The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes

by Jack M. Bickham

  Let's look at the structure of a scene just a bit more to make sure you understand how it works and why summary is lethal to its effectiveness.

  To have conflict, you have to have two people with opposing goals. They have to want the same thing, or Character A must want to thwart Character B's immediate goal-motivated quest. Therefore, to start a scene, the first thing you have to do is have one of your characters (usually the viewpoint character) clearly state or show what it is he wants. Once that goal has been demonstrated or stated with complete clarity so the reader can have no doubt about what's at issue, then the other character to be in the scene must say, in effect, "Oh, no you won't"—and start the fight.

  The fight, the conflict, makes up the bulk of the scene. If it's over a simple issue, the scene may take only a couple of pages to play for all its worth, although most scenes tend to run a little longer than that. In this portion, the characters try different tacks, varying arguments; they struggle for the upper hand. They do not just stand there, in effect yelling at each other "Yes, I can!" and "No, you can't!" Every step of their maneuvering is covered in detail.

  In a dialogue scene (the most common kind), the maneuvers are verbal. In an action scene, the maneuvers might involve a destroyer crisscrossing over a submarine, trying to hit it with depth charges. In any case, one goal-motivated entity tries something; the other parries and tries something else; the first entity responds with still another stab. And so on, back and forth, no summary, following the rules of stimulus and response.

  While this struggle takes place, the readers are bound to worry. While they might worry about a lot of things, the main thing they'll worry about is the scene question.

  What's the scene question? It's the inversion of the stated scene goal.

  Here's what I mean. If you start a scene by having the destroyer commander say, "We have to sink that sub!" Readers will turn the goal statement into a scene question: "Will they sink the sub?"—and worry about it. If you start your scene with the young woman saying, "Mr. Jones, I have come to ask you for a job," your readers will turn that stated goal into a question, and worry whether the heroine will get the job she wants. Readers are willing to worry about virtually any scene goal, as long as you make clear to them that the goal is vital to the character's story quest.

  To put this another way: If the stated scene goal is clearly relevant to the character's story goal, it will be vital to that character's happiness and the outcome of the story. If the scene goal is relevant in this way, readers will see how important the outcome of the scene is going to be and will worry about it.

  The conflict portion of the scene draws readers out through a moment-by-moment drama, extending the scene suspense with pleasurable agony.

  At some point, of course—after two or six or a dozen pages—the scene must come to an end. If your readers are to feel satisfied, the scene has to end in some dramatic way. Therefore, it can't just stop; it has to provide some new twist or movement for the story.

  In addition, the ending of every scene has to be logical; it can't cheat the readers. They have eagerly read the scene, worrying about a question. So to play fair with them, the conclusion of your scene has to answer the question posed by the goal in the first place.

  So if the question was whether the destroyer would sink the sub, the end of the scene has to answer that question. If the question was whether the woman would get the job, the end of the scene has to tell whether she did or didn't get the job.

  To maintain reader tension, however—which you always want to do—you should seldom provide a happy answer to the scene question. Ideally, to keep readers involved and worried, the scene should answer the question with a bad development.

  We call this kind of scene ending a disaster.

  How do you create disaster? Whatever your viewpoint character wants, he must not get it at the end of the scene. For if he does, he has suddenly become happy... story tension relaxes... the reader goes to sleep... and your story has failed.

  So, again turning to the example about the destroyer, the captain must not clearly see that he has without doubt sunk the submarine. To the question, "Will the destroyer sink the sub?" the answer must not be a simple and unqualified yes. The submarine must escape, or shoot a torpedo through the destroyer before itself sinking, or manage to radio for help. Or possibly the submarine can be sunk, but debris proves it was a friendly sub.

  Such dynamic bad news keeps the story rolling forward.

  Any time you start to write a scene, you should go through the following process:

  1. Decide specifically what main character's immediate goal is.

  2. Get this written down clearly in the copy.

  3. On a separate note somewhere, write down for yourself, clearly and briefly, what the scene question is. Word this question so it can be answered "yes" or "no."

  4. In your story, after the goal has been shown, bring in another character who now states, just as clearly, his opposition.

  5. Plan all the maneuvers and steps in the conflict between the two characters you have set up.

  6. Write the scene moment-by-moment no summary.

  7. Devise a disastrous ending of the scene—a turning of the tables or surprise that answers the scene question badly.

  After you have practiced this procedure for a short while, I think you'll begin to see that it has within it the essential dynamic of fiction, the way fiction "works." A character wants and strives and is battered back tension increases, and so does reader sympathy; then the character strives again.

  This structure of scene... one scene inevitably leading to another scene... gives your fiction straight-line development. In addition, the structure powerfully implies something wonderful about life and the human condition. In using scene structure, you show people who struggle and try to take charge of their lives; indirectly, you are saying that people in real life can do that, too. In addition, you imply that life is not merely blind fate... that anyone can struggle and try to take their own life by the scruff of the neck, and improve it. Finally, by showing a character meeting serious disaster after such a struggle, then getting up to struggle again, you say something positive about human strength and courage.

  Please note, however, that none of this can happen—nothing can work—if the scene does not grab your readers and intensely involve them. To accomplish that, the scene must be lifelike. And the greatest danger to this verisimilitude is summary. Check out the scenes in your story. If you find inadvertent summary, by all means fix it by playing out that part of the scene in detail. Nothing less will do.

  23. DON'T DROP ALLIGATORS THROUGH THE TRANSOM

  DISASTERS—THOSE BAD TWISTS that end scenes with an unhappy answer to the scene question—often are very bad indeed. But sometimes the use of the word "disaster" confuses a new writer, and she thinks any kind of really bad thing will work at the end of a scene.

  It is said that somebody once provided a "disaster" at the end of a detective-client scene by literally dropping an alligator through the transom.

  In the fabled detective yarn, there sat our Sam Spade clone, interviewing his beautiful client in his grubby office. His goal, clearly stated, was to learn the name of the man who had threatened her life. Thus the scene question clearly was: Would he discover the identity of the man?

  At the end of the scene, according to legend, the writer realized she needed a disaster. So kerplop! over the transom of the detective's office door came a live alligator, wetly hitting the floor beside the desk and opening wide in a decidedly nasty mood.

  The development was pretty stupid in that story. Why? Because it didn't answer the scene question.

  The question, remember, was, "Will Sam learn the identity of the man threatening his client?" The alligator had nothing to do with that question.

  If so, the disaster had to answer that question. The answer could not be, in effect, "Gosh, I don't know about that, but an alligator just fell through the office door transom."

/>   That's the worst kind of cheating, the sorriest kind of writing.

  Don't do it. You'll give all of us fiction writers a bad name.

  Figure out what the scene question is. Then devise a setback, negative answer for the end of the scene, one that is bad news, logical but unanticipated, but which answers the question asked.

  In the case of the mythical scene and question just presented, it's hard to imagine how an alligator could provide an honest disaster. But it's easy to think of some disasters that would have worked.

  The answer simply could have been: "No, Sam never got an answer."

  Better yet, the answer could have been: "Yes, Sam finally got the answer, but when the client identified her threatener, it turned out to be Sam's dearest friend."

  Or it might even have been: "No, Sam never got his answer, but his persistence so angered his client that she fired him on the spot, storming out of his office and leaving him never to know—or have the income he needed from her fee."

  It isn't always easy to figure out the logical but unanticipated disaster. You can do it, though. You must, if you're going to play fair with your readers and keep your story moving forward with tension and suspense.

  24. DON'T FORGET TO LET YOUR CHARACTERS THINK

  IN YOUR ANXIETY TO BUILD your story in a straight line, with tight scene plotting, you may run the risk of plotting action so tightly that your characters never have time to catch a breath.

  Are your stories like that? Did anyone ever frown and admit that your story confused them... just a little? If so, the chances are good that your story problem lies in your failure to provide time and structure for your characters to breathe... and think.

  Most writers build components into their yarns to provide this kind of pacing time. Sometimes they may call such a part of their story a "valley." But ultimately this name for breathing time in a story is not very helpful to the writer. Long ago, I heard literature professors talk about high points in fiction as "peaks," and the quieter points as "valleys." And the terminology confused me for years until I finally figured out what they were trying to say.

  When they spoke of "peaks," they were talking about scenes. For scenes, as discussed in Chapter Twenty-two, represent the high points of excitement, conflict and reader involvement.

  When they spoke of "valleys," they were talking about quieter times in the story when conflict was not onstage in the story now—when the character had time to feel emotion, reflect on recent developments, and plan ahead.

  We call the "valley" parts of your story the sequels.

  Sequels, however, are more than just the quiet times in your story... more than little spots that provide breathing time for the character and the reader. They are those parts of your tale in which you show your character's reaction to the disaster that just took place... then planning what he is going to do next to try to get his quest back on track.

  You must not forget to provide such sequels.

  Think for a moment about times in your own life when something really bad—some disaster—befell you. What was the pattern of your response?

  If it really was a disaster, the first thing you felt, perhaps only for an instant, perhaps for months, was emotion.

  At some point, however, you stopped feeling blind emotion, and began the process of thought.

  And at some point you told yourself, in effect, "I've got to get going again... I've got to make some decision."

  This pattern, emotion-thought-decision, is the kernel of the structure of the sequel.

  In planning your story's next development after a scene-ending disaster, you must put yourself in the mind and heart of your viewpoint character: imagine her feelings, in all their shadings and ramifications; then go through with her the painful transition into thought, the wondering "What shall I do next?"; finally, imagine with and for her what that new, goal-motivated decision ought to be.

  Having done this, you will have planned her sequel.

  Now, having planned—imagined—her sequel, you ordinarily will write it. How much emotion will you portray? How many pages will you devote to her feelings, before she progresses to thinking? That will depend on the nature of the disaster that just befell her, what kind of character she is, what kind of story you are writing. In a romance, your written delineation of her emotional response may take many pages; in an action story, you may have such plot pressure on her that she must respond in some new action almost at once, without the luxury of taking time for much feeling; with a sensitive heroine you may have to devote pages to her feelings, while with a gruff woman of the world, it may be more realistic if she shrugs off the hurt almost at once, and gets on with business.

  The same is true in terms of how much page space you will give to the thinking portion of the sequel. A college professor may take many pages to think logically about what to do or where to go next; another kind of character may make an impetuous decision almost at once.

  As you take your character through these parts of her sequel, you may often be inside her head, with no one else around. Or she may talk to a friend or confidante, and "talk out" most of her sequel. In either case, since this is the feeling-thinking part of the story, and not so exciting as the scenes, you are allowed to summarize. Thus your character may look back on earlier parts of the story, or of her life. You may have a sentence such as, "She worried about it for four days, and then on Thursday..." As you work through your character's reactions and planning almost anything goes in terms of timing.

  At some point, however—perhaps sooner, perhaps later—your character must make some new decision in order to get the plot moving forward again. So you move your character to her next decision, her next goal.

  And what is that new goal? It's the goal she carries into her next scene!

  Scenes end in disasters, which require sequels. Sequels lead inevitably to new decisions based on new experience, and these new decisions involve a new goal. The moment the character acts on this new goal—and encounters new conflict—you are into the resulting next scene.

  Thus the major structural components of fiction—scene and sequel—link like the strongest chain. In the scene you provide excitement and conflict, ending in disaster, in the sequel you provide feeling and logic, and the character's decision, which leads directly into the next scene.

  In imagining your story, you probably ought to plan every sequel. In writing the final draft of the story, it may be that you will sometimes leave out a sequel in order to speed from one scene directly into the next. Such decisions are based on story type and tactics, and your "fingertip feeling" for how fast or slow the story should be at any given point. The key here is to remember that scenes move swiftly and read fast sequels tend to move slowly, and read like story "valleys." It follows, then, that if your story feels slow to you, you may need to expand your scenes and cut, or even eliminate, some of your sequels. While if your story seems to be going at an insane pace, with no characterization or logic, you may need to trim some of your scenes a bit, or expand your sequels to provide more breathing room.

  If the idea of sequel is new to you, it may help you to study some stories by other writers. Work to pick out the sequels. Notice how the author is often inside the head of a character alone, feeling and thinking about the plot action or other story people. How is the emotion shown? How are the thoughts presented? How does a writer get from random feelings to increasingly linear thought to some firm—if desperate—final decision that will lead to new action?

  Try to make every such analysis a learning experience. If it helps, make some notes in your journal, or elsewhere, about how sequels are handled. The analysis will help you enrich your own skills in handling these vital components of story.

  25. DON'T WANDER AROUND IN A FOG

  "WAIT A MINUTE. I DON'T KNOW what's going on here."

  Did you ever read a short story or novel that gave you this feeling partway through? Worse, did you ever write a story where you suddenly started feeling that way
?

  It's a pretty bad feeling when it comes during a story you're reading. But it's far worse when it happens during your writing of a story. In that case, it probably signals potential disaster.

  Of course all of us experience times during first draft when things do not seem to be going well—when all our careful planning seems to have failed us, and the plot no longer seems to work. Sometimes we can muddle through and fix things later. But even if we make a good fix and later sell the story or book, it's not fun to go through.

  It just doesn't pay to wander around in a fog when you're supposed to be putting down a story that makes sense. At best it wastes time. At worst, it wrecks your project. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to minimize such times of confusion.

  First, you should always begin with a brief statement, as precise as possible, about what your planned story is essentially about.

  Second, you should remember always to follow the story, which is to say, the line of conflict growing out of the lead character's goal.

  Third, you should beware of late-blooming ideas that seem to come from nowhere during your writing of the project.

  Some writers would protest the first advice, saying they "write by inspiration," or "do the story to see how it's going to come out." I hope you're not one of those. The more planning you do before starting to write, the better. Some writers do a detailed outline or proposal; others make elaborate notes on the characters; some make do with a scribbled page or two out of a legal tablet, sketching in a synopsis of the plot. Whatever the individual procedure may be, however, there is a central idea in such planning: Be sure you know what your story is about before you start.