AOL this morning has a story about Jack Norworth, the man who penned “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. The refrain to that song is almost as familiar as the Big Closet melody, There Are No Rules, which is chirped every time someone suggests a methodology for writing.
Rules are made to be broken, but it’s easier to successfully engage the reader if you put the ball close to the strike zone.
The other day I read a story written by one of the more revered storytellers on Fictionmania. The author started with twenty paragraphs of disclosure before commencing the action.
My fingers drummed impatiently alongside my keyboard.
The egregious sin the author committed has been named by literary agents. It’s called an “information dump”, and it will get your manuscript tossed into the trash pile faster than you can say, “There Are No Rules”.
A huge percentage of BC writers fall into this trap. They erroneously think the reader needs complete background information upfront to understand the story.
Listen carefully . . . the readers crave the pleasure of working things out themselves. They like to say, “Aha! I was right.” while information is given to them in slow dosages and the story unfolds.
The primary rule for writing is “Show” -- don’t “Tell”. Instead of telling the reader, “I felt nervous.” you might say, “My hands became one with the steering wheel, guiding my car by instinct through an anxious, morning fog.” When you write with the blatancy of the usual “information dump” you’re “Telling” the reader, and consequently robbing her of the pleasure of drawing her own conclusions and later realizing she was right. This is true of every genre, not just a mystery.
Start out with action. Make sure your hook includes enough sensory-appealing words to allow the reader to see, hear, taste, smell, and feel the world you’re creating, but don’t go on about the sunset when the reader wants to quickly dip into your tale. Establish your narrative character as quickly as possible so the reader can identify with her and experience more deeply the theme you’re driving home.
Start your story with action.
Start your story right now!
Make them smell peanuts and crackerjack. . . .
The next time you post . . . they all will be back.
They will read, read, read —
What you’ve written,
And you will gain great fame.
Make it fun, fun . . . from the first word,
That’s the whole ballgame.
Jill
Comments
I resemble that remark
Information dumps in TG fiction stories. That is something I have been accused of doing.
I might have picked up this bad practice from reading the books of a few suspense/thriller writers. A good number of TG fiction readers(or the regular complainers I've encountered) have little patience for info dumps in their rush to get to the action(The sex). You can not arrive at this too slowly for these people.
"Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?"- T. S. Eliot
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant
Le Carre Versus Len Deighton
For me Jill hits it on the head and my personal favourite comparison is the two writers I have named above. The critics love Le Carre and ignore Deighton and yet it takes a couple of hundred pages to get into a story by the first author and yet I'm riveted from word one in a story by the second,
Joanne
Yes, she has it right,
but with critics, I have noticed the things they hate are the ones I enjoy, at least movie critics and book critics are this way, to me. I mean, they were panning Avatar before it even came out, and look at what it ended up grossing. I think it is the fact that science fiction/fantasy is not recognized as art and thus looked down upon. I will never understand the pseudointellctualism of the crtics...
Diana
ps I know that the word used abouve isn't correct in it's usage (not supposed to be applieed to mass-marketed items), but it was the closest word/idea icould find. maybe faux-intellectual would work better?
peanuts and crackerjack??
Umm... yeah okay I get it, even at the other end of the world. You and I have butted heads more than once over the rules thing. Which doesn't mean we disagreed, just came at it from a different direction. There are of course rules and beyond that subtle expectations, which takes in taste and desire. which can override any rules.
I know I mess with said rules now and then, sometimes deliberately, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes...well, huh? Other times.. the story is what it is and regardless, that's what it is. Still I do know that butting heads and more polite discourse have made me think about such things a bit more than I might have before. I like to think I am better at showing or perhaps scene setting than I might have been. I do still like to tell stuff now and then too. It does need careful vetting though I agree, it's easy to ramble on... doesn't always help the story, even if you think it essential at the time. Hey, been there.
I suppose in part it's the old... stories here are more personal and exploratory than most forms so a bit of slack gets cut. Rules... yeah they matter, but not perhaps quite as much as in the wider literary world. I know to me the emotion and feeling mean more than a plot strategy. Yet I do agree that once past the initial exploration and examination... a nod to the rules doesn't hurt.
Any one that writes stuff needs to make choices, about scene and character and telling stuff, err exposition some might call it. It's all a balancing act and the rules.. well they's a guide more than a dictionary. But any wanderer does need to glance that way now and then as they scribble 'cause growth is part of it too. At least to me, but hey I'm nobody. But I still try. Sometimes it works and sometimes.... but that's mostly just me being me.... and that's a big part of what this is.
Thanks Jill
Kristina
The Primary Rule -- Kristina L S
The primary rule might be, "write like Kristina". Or, another way to say that is, "Have something to say, and say it.".
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Caution Ahead
While I agree with the concept that a story should begin with action and not a long, scrolling narrative that states, "In a galaxy far, far away . . .", there are different ways of depicting action.
The one most people latch onto without hesitation is the obvious; fast cars, spectacular explosions or some poor slup being offed in a most gruesome manner.
A subtle approach can be even more effective. Last night I had the privilege of getting a sneak peek at two other very gifted writers' opening sections of stories you will soon be seeing here on TS/BC. Neither took the 'slam-bam' slap you up the side the head approach to beginning their stories. One recounted the journey of a condemned man as he ambled his way toward an unenviable fate. The other carefully described an inventory of most unusual items. Neither screamed, "Run, duck and cover," yet both drew me in.
I myself decided to use this approach in my latest effort, "While the Band PLayed Waltzing Matilda." This is in stark contrast to the way I opened "A Different Kind of Courage," which is still posted here under the title "Tips, An Introduction to The Follow-on Story." Both techniques are, in my opinion effective and viable. The reason I opted to use each where I did is because the opening fit the mood of the story they are part of.
Bottom line here is yes, stay away from protracted information dumps at the beginning of your story with the same care you avoid STDs. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking you have to start every story with a 'Wham, bam, thank you ma'am" opening.
Okay, I'll get off me soap box for now and get back to writing.
Nancy Cole
www.nancycole.org
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
You have to use something that works
I read a lot of adventure/ mystery novels and find that you need a hook at the beginning or the story is a loss no matter how well it's written. I just finished 'The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo' by Stieg Larson and the hook was subtle, but with out it I would have put the book down after the first hundred pages. James Paterson and Michael Connely hit you over the head in the first three pages and the action never stops. I used the first chapter of Assassin as a hook because I knew if the story started in Afaghanistan most readers would have thought it was another war novel, which it's not. It's a developing mystery, but without the hook it would be dead by now. A lot of writers forget that the readers are a lot more intelligent than they think and are usually two steps ahead of them when their story is being read. Arecee
The Girl With. . .Stieg Larson
You're dead on with the Stieg Larson book. The author challenges the reader in so many ways, but in the end gives such a compelling story you're riveted. Most "how-to-write" books would have a fit with the myriad of characters Larson throws at you, so many that i found myself using his family chart quite often.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
All kind story
S. S. Van Dine's Philo Vance stories were once wildly popular, although regularly panned by critics, and managed to sell the rights well enough. Of twelve books, ten were made into movies, and an additional three movies were fairly successful using just the name. The Philo Vance stories had huge information dumps, often included diagrams of the murder scenes, and featured a thoroughly unpleasant protagonist who made Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolf both look like madcap social butterflies, yet people enjoyed them as logical puzzles*.
Tastes change, readers have wildly different appetites, and styles go through evolution as fads in popular culture make one storyline or another popular, or not. It seems that one can hardly flip through the channels on the telly these days without tripping over a forensic pathology lab called a CSI, or something like it, enough so they are, I hope, approaching saturation and will soon disappear. I could be wrong. "Reality" TV is still around, but then Wrestlemania is as well, and they share a basic premise.
You could hardly pay me** to read anything by L Ron Hubbard or Ayn Rand, since it's my considered opinion that both are fatuous idiots, but many people love either or both at once, and worship them as cult figures. I shudder to think of writing a novel -- even a short story -- that would appeal to the readers of either, but many would count themselves blessed.
Write what you want to read, not what someone tells you is "hot" in any particular year or decade.
If you're not having fun writing, what's the point of the exercise?
If you think writing's going to be your "day job," it's very likely that you'd make a lot more money as a server at McDonalds.
If you simply must write, it's nice to be paid for it, but it's not usually a smart career move.
Cheers,
Puddin'
* Here's a typical Philo Vance footnote (yes, the books had footnotes as well as floorplans): The book referred to by Professor Dillard was the great work which appeared two years later, "The Atomic Structure of Radiant Energy," a mathematical emendation of Planck's quantum theory refuting the classical axiom of the continuity of all physical processes, as contained in Maximus Tyrius' Ούὁὲ εμταῡθα ὴ θύσις μοταπηὸψ δθρόως
** Without *buckets* of money in large denominations.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Reality Shows and Wrestling
LOL. Now I see the similarity between the two. I watch neither of these shows.
What I've seen of Reality shows, via their commercials, is that they are horribly contrived. If 'Survivor' really was survivor, some of the cast would die. That will never happen, because the network won't be able to do its 173rd version of the show if potential cast members fear they will get eaten by a lion.
Bravo has reality shows on stop. The Real Housewives of some glamorous location. We can replace that with 'The Real Housewives of Evansville Indiana'. In its premier episode-
Shelly Smith while shopping at Walmart debates whether to buy T-bone steaks instead of London broil for dinner on Sunday.
Joan Jones has to call a plumber to fix her leaking sink when her husband John is away on a business trip.
Hilda Harris is stuck in traffic on I-64. Does she cancel her every other month appointment with the podiatrist?
Soccer Mom Donna Davis is thinking up ways for her Little League son David to not feel unwanted compared to overacheiving junior golf champion sisters.
That's just week one. Can't you hardly wait till the writers come up with less exciting themes for the weekly show?
Real Reality is boring 99.94444444444444444444444444% of the time. The rest is sheer terror.
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant