An Unbending Honesty

In my previous post about finding what’s wrong in your work, I said that I think writers need to understand the structure of a scene to identify what’s wrong with a scene.

Another thing I strongly believe a writer needs is an unbending honesty with himself. This means you have to tell yourself the truth, not what you want to hear. This is tough to do, especially if we’re in the habit of smoothing our own ruffled feathers in other aspects of our lives. If we’ve learned how to pat ourselves on the head and make ourselves feel better over real-life issues, we should at least suspect that we’re capable of doing the same thing when it comes to our writing.

If you want to strive for excellence, you need to be honest—both about what’s wrong with your work and what’s right. No running yourself down relentlessly, indulging in false modesty and refusing to acknowledge your strengths. No glossing over your weaknesses.

One thing I clearly remember from my early days as a writer was making the decision to read the work in hard copy rather than on the screen when I’m revising. I think doing that is one of my subconscious triggers. As long as it’s on the screen, it’s “mine.” Once it’s printed on the page, I find it easier to distance myself from it. To read it as if someone else wrote it. Unless I do that, I can’t honestly determine whether I’ve hit the bar I’ve set for myself.

The first time I sat down to read a manuscript I wrote from beginning to end, I talked to myself long and hard about forgetting that I’d written it so I could approach it with some detachment. I believe this is another key element in being able to identify what’s wrong. As long as we remember that it’s our work, we retain a deep personal attachment to every word, to every scene, to every idea on the page.

When you sit down to read something you’ve written—whether it’s a page, a scene, a chapter, or an entire manuscript—remind yourself that nothing is sacred. Absolutely nothing.

It doesn’t matter how long or hard you’ve worked on a scene, how much you like a particular description or phrase—if it doesn’t fit, if it doesn’t feel right, it needs to go.

If a character or a location isn’t working, he goes, she goes, or it goes. Absolutely nothing is sacred. Absolutely nothing is safe.

If you’re approaching your work feeling protective in some way, determined to preserve, to fix, to keep what you’ve written, you are automatically shutting down some of the internal voices that will help you identify problem areas before you even begin.

To find the flaws in what you’ve written, you have to remain logical. Logic and sentiment don’t work well together. Sentiment will allow you to keep contrived and unbelievable situations because you like them or you don’t want to work as hard as you need to in order to fix them.

If you’re a discriminating reader, logic will pinpoint those problem areas immediately. You’ll know what works and what doesn’t. And that’s when you need to remember that ideas are just ideas. Words are only words.

Much as we like to talk about pouring our blood and our souls into our work, ideas are still just ideas. No matter how often we wax eloquent about the “book of my heart,” words are still just words.

When you’re looking at a scene, a chapter, or an entire manuscript and trying to figure out what’s wrong with it, remember that you’re looking at the whole picture, not just a single element. If you’re focused on a beautifully written sentence, for example, you might not be able to sense that it’s actually making your character seem weak or ineffective, or that it’s making a character behave out of character. You might not recognize that the character’s motivation is weak, or that the emotion you’ve written for her is contrived.

Remember also that an idea doesn’t make a plot. Ideas are everywhere. Some ideas can be spun into plots, but ideas and situations are not plots all by themselves.

Plots have—here comes that word again—structure.

If you don’t fully understand what your plot should be doing, it will be very difficult to identify when your plot isn’t doing it.

Does your plot have an inciting incident that’s big enough to drive the plot forward? Are your characters sufficiently motivated to keep them moving when things get tough? Does your scene contain actual conflict, or is it full of anticipated or remembered conflict?

Is your character spending too much time thinking about what just happened or what’s going to happen? It’s possible that too much time in his own head will make him feel self-centered and selfish, and that you’re losing sympathy for him without even realizing it?

Is he falling in love with a weak character or one who is TSTL (Too Stupid to Live?) Is the antagonist he’s facing too weak to present a challenge that will keep readers engaged? Are you relying on an unrealistic coincidence to either move your plot forward or bring it to a conclusion?

Do you have actual turning points, or is your plot plodding along on a predictable path? How many times has your protagonist thought about his or her goal, motivation and conflicts? Are you presenting new information to the reader, or are you rehashing stuff they already know?

Be honest with yourself. Don’t ignore those flickers of doubt. Don’t automatically assume the doubt is justified, either. But at least give it some honest consideration before you duck and run.

If you feel that something’s wrong with your story, but you don’t know what it is, ask yourself when you last felt that the story was absolutely right. Go back to that point and read what you’ve written to see if you’ve taken a wrong turn.

Have you forced a character to follow a pre-determined path just because you once decided that’s what needed to happen? Should you have listened to the character when he said that’s not how he felt and wanted to go in another direction?

Another big question I would have for anyone who has trouble identifying what’s wrong in their own work is: How much do you read?

I’ve said this before, and I’m certainly not alone. Reading is not optional if you want to be a writer.

Are you reading at least one book a week?

When you read, what are you reading? Are you reading the work of authors who are where you want to be? Are you reading outside your chosen genre? Are you opening yourself to ideas beyond what other authors in your genre have used? Even if you're writing sweet contemporary romance, you can learn a lot from someone who writes fantasy or action/adventure or mystery, or even (gasp!) literary fiction.

If all you ever read are books from one genre, how will you identify if you're relying on genre cliches to carry your work?


Are you constantly and consistently studying the medium in which you’re trying to work, or do you put off reading, (the necessary study of your craft) because there are other things to do?

Do you write consistently and regularly? When you sit down to write is there any discipline involved in what you’re doing?

If the answer to any of those questions is no, then I have one more question for you—how do you expect to understand what’s wrong with your work?

If you’re not working at your craft—and I mean really working, not playing, not talking about it—if you’re not actively trying to improve your understanding of the craft and practicing what you’ve learned, and stretching yourself a little more every day.

If you’re not studying by immersing yourself in the work of other authors who are where you want to be, then how do you expect to know when you get there?

As I said before, you need to clearly understand where you’re heading before you’ll even have a clue whether or not you hit the mark.

You need to earn the understanding you’re looking for. No one can hand it to you. You can’t learn it from reading a book--or even this workshop. The best teacher in the world, the best critique partner in the world, the best how-to book in the world can’t do a thing to help you if you’re not willing to help yourself.

And willing doesn’t mean intentions. Willing means action.

Yes, we can learn from others. I wouldn’t write this blog or offer workshops if I didn’t believe that. But ultimately, we learn from doing. We learn by write by writing. By trying someone else’s technique or suggestions, seeing if it works for us, and either keeping it or discarding it.

We learn by trying new techniques and perfecting the old.

So go.

Write things!

So You Want to Plot

To create a plot that will hold the reader’s attention from beginning to end, we need to begin at the tip of the iceberg, not at the summit, not on the downhill slope. We begin at the tip and then force out characters to go up, over and across the iceberg, not around it where the going is easy.

We make them face every dangerous moment as they traverse the obstacle that’s in their way. We don’t lessen the danger. We don’t send help. We don’t toss them a rope or put a ladder under their feet.

Start with what each of the characters in your story wants. Make sure it’s something they can’t achieve or acquire easily. It should be something they can’t ask another person for and can’t run out and buy. It took me a long, long time to realize that a character who doesn’t really want something—and want it badly—is next to impossible to motivate in difficult situations. As a result, I ended up putting those characters into contrived situations, and then wrote myself into very deep corners I had trouble getting out of.

To avoid my mistake, make sure your character wants something so badly he’ll do almost anything to get it. Make it something he aches for or something upon which his future, or the future of others, depends. The character’s motivation must be strong enough to propel the story forward, even when you’ve boxed him into a corner.

Does that concept make you recoil? Do you think it’s too extreme?

You want to write about simpler things. Stakes that aren’t quite so high. Passion that’s a little less ... passionate. Wants that are less earth-shaking, less life-altering.

But do you really?

If the people you’re writing about aren’t one-hundred percent committed to pursuing their goals, willingly or not, they’re going to be too easily discouraged when things get rough. They’re more likely to back down, turn away, give up, move on, shift goals, and go after something else until things get rough.

Once you give a character an out, he’ll probably take it. If he doesn’t, what comes next may feel contrived.

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To write really compelling fiction, you must write about people who are completely committed. Passionate people who are willing to fight for what they want and keep going after it in the face of obstacles, right or wrong, wise or foolish. Just keep your idea in view, your motivation appropriate, and the people in your story behaving in character.

A word of warning (another lesson learned by doing it the other way): Characters who want to achieve a negative goal, to avoid something, to prevent something, to run from something, also make for unworkable (or very tough) fiction.

If you create a man who wants, for example, specifically, not to fall in love, anything you put into your plot that makes him fall in love is likely to feel forced. Why would a person who truly wants to avoid the opposite sex open the door, even a little, for that perky Heroine you’ve just shoved under his nose?

People who want negative goals (who want to avoid creating something new in their lives) don’t have to actually do anything to accomplish their goal. In fact, all they really have to do is keep doing the same thing they’re doing now. Creating a character arc for someone with a negative goal is difficult and painful because making that character move and change requires you, the author, to lie, Readers can always, always, always feel a lie, even if they can’t identify it as one.

Books about people who don’t change, move, grow, or step outside their comfort zones are generally not well received. Books about people who make changes, move, grow and step outside their comfort zones unrealistically also get a lackluster response from the reading public.

We want to read about someone with a problem he can’t avoid, a plan for getting around it, and the courage to take active steps toward succeeding with the plan.

Instead of having your romance hero wake up in the morning vowing never to fall in love again, let him want something instead—something that gets him moving forward. He’s accepted the fact that he won’t find love again, but he wants desperately to regain the respect he once had from people in his chosen field. Because he wants a positive (respect) rather than a negative (to not fall in love) he may reluctantly open the door for that perky Heroine he views as a negative because she offers the means to the end he seeks.

Thinking about your plot in those terms can give you goals for your characters, motivation that keeps the story moving, and believable conflict all in one! 

To Plot or Not to Plot

No doubt you’ve heard (and probably participated in) debates over which is best—plotting in advance, or writing off into the mist. I have no doubt that you have a preference, because just about everyone does. 

Although we can sometimes get into heated debates, we all know that there really is no right or wrong way. No one-size-fits-all solution to the question of how to get from the beginning to the end of your novel. The important thing is to achieve the desired effect, to pull readers into our stories and keep them hooked from the first page to the last.

Whether you plot before you begin to write, as you begin each section of the book, or sit down every day with no conscious idea where your book will be going that day, we all plot. Even those who write into the mist plot in some way at some time, either consciously or unconsciously, or they wouldn’t end up with a story.

But let’s begin at the beginning.... What is plot? 

Plot is probably the most often-heard term when writers get together to discuss fiction. Most people consider it the essence of fiction. Without plot, there is no story. While some people begin with plot and then look for characters to enact that plot, others begin with interesting people and discover their plot by looking into the characters’ lives. Either way, plot is story.

There are many definitions of plot floating around out there. Plot is

• an ordered structure of significant events;
• the story of strong forces meeting and one of them triumphing over the other for better or worse;
• a record of change.

 An ordered structure of significant events. Okay, I guess that’s true. If I’m describing my plot to an editor, an agent, or a potential reader, I’ll want to give an ordered structure of story’s significant events, so yeah. That describes plot as I know it. 

Plot is the record of strong forces meeting and one triumphing over the other, for better or worse. I agree with that, too. Plot is all about the conflict, about a person who wants something, meeting strong forces that keep him from getting what he wants, and his eventual triumph over or defeat by those forces. 

Plot is a record of change. I agree with that, too. Change alters people’s fortunes, their thoughts, and their beliefs—even if it’s only long-held beliefs about themselves. Change is what readers come to the book to find. I doubt you’ll ever run into a reader who picks up a book hoping for 400 pages in which everything in the characters’ lives remains exactly as it was on page 1.

Plot is also a force upon the people in your story, often called narrative drive. This drive is the relentless forward movement of events, and the details related to those events, that pile up until the whole teetering tower collapses into the final conflict—those climactic scenes that make the story worthwhile.

We need that force working on the people in our stories because, again, readers don’t come to the book to find out what happens in the life of someone who never experiences something beyond their control, never ends up with their back against the wall, or never has to fight their way out of a bad situation. So change isn’t enough. It needs to be a change that challenges the character to climb higher, dig deeper than s/he ever has before.

It’s a rare person who will stick with a book about nice people to whom nice things happen repeatedly until the story ends. As an author, I wouldn’t know when to stop writing if the people in my book had nothing to conquer or nothing to concede defeat to by the end. 

Readers need plot—that relentless forward movement—to keep them hooked. Authors need plot to know when and where to begin, and when and where to stop. 

In the past, I've worked with many confused writers who had no clear idea of how and when to begin the book they want to write, no clear idea where they’re going, and no clue where to end. This is a horrible feeling. It leaves a writer feeling unequal to the task they’re facing, which might be okay if they weren’t driven to face that task, tackle the book, and conquer it—a mini-plot in itself!

We’re all terribly afraid that our plots won’t work and worried that we are the rare thing among writers—the one and only author who can’t come up with a perfect plot.

Rest assured that there is no such thing as a perfect plot, but in Plotting the Organic Way, we'll focus on creating plots that are as close to perfect as humans are capable of creating—and, more importantly, plots that work.

To quote author Stella Cameron,

 “What doesn’t work in a plot is what doesn’t work. If the reader stops, frowns, re‑reads, and stops again—there’s something very wrong.”

There may be different causes that bring about the pause. Perhaps the inadvertent loss of viewpoint control throws the reader for a loop, or maybe it’s a slip in chronology, or maybe the author’s failure to create a setting the reader can see and feel. Maybe it’s an illogical or unbelievable reaction by one of the characters, or a decision no sane person would ever make. Or it could be a reaction, a situation, or a decision that was obviously contrived for the convenience of the author but which has nothing to do with reality. All too often it’s an inconsistency in plot ... which we'll have to discuss later. 

I've discovered that I'm neither plotter nor "pantser." My style falls somewhere in the middle, a plot style I like to call organic. What kind of plotter are you? 

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Plotting the Organic Way: A Dancing on Coals Workshop for the Fiction Writer coming soon to a Kindle near you! 

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