Writing plot and action in writing go hand-in-hand, but not all writers are clear about what constitutes action. Basically action in writing should have consequences in order for it to benefit plot. Let’s take a deeper look.
Sure, your character is doing something. But are you writing plot? Does this action matter?
Action in Writing
I’ve had some pushback from writers in creative writing critique when I say that something their character is doing doesn’t count as action. “Of course it is!” they say. “My protagonist is DOING STUFF. Look, they are chopping vegetables for a stew!”
It finally struck me that I should probably define action in writing (as I use it) to keep this misunderstanding from happening. Action is NOT busywork (chopping veg, shopping, driving, hanging out). In the world of theatre, this stuff is called “business,” or things that actors do in a scene so that they’re not just sitting around and talking. It’s stuff.
But it has no larger meaning, or it might probably happen again in yet another scene where the character needs something to do. If that character didn’t chop those vegetables, the plot wouldn’t fall apart. So, therefore, while the thing is active, it’s not action.
Writing Plot
Instead, if you’re interesting in writing plot that counts, keep this new definition in mind. Action in writing means something that has story consequences. Action means that the protagonist either comes into contact with another character or encounters an obstacle or makes an effort to reach a goal or does something in the world of the story that is significant and moves the story forward. Unless they are cutting vegetables for the stew that they will use to poison the king–and this action is the result of a big decision to finally commit treason–then it’s business, not action (more ideas for conflict in a story).
For everything your character does in scene, ask yourself whether you’re writing plot, or writing busywork. Removing unnecessary action in writing will help to speed up your pacing, too.
Is your plot dragging? Have you been accused of low stakes writing? Hire me as your manuscript editor and we can dig into your plot together.
A POV in writing that I see occasionally is a protagonist who’s a loner or intellectual. They observe the action of the story from a distance as an impartial observer without getting too involved. We all know these types of wallflowers and, as writers, I’m guessing some of you fit this description perfectly. That’s what writers and shy kids do, they observe. While this is perfect in real life, it doesn’t work well for fiction. That’s not to say that your characters all need to be gregarious and outgoing, and you shouldn’t do away with characters who take pleasure in simply looking at the world.
If your protagonist is more of a camera than an active participant, liven them up with emotion and interiority.
But your POV in writing can’t simply be a video camera or a set of eyes. Your protagonist must participate in the novel and in the action, because the reader really only learns about them when they reach out and do something (AKA an active protagonist). They can think all they want, or talk all they want, but it’s not until they interact with the world that you’ve created that you’re living up to the show don’t tell rule.
The other concern with this type of character is that the impartial observer sometimes relays what’s in front of them in a dry, emotionless way. This is what I mean by my “video camera” comment, above. A piece of technology records the action without adding any of its own stamp (unless it’s Instagram and has all those nifty filters!). A POV in writing that records observations but doesn’t comment or react is about as useless as a nondescript point-and-shoot.
Effective POV in Writing Requires Interiority
Interiority (thoughts, feelings, reactions) is your best friend here. So if a character is not taking action, give them plenty of internal reaction to keep the reader connected to and invested in their experience. Still waters should run deep. Same goes for if you’re writing an aloof or mysterious POV–it’s very easy for readers who feel distanced from their protagonist to click off. You want to avoid this at all costs.
Writing Shy Characters
So if you want to write shy characters who don’t interact much, that is your creative choice, but you should be extra careful to make them a) a participant, not just an observer, and b) a colorful narrator of the story, not just a video camera. Force them into the action and, when they’re hanging back and looking, give them real narrative presence that injects events with voice and character and emotion. Otherwise, your wallflower could be just any old person, relaying a story in a detached, cold, and clinical way. Nobody wants that. So keep these things in mind when working with this type of character.
Motivation is how you convey why a character is doing what they’re doing. I go into great detail about it in my upcoming book, WRITING IRRESISTIBLE KIDLIT, which comes out in late October/early November. But it all boils down to this, and if you want to write this on a Post It for your computer monitor, that might not be a bad idea:
I don’t care about what a character is doing until I know why they’re doing it.
All reader investment and emotion comes from caring. All character emotion comes from the events of the plot and how they rub up against their motivations, objectives, wants, and needs. If you don’t put any thought into the latter elements–or if you don’t work to convey those to the reader–nobody will care or feel anything.
When you’re writing a plot problem, there should be balance. Just like there’s a balance between too much action and too much information in fiction, a balance between external conflict and internal conflict, and a balance between characterization and plot, there should also be a balance between high-stakes obstacles and easy hurdles.
Give your protagonist a story obstacle where they have a chance to work their way out.
The best case scenario with any plot point is that it’s an obstacle that seems just impossible enough and then is acted upon in a surprising way, bringing about delight and relief in the reader. The two extremes on the scale of obstacles: the wimpy story obstacle that is overcome too easily, and the impossible story obstacle that kills the reader’s sense of hope.
Plot Problem: Wimpy Obstacle
The first one is bad for an obvious reason: you always want to be playing up your stakes and tension, especially as you move toward the climax of your story. If a bad guy goes down on the first punch or the secret journal that simply can’t be found is…in the attic, well, that’s a bit lame. You don’t lose your reader if you have one or two of these easy obstacles, but if the reader gets the message that no plot problem is really all that challenging in your book, you will lose them after a while.
Plot Problem: Impossible Obstacle
The latter problem is, actually, what I tend to see more: the story obstacle that is so impossible, so implausible, so high as a hurdle, that I give up almost before the character tries because it strains my suspension of disbelief. While I applaud writers for making big, high-stakes obstacles and putting them in the paths of their characters, the protagonist must always stand at least a fraction of a snowball’s chance in hell of overcoming the plot problem, or the reader will click off. There are those “impossible dreams” that are darn difficult to achieve, and so the journey of that process is worth sticking around for, and then there are those goals that are simply impossible. Aim for the former. (An off-shoot of this impossible story obstacle is the protagonist requiring something of a character, and that character just saying flat-out: “No.” That does not give you much room to strive toward the goal, either, and, in most cases, strikes me as extremely arbitrary.)
To strike this balance: Set the bar high, but give your character a fighting chance.
Hire me as your book editor and I’ll help you achieve balance in your manuscript.
Here’s something to always keep in mind, no matter if you’re writing picture books or full-blown novels: each major plot turning point in your novel should change the course of events and plot development in a permanent way. These types of events are going to be crucial to both character and story. If your plot points can be rearranged in any order without consequence, you’re doing plot development wrong.
Just like this sugar cube, a plot turning point should have a clear “before” and “after,” with no going back to the way things were.
The Irreversible Plot Turning Point
If you have a plot turning point where the effect isn’t crystal clear, no decision is made, no characters change, and the trajectory of your story seems to bob along rather than follow a very direct line, your plot points are not absolute enough. In plots like this, your characters could likely revert to exactly who they were at the beginning of the book if they wanted to. That’s a problematic novel, to me. (Try starting with a character outline, so you can track character and plot development.)
Anchor the forward momentum of your story along plot development that divides your tale into a clear “before” and “after” with no going back. This will also help you work on the all-important elements of raising the stakes and story tension. These will act on character. Even if the plot turning point is not a HUGE moment on the page, let it have a HUGE effect. For example, a short conversation with friends in which something is revealed that changes a relationship forever. (You can, and should, of course focus on big plot points and character life changes also.)
The moment itself isn’t big. A few words are said. But the effect is felt and leads to further plot development. Basically, you want everything in your novel to have an effect. Otherwise, why is it there? This is especially important for your plot turning point moments, the ones that resonate throughout the story.
Struggling with plot development? Work with me as your book editor and we can engineer a strong and compelling story together.
Today’s post has to do with ending a chapter. It also ties in with Monday’s post about guiding the reader emotionally with character feelings. Whenever you plunge your reader into white space (the white space at the end of a chapter, for example), you run the risk of losing them. So a lot of writers employ some smart tactics to keep this from happening.
Whenever you plunge your reader into the white space at the end of a chapter, you run the risk of losing them.
Recommendations for Ending a Chapter
I always recommend ending a chapter on a cliffhanger, or introducing a new character, piece of information, or plot complication. Anything that will add tension and make your reader compulsively turn the page and start reading your next chapter. In essence, you never want to end a chapter with the character thinking about how tranquil everything is, or the reader will close the book and go play Xbox.
Well, sometimes you do use something drastic, like a cliffhanger, as your chapter button, but there’s the potential for a missed opportunity there, as well. Take this example:
And her father–right there in the flesh, after she thought he’d been dead all these years–walked right through the door.
Wow! Cool! I want to find out what happens, don’t you? Well, this could also be very abrupt if it’s the last sentence of your chapter. And if you tend to do this over and over, it will start to feel like your reader hitting a brick wall with each successive instance. Per the Law of Diminishing Returns, the cliffhanger tactic will also start to lose its tension-rich effectiveness.
Ending a Chapter with a Button on Character
One way to mitigate this effect, retain the tension, and also give the reader a more complex emotion than just “surprise” is to always button on character. This means to go back to your protagonist for a reaction before abruptly ending the scene. We get the surprise (or whatever tactic you’re using here), but then we’ll also put it in context, get some emotional resonance, and refocus on the protagonist’s experience of the story. If done right, this packs more of a punch than just a shock. So don’t leave your protagonist and their emotional reaction hanging until the beginning of the next chapter every time. A strong character-focused chapter button will still keep readers invested enough to turn the page.
When you invest in my book editing services, I do a close evaluation of all aspects of your story — including your chapter endings.
I’ve done a lot of emotion-centered posts about character feelings and writing emotional scenes, and that’s because I am coming around, more and more, to the idea that the reader’s feelings are paramount in writing good fiction. One of the cornerstones of my teaching philosophy is, after all, interiority, which is the practice of getting deeply into character feelings.
Writing emotional scenes that exploit your character feelings will also hook the reader. Don’t be afraid to get moody!
Writing Emotional Scenes is Reader Crack
If you can’t make the reader feel (this comes in large part from first being able to deeply feel your own story), then you are sunk. Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey aren’t novels, per se, they are 400 solid pages of character feelings (longing, in the same of Twilight, desire/curiosity/revulsion in the case of Shades). For me, both of them sunk their hooks into me (and about 40 million other people) so deep that I would constantly look up from the books, thinking, “This is such crap … and I can’t stop reading it!” Why? Character feelings. Emotional scenes. They are all that matter.
This brings me to today’s point: You are the curator of your reader’s feelings via character feelings and writing emotional scenes. How do you cue your reader’s emotions? With your characters’. Via their Interiority (thoughts, reactions), you lead your reader’s own thoughts, reactions, and feelings along the path of story that you’ve constructed.
A big pet peeve–and what inspired this post–is a character saying “I didn’t know how to feel right then” (or the equivalent). This is a cop-out. You need to be writing active character reaction. Guide the reader. Sure, “not knowing how to feel” or “feeling lost” is a valid emotion, but it’s a missed opportunity if you lean on it too hard. Instead, conjure up two or three really specific feelings that, when mixed together, convey a sense of being lost without ever dropping the emotional ball for your reader. Always be guiding them, and always keep in mind the emotions you are creating from moment to moment and, and writing emotional scenes, scene to scene.
Does this make you feel like a puppet master with character feelings and reader emotions? Good! That’s called “writing.”
Is your manuscript falling flat? Work with me as your developmental editor and we can get the most “emotional juice” out of your project.
Telling when it comes to describing emotions in writing is probably one of the biggest problems I encounter in manuscripts. As a writer, you need to include emotional writing at every turn, but always through Interiority and showing.
Describing emotions in writing: Protagonists have to be emotional beings.
Without being clued in to their Interiority–thoughts, feelings, reactions to what’s going on in the world–and without getting a sense for character emotion through voice and the way that they describe everything and everyone in your story (this applies to third person, too), we won’t truly know them.
Dig for the Nuance
But even when you’re proficient at describing emotions in writing, don’t be content to play on the surface. In a good book, there should never be just “happy” or “sad.” All emotions have causes, degrees, and consequences. The more complex the emotion in every situation, the more specific you’re being, and the more engaged your reader will become. (More on how to write emotions in a story.)
For example, prom is something a lot of teens look forward to. But “happy and excited” can also be cliché and boring. Not to mention unrealistic. A much more authentic character emotion might be that prom is actually bittersweet. Sure, it’s the event of the year, but it’s also a rite of passage for graduating seniors. It’s a signal that the year is almost over and that this is one of the last times all these friends and enemies and peers and teammates will be under the same roof ever again. (Advice on writing teenage characters.) For every emotion, find its shadow or highlight, search for a deeper layer, and give your reader several facets.
Describing Emotions in Writing Via Interiority
You can easily do it in Interiority. If we run with our prom idea, planting seeds of melancholy can be accomplished quickly and efficiently like this:
“Cheese!” Lacey grinned at the camera, clutching her date. As the flash went off, she felt a pang of nostalgia sharp enough to make her draw a quick breath. This will all be over so soon, she thought. But then the thumping bass beckoned her from the hotel ballroom, and she marched off toward it, ready to be lost in a crowd of her friends.
Ideally, we’ll get the primary emotion–excitement–and then hints of something else. No matter how you accomplish it, this kind of layered narrative is always infinitely more interesting to me as a reader, and it makes for much richer character emotion.
Is your manuscript hitting the right emotional notes? Hire me as your developmental editor and get an expert to help with describing emotions in writing.
A story needs external conflict to work. Let me tell you a little story about how I fly and the internal conflict that ensues. If y’all have spent any time following my blog or Twitter, you know that I seem to wind up on airplanes a lot. Last year, I logged 75,000 miles, with my longest flight lasting 12 hours. It may come as a surprise to you, then, that I am not a good flyer. In fact, I’ve resorted to many possible solutions for my flight anxiety, from hypnotherapy to whiskey. (Both happen to work, but the latter makes for a rather groggy arrival, just FYI.) But here’s the thing. Even though flying ramps up my anxiety, it’s boring to an outside observer because there’s no external conflict.
This person could be screaming her brains out on the inside, but to an outside observer she’s still just passive and static.
Worrying is Passive
These days, the only real problem I have with flying is takeoff. Landing is fine, being in the air is fine, but takeoff always gets me. (In the air, you don’t really realize you’re going 500 mph because you don’t have the ground as a reference point. On takeoff, you can see exactly how fast you’re going and you can feel yourself pulling against gravity, and I think that’s what bothers me. It’s a physical reminder of the forces involved and I don’t like to think about it.) Turbulence used to really bother me until someone I sat next to once said, “Imagine a stick bobbing in a river. It’s not comfortable, but it’s safe because it’s behind held up by water. Water has mass, and so does air. We’re floating on top of a choppy current, but we’re being held up by the air in much the same way.” That really helped.
Until I got my head straight re: turbulence, though, I would sit in my seat, pinned down with my own internal conflict, operating under the mistaken notion that my constant vigilance was the only thing keeping the plane in the air. I wanted to note every noise, feel every g-force, monitor every bank, and otherwise white-knuckle it until landing. Flying is completely out of a passenger’s control, and through the sheer force of my anxiety, I flew for years in a state of hyper-vigilance, hoping to regain some of that lost agency.
Worrying Is Okay to Write, But…
If I were to give you my Interiority on a plane–my thoughts, feelings, emotions–there would be a lot going on (interiority meaning here). Every second would be consumed with my brain’s whirrings. Worry is a very familiar, specific, and active thought process. (And here I arrive at how all this applies to writing…) There are lots of novels where I read characters worrying, and it’s a very natural emotion that helps raise stakes and build story tension. In fact, I think that a lot of characters don’t worry enough, and a lot of writers miss great opportunities by not sharing their protagonist’s anxieties with the reader.
But there’s also a danger in writing a character who is constantly worrying. Think back to me in my window seat, monitoring every aspect of the flight and gripping my armrests. Internally, I am a hive of activity. But, to the observer in the seat next to me, I look like I’m…just sitting there. There’s no external conflict. Worry is great in doses, but you can’t build a plot on internal conflict. Because it’s static. I happen to find my thoughts as I fly fascinating. But Mary Flying would make a terrible movie because it is physically passive and static.
Balance Internal Conflict With External Conflict
So use internal conflict to amp up tension and raise stakes and definitely include it as Interiority (advice on raising the stakes here). But remember that you need to balance it well with external conflict, or you risk your character…just sitting there. At one point, they have to cross the thought/action barrier and do something about all of their anxieties. They need to be proactive and to make something happen in the world of your book. We learn a lot about character through Interiority, but I’d argue that we learn more as they actually get out of their heads and take action. (There’s also the juicy tension of them thinking one thing and doing another, for example. But, again, you can only get there once you put them in motion.) As for me? You’ll often find me 30,000 feet above your heads, but these days, I’m more often than not (thankfully) asleep.
Hire my editing services and I’ll help you balance the internal and external conflict in your story.
The turning point of a story for your main character is one of the most important elements in your fiction. If you can create that on your page, your audience’s involvement and investment cements forever. A lot of the time, climactic plot moments should rub up against these instances of deep personal change. When your character’s heart hardens, or softens. When one of their core defining values is broken down, or reinforced. When they make the most difficult decision of their lives. These instances are what great storytelling is made of.
From the smallest changes of heart to the most important, I need to be able to point to the very instant on the page where your character turns a corner.
Exploit Your Story Turning Point
Sometimes, though, a change of heart just happens to a character. They don’t like someone and then, well, they wake up one day and feel differently and then the writer continues the plot from that new perspective. The only problem is, any story turning point is an Event-with-an-E. Or it deserves to be, because it has great power potential with readers. Just like you should put great care into approaching how to start a story, the turning point of a story is a hot spot that you absolutely must exploit.
The Turning Point Of A Story Should Be An Intentional Moment
From the smallest changes of heart to the most important, I need to be able to point to the very instant on the page where your character turns a corner. It will usually happen in reaction to something in your plot and be expressed mostly in Interiority (your character’s thoughts, feelings, reactions). After that, their new attitude or feeling about a person or situation will filter down and express itself in how they behave in scene and during the plot. But that moment when they see something differently has to be present.
I talk a lot more about the turning point of a story in my book, Writing Irresistible Kidlit. For now, though, do go back and examine your character’s story turning point and make sure that you’re juicing every last bit of resonance from that moment. This goes double for picture books, where you have a lot less text to work with (learn about picture book word count here). Sure, real kids change their minds all the time, but fictional ones need to be very strongly motivated in order for their emotional logic to make sense to the youngest readers.
Hire my developmental editing services and I’ll help you make sure that those emotional turning points are present and intentional throughout your story.
