. Since every scene should cause the next one to come about, like a chain of dominoes, you could also use this revision pass to check that scenes wrap up promptly (“get out early”), before the momentum has a chance to start petering out.

Next, move back to the scene opening to check for the 3 Ws: who, where, when.

Done.

Continue to work your way through the manuscript one scene at a time from back to front, checking only for scene opening issues. The result will be a smoother read that invites readers into the action every time.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post Strategies for Smooth Scene Openings appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Readers come into a story eager to greet a new world, willing to temporarily suspend their belief in the way the world works to explore your vision of the alternatives. They place their trust in you to make it feel plausible. Could that character really turn into a fly? Would this one really give up stardom for her love?

Stories that fail to ring true break that trust. These brittle, hollow stories break reader immersion again and again before finally driving readers away.

It’s easy to blame the tinny, artificial quality of an unconvincing story on external factors: plot holes, improbable scenarios. We just don’t believe that the plot could happen that way.

But dip into any well-written speculative novel or a tightly crafted psychological thriller, and you’ll see that readers are keen to be led into all sorts of farfetched nooks and crannies. They’ll overlook a certain amount of hand-waving and even step willingly over minor plot holes as long as the characters are all in.

If characters forge a fathomable path into the story through their thoughts and reactions and emotions, readers will dive in alongside them.  

Credibility & Inner Life

Character reactions are signposts that show something has happened in the story worth noticing. When the characters fail to react, readers assume that there’s nothing worth noticing going on.

Inappropriate character reactions leave readers hanging. When a character melts into tears because the donut shop is out of blueberry donuts (I know—it hits me right in the feels, too), readers will wonder if the character is unhinged. Could blueberry donuts really play such a key role in the plot? Or is the author simply unable to convey how the characters are behaving in a believable way?

As long as you offer a frame of reference through your characters’ inner lives, readers will willingly travel fantastic places within your book, plumbing a serial killer’s psyche or accepting magic and alien cultures. Your characters’ inner life is like the legend of the story map, showing how the regions of the story world relate to each other. Stiff, disconnected, or missing character reactions remove that key and scramble readers’ ability to make sense of the story.

The Roots of Verisimilitude

It’s all about action and reaction, stimulus and response. Multiple stimulus-response units within even a simple plot point or exchange of dialogue—the characters’ reactions—are what make the scene feel real. If you gloss over character reactions, the writing feels wooden and inauthentic.

This isn’t a matter of hitting the high points. Getting readers to swallow the twists in your story is a process of making the individual “transactions of fiction” seem believable in their eyes, as Jack Bickham explains in Scene & Structure. You can read more about character reactions in our exploration of action-reaction misfires, where we made a step-by-step survey of the experience of tumbling into a hill of roiling ants.

When characters fail to react or when they fail to react appropriately, readers lose trust that things make sense within the confines of the story world. Heap enough action-reaction clunkers on readers, and the entire plot loses credibility. Why are the characters doing this? Why should readers care?

Scene Goals

People tend to dwell on their immediate needs and concerns. This is true whether they’re sweating through a potentially career-making presentation or racing to make it home first at the end of a lousy day to snag the last ice cream bar from the freezer. Momentous or not, people always have some top-of-mind agenda.

“We know that the viewpoint character is strongly motivated toward a specific, short-term goal essential to his long-term quest when he enters the scene,” Bickham explains. “Therefore, he will tend to be preoccupied with this goal throughout the scene. In fiction, as in real life, people tend to interpret everything in the frame of reference of their preoccupation of the moment.”

You can keep that agenda in view using the viewpoint character’s inner life. Their continual orientation and re-orientation to their short-term goal (the scene goal) helps readers grasp why they’re doing what they’re doing. As long as readers grasp the why, even implausible actions in an implausible setting can take on an aura of verisimilitude.

“Fiction must make more sense than real life if general readers are to find it credible,” Bickham writes. But how could it be possible to make fiction make more sense than real life? By showing how and why it makes sense to the characters who are living it.

To put it another way, plausibility arises from consistent authenticity. When the characters’ reactions and choices feel authentic, the plot itself gains credibility. Based on the reactions of these characters in this situation, what’s happening makes sense.

And even when readers disagree with the characters’ choices, they’ll accept them as long as the story clearly shows how the characters arrived at those conclusions.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post The Link Between Character Thought and Credibility appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

If you’re all about Mark Zuckerberg’s famous credo “move fast and break things,” you may feel confident diving from writing into self-revision and then editing. But if you like to get the lay of the land before trying new things, or if you’d appreciate having an experienced guide to call on as you’re writing, a book coach could be just what you need.

A book coach shows you the ropes from start to finish. Book coaches have been described as consultants, mentors, teachers, and personal trainers for your writing.

Book Coaching Vs. Editing

Book coaching shares a lot in common with developmental and line editing, especially from experienced editors who provide customized approaches beyond critiques or edits. Generally speaking, book coaching is more ongoing and interactive than editing, but one-to-one comparisons don’t paint the entire picture.

Editing provides feedback and guidance once the writing is complete.
Coaching provides feedback and guidance as the writing progresses.

Editing happens in stages, one person at a time: the writer writes, then the editor edits, then the writer revises, then the editor reviews …
Coaching happens collaboratively as the project progresses, with regular, real-time check-ins.

Editing is primarily text-based, using editing and written feedback.
Coaching frequently occurs via Zoom and email as well as written feedback and editing.

Editing is generally considered a distinct, one-time service for hire.
Coaching is more like short-term consulting or a long-term mentorship.

Editing seeks to identify and course-correct issues in a manuscript.
Coaching seeks to prevent issues from creeping into the manuscript to begin with.

Editing guides writers to improve their work in progress.
Coaching guides writers to improve their work in progress and develop long-term mastery.

But just because book coaching covers a lot of ground, don’t look for a book coach who claims to do it all. A jack of all trades is master of none—the best book coaches specialize.

Book coaches who specialize—certain genres (upmarket and literary fiction, SFF, historical fiction), certain types of clients (debut writers, memoirists, women, experts in a professional field), or specific tasks like self-publishing or marketing—possess a deep understanding of their fields and can offer nuanced and tailored feedback.

Coaches who claim to do it all may lag behind in rapidly evolving areas such as self-publishing or marketing. They may not edit frequently enough to stay fluent in the minutiae of copy editing. Yet when coaching companies spread these tasks across multiple points of contact, the carefully nurtured collaborative spirit of the client–coach relationship is diluted.

What Book Coaches Do

Book coaches typically lean into one or two of the following broad areas.

Story coaches help you develop and write your story. They’ll help you deepen your concept and plot and cultivate richer characters and themes. They’ll teach you how to use story form and structure to support your story. They’ll help you outline your book, and they’ll nudge your output as you write to keep it on track. They’ll help you define your genre, readers, and comp titles. These coaches are personal alpha readers, editors, and storytelling gurus rolled into one.

Support coaches focus on motivation, accountability, and emotional support for the writing journey. These coaches are like personal trainers, keeping you moving and helping you maintain a healthy outlook during the notoriously roller coaster experience of writing a novel. They’ll help you develop and stick to a writing schedule and keep you accountable for turning in pages regularly. Most book coaching encompasses at least some elements of support by virtue of regular communication and one-on-one focus.

Writing coaches are more like teachers, mentors, and editors. Their feedback may include story issues but often focuses on how authors express themselves on the page. Writing coaches will steer you through tricky narrative choices like point of view and help you master narrative techniques like narrative distance and dialogue before you’ve baked problems into the entire manuscript.

Publishing coaches are like project managers for writers. You may hear them referred to as book shepherds or book sherpas, publishing guides or consultants, or book consultants. These coaches may personally provide self-publishing or marketing services such as cover design, ebook formatting, website design, and marketing plans, or they may steer you toward reputable providers.

What Book Coaches Don’t Do

As versatile as book coaches are, you’ll want to hire other specialists for some tasks.

• Ghostwriting If you want someone else to write your book for you, you deserve a dedicated, experienced ghostwriter.
• Book doctoring To have someone rebuild an unsuccessful story from the ground up, doing most of the heavy lifting themselves, hire a book doctor.
• Editing Completing your manuscript under the eyes of a book coach won’t necessarily prepare your manuscript for querying or publication. Coaching is not a form of incremental book editing. Talk to your coach about the next steps for your book, and don’t be surprised if that includes editing.

Steer clear of book coaches who promise to get you an agent or publisher as part of their services. Legitimate professionals do not guarantee representation or publication for your book.

Book Coaching Benefits

Why would someone work with a book coach? To get the jump on things. Coaching accelerates your creative development as a novelist. Think of it as professional training or a start-up cost for your writing career.

The benefits you reap from coaching begin immediately and last long after this book is out the door. Your book gets intensive one-on-one development, and you finish with storytelling and writing skills you’ll use the rest of your writing career.

What To Look for In A Book Coach

When you’re ready to work with a book coach, identify your priorities. Do you want help with story development, writing technique, accountability and support, or publishing and marketing? You can have more than one of those things, but you probably can’t have them all from one person.

Check out coaching programs from bigger companies, but keep in mind that their standardized, one-size-fits-most methods may not work for you and your book. In programs that emphasize teaching and group feedback, you might not get as much one-on-one time with the coach. Some programs use proprietary software or methods to analyze your work and guide your revisions, which may not fit your writing or work style.

When coaches advertise themselves as certified or trained in a specific methodology, recognize that they’re referring to completion of a certificate program and not a professional certification. There are no professional boards or organizations that certify book coaches. Certificates indicate the coach has completed a paid training program with a company or trainer, not that they are certified by a professional or occupational board or organization.

How Much Does Coaching Cost?

Individual coaching sessions start around $60 an hour at the low end, climbing to a more typical $100 to $150 an hour. Rates for one-time consultations are often significantly higher, due to the prep time required.

Competitive coaching programs can cost $2,000 to $3,000 for several months of coaching. Bespoke packages or plans from independent coaches who provide frequent one-on-one face time or personally handle self-publishing or marketing tasks can approach $10,000.

Hiring a book coach is a smart move if you want to improve your writing and storytelling skills while developing and polishing your work in progress. With the help of a coach to keep you on track and offer support along the way, you’ll write more efficiently, effectively, and confidently, and you’ll optimize your book’s potential to connect with readers.

Tip: If you’re looking for a great coach or editor…check out our amazing
Resident Writing Coaches!
We also list some more under Editing & Formatting Services in this post.

Here are some other helpful posts:

Feedback and Editing: The Right Eyes at the Right Time
When Are You Ready for Professional Editing?
Best Practices for Working with an Independent Editor
“Perfect to Me”: How Self-Editing Can Take Your Novel to the Next Stage

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post What’s the Difference Between an Editor and a Book Coach? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Cause and effect. Stimulus and response. Action and reaction. Everything in a story depends on what the characters do about whatever the story pushes them up against.

Stiff, disconnected, or missing character reactions snap the chain of cause and effect that constitutes your story. When readers can no longer see how and why the characters are doing what they’re doing, they lose the thread.

Let’s talk about the three most common action–reaction misfires I see in manuscripts.

1. Missing or insufficient reactions
2. Jumbled responses
3. Purposely obscured stimuli

Missing or Insufficient Reactions

When characters fail to react to what’s happening around them, it’s as if nothing is happening at all. A snappy line of dialogue goes nowhere if it doesn’t get under someone’s skin. The first glimpse of a long-sought clue builds no excitement if nobody notices it. A punch in the nose might as well not have landed if it doesn’t start or end a disagreement.

When characters don’t react to the conversations and events around them, readers will assume they don’t care. If the characters don’t care, why should readers?

Keeping your characters engaged in the story keeps readers engaged with it too. When writing viewpoint characters, you have access to both internal and external responses. For other characters, you’re limited to whatever visible manifestations of those responses that the viewpoint character or narrator can perceive.

Internal Responses

All but the last type of internal response, thought, are involuntary reactions.

1. Involuntary sensations—These include physical sensations such as feeling a lump in the throat or a stomach full of butterflies.

2. Reflex reactions—These are the so-called knee-jerk reactions, such as jerking away from the source of pain.

3. Emotions—Before you can reveal emotions using any of these reaction modes, you as the writer must know what the emotion or blend of emotions actually is.

4. Thoughts—What’s the uncensored commentary running in the privacy of the character’s mind?

External Responses

These responses are conscious, voluntary reactions.

1. Voluntary action—These range from small-scale gestures (fist-pumping with glee) to story-moving choices (drawing a sword and attacking the duke).

2. Dialogue—“We’ve never done it that way before—I don’t think it works like that,” or “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Pro tip: Calibrate the number and scope of the responses to the significance of the stimulus. Dropping your keys on the floor merits a much smaller reaction than dropping your phone overboard into the sea. The more significant the stimulus, the more responses you can layer in. Tune with care. Over- or undercalibration makes the writing seem either melodramatic or flat.

Jumbled Responses

Almost as confusing to readers as a character who fails to react is a jumbled reaction that pulls the logical order of stimulus–response out of whack.

He scrabbled away from the roiling heap in which he’d landed. “Get them off, get them off!”

It was ants—enraged, mandible-clacking ants, streaming over every inch of exposed skin. His whole frame jerked spasmodically, and a lacy net of agony cinched around his legs.

In this example, the hapless adventurer reacts by leaping away and shouting before readers even know there’s a problem. The narrator must loop back to explain (It was ants) and fill in the details. That’s not a dramatization of what’s happening (showing); it’s an explanation after the fact (telling).

Stimulus and response follows a predictable physiological pattern of perception and reaction. As a general rule of thumb, involuntary reactions come first. Next comes thought, as the character processes what’s happening. Finally, the character voluntarily and consciously reacts through action and dialogue.

STIMULUS—Our ill-fated adventurer tumbles into an ant hill.

1. INTERNAL RESPONSE—Sensation (involuntary): A lacy net of agony cinched around his legs.

2. INTERNAL RESPONSE—Reflex (involuntary): His whole frame jerked spasmodically …

3. INTERNAL RESPONSE—Thought (voluntary): It was ants—enraged, mandible-clacking ants, streaming over every inch of exposed skin.

4. INTERNAL RESPONSE—Emotion (involuntary): Panic. You have a small window of creative leeway here. You could position this involuntary emotion after the voluntary thought in which he concludes that he’s covered in ants, or you could show him panicked by the sheer onslaught of physical reactions.

5. EXTERNAL RESPONSE—Action (voluntary): He scrabbled away from the roiling heap in which he’d landed. The order of these last voluntary actions is your call; your hero might shout first, then scrabble.

6. EXTERNAL RESPONSE—Dialogue (voluntary): “Get them off, get them off!”

Poor guy.

Here’s how the passage would read if the scene were written following a physiologically logical order of reactions. You may give him an extra voluntary action (He peered down) in reaction to the pain, which allows him to reach the conclusion that inspires his next move.

A lacy net of agony cinched around his leg, and his whole frame jerked spasmodically. He peered down: Ants. Enraged, mandible-clacking ants, streaming over every inch of exposed skin.

He scrabbled away from the roiling heap in which he’d landed. “Get them off, get them off!”

Purposely Obscured Stimuli

When you’re straining to create suspense, it’s easy to fall into withholding information—what I call Mysterioso Syndrome, the refusal to show readers what the characters are already clearly reacting to. This heavy-handed technique attempts to build dramatic tension by hiding or failing to identify the stimulus.

Let’s go back to the original, jumbled account of our hero’s tumble into the ant hill.

He scrabbled away from the roiling heap in which he’d landed. “Get them off, get them off!”

It was ants—enraged, mandible-clacking ants, streaming over every inch of exposed skin. His whole frame jerked spasmodically, and a lacy net of agony cinched around his legs.

If the first paragraph were the end of the chapter, this dash of confusion could add a zing of cliffhanger-ish suspense.

But in the middle of a scene, refusing to let readers see what’s making our adventurer scrabble and shout momentarily puts the story on hold. It forces readers to wait for you to finish your clever little wait-for-it moment and get out of the way so that they, too, can see whatever the character’s in such a twist about.

Take heed: Modern readers want to see the story for themselves, not be left idling in the margins while you parse out explanations one crumb at a time. Let readers into the story: Cause, then effect. Stimulus, then response. Action, then reaction.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post 3 Action-Reaction Misfires That Flatten Your Writing appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Unless you wrote your book exclusively for your own satisfaction, once your creative vision is on the page, it’s time to zoom in on how the book works for readers. The key is getting the right kind of feedback for where you are in the revision and editing process—and dodging the kind that will pull you off track.

Much of this choice hinges on your editorial budget. You could do most or all these steps for yourself at no cost, but the quality of your book will reflect the quality of the production behind it. Most writers end up drawing on both free and paid feedback options.

Let’s make sure you’re leaning on the right options at the right time.

Writing Feedback: Stage by Stage

With a newly complete manuscript

Volunteer feedback is perfect at this stage of your book’s development. One or two alpha readers (often a spouse, critique partner, or close friend) provide that initial gut check on what’s hitting home and what’s missing the target.

During second and later drafts

As you continue working through early drafts, crowdsourced feedback continues to be your best bet. Lean on your peers in critique partners and groups, collecting enough opinions to sort out which point to genuine issues and which simply refer to personal taste.

Active drafting can be an opportunity for coaching or mentoring on story problems identified by critique buddies—a character arc that refuses to gel, saggy pacing, a general lack of zing—if your budget and time comfortably allow it. A little one-on-one help from a pro now could prevent you from filling your manuscript with pernicious errors that will inflate your editing rate down the line. (Incorrect use of dialogue tags and action beats, I’m looking at you!)

Before you’re ready for professional editing

Once you sense you’re nearing the limits of your ability to improve your book on your own, it’s time to bring in beta readers. Beta readers provide high-level, subjective, personal feedback such as “the pacing felt slow in the middle” or “I just didn’t like that character at all.”

Although paying for beta reading ensures the readers will finish the book and return feedback, it’s not necessary to hire a pro. In fact (unpopular opinion ahead), an editor is the wrong choice for beta reading. The reason is simple: Beta reading is not Editing Lite. It’s designed to generate genuine reader reaction, not analysis from a trained professional.

When you’re ready for professional editing

When you’re ready for professional editing, marching in with a request for a particular type or level of editing puts you at risk of getting precisely what you ask for—whether your manuscript needs it or not. It would be like relying on Dr. Google to diagnose a physical ailment, then convincing a local doctor to prescribe strictly the medications and treatments you’ve decided you need.

Choose your editor with care. You deserve a specialist who resonates with you and your work, not whoever offers the lowest rates and immediate availability.

Once you’ve found the perfect editorial collaborator, let them recommend what your manuscript needs. Their recommendations should be based on what will best support your story, your writing, and your publishing goals. If your editor hasn’t reviewed all those points, you can’t be sure you’ll get what you need.

Between edits

Another popular point for beta reading is in between edits. For example, betas can check whether the revisions you made after a developmental edit satisfy the needs the edit identified.

Don’t use beta readers beyond the point at which you’re willing to make big-picture changes. Once the story is settled, it’s time to move forward into editing.

Before you query

Raw talent shouldn’t mean raw material, and having your manuscript edited before you query agents and publishers helps you get your foot in the door.

“Our agency consistently see proposals that are okay, but simply not written at a level that is needed to break into the market,” writes literary agent Steve Laube. “Agents are not freelance editors so there is only so much we are willing to do to fix a project. I have said it this way, ‘If I get something that is 90% ready, I can take it the rest of the way. But if it is only 80% ready I will kick it back to the writer with a rejection. We are looking for the best of the best.’”

Agents are not there to provide you with free editing. In The Shit No One Tells You About Writing (season 2, episode 1), literary agent Cece Lyra advises writers not to expect feedback from an agent until “your writing is so, so good to the point that your agent is actually ready to sell it, then he’ll give you editorial feedback. … Your agent’s job is to sell your work. You need to have other sources of feedback too.”

Authors like Bianca Marais (The Witches of Moonshine Manor) seek out professional help before sending their manuscripts to agents. “I think as writers, we need to get into the habit of seeking out the expertise that we want, and that means paying for it,” she notes in The Shit No One Tells You About Writing (season 2, episode 1), “but it makes the agent’s job that much easier to be able to sell the work because the work is so much more polished and professional at that time.”

Before you self-publish

Self-publishing your work means assuming the responsibility for producing a professional-quality product—and that means paying for professional-caliber editing.

A developmental editor will help you master and refine the principles of story structure, genre, and storytelling technique. Your need for this level of editing may diminish as you master the craft, but you can’t afford to launch your writing career with limp storytelling.

And when it’s time for line editing and copyediting, your friend the English teacher can tell you if you have a problem with dangling participles, but they probably haven’t the foggiest about publishing industry standards for fiction style and punctuation. Get a professional copyedit.

Proofreading could be a suitable time to loop in friends and family who’ve promised to help. Vet their recommendations carefully—their knowledge of current grammar and usage or publishing industry standards will not always be on target—and be clear that you’re asking for help identifying typos and objective errors. Collate and compare volunteer findings, then get a professional editor or proofreader to review the results. You may be able to get this done as part of your editing follow-up or at an extremely low rate.

Keep Hold of the Creative Reins

Finally, follow these three guidelines for incorporating feedback into your work at any stage.

1. Don’t seek creative feedback from anyone you wouldn’t entrust with molding your book’s creative vision.

2. Take responsibility for learning your craft. “The conscious writer listens to everyone, tries everything, but follows no one; they are their own guru,” advises story development consultant Jeff Lyons. “(The conscious writer) takes responsibility for their failures as well as their successes and knows that they, not some fortune cookie, are the only ones who can solve their writing problems—and they love that responsibility.”

3. Don’t get sucked into an endless feedback loop. Gather constructive input, make your decisions and revisions, and move on to the next novel. You want a writing career filled with books, don’t you?

Onward!

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post Feedback and Editing: The Right Eyes at the Right Time appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Vocabulary and the way a character speaks are the outer layer of character voice—the icing on the cake. Instead of trying to build character voice from the outside in, get under the character’s skin by revealing how they experience and interpret the story world from the inside out.

Character voice bubbles up organically when every aspect of the story is seen through a character’s-eye view of priorities, perspectives, and agendas. It’s less like cobbling together a latticework of characters, setting, and events than it is establishing a running commentary on how the character views everything caught in that web.

“Running commentary” may sound like something suited for first-person or deep third point of view. In fact, continually inflecting the story with a character’s personal concerns is a fit for any point of view whose narrator is also a character. It’s a seamless way to write. The character voice—with all its attendant observations, judgments, opinions, prejudices, preferences, thoughts, and emotions—effectively becomes your framework for worldbuilding.

The idea of character voice often brings to mind a character’s favorite words and phrases—for example, whether a character calls something neat, cool, lit, or dope. That’s coming at character voice from the outside in. To build character voice from the inside out, start with what the character observes in the first place.

1. What Characters Notice

What you know is inside a room will almost certainly be different from what the viewpoint character notices. What gets noticed depends on who does the noticing. Everyone sees the world through the lens of their own mindset, a potent brew of knowledge, experience, motivations, goals, preferences, hopes, fears …

A musician notes different qualities in a concert hall than an interior designer. A six-year-old child beelines right past the collection of R&B vinyl to get to the puppy. The best friend sees a comfy, lived-in nest while the exhausted mom sees dirty socks and a pile of bills on the counter.

This is where knowing your characters’ histories comes in handy. What memories and emotions are associated with the people, places, and things they meet?

TIP: For deep-level character exploration, there’s no better tool than the Character Builder at One Stop for Writers.

2. What Characters Think About What They Notice

Once you’ve worked out what a character would notice in any particular scene, it’s time to express that observation using their unique frame of reference.

Frame of reference is everything. To a character who spent summers at Grandma’s, it’s not simply the blue couch in the parlor; it’s Grandma’s sacred slab of dusty blue granite. To a carefree bachelor, it’s not a twelve-year-old girl; it’s a whiny tween suffering through Nikes instead of Yeezys.

This personal frame of reference often overtakes more logical, objective methods of description. Only narrators immediately know such details as another character’s exact height or age. The viewpoint character must make a guess: a woman so short he’d need to fold in half to kiss the top of her head, a guy about Mark’s age but with less gray hair.

It would be hard to get too specific with these judgments. People are opinionated. They have beliefs, and hopes, and prejudices about virtually everything they encounter. Don’t be afraid to be judgmental; you’re only letting your character out of the corral.

3. What Characters Are Stewing About

Most people have some sort of agenda at any given moment. What’s on the calendar for today?

This dynamic is supercharged for story characters, who are actively struggling toward specific scene and story goals. Like any of us facing a potentially eventful day, characters mentally and emotionally home in on their goals. Are they on the right track? Is today the day they’ll succeed? Or will all the cards come tumbling down?

Even the smallest actions, such as what a character chooses for breakfast, can be influenced by their goals for the day. If today’s the big presentation, will they eat a carefully balanced meal, pound a half dozen donuts, skip food to avoid nervous heaves, or forget about breakfast entirely? The way your character approaches these details reveals what they think is important.

Filling in the Blanks

Dialogue and thought, including vocabulary and syntax, are the external clothing of character voice. What does the character’s speech reveal about their upbringing, education, and experience? Will readers notice favorite words, phrases, or sayings? This characteristic language creates a neat, recognizable package for readers.

Just don’t forget what’s on the inside, as well.

Peering through a character’s lens into the world is often simpler to carry out after the first draft. Once all the story things are on the page, there’s more room to figure out how the character would view them.

At that point, it’s time to add color. How could you describe every person, place, and thing in a way that reveals something about how the character views it? What do those elements evoke for the character? Dialogue, description, backstory and facts, setting—virtually every element of the writing can be shaded through this personal lens.

Is using character voice to inflect the entire story a characterization technique or a description technique? The answer is yes. #wink

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post Build a Character’s Voice from the Inside Out appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.