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Professional Wednesday: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings, part VI — Final Thoughts

This week I close out my Professional Wednesday feature on “Beginnings, Middles, and Endings” with some general observations about narrative structure. If you are just coming to this series of posts, I would recommend you go back and read the previous entries on openings, middles (here, here, and here), and endings.

Not surprisingly, I stand by all I have written in the preceding essays. But I also think it is worth pointing out that everything I’ve written in this series of posts thus far assumes a linear approach to narrative. And for writers who are at the start of their careers, still learning their craft and/or still trying to break into the business, that is the safest approach to storytelling, if not the most exciting or innovative. The three-act narrative structure has been around for a long time. Lots of creative careers have been built on it. One could argue that the entire movie industry was founded upon it, and did quite well for a long time, thanks very much.

But for many of us, the real fun begins when we take apart that traditional narrative structure and piece it back together again in ways that are less predictable and more challenging, for creator and audience alike. There are so many fine examples of this, I hardly know where to begin. William Faulkner’s masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury, is the first one that comes to mind. In it, Faulkner tells the story of a tragically dysfunctional Southern family by focusing on the events of four days as experienced by four different point of view characters. Each section adds crucial details of the family’s rise and fall, until the final point of view brings all the previous elements together into a coherent whole.

One of my favorite novels of all time is Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner, which consists of two narratives, one of an older man coming to terms with the looming end of an unhappy life, and the other tracing the life of his mother, which the man reconstructs as he reads through her journals. The two narratives intertwine and feed one another in unexpected and poignant ways.

Many of you are probably familiar with Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction, which interweaves several storylines, playing with chronology, coincidences, and chance encounters to create a fascinating (albeit bloody and graphically violent) fractured whole.

No doubt you can think of many other examples — together we could go on for pages and pages pointing to all the innovative narrative structures we’ve encountered, be it in novels, short stories, movies, television episodes, etc.

My point in presenting these posts was to familiarize readers of my blog with the basics of traditional, linear narrative structure. Because before we as artists start breaking the rules, we need to KNOW the rules and even master them. Miles Davis and Charlie Parker didn’t start off their musical lives creating jazz classics that sounded like nothing that had come before. They started by learning their craft and by becoming virtuosos of well-established jazz styles. THEN they innovated and changed the world.

The other thing to remember is that straying from narrative traditions doesn’t always work. The examples I have given, and those you can think of, are the ones that were successful and memorable. As many as we might think of, I’m certain they represent a minute fraction of those that have been attempted. The vast majority likely fell flat. And even those that are part of successful works are not always worth emulating.

The end of The Lord of the Rings (the books, not the movies) actually has two climaxes. There is the final battle with Sauron’s army which coincides with Frodo and Sam’s final ascent of Mount Doom and the fight with Gollum over the fate of the Ring. From there the book starts to wind down, with the coronation of Aragorn and leave-takings and resolutions to so many relationships. But then the hobbits return to the Shire and we have the second climax, “The Scouring of the Shire,” which sees Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin having to rally their fellow hobbits to defeat Saruman and Wormtongue. The books were successful obviously, but that is not a structural quirk I would recommend for any beginning writer or established author.

Islevale compositeWhich is another way of saying that innovation for the sake of innovation is not necessary or advised. Yes, it’s fun and challenging to write books or stories that don’t conform to simple linear narrative. I learned that with the Islevale Cycle, my time travel/epic fantasy series. And if you have ideas for playing with chronology or otherwise changing up your narrative style, by all means give it a try. But don’t feel that you have to. There are plenty of books, movies, plays, and stories out there that conform to regular old narrative form, and they do just fine. Better to write a story in the normal way and have it come out well, than to change things up just for the purpose of doing so, and thus leave your audience confused.

Keep writing!!

Angry Robot Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Falstaff Books, Islevale Cycle, Thieftaker Chronicles, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings, part V — What Makes a Good Ending?

Continuing my Professional Wednesday feature on “Beginnings, Middles, and Endings,” (previous posts can be found here, here, here, and here) I now turn to endings. And I will begin by stating the obvious: The ending to our story is likely the most important part of the story arc. Yes, the beginning hooks our reader, which is crucial. And the vast middle carries the plot and the character arc, which is even more essential.

But a book can recover from a weak beginning if its narrative and characters are strong enough, and a flaw in our plot line can be overcome with compelling character development. There is, however, no recovering from a poor ending. Even if the rest of the story is perfect, a narrative climax that fails to fulfill the promise of those early pages and/or a denouement that leaves readers unsatisfied can spell doom for a novel or piece of short fiction.

So, how do we get it right? What are the necessary components of a “good ending?”

Time's Assassin, book III of The Islevale Cycle, by D.B. Jackson (jacket art by Robyne Pomroy)Those are not easy questions to answer. As with beginnings and middles, there are as many ways to approach an ending as there are stories to be written. Different authors like to do different things with their closing chapters. And so, again as with the other parts of story structure, we can learn how to write good endings, in part, by reading as many books and stories as possible. Guy Gavriel Kay’s stand-alone fantasy novel, Tigana, has one of the finest endings of any book I’ve ever read. It is haunting and beautiful and — surprisingly — uncertain. But it is incredibly effective. Of all the endings I’ve written, I believe my favorite is the closing to Time’s Assassin, the third and final book of The Islevale Cycle, my time travel/epic fantasy trilogy. Why do I think it’s the best? Because it ties off all the loose ends from my narrative. It hits all the emotional notes I wanted it to. My characters emerge from those final pages changed, scarred even, but also in a place of growth and new equilibrium. Also, it’s action-packed and, I believe, really well-written.

And speaking only for myself, since I am but one writer, I would say that those are the main things I want my endings to accomplish. Let me list them again, with a bit more explanation:

1) Offering a fitting, exciting climax to my narrative. This can be considered as the ending of the middle, or the beginning of the ending. I include it here because I think of it as the latter. Most of us are pretty comfortable with writing this part of our story — it’s something many of us anticipate with relish. All that hard work we do on the middle is done in the service of setting up the climax. To my mind, our narrative climax and the crucial moment in our protagonist’s character arc, should basically coincide. The lead character should achieve their full potential as the story is coming to that big moment. And so, when writing stories in any sort of magical setting, I like to have my protagonist’s magic fail them in the final “battle,” forcing them to draw instead on more relatable (for my readers) human qualities — courage, resilience, intelligence, creativity, etc. Just a personal preference.

The Loyalist Witch, by D.B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath)2) Tying off various narrative loose ends. The most important story element is the central conflict, which the climax should either settle (if the book is a stand alone or the last of a series) or advance in some significant way (if the book is a middle volume of an extended series). But there are often other narrative threads that need to be concluded to the readers’ satisfaction before our audience will feel at peace with the story’s ending. These can include unresolved relationship issues (strained friendships, burgeoning or troubled romances, conflicts between siblings or a parent and child, etc.), missing information and/or secrets that could not be revealed before the climax ran its course (this is especially common in mysteries like the Thieftaker stories), or character arc and narrative arc issues involving secondary characters and storylines. Part of the so-called “denouement” involves wrapping up these additional story threads.

3) Hitting those final emotional notes. In a sense, this is part of #2. But I list it separately because I believe it to be so important to what we do in our final chapters. Readers don’t simply want the story to wrap up in a nice, neat package. They want emotion. They want something cathartic and moving and memorable in those last pages. I’ll be blunt — I strive in the final pages of my book to make my readers choke up. And usually I can tell if I’ve done this because if the scene works on that emotional level, I choke up while writing it. As Robert Frost once said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”

4) Leaving my lead characters at a new equilibrium. If our stories matter, if the narrative we have woven carries weight, then our central characters ought to emerge from them as something more than what they were at the story’s outset. They should not just be the same people at its end. That diminishes the significance of what our readers have experienced. The characters might bear scars — physical and/or emotional — from what has happened to them. They might have grown in some way. As with so much of this, the changes we put them through are story-dependent. The important point, though, is that the events of the story have left their mark. And for fantasy or science fiction tales, this is true not only of main characters, but also of settings. Think of Frodo at the end of Lord of the Rings, and think as well of the Shire, and of Middle Earth. There is continuity, but there is also lasting impact from all that has occurred.

5) Hinting at what is to come. Clearly, this can pertain to middle books in a series. We want our endings of those middle volumes, or of stand-alone books in an ongoing serial (like Thieftaker), to offer some glimpse of what awaits our heroes. We don’t have to do a lot of this. I’m not suggesting ending on a cliffhanger. Indeed, I don’t like cliffhanger endings at all, in any context. But we do want at least to nod in the direction of what might happen next. And to my mind, this is true of the final volume of a series as well. Most stories end with key characters still alive and looking to the next “chapter” of their lives. What might those chapters look like? We don’t need a lot of such information. But a hint — the continuation of that burgeoning romance, a better relationship between characters who have been at odds. The last line in Casablanca — “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” — is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. We know Rick and Louis will be fighting for the Resistance. We don’t know precisely what that might mean, but we are happy to be left with the image of them as brothers in arms.

This is a long post, but I managed to get in much of what I needed in order to cover the topic of endings. Next week, some final thoughts on story structure.

Until then, keep writing!

Angry Robot Books, Bell Bridge Books, Belle Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Islevale Cycle, Radiants, The Chalice War, Tor Books, Winds of the Forelands, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings, part IV — Keeping Our Plots Tight

Today, I bring you one more “Middles” post in my several-weeks-long feature on “Beginnings, Middles, and Endings.” You can find past posts in the series here, here, and here.

I made the self-evident point a couple of weeks ago that the vast middle of any book is by far the largest segment, which is why I have spent a few weeks on the subject. At the same time, though, there are as many different ways to approach the middle (and the beginning, and the ending) as there are books to be written, which is to say there’s an infinite number. And so there are only so many specifics I can offer. This, it seems to me is especially true of the middle. Beginnings share a common purpose — we use them to hook our readers. Endings seek to cap off our narratives, tie off loose ends and, perhaps, hint at additional story elements to come in subsequent volumes.

The purpose of the middle is to tell the story. How’s that for vague?

As I say, the middle can take readers literally anywhere. That said, though, I believe strongly that every scene in the vast middle has to serve a narrative purpose. This is one reason why I tend to rely on an outline when I write. Even if that outline is rough and purposefully sketchy, it helps me organize my thoughts and plan out my story. I don’t do it because I’m OCD. (I mean, I am OCD, but that’s not why I outline. Or at least it’s not the only reason. Okay, moving on . . . .) I do it because I don’t want wasted pages in my manuscript. I want my pacing as taut and clean as it can be.

Shapers of Darkness, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Romas Kukalis)I am currently reading through my Winds of the Forelands series, editing OCR scans of the books in order to re-release them sometime in the near future. Winds of the Forelands was my second series, a sprawling epic fantasy with a complex, dynamic narrative of braided plot lines. At the time I wrote the series (2000-2006) I worked hard to make each volume as coherent and concise as possible. Looking back on the books now, I see that I was only partially successful. I’m doing a light edit right now — I’m only tightening up my prose. The structural flaws in the series will remain. They are part of the story I wrote, and an accurate reflection of my writing at the time. And the fact is, the books are pretty darn good.

RADIANTS, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Belle Books)But when I hold Winds of the Forelands up beside the Radiants books, or the Chalice War novels, or even my Islevale Cycle, which is my most recent foray into big epic fantasy, the older story suffers for the comparison. There are so many scenes and passages in WOTF that I could cut without costing myself much at all. The essence of the storyline would remain, and the reading experience would likely be smoother and quicker. — Sigh — So be it.

Again, the purpose of outlining, and the purpose of revising and editing, ought to be to make our work as concise and focused as possible. I can think of several books by big name authors that have in their vast middles scenes that meander, that serve little or no narrative purpose, that (in my opinion) actually detract from the larger story. I won’t name the books or authors, but chances are you have come across similar scenes in books you’ve read. Maybe you’ve encountered the same ones I’m thinking of. This is the sort of thing we want to avoid. Big name authors can get away with doing this occasionally. Authors seeking to break into the business, or mid-list authors looking to move up the ladder, simply can’t.

So, how do we avoid those superfluous, serve-no-purpose scenes?

Well, as I’ve said already, one way to avoid them is to outline. I know there are many dedicated so-called “organic writers” out there, and I respect that. Again, I outline loosely, precisely because I want to maintain the organic quality of my writing. Still, outlining really can help keep us from straying from our crucial plot points.

So can something called Vernor’s Rule. This is a writing principle I have discussed before in various venues. Allow me to explain it again here. “Vernor” is multiple Hugo-award winning author Vernor Vinge, who is best known for such books as A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness In the Sky. For a time, he and I had the same editor at Tor Books — that editor is the person who first told me of Vernor’s Rule.

Vernor’s Rule goes like this: There are basically three things we authors do as storytellers. We advance our plots, we build character, and we fill in background information. (Yes, this oversimplifies things a bit, but if you think about it you soon see that all we write can be placed under these three broad headings.) Every scene we write should be doing at least two of these things simultaneously. Preferably, each scene should do all three things at once. If a scene only accomplishes one of these things, or — heavens forbid — none of them, our narrative has stalled and we need to rework the scene.

Got that? If not, read the paragraph again — it sounds more complicated than it is. Really. It means essentially that writers need to multitask all the time. Every scene, every passage, ought to accomplish several things at once. That’s how we keep our narratives moving. That’s how we tackle the vast middle.

Next week we start endings. As it were.

Keep writing!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings, part III — The 60% Wall

Today, I add to my series of posts about “Beginnings, Middles, and Endings,” with a continued focus on the vast middle of the novel. If you wish to go back and read my first two essays in this feature on openings and middles-part I, feel free to do so. We’ll wait.

Ah, very good. Moving on . . . .

Seeds of Betrayal, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Gary Ruddell)I have spoken before about the recurring problem I have with manuscripts at about the 60% mark. For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, which afflicts many writers — not just me — it is fairly simple to explain. When I write a novel, I tend to make fairly steady progress until I approach the final third of the narrative. At that point, I run into a wall. And this has been true from the very start of my career. I didn’t recognize the pattern until one afternoon, while working on my fourth or fifth book. I came downstairs after a frustrating day, and Nancy asked me how my novel was coming.

“It’s awful,” I said. “There is no story here. I don’t know what I was thinking. The whole thing has fallen apart on me, and I have no idea how to move forward.”

“Ah,” said she, without surprise or very much sympathy. “So, you’re about 60% in.”

Cue heavenly light and revelatory music sung by angels. Because, yes, I was 60% in. Apparently, I complained this way, at this exact spot, with every book.

As I say, this is not all that uncommon. Lots of writers struggle with a similar wall. For some it comes a little earlier, for others a little later. But I would suggest that it is caused for all of us by the same basic dynamic in our process.

For the first 60% of our narrative (again, your percentage may be slightly different) we are doing what comes naturally to us writers: namely piling layer after layer of awful shit onto our protagonists. We set them up with lives — with love and security and comfort, with friends and family and colleagues, with belief systems and confidence and purpose. And over the course of 250 pages, we strip all of that away. We throw tragedy at them. We place them in danger. We rob them of the things they need and love most.

Those of you who don’t write fiction might, at this point, ask why we do this. That is a topic for another series of posts. The short answer is, we are horrible human beings, possessed of unbounded cruelty, bordering on sadism. But we are also sane enough (barely) to understand we ought not to do all these terrible things to REAL people. And so we do them to our characters. Also, it makes for really good reading. And what that says about the rest of you, I will leave unspoken . . . .

In any case, after we have done all these awful things to our characters, we suddenly realize (for me at around 60%) that we have to start repairing some of this damage. We can’t end the book with our heroes tied in knots, their lives destroyed, their spirits broken. Because while readers might enjoy watching us torture the poor dears, they also want us to offer them redemption and a new start after all is said and done.

All kidding aside, the problem in plotting comes at that pivot point, the place where the tide finally turns and the main characters start to work their way out of crisis. Setting up all the bad stuff is actually pretty easy. Getting characters to move beyond it, to find their way to a new equilibrium — that’s hard.

So, how do we get past that wall? How do I defeat the 60% block again and again and again?

First, breathe. Our story has not suddenly blown up. The situation is not hopeless. This is no time to give up our dreams of being a writer and turn to orthodonture. Seriously, that turning point is never easy, and writing is not one smooth exercise in creation. Fits and starts are part of the process. So relax. There IS a story here, and there is a way to get our heroes to where we want them to be. But we have work to do. I can’t tell you how many aspiring writers have unfinished manuscripts that break off at this pivot point. Let’s not allow ours be one of them.

Second, we need to think about the ending we have in mind for our novel, and then work backward from there, step by step. What needs to happen in order for our narrative and our characters to get to that finale? Take notes, make a reverse outline, plot point by plot point. In doing this, we may realize that we need to make some revisions to the first 60% of the novel — adjustments that make the ending possible. That’s fine. This is our first draft. No one will know but us. Yes, we might even have to kill a darling or two. That’s part of being a writer.

Third, if the 60% problem still seems intractable, we need to look for places where our story as it reads now has deviated from what we had in mind when we first conceived of the narrative and its ending. Maybe we have taken a narrative detour, or added in a new character, or killed someone off who it turns out we need. Again, this is draft. Rewrites are part of the process. So if we have stuff to fix, so be it. Or maybe we keep those deviations in place and have to rethink our ending. That works, too. But we might need to make some adjustments.

Finally, we keep moving forward no matter what. Don’t give up. Don’t retreat into those rewrites now. We’ll make notes on all we have to revise in the earlier part of the book, and then we will finish. Because that’s what writers do.

Remember, the pivot is hard for all of us. We can overcome it. If we couldn’t, there would be far, far, far fewer books in this world.

Keep writing!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Thieftaker Chronicles, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings, part II — Narrative Structure

Last week, I began a new Professional Wednesday feature called “Beginnings, Middles, and Endings,” in which I plan to write about the various parts of story writing. In last week’s post, I focused on openings, on how to approach the beginning of a novel or short story.

This week, I take on middles, and I imagine this will be the first of a couple of essays on the subject. Because let’s be honest: By far the biggest chunk of what we write is the “middle.” Even if we take the first two or three chapters as the opening, and the last two or three as the ending, that still leaves the vast majority of our novel occupying the middle. So any discussion of how to handle that middle is going to have to touch on several topics. And today, I am beginning with a general overview — the 10,000 foot view, if you will.

Thieftaker, by D.B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath)First, though, it occurs to me that in writing about openings last week, I left out one crucial, but easy-to-describe story element: “the inciting event.” The inciting event of your narrative is, quite simply, the thing that jump-starts your story, that takes the characters you have introduced in your opening lines from a place of relative stasis to a place of flux, of change, of tension and conflict and, perhaps, danger. It is the commencement of the narrative path that will carry your characters through the rest of the story. In his description of the Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell referred to the inciting event as the “Call to Adventure.” If you’re looking for examples, think of the arrival of the first letter from Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, or the appearance of Gandalf at Bilbo Baggins’s door in The Hobbit. In pretty much all the Thieftaker books and stories, it is the arrival of whoever Ethan’s new client will be for that episode.

Your inciting event can be anything. Whatever launches your narrative, taking your lead character from a place of balance and peace to one of conflict and tension. And really, that’s it. We can make it more complicated, but it doesn’t need to be.

This description of the inciting event allows me to segue into a broader discussion of story structure, since any formula for narrative will include the inciting event. The most common storytelling model — the one that comes up most when I have conversations with fellow writers — is the three-act structure. This is a fairly simple and helpful framework by which to organize our narrative. Act One is the “Setup” and includes an introduction to our characters and setting, as well as the inciting event and an early climax. Act Two is called “Confrontation.” Here our story takes off, with ever-increasing action and tension, a series of obstacles placed in the path of our heroes, a midway-point plot-twist, and ultimately a crisis that precipitates a second story climax. Act Three, “Resolution,” features our story’s resolving climax, a diminution of action, and finally a denouement that resolves outstanding issues, eases tension, and, in most cases, leaves our characters changed, but at relative peace. You can Google “Three Act Structure” and find essays about this approach as well as visual representations of the structure. I should add as well, that there is also a five-act structure that I find less compelling and useful than this one.

Okay, confession time.

When I write, I never think in terms of “Acts” and I don’t graph out my chapters to make certain I am following the schematic one sees in the results of the aforementioned Google search. It’s not that I find fault with the three-act structure, or try to avoid it in any way. To the contrary. I expect that I use it in every project; if you were to superimpose one of those graphics onto the narrative structure of any of my novels, you would probably find that I write in three acts all the time, following the model quite closely.

What I said was, I don’t THINK in terms of “Acts.” I never have. Not even with my earliest novels. I believe by that point I had already thoroughly internalized the three-act structure, having been exposed to it in novels, movies, television shows, theater, etc. for pretty much my entire life. Writing in that form came as second nature.

Now, that is not to say that those who do organize their novels and stories using the three-act structure have somehow failed to internalize it as I did. Not in the least. The model is so prevalent that I think all of us have it ingrained to some degree, even those who don’t create stories for a living. This is why two writers, one who outlines and one who writes without any narrative plotting written down ahead of time, can both come up with tales that closely follow this structure. As with a written outline, I think of the three-act structure as a narrative tool, something some writers use to organize their thoughts ahead of time. I outline by chapter. Sometimes. I also write without an outline. Sometimes.

And without actually visualizing my story as a three-act graphic, I almost always write in three acts. So why don’t I think in those terms as I’m writing or even outlining? I suppose I am leery of imposing any predetermined structure on my story planning. Even if I wind up following the structure, I want it to happen organically, without the sort of premeditation that might convince me to plot according to pattern rather than according to the exigencies of my story, my characters, my creative vision.

Where does this leave our conversation, and what does it mean for whatever advice I might offer in this first post about story middles?

First, pay attention to the structure of movies and television shows you watch and books you read or listen to. The best learning tools at your disposal are the narratives crafted by creators you enjoy and respect.

Second, even if you don’t plot strictly according to the three-act structure, be aware of the rough pattern illustrated in those visual representations. You want to have an inciting event, a huge twist near the middle, and a deep crisis for your protagonist near the climax. You want your narrative tension to climb until your final climax. And you want there to be resolution at the end.

Third, write your story. Just write it. Get it down on paper (or phosphors). Don’t obsess over structure and whether you have every plot point in the right place. Write it. Finish it. And then, if the structure needs adjustment, handle that in revisions. Your story need not conform to anyone else’s concept of what “narrative” should look like. Write it as you imagine it. And if you decide to “fix” things later, make sure you do so in service to the story YOU want to tell, not the structure someone else says is “correct.”

Keep writing.

Bell Bridge Books, Belle Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Radiants, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings, Part I — Openings

This week, I launch a new series here in the Professional Wednesday feature — “Beginnings, Middles, and Endings.” Sometimes I focus on minute details of writing in these posts, arcane points of craft or business that are helpful to some, but perhaps less so to others. With this series, I am, at least for a few weeks, returning to basics of storytelling. Because while we can focus on all sorts of small points to improve our writing, the fact is we’re all storytellers, and it never hurts to reconsider the fundamentals now and then.

Today, let’s start with beginnings (“A very good place to start,” to borrow from The Sound of Music). To state the obvious, your opening lines, paragraphs, and pages are where you want to hook your reader. I spend a great deal of time — a disproportionate amount of time — crafting my opening page. I want my readers to be wowed by the time they start reading page 2. I want them to have decided on that very first page that they cannot/dare not/will not put this book down until they have finished reading it. (Yes, they can pause for meals and sleep, but only because I’m a generous soul.)

There are, of course, as many ways to hook a reader as there are stories to be told and authors to tell them. My wonderful friend J.D. Blackrose (Joelle Reizes) begins her book A Wrinkle and Crime with a single sentence that is laugh-out-loud funny. Readers are hooked in mere seconds. Guy Gavriel Kay, another good friend and probably my favorite author, tends to ease into his novels a bit more, allowing his gorgeous prose and the slow build of his brilliant storytelling to draw readers in.

RADIANTS, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Belle Books)I fall somewhere in between. I don’t think any of my novels have a single opening sentence that grabs readers by the collar (that’s actually pretty rare), but I do try to capture my readers’ attention early. My best book opening, I believe, comes in Radiants (Bell Bridge Books, 2021):

The first time I did it, my mom, who is about as chill as any parent anywhere, hit me. Slapped me across the face. This was after I confessed. She never would have known if I hadn’t told her, and still she hit me. That’s how pissed off she was.

She told me it was a violation, which I didn’t even understand at first. I thought she meant it was against the rules—like a violation in sports—and I had pretty much figured that out when she slapped me. But no, she meant violation in a way I’d never heard the word used.

An invasion. A rape of the mind. She called it that, too. Her slap shocked me. When she called it a rape, I started to cry. I swore I’d never do it again, and she made me promise on my dad’s grave, something she hadn’t ever done before. I did, and I meant it.

I was twelve at the time. About the age my brother is now, and you just know Mom is aware of that. Hyper-aware.

I honored the promise I made that day. I had been tempted in the weeks and months and years since. Many, many times. But never once did I break my vow. Not until today.

Why do I like this opening so much? Well, let’s break it down. Our opening should hint at conflict and tension. It should introduce a key character — a central protagonist or antagonist. It should establish voice. And it should intrigue or excite the reader with action or mystery or romance or some other compelling plot feature. This opening to Radiants does all of those things in about half a page. The conflict and tension are right there in the first graph, with the slap from an otherwise mellow parent. Clearly this narrator did something really bad — and we want to know what it was. These graphs, and her confession, establish the narrator as someone we trust and want to know more about. Already we know she has faced tragedy, as indicated by the oblique reference to her father’s death, and we know she has a younger brother. We get a sense of her voice from the informal tone of the prose. And with that last line we want to know more — about her and what she is going through. This terrible thing she did, this thing that angered her mother so much, she has just done again! Today!! Why? And we’re off and running . . . .

As I said, there are an infinite number of ways we might open our books. There is no single right way to do this (or really anything else in writing). But there are some things to avoid in our opening passages. One of the most common errors I see in the opening paragraphs of short stories and the opening pages of novels, is an over-reliance on exposition. Often beginning writers are so eager to explain their worlds, tell us all there is to know about lead characters, and show the cool stuff in their magic systems or imagined technologies, that they dive into descriptions and explanations. The problem with this? There is almost no tension or conflict in exposition and background. Tension and conflict come from character and narrative. So save the exposition for later. Or, better yet, do away with it entirely and find other, more creative and compelling ways to reveal your background information.

Some writers err on the side of the other extreme. They are so eager to plunge the reader into action that they have on page one some serious, terrible stuff happening to their characters. The problem here is that we don’t yet know the characters well enough to care about them the way we ought to before they’re put through the wringer. As in so many aspects of writing, we want to find balance. We don’t want to bore readers with too much character background, but we also don’t want to overwhelm them with spectacle at the expense of introducing our lead characters.

There are a few things beginning writers are told they should never, ever do with their opening lines. “Don’t begin with your character waking up.” “Don’t start with the literary equivalent of a weather report.” (“It was a dark and stormy night . . . .”) “Don’t open with a dream sequence (and then have the character wake up).” The problem with these sorts of openings is they’re overdone to the point of cliché. That said, it may be that you’ve found a way to open with a character waking up that is perfect for your story and is unlike any other waking-up-opening the world has ever seen. In which case, go for it.

As long as your opening feels original and organic to the story, you should be fine. And originality is most likely to come from your characters. Anchor yourself firmly in the point of view of whoever your narrating character is for the opening scene, and then tap into their emotions, thoughts, and sensations. Make it visceral, make it powerful. Ultimately, the best opening will be one that is compelling, intriguing, and, of course, written with eloquence and passion.

Next week (and perhaps the week after), Middles!!

In the meantime, keep writing.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Tor Books, Winds of the Forelands, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Trust Yourself. No, Really.

Rules of Ascension, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Gary Ruddell)Trust your reader.

This is editor speak for “trust yourself.” It is something I say often to many of the writers I edit.

But what does it mean?

I have had my own lesson in “trust your reader” in recent days as I have begun the long, arduous task of editing for reissue the five volumes of my Winds of the Forelands epic fantasy series, originally published by Tor Books back in the early 2000s, when I was still a relative newbie. My editor at Tor used to tell me all the time to trust my readers, and so I assumed — naïvely, it would seem — that back in the day he and I had caught all the instances where I didn’t trust my reader. But no. It seems there were so many of these moments, that he had to engage in a sort of editorial triage, catching only the most egregious and leaving the rest.

Yes, I know. I still haven’t defined the phrase.

Seeds of Betrayal, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Gary Ruddell)As I say, “trust your reader” is essentially the same as “trust yourself.” And editors use it to point out all those places where we writers tell our readers stuff that they really don’t have to be told. Writers spend a lot of time setting stuff up — arranging our plot points just so in order to steer our narratives to that grand climax we have planned; building character backgrounds and arcs of character development that carry our heroes from who they are when the story begins to who we want them to be when the story ends; building histories and magic systems and other intricacies into our world so that all the storylines and character arcs fit with the setting we have crafted with such care.

Bonds of Vengeance, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Romas Kukalis)And because we work so hard on all this stuff (and other narrative elements I haven’t even mentioned) we want to be absolutely certain that our readers get it all. We don’t want them to miss a thing, because then all our Great Work will be for naught. Because maybe, just maybe, if they don’t get it all, then our Wonderful Plot might not come across as quite so wonderful, and our Deep Characters might not come across as quite so deep, and our Spectacular Worlds might not feel quite so spectacular.

And that would be A Tragedy.

Shapers of Darkness, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Romas Kukalis)Okay, yes, I’m making light, poking fun at myself and my fellow writers. But fears such as these really do lie at the heart of most “trust your reader” moments. And so we fill our stories with unnecessary explanations, with redundancies that are intended to remind, but that wind up serving no purpose, with statements of the obvious and the already-known that serve only to clutter our prose and our storytelling.

The first few hundred pages of Rules of Ascension, the first volume of Winds of the Forelands, is filled to bursting with unnecessary passages of this sort. I explain things again and again. I remind my readers of key points in scenes that took place just a dozen or so pages back. I make absolutely certain that my readers are well versed in every crucial element (“crucial” as determined by me, of course) in my world building and character backgrounds.

Weavers of War, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Romas Kukalis)As a result, the first volume of the series was originally 220,000 words long. Yes, that’s right. Book II was about 215,000, and the later volumes were each about 160,000. They are big freakin’ books. Now, to be clear, there are other things that make them too wordy, and I’m fixing those as well. And the fact is, these are big stories and even after I have edited them, the first book will still weigh in at well over 200,000 words. My point is, they are longer than they need to be. They are cluttered with stuff my readers don’t need, and all that stuff gets in the way of the many, many good things I have done with my characters and setting and plot and prose.

I have always been proud of these books. I remain so even as I work through this process. People have read and enjoyed all five volumes as originally written despite the “trust your reader” moments. I actually think most readers pass over those redundant, unnecessary passages without really noticing them. They are not horrible or glaring (except to me); they’re just annoying. They are rookie mistakes, and so I find them embarrassing, and I want to eliminate as many as possible before reissuing the books.

But our goal as writers ought to be to produce the best stories we can write, with the clearest, most concise narratives and the cleanest, most readable prose. “Trust your reader” moments are a hindrance — one among many — to the achievement of that goal, and so we should be aware of the tendency and work to eliminate these unnecessary passages from our writing.

Mostly, we should remember the translation — “trust your reader” means “trust yourself.” Chances are we have laid our groundwork effectively, establishing our worlds, developing our characters, setting up our plot points. If we haven’t, a good editor will tell us so and will recommend places where we can clarify matters a bit.

So, remember that less is usually more, that showing is almost always better than telling, that most times when we stop to explain stuff we rob our stories of momentum.

And most of all, remember to trust yourself. You’ve earned it.

Keep writing.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Eliminating Excess Verbiage, Part II

Last week, I revisited an old Magical Words post I’d done about eliminating excess verbiage in our writing, putting a new spin on the discussion. As promised, I would like to continue that conversation today.

Before I dive back into the topic, though, I would like to address what might seem like a basic question: Is more concise always better? To my mind, concise is ALMOST always better. I can imagine situations — perhaps when writing a period piece, or trying to do something stylistically with a particular narrative voice that we want to be stuffy and verbose, or scattered and therefore wordy — in which concision is not a desired goal. But those are pretty specific instances. For the most part verbosity is not a style, but is rather a hindrance to effective storytelling. In general — and again I will accept that there may be a few exceptions to this — wordiness gets in the way of flow, of clarity, of linguistic precision. Others might disagree, and I would be open to debating the issue over beers. But I am skeptical of any argument that presents excess verbiage as a virtue.

In last week’s post, I covered passive writing, distancing phrases, and using mannerisms of speech in our prose. Let’s move to this week’s topics.

Adverbs: Yes, there are Adverb Authoritarians out there who will tell you that every adverb is an abomination, that none of them is necessary. I disagree. Used sparingly, adverbs can add to our prose, refining the meaning of our sentences and bringing more clarity, not less. Having said that . . . . A few years ago, when I edited the three volumes of my LonTobyn Chronicle in preparation for their re-release, I found way, way too many adverbs in the text, and I eliminated ninety percent of them. For the most part, adverbs add clutter, and often wind up being redundant.

So often, in my own older work as well as in the stories and books that I edit for others, I have found constructions like these: “He glanced at her briefly.” “She tapped lightly on the door.” “They ran quickly across the field.” None of those adverbs (“briefly,” “lightly,” “quickly”) is necessary. A glance is always brief; that’s why it’s a glance. A tap is light by definition, as opposed to a “knock” or a “rap” or a “pound.” And running suggests relative quickness. You rarely hear anyone say, “They ran slowly” (unless they happen to be commenting on my running speed . . .). Again, I would be reluctant to say “never use adverbs.” But I would say before using them, make sure the word is needed. More often than not, I believe you’ll find they add little to your narrative.

Weakening words: I am SO guilty of this one. I constantly need to look through my work to weed out words like “somewhat” and “a bit” and “slightly.” Or else I start phrases with things like “He found that . . .” or “She tended to . . .” All of these words make my prose mealy and soft, wordy and weak. It’s not that EVERY phrase has to be definitive and strong. Of course there are times when we want to soften a statement or qualify it in some way. Words and phrases like these become problematic when they occur as crutch words, as things we throw in without thinking because we can’t find a better way to write the sentence. And all writers do this on occasion. I have a list of manneristic words and phrases that crop up in my prose. When I finish the first draft of a manuscript, I do universal searches for all the crutch words on that list and I do my best to eliminate as many of them as possible. And too many of them are weakening words like these.

Beginnings and starts: These are a bit like passives, in that they clutter up and weaken verb phrases. Instead of “He ran,” we write “He started to run,” which says essentially the same thing with less power and in twice as many words. In almost all instances, we don’t need to be told that a character “started” or “began” to so something. A few sentences ago, they weren’t doing it. Now they are. We can assume that somewhere in the interim, they started doing it. This really isn’t complicated.

Now, as with many of these other issues, some instances of “started” or “began” are necessary. There are moments when the initiation of a certain action is, in fact, significant and worth noting. But those moments are pretty rare. For the most part, in my experience editing other people’s work and revising my own, I find these phrases to be empty and unnecessary.

Dialog tags and name checking: I could devote an entire post to writing decent dialogue and tagging speakers in subtle, effective ways. Actually, I’m sure I have written such a post. Still, it’s worth repeating a few key points. We don’t need tags for every line of dialogue. I often go through early drafts of my work and take out tag after tag after tag. As with other writing “rules,” I don’t subscribe to the “never do this” approach to dialogue tags. There is a place in good writing for “She said” and “He asked.” I’m merely pointing out that we often overuse these phrases. I would suggest you read through your dialogue and remove any tags that are not needed to clarify who is speaking when. In conversations between just two characters, that will be most of the tags. In conversations involving several characters, tags become crucial clarifying tools, requiring us to keep a far higher percentage of them.

“Name checking” refers to having one character address another by name in written dialogue. In most cases, we simply should not do this. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and initiate a conversation right now with a friend or a partner or someone else in your life. And use their name in every other sentence. “How was work today, Nancy? Did you have lots of meetings? Who were they with, Nancy?” Etc. It won’t take you long to realize that you sound ridiculous.

Now try doing it every fifth sentence. That will sound ridiculous, too. Trust me. Aside from moments when we’re calling to one another from another room, or something of that sort, Nancy and I can go for days without using each other’s names. Most of us are like that. Name checking makes our characters sound weird and unrealistic. And it clutters up our prose.

Keep writing, whatever your name might be!

Bell Bridge Books, Belle Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, The Chalice War, Writing, Zombies Need Brains

Professional Wednesday: Eliminating Excess Verbiage, Part I

The Chalice War: Cauldron, by David B. CoeAs I mentioned in a recent post, I have been doing a tremendous amount of editing and revising these past several months. Between co-editing (with Edmund Schubert) the Artifice and Craft anthology for Zombies Need Brains, revising my upcoming Chalice War trilogy, and working on manuscripts for clients of my freelance editing business, I have been through literally half a million words of text! And that is to be expected. Books and stories require careful editing and committed revision to reach their fullest potential.

During this time I have noticed, in my own work and in the prose of others, certain phrases and verbal habits that make our writing wordier, and therefore less effective, than it needs to be. Last week, I drew upon one of my old Magical Words post for inspiration to revisit a writing issue, and I thought I would do the same thing this week. Our topic today: cutting excess verbiage.

Just about all of us use more words than we should in our initial drafts. Hence that need for editing I mentioned above. With experience comes the ability to catch at least some of our worst writing habits. And yet, I have been writing professionally for more than twenty-five years, and I still fail to see all of them on my first revision pass. Fortunately, I have a wonderful editor who catches the wordy constructions I miss. (Be forewarned: She’s not editing this, so . . . well . . . yeah.)

Still, in revising my own work, and editing that of others, I have noticed a few patterns that all of us should watch for in our prose.

Passive constructions: Passing writing takes a number of forms, but at its most basic it uses weak verb constructions that rely on forms of the verb “to be.” These include “is,” “was,” ”are,”“were,” etc. Instead of “He ran” or “she speaks,” passive writers might say, “He was running” or “She is speaking.” Yes, in these examples passive constructions add only one word, but the damage goes far beyond word counts. Passive writing can flatten our prose, making it less powerful and less impactful. Or, put in another, stronger way . . . . Passive writing flattens our prose, robbing it of power, of impact. To state the obvious, we can’t remove every “to be” verb construction from our writing, at least not without relying on tortured syntax. Sometimes there is no other way to say what we want to say. (See what I did there?) We can, however, look for every opportunity to change a weak, passive phrase into a strong, active one.

Distancing phrases: When writing fiction, we should always be in a character’s point of view. Usually I try to avoid blanket statements of hard and fast rules, but I feel strongly about this. Point of view is the greatest tool we possess as writers. We should use it. One reason why? POV makes distancing phrases “he felt,” “she heard,” “they saw,” etc. unnecessary. “She heard cannon fire booming in the distance.” “He felt the house tremble with the rumble of thunder.” Those sentences are fine, but they’re unnecessarily wordy. In each case, we’re in a character’s point of view, and so the “she heard” and the “he felt” are redundant. If she experiences the sound, we KNOW she heard it. If he experiences the movement of the house, we KNOW he felt it. So . . . . “Cannon fire boomed in the distance.” “A rumble of thunder shook the house” or “The house trembled with a rumble of thunder.” Either works. Both are better than the original construction.

How about this one? “They could see dust rising from the road as a company of horsemen approached.” Here we have lots of unnecessary verbiage. Starting with the “They could see.” Again, we’re in a character’s point of view, and that character is part of the “they.” We also have the “as” phrase, which less experienced writers also tend to overuse. If we present cause and effect with clarity, words like “as” and “while” become unnecessary. So . . . “Horsemen approached, dust billowing from the road in their wake.” More concise, more powerful, more evocative. When we use words like “saw,” “felt,” “heard,” we TELL our readers what is happening. With more direct language, we SHOW them, which is always preferable.

Including mannerisms of speech in our prose: Humans are, as a species, remarkably inarticulate creatures. When giving advice on writing dialogue, I often tell writers to have their characters speak not as we do, but as we wish we did. This by way of eliminating “er”s and “um”s, “you know”s and “like”s, and all the repetitions and circularities of everyday speech. But there are other ways in which our speech patterns infect our prose. Just a moment ago, I started a sentence like this: “One thing we can do to improve our writing is . . . .” That is a TERRIBLE phrase. Just awful. I caught myself immediately and rewrote the offending sentence. Often, however, such phrases slip by our internal editors and find their way into early drafts. When we speak, we use roundabout constructions like that one to gather our thoughts, and we do it without even thinking. It’s a way of answering a question or opening a conversation with something other than a) silence, or b) inarticulate rambling. The thing is (and yes, “The thing is” is another example of the same phenomenon) when we write, we don’t need those filler phrases. Indeed, we don’t want them. They add clutter to our writing. We can’t possibly anticipate all the nonsense phrases that might slip into our prose in this way, but we can watch for them, recognize them when they crop up, and eliminate them.

Next week, I will continue this discussion of excess verbiage in our written work.

For now, keep writing!!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Thieftaker Chronicles, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Adding Characters To Spice Up a Story

Many years ago, several of my writer friends and I were involved in a joint online venture — a writing blog called Magical Words, where we offered writing advice for free. We posted new content nearly every day, each of us taking one day out of the workweek to write, we commented on one another’s posts to create a writing dialogue, and we garnered a pretty significant following. The roster included regulars Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, A.J. Hartley, John Hartness, C.E. Murphy, Stuart Jaffe, Edmund Schubert, and me as well as a host of terrific guests including James Tuck, Mindy Klasky, Lucienne Diver, and Gail Martin, to name just a few. I know, quite a line-up, right?

How To Write Magical WordsWe kept the site going for nearly a decade (thanks Todd Massey), and the site still exists, for those interested in wading through the extensive archives. We also produced a writing book, which is still available.

I bring all of this up because recently I have been thinking about the advice I offered on that site, with the idea of revisiting some of the topics. And I’d like to begin doing that today . . . .

I have posted before about different ways we might breathe life into a story, book, or series that has gone a bit stale. This is a fairly common problem, one I have dealt with throughout my career, and one I have thought about recently as I contemplate what I might do with a new Thieftaker installment, or a return to one of my other projects.

A great bit of advice in this regard comes from Faith whose approach to the problem is fairly simple, not to mention ruthless. When your plot starts to feel flat, she has often said (paraphrasing here), kill off a character. This will change your story’s dynamics, give your writing a burst of emotional power, and almost certainly result in shifts in narrative tectonics you can’t even anticipate. And I agree with this: It’s a great way to shake things up. But there is another way to breathe life into an older project, and it’s actually the direct opposite.

One of my favorite characters in the entire Star Trek franchise was Ensign Ro Laren (played by Michelle Forbes), the Bajoran-rebel-turned-Starfleet-officer. She was introduced to viewers of Star Trek: The Next Generation in an outstanding episode that aired in the 5th season, and it was clear from her very first scene that she would be a terrific character. She was surly and abrasive, disdainful of authority and deeply proud of her Bajoran heritage. Starfleet was always portrayed as the ultimate melting pot — characters from different planets were expected to subsume their native cultures to the shared values of the larger organization. She refused, which made her compelling, fascinating even. Adding her to the cast shook up the somewhat tired dynamics of the show and yielded several memorable episodes.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, another of my favorite series did something similar in its third season, when it introduced a second slayer, Faith Lehane (Eliza Dushku) to the mix. Faith joined Buffy’s Scooby-gang, but she brought a rebellious, morally-ambiguous quality to the show that had been missing previously. She disrupted Zander and Willow’s friendship, defied Giles’s authority, corrupted Buffy, and eventually turned on her, becoming a dangerous rival. Again, the addition of a new character altered familiar dynamics and infused the franchise with new drama and energy and power.

A third example: My favorite show of all time is The West Wing, which, in its second season, introduced a character named Ainsley Hayes (Emily Procter) to the Bartlet White House. Ainsley was a Southern conservative Republican, whose political views were diametrically opposed to those of Josh, Sam, C.J., and Leo, and whose keen intelligence and sharp wit made her a worthy foil for all of them. The West Wing hadn’t had time to grow stale at that point, but Aaron Sorkin, the show’s creator and chief writer, seeing the potential for such a thing, acted preemptively. By adding Ainsley to the cast, he sent the show in new and unexpected directions and brought additional tension, humor, and resonance to a show already brimming with those qualities.

Three different shows, three powerful, dynamic women added to the storylines. In each case, the addition of one character completely altered the tone and feel of the series.

The lesson here should be fairly obvious. Yes, killing a character can jump-start a plot. I use that approach quite often. But adding a character can do much the same thing. And if I am working on a longer project — a multi-book series — I often find that killing off someone important isn’t enough to infuse the franchise with the needed energy. Introducing a new character, however, particularly someone who is going to prove disruptive to my plotting and uncomfortable for my established characters, can really shake things up. And sometimes that’s exactly what we need.

Storytelling is about conflict and tension. When we find a book or series going flat it is usually because those two qualities — conflict and tension — are missing, or at least lagging. That’s why it’s not always enough to add just any new character. Sure, a new love interest or sidekick can spice things up a little. But if this new person fits in too comfortably, the point of adding them might well be lost. If instead we bring in someone who is going roil the metaphorical waters, we stand a much better chance of achieving the desired result: namely more drama, more emotion, more trouble for all concerned. Our readers will eat it up.

Keep writing.