Storytelling for Pantsers

by Annalisa Parent

  This is the moment in your novel where all of the story movement leads to a yes/no or either/or decision.

  In a character-driven plot, your protagonist’s life changed, gotten shaken up and now s/he has ended up in a spot where s/he will have to make a decision that will change his or her life forever.

  In a plot-driven plot (that sounds funny, doesn’t it?), there will be some turn of events that will impact all that we’ve been building up to. Perhaps the bad guy has captured Bond: Will Bond escape and save the day, or will he be eaten by sharks as he is slowly submerged into the tank?

  The bottom line here is: one decision. The protagonist has to choose one course that precludes all others.

  We’re so over Zeus

  Now look, the Ancient Greeks were cool and all—they threw great parties, the kegs, the togas.

  Hmm, wait a minute. What am I talking about?

  No cheating.

  Many Ancient Greek playwrights used a plot technique called Deus ex machina; this is when God steps in to save the day.

  Groan.

  Why? Why do we groan when a neat solution appears from nowhere? You’re reading this book about a brave hiker who gets separated from his group, survives a hail storm inside a hollowed out tree, eats grubs, tries to start a fire but can’t, climbs and climbs and climbs that mountain looking for some sign of civilization, but he can’t even hear the distant hum of planes, trains, or automobiles.

  Finally he finds a vantage point where he can see, and what’s that? A small town about a mile away as the crow flies. He could get there before sunset. A ray of hope! At last. He turns to run down the path to salvation when a big ole bear lumbers up, licking his chops like “Man” is on the menu tonight.

  Now Joe Hiker has a choice: battle the bear or jump down the steep rocky cliff. He looks back and forth: cliff, bear. Cliff, bear. The bear moves in closer and takes a swipe at Joe’s shoulder. The paw is bigger than Joe’s head. He’ll have to jump, but, oh no, look at all those sharp rocks. Vertigo sweeps through his body, and the bear lets out a growl.

  Poor Joe—how can he decide? Exit, pursued by a bear?1

  And suddenly a helicopter swoops in…

  Cheated.

  Why? You invested time in caring about Joe Hiker, and you were cheated from the satisfaction of knowing his decision, of taking that journey with him. Something swooped in from outside the story as we’ve known it so far. You’ve been robbed.

  Don’t rob your readers. Make your protagonist make a choice.

  The trick here is length. I’ve read books where the resolution feels trite and just one step above “And they lived happily ever after.” I’ve read books where the author drags out the resolution on and on and on. There’s no hard and fast rule, but keep in mind that you want to wrap up all or most of the questions you posed in the rising action.

  Remember that not every plot line needs to have a happy ending, or needs to be tied up neatly. It’s ok to have some ambiguity. After all, that is the realistic situation we all live in. Modern literature (Twentieth century and beyond) began by picking up some of the ambiguity of the human condition and, as time went on, began to revel in it and even make its absurdity and abstraction a centerpiece.

  In a world where moral absolutes seemed evasive, ambiguity became the order of the day.

  It’s up to you how tightly you want to tie your loose ends, and how much you want to leave up to the reader’s imagination.

  Also, consider this: if you are thinking of a sequel, the resolution’s a really good place to leave a few loose ends to pick up in the next book.

  ____________

  1 Can you name this obscure Shakespearean reference? #ObscureCultural- References See the FINAL COMMENTS section for the answer.

  WHAT IS PACING?

  IF PLOT IS THE order of events, pacing is the rate of the events; it’s how you maintain tension.

  When I was a kid, my brother and I thought the song “There’s a Hole In the Bucket” by Harry Belafonte was hilarious.

  Henry’s got a hole in his bucket and he doesn’t know how to fix it, so he asks his wife, Liza, for a solution. She suggests a stick.

  Poor Henry. He’s having a bad day!

  The stick is too long (problem)

  Cut it (solution)

  With what shall I cut it? (problem)

  An ax (solution)

  The ax is dull (problem)

  Sharpen it (solution)

  The song goes on and on like this in a pattern of problem/solution. This structure is a good example, in a microcosm, of the tension relationship that should be happening in your rising action. Will Henry ever fix the bucket? Let’s keep turning pages and see. What makes us turn pages? There’s a new problem.

  Not only do we turn pages, but the tension here is both balanced and economical. For every problem, there’s a solution, and no problem or solution is extended longer than the others.

  We’re going to talk about those attributes in detail in this section, but first, let’s talk about the relationship between pacing and the revision process.

  As I mentioned before, for pantsers, the writing is in the revision. I would further argue that the revision is in the pacing.

  Before we can address pacing and do it justice, we need to know if we’re ready to revise.

  How do you know when you’re ready for revision? Read on, my friend.

  Are we there yet?

  Writers ask me all the time, “How do I know when my book is done?” Well, it’s never done, but you can sense when it’s complete: when all the characters arcs are tidy, and the plot arc comes round. There’s no science to this one; it’s just an overall feeling of wholeness to your piece.

  When you’re at that point, you’ve filled in as many blanks as you can see, you’re ready for revision.

  Can you think about pacing in the prewriting and writing stages? Sure, but it is a far more useful consideration in the revision stage.

  Something I’ve never seen any other writing book or course do is address when in the writing process to start thinking about each of these elements.

  That’s the hard part, right? Figuring out when to do what.

  This chapter is going to help you to start thinking about that process.

  To that end, this Secret Sauce is a big hint!

  Here’s another hint: The most important element to keep in mind as you are working through the revision is the reader’s experience.

  A writer once told me that the worst writing advice he’d ever gotten was to write for the reader. Shouldn’t you write for yourself? he asked. Once again, we have a case of a guru giving advice without telling the recipient how to use it. (Are you as frustrated as I am with that kind of feedback?)

  Yes, you should write for yourself. And you should write for your audience. What do I mean? Remember the creative phases we talked about in the brain? The question of for whom you are writing functions in much the same way. The first draft, when you are just getting the story out (Ok, we all know it usually takes more than one draft), is 100% self-indulgent bubble-bath luxury. It is all about you, the author, playing, exploring and enjoying yourself.

  But in the revision phase (remember we were talking about revision?), you keep your eye on your reader.

  So, if the three most important things to keep in mind when buying a house are: location, location, location; then the three most important components of revision and pacing are: audience, audience, audience.

  There are two main components to quality pacing: balance and economy.

  Balance and economy are similar in that they both consider the quantity of any given element you add, refocus, eliminate, or change altogether.

  Let’s step back into the kitchen. Everything in a recipe works in relationship to everything else, right?

  So, “How much pasta do I need?” is going to depend on the flavor I am going for. Two pieces of pasta for a whole can of sauce wouldn’t work very well. There has to be a balance.

&
nbsp; Let’s explore: Some people put sugar in their spaghetti sauce, and a little goes a long way! Using just a little is economy, but the ingredient (sugar, in this case) is still acting in proportion to the other ingredients—one teaspoon may be underwhelming in a pot to feed an army, and overwhelming in a single serving.

  Similarly, the elements of quality writing are always working in balance with one another (Balance) and in reasonable proportions to one another (Economy).

  THE SECRET TO THE SAUCE

  Balance i.e. How much pasta do I need to balance out the sauce?

  Economy i.e. How much is too much/too little based on how much of the other ingredients I have?

  I’ve broken the pacing sections into two subsections (balance and economy), but keep in mind that, like all of the other elements we’ve talked about, in practice they are intertwined.

  Let’s step into the kitchen again. Scratch that. Even better, let’s step into the dining room.

  We’re sitting down for pasta night and I hand you a hot, steaming, delicious breadstick, just the right amount of melted Parmesan and sea salt. Before you take a bite, do you want to chat about the amazing attributes of yeast and flour?

  Probably not.

  Your mouth is watering because of the effectiveness of the interrelationship of the ingredients. The attributes of each one are irrelevant—when they work together well. When they don’t, we all know, whether we’re talking breadsticks or novels, right? We feel when something is out of balance, there’s too much of something, not enough of something else.

  This effective intertwined, well-crafted mess is what you’re shooting for and what we’re going to talk about: how these two ingredients work together to create a quality reader experience—a third entity greater than the sum of its parts.

  Please pass the Gestalt.

  BALANCE

  Stake and a side of fries

  AH, THE PARIS BISTROS and their quintessential steak frites. Imagine people-watching, gathering information about human behavior—our quirks, our gestures—not far from the Palais Chaillot. You jot notes in your leather-bound notebook and sip your miniature cup of espresso.

  But I digress, and all for the sake of a cute title.

  The real point here is that there must always be steak, er, stake in your writing.

  Always having something at stake is the underlying principle behind each of the points I am going to guide you through in this section.

  The great novelist Henry James wrote in The Art of Fiction: “What is character, but the determination of incident? What is incident but illustration of character?”

  As you can see in the diagram above, these two elements push one another forward through the novel.

  Notice that we have here another vortex, a cyclical pattern with increasing strength. What’s at stake for the character pushes the incident. What happens moves the character. And around and around we go. Not only is a vortex the nature of novel writing, but of the novel itself. (Whoa, meta!)

  I Gots to Use It

  Once upon a time, I was a Kindergarten teacher with the Teach for America program in the Mississippi Delta. My students used a colloquialism I found both charming and endearing. Rather than ask, “May I go to the bathroom?” they would say, “I gots to use it,” usually accompanied by a pee dance.

  Here’s how you’re going to use this gratuitous anecdote: You’ve got to create a sense of urgency in your writing. You’ve got to go now. We need an answer now.

  Remember there’s a balance, but even over breakfast, there needs to be something at stake. Don’t waste a single moment of your novel.

  Urgency and stakes are two sides of the same coin.

  Stakes are what the author creates.

  Urgency is what the reader feels.

  Use whichever perspective helps you to create a page-turner. (We’ll talk in depth later about how to do that, but every quality novel needs to have a heavy dose of one of these main ingredients.)

  Let me play with urgency for a moment. (Indulge me. Remember what I said about the importance of play to creativity.)

  I can’t take it anymore, she thought as she fumbled with the house keys. That damn door.

  It was another thing she’d asked David to fix, one of things he’d “get around to.”

  “I’ll get around to it, honey.” How many times had she heard that as the spoon clinked in the glass, stirring round and round? Chocolate milk. Cinnamon milk. Cinnamon blueberry milk.

  It was an obsession.

  She jiggled the key and finally found the sweet spot.

  If he puts that milk jug back in the refrigerator one more time without the lid, I will walk out without a word.

  The door swung open on the third push, and Doris nearly dropped the heavy grocery bags hanging from her wrist.

  She fumbled her way across the living room toward the kitchen to the now too familiar dirge: Clink. Clink. Clink.

  “Hi hon.” David looked up at her from the open fridge, his arm extended into the white light.

  Doris bit her lip as she heard the familiar thud of the heavy jug hit the shelf.

  She closed her eyes, unsure how long she could carry the heavy load.

  He shut the refrigerator door and turned to her. “

  Have a good day?” David asked as he lifted the glass of milk to his lips.

  You want to know, don’t you? Is there going to be a milk cap on the counter when she gets to the kitchen? Is she going to leave him? Look, I just made you care about a milk cap.

  Now this is just an exercise in silliness, and this story isn’t really going anywhere, but the point is: Use urgency, create and maintain tension in every object (doors, grocery bags, and, yes, milk caps), every gesture, every thought or word spoken.

  Try it. Let me know how it goes.

  REMEMBER THAT LIFE’S A GREAT BALANCING ACT

  —DR. SEUSS

  There’s a lot to balance in life, and there’s a lot to balance in fiction.

  In fiction we need to balance emotional intensity, action, and character complexity.

  What you need to balance and how you need to balance them will depend largely on what type of plot you are working with.

  As we saw in the plotting chapter, both plot-driven and character-driven plots have elements of action and emotional depth, but plot-driven novels focus more intensely on action than character development, and character-driven novels do the converse.

  This fact is going to influence what needs to be balanced in any given novel.

  If you’re working on a character-driven novel, you’ll need to balance the emotional intensity of the overall piece.

  If you’re working on a plot-driven novel, you’ll need to balance the pacing of the action.

  Remember: There are no hard and fast rules here. Every novel contains elements of action and character development. Balance is always essential. What I mean is: Don’t skip ahead to the next section. (I knew what you were up to.) Just because you write plot-driven novels doesn’t mean you don’t need to understand the importance of balancing emotional intensity, and vice-versa.

  Emotional Intensity

  One of your jobs as a writer is to evoke emotion. Ever cried at a movie? Quality writing.

  (Personally, as a child, I excused myself to the bathroom at the end of The Sound of Music Every. Single. Time. so no one would see me tearing up. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that. My secret’s safe with you, right?)

  Evoking emotion is a great responsibility. Consider these two friends.

  1) The Drama Queen. Everything’s urgent. Everything’s a disaster. Everything’s certain death and no solution.

  2) Mr. Understatement. He’s the guy who breaks his back, hobbles himself to the hospital, then mentions it non-chalantly six months later. He’s Mr. Buttoned Up. My lips are sealed. I-got-nothin’ Dude.

  Ok, so maybe you’ve got these people in your life, and a whole bunch of normal friends. (Is there such a thing as normal friends?) It’s an
average Saturday night, you want to hang out, whom do you call?

  Normal friends. Almost every time. Right?

  Why? We like to limit our emotional extremes, in general. Sure, we hang out with the others sometimes. We like them; they may even entertain us. (They definitely entertain us.) But they can be exhausting.

  Spending time in emotional extremes demands energy from us. It’s ok from time to time, but we don’t, typically, make it a lifestyle. We are, for the most part, programmed to avoid living in emotional extremes. (Remember the brain and its stress response?)

  And yet...

  The rules of writing are nothing like the rules of real life.

  In real life we censor ourselves, leave out the gory or embarrassing or overly personal details of the stories we tell about our daily lives.

  In writing, we have to be so brutally honest about the human emotional reality of the situations we portray, we are left feeling exposed—if we have done our job right.

  Good writing is—unlike all of the people with which we are surrounded—and even ourselves, if we dared be totally truthful about it—honest to the point of purity.

  Perhaps this is why those of us who love to read have such a deep connection to quality writing: Its honesty is such a relief, so compelling, such a breath of fresh air, that we miss the characters-turned-friends once we’ve come to the end of a good yarn.

  Good writing is that guy you invariably end up sitting next to on the plane who wants to tell you every detailed encounter with the junior high bully, or every hobby his grandkids ever pursued…except when it’s good writing, it’s actually interesting. The story is compelling even though you’re not male or have never crossed paths with your school’s bully or have no kids nevermind grandkids. It has an emotional reality to it so convincing that not only do you believe it, you feel it—and you want more.