A trope is a storytelling element that has been used so many times that it has become a convention.
The term trope is used broadly and can cover aspects of storytelling such as figures of speech (e.g. ‘let’s go kick some ass’), imagery (e.g. a human rising through the air toward a UFO), character (e.g. the jaded cop two weeks from retirement) or plot structure ( e.g. the ‘chosen one’ teenager who saves the world while choosing between two love interests). It is a recognisable plot element, theme, visual or verbal cue that conveys something to the reader.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Tropes function as shorthand, conveying a wealth of information to the reader in a few short words or images.
Tropes in writing become a problem when they have been overdone and the writer has brought nothing new to them.
An over-reliance on tropes is considered a sign of poor writing, lazy writing, and a lack of originality.
When using tropes, it is important to use them within intention. That is, to know what they are and how they function within your genre.
You can then either double down on them, leaning into all their tropely glory, confident that they are serving the type of story you want to tell. Or, you can know they are there and intend to up-end them or put a fresh spin on them in some way.
Be warned though, subverting tropes can backfire on you if you don’t manage your readers’ expectations appropriately.
How Do I Use Tropes To Manage A Readers Expectations?
People read to experience a desired set of emotions.
We read because we want to FEEL a certain way.
Plot tropes are a form of shorthand which let us know which feelings to expect when we pick up certain books. For example, a fantasy reader is usually seeking a sense of wonder and heroism, a thriller reader is seeking a feeling of intrigue, tension and suspense, and a romance reader is seeking a feeling of squee. Yes, squee. It’s a real word and everything.
Common plot tropes include but are by no means limited to: the buddy cop story, the underdog story, the rags-to-riches story, the happily-ever-after story, the whodunnit story, the quest story, the romance story and the comedy.
When we select books with these plots we know, for the most part, what to expect from them.
And we’re okay with that. In fact, that’s why we chose them.
People read genre fiction because they want to go on a familiar emotional journey. At the same time, they are expecting the author to make that familiar journey feel fresh and new to them in some way.
No pressure authors
People read genre fiction to experience a familiar set of emotions
The Perils Of Subverting Tropes
If you choose to subvert the tropes in your book you need to foreshadow this on the cover, the back cover blurb and in the first chapters, otherwise, the majority of your readers will feel tricked and betrayed when their happily-ever-after story (in which they were hoping to feel squee) turns into a tense thriller story.
Conversely, your thriller readers will feel disgruntled and let down if your edge-of-your-seat thriller turns into a mushy romance halfway through.
Sure, some of your readers will love the subversion, but they will be the exception and not the rule.
By and large, you will alienate your audience – unless you managed their expectations of the story from the very beginning.
(Spoilers ahead) A great movie example of this is Hancock. It starts out as a fresh take on the superhero trope featuring an alcoholic and down-on-his-luck Will Smith. The story is captivating and interesting until they introduce his superhero ex-girlfriend, Charlize Theron.
From there on the story shifts from superhero movie into a ‘romance of the ages,’ completely losing any tension it had. As a general consensus, the movie alienated both romance movie lovers and superhero movie lovers.
For a literary example, Dan Wells often cites the number one complaint with his ‘I Am Not A Serial Killer’ book, is that he left it too long to introduce the supernatural element in the story. This had the dual effect of:
Not capturing the interest of readers who WANTED that paranormal aspect in a story, and
Alienating readers who thought they were reading a standard crime thriller when suddenly it turned paranormal.
So again, be aware of the tropes in your story and of how you are using them.
What’s The Difference Between A Trope And An Archetype?
The difference between the two is the timelessness and universality of their natures. Tropes are dependent on the time period and the culture they exist in, whereas archetypes are concepts that are universal across all ages of civilisation and cultures.
Within the framework of storytelling, an archetype is a common pattern of behaviour or a representation of a universal truth. For instance – the mentor character has a common pattern of behaviour, while ‘love is the answer’ is considered a common universal ‘truth.’
Due to its persuasive and universal nature, an archetype never becomes stale or dated. Although they can feel one dimensional unless the writer fleshes them out and put their own unique spin on them.
You can have a mentor character archetype, but what makes your mentor character different from every other mentor character out there?
The 12 main archetypes common across all time periods and cultures
What Are Some Of The Most Common Tropes In General Fiction?
There are some catchall tropes that everyone is familiar with:
Idiot plotting – wherein the stories problems could easily be resolved if the two main characters just talked to each other, yet don’t for a variety of flimsy reasons
The dark lord who wants to take over and destroy the whole world/universe
The ‘everyman’ character who rises to the occasion and saves the day/world
The two lead characters getting together at the end of the story,
The bad guy/monster we thought was dead rising again when the main characters back are turned.
What Are Some Common Tropes Found In Genre Fiction?
Action Books & Movies
The chase scene: A frantic pursuit between two parties, either on foot or with vehicles.
The ass-kicking pose: As the team prepares to fight, they all simultaneously adopt the ‘ass-kicking pose’ and pause, looking cool
The just-in-time-object-catch: The hero dives for, and catches an object that absolutely must not strike the floor, just before it hits the ground
Romance Books & Movies
Arranged Marriage: A common technique in historicals to force the hero and heroine to deal with each other.
Anti-Hero: The types vary, but romance novel leads can tend towards bad boys (ready to be reformed) instead of a clean-cut, straitlaced fellow.
Broken Bird: Women love to see the healing power of love. Most have a side of Intimate Healing as well, but usually after the hero is a bit less screwed up.
Speculative Fiction Books & Movies
(Fantasy) The power to create something from nothing: the character makes something out of thin air, or, more accurately, nothing.
(Sci-fi) The lightspeed leapfrog: The brave explorers set out in their spaceship to spread humankind to the stars. You can’t travel faster than light, so they’re going to spend most of the trip on a Sleeper Starship as Human Popsicles, or it’s a Generation Ship and it’ll be their descendants who step out at the other end of the trip.
(Fairy tales) The impossible task: a favourite in myths and folklore and the world over. The task might be undertaken to win a boon, or a bride, to gain land, to break a Curse
Thriller Books & Movies
The cliff hanger: often thought of as a cheap and lazy way to create a sense of suspense. A Cliff-hanger ends a scene, chapter or book with some (or all) of the main characters in peril of some kind and the audience is made to wait for the outcome.
The conspiracy: The story starts off with either a minor meaningless crime or a high-profile murder. A person related to the criminal blamed or the uncovered victim notices some odd discrepancies in the official story and digs deeper. Before the protagonist(s) realize(s) it, they are caught in a multi-layered plot.
The reveal: A key moment in most plots, when the heroes or the audience discover how the villains have been manipulating everyone. Can also be used to make a cliff-hanger more dramatic.
Mixing The Familiar And The Strange. Making Tropes Your Own
There is a reason that most speculative fiction stories usually consist of 70% the known world and 30% the strange.
If I wrote of an experience that was wholly new in all of human existence, it would be so foreign and incomprehensible to the human mind as to be meaningless.
Without a framework of familiarity to reference, any wholly new thing or experience cannot be thought of, understood, discussed, or shared.
This same principle applies to storytelling. We need tropes to understand the framework of the story. The secret to fresh storytelling lies in taking those familiar tropes and twisting them just enough to make them interesting and unique while keeping them relatable.
Summary
As always when it comes to the craft of writing, the most important thing is to KNOW what the tools are, UNDERSTAND how they impact story and then to use them WITH INTENTION.
Tropes aren’t inherently bad, and there is nothing wrong with writing the most tropetastic story in existence (hello The Witcher), AS LONG AS YOU DO IT INTENTIONALLY, and not by default through lazy or ignorant writing.
So go, know thy tropes, and wield those tropes with devastating intention.
My whole life is dedicated to being a successful, published author. To that end I applied for a writing workshop in America. Here’s what happened.
I was awarded a place at Futurescapes, a prestigious writing workshop in Utah.
YAY!
I was also awarded a scholarship to attend.
EVEN MORE YAY!
The Futurescapes workshop is highly competitive. Places are offered to people whose writing is on the cusp of professional standards or higher, and you must submit an example of your work as part of your application process.
Attending Futurescapes provided me with the rare opportunity to workshop my manuscript (as well as hobnob) with some amazing authors, editors, and agents, such as:
Ted Chiang
Ali Fisher
Matt Bialer
Matthew Kirby
Lucienne Diver
Thao Le
Dan Wells
Ben Grange
DongWon Song
Fran Wilde
Christian McKay Heidicker
to name a few.
Being based in Australia makes attending these types of events a bit of a challenge for me, but I felt the opportunity was too good to pass up. Unfortunately, my autoimmune condition has recently forced me to drop down from full-time work to part-time work even though I need a full-time wage in order to be able to feed the mortgage beast and keep the utility monsters at bay (the cat and dogs are also pretty keen on regular meals).
Nevertheless, I was committed to attending, and after a pep talk from my best friend, she convinced to me to start a GoFundMe campaign.
‘After all,’ she said, ‘You might as try to raise the money. You already can’t afford to go, so you have nothing to lose by trying.’ Made sense to me and so I launched my campaign. And of what a squirmy, uncomfortable process that was. The concept made me feel SQUIRRLEY with embarrassment. SQUIRRLEY I tell you (not to be confused with squirrely). I learnt a lot about myself in a short amount of time. I realised that I might, just might, have some issues around self-worth and self-esteem and asking for help.
I’m the kind of person who, even if I have ten bags of groceries in my arthritic hands I will still try and open the front door by myself even though there’s someone else standing right there. That’s just how I am. Asking for help has always been anathema to me. But now here I was asking for the most embarrassing kind of help – money help. From strangers. I was cringing and dying inside.
And then the donations started coming through.
I was flattered and honoured. Each one made me say out loud to myself, “Oh no – you shouldn’t have” as I covered my mouth with excitement and embarrassment. I was also astounded when a few big-name authors (who shall remain anonymous) donated. They know I exist? I thought with amazement as I saw their donations come in.
The GoFundMe campaign was quite successful and, in the end, raised almost enough to pay for my flight to Utah. It was official. I was going!
Having had previous experience in just how heavily jet-lag can affect you on these trips I left three days early to allow myself enough time to adjust, and it was just as well because I hadn’t factored the altitude of the location. Now I live at literal sea level and walk to the beach most days. But Futurescapes took place in at The Chateaux in Deer Valley – a gorgeous hotel located at 8100 feet or 2400 meters.
Let me tell you, breathing was hard. If you’re asthmatic or have ever had a severe chest infection, it felt similar to that. My lungs were burning. It felt like someone was standing on my chest. Because I couldn’t get enough air I felt like I had anxiety (pounding heart, quick shallow breaths, anxiousness) but it was simply the lack of oxygen. Which, by the way, also made me feel quite loopy and surreal. I’m pretty sure the walls were breathing in and out at one stage.
I slowly adjusted to the altitude and by the time the conference officially started I was feeling almost human, though I did get quite faint every time I got to the top of a staircase.
My feedback to my patient critique group was also given in this manner:
“[deep breathe in] I feel that this [deep breath out] piece could benefit [deep breathe in] from changing the order [deep breath out] of information [deep breath in]”
It’s safe to say that, thanks to the altitude, I was neither the brainiest nor most eloquent during my time at Futurescapes.
The first day opened with our critique group meeting with Thao Le, from Dijkstra Literary Agency to assess our first three thousand words. Half an hour before the meeting I got very anxious, but my fears were allied as soon as I met my group and Thao. Everyone was lovely and supportive and offered fantastic insight into each other’s work. (Yes – that means even more revisions for The Truth About Dragons. But I gained some really valuable insight into deepening the POV in tight third person, so it will definitely be worth it).
Over the next few days, we continued to workshop our manuscript. I got to review my query letter with author Emily R King, who uses the three C’s when constructing a query letter. The format she uses is:
First paragraph – Character:
What does the MC want and why do they want it?
Second paragraph – Conflict:
What is stopping the MC getting what they want?
Third paragraph – Consequence:
What will happen if the MC doesn’t get what they want?
On query letter bio’s DongWon Song said: “No one cares how many kids or pets you have. Don’t put it in there. Put in something that will make you stand out.”
Sage advice 😊
It was great to see familiar Writing Excuses Cruise faces at Futurescapes including Bob Connick, Nick Bright (and of course DongWon Song). Since my arrival on the 9th The Chateaux had gone from empty to filled with writers talking about writing in every lounge chair, nook and cranny you could find. The sounds reminded me of a flock of chattering birds on a wire. And while it was great to indulge in such fervent excitement on the topic of writing, I also took frequent breaks from it, but retreating to my room to decompress for an hour at time.
Once it stopped snowing (and I could also breathe again) I even went for a walk and a swim. To say it was picturesque was an understatement. I mean, look at me doing tough here:
All too soon the Futurescapes workshop was over and it was time to head back to reality. I had gained some valuable insights on the craft, met up with old friends and made some fabulous new ones.
I’m look forward to my next overseas writing conference, and I have my eye set on attending the Nebula’s and New Zealand World Con in 2020. Maybe I’ll see you there!
A brilliant, shiny idea. It’s masterpiece in the making, you’re sure of it. You can already see it being bought by Netflix if Disney doesn’t beat them to it.
You can’t wait until the kids are in bed so you can finally start writing it all down.
But as you get more and more words on the page, the doubt begins to creep in. You begin to struggle with the setting, or with the plot. Maybe it slowly dawns on you that you don’t understand your characters internal motivations as well as you thought.
Or perhaps you were so overflowing with the zeal of creation that you could barely keep up with the jumble of ideas and words pouring from your fingers. As you type feverishly away you begin to wonder if the story makes sense to anyone but you.
You want feedback on what you have so far, but this is dangerous territory.
Your story is in its infancy. It has barely begun to draw breath. Even the slightest criticism could crush it irrevocably. What do you do? Do you continue on, ploughing through the words while plagued with self-doubt?
Or do you risk showing it to someone, knowing your vision could be destroyed before it ever gets off the ground?
If you find yourself in this situation then what you need is a first reader.
First Readers
A first reader is someone you trust and someone who will act as a cheerleader for you.
A first reader will be positive and support your efforts no matter what. And while your first reader should be supportive, they should also give you useful feedback on your unpolished story. What did and didn’t work for them about the plot? What characters did they love or dislike and why? In Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ he mentions that his wife, Tabitha, is his first reader and he can feel secure in the knowledge that she’ll be supportive of his efforts, but also let him know where his story is going astray.
It’s important you trust your first reader and that you know they have your best interests at heart. Your first reader should be able to be honest with you without crushing the life from your story.
It can be hard to find a first reader that strikes right balance between honesty and cheerleader. While it may make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside to have someone tell you that every word you wrote is brilliance, it is not very helpful.
ALL first drafts have room for improvement, no matter who wrote them.
If your first reader showers you with nothing but praise you would do well to look further afield for someone who can give you more objective feedback.
If you don’t have a first reader that you trust, then I would suggest not showing the work to anyone until it is completed. It is all too easy have your creative vision derailed by a savage or thoughtless comment.
Vision Writers, Brisbane
Alpha Readers
Alpha readers, in my opinion, tend to be writers. Often, they are your writing group and they do not critique your novel as a whole but on a chapter by chapter (or word-count by word-count) basis. The type of feedback they provide is very much dependent on the individuals and the nature of the writing group.
Writing groups are peculiar creatures, each one having its own quirks and agenda’s.
Hopefully you have found a positive and supportive writing group – be it face-to-face or online. If not, it is well worth your time to do so. Don’t be afraid to try out different groups until you find the one that feels right for you. Not all writing groups are going to suit all people.
In general writing groups should focus on structural level elements of your piece, such as plot, consistent character motivation, believable dialogue, and avoiding rookie writing mistakes such as all telling rather than showing, ‘As You Know, Bob’ dialogue and so on. But each writing group will have a hobby horse or two that they like to harp on about, as will individuals within the group. Don’t be surprised if different members of your writing group nit-pick different things, like commas or use of prose despite your manuscript being at the structural stage of development.
The great thing about the diverse focus of writing group members is that they help flag problematical aspects of your novel that might otherwise not have occurred to you, such as the way a fire spreads in a closed room, or the real colour of a river in a certain climate. Each little piece of feedback is another ragged edge you can file off your story; so be thankful for it even if its not immediately relevant to your structural edit.
At the alpha reader stage you’re looking to smooth anything out that will be jarring to your beta readers.
You want to avoid throwing your beta readers out of the story wherever possible so that they can focus on their reader experience.
Beta Readers
Beta readers are your test audience.
They are a group of people who read your novel as a whole and provide feedback on what did and didn’t work for them. They are often not writers themselves and that is fine because what you are looking for at this level of feedback is a reader’s response to your story, not a writer’s response.
Beta readers don’t need to be concerned with grammar and punctuation, what you want them to focus on is what worked for them and what didn’t? What did they love? What did they hate? Where were they bored or confused?
Where Do You Find Beta Readers?
Beta readers can either be volunteers or paid. Most writers try to source willing victims readers amongst friends, family and followers on social media. I would suggest that you get ten to twenty people to beta read your novel. Any less than that is too small a sample size to give you meaningful feedback.
You can do two rounds of beta reading if you like, having ten people read the first version, then making the necessary edits before having the second ten people read your manuscript.
Skimp on beta reading at your own peril.
It can be hard to find quality beta readers and emotionally painful to wade through their feedback. It can also feel overwhelming to go through your novel and implement the required changes. But if you don’t get this feedback from beta readers you will soon be getting it via poor reviews and lack of sales if you self-publish and from agents if you go the traditional publishing route.
When seeking beta readers, it helps to keep in mind that most people, no matter how well intentioned, will leave reading your manuscript until the last possible moment. If you give them four weeks to read it they won’t start until the third week. If you give them six weeks to read it they most likely wont start till the fifth week. It is simply human nature. Similarly, you can expect 30 – 50% of volunteers not to complete the assignment for one reason or another. Life gets busy and being a beta reader is hard work.
Therefore, you should treat your reliable beta readers like the amazing golden people they are. Never take them for granted and always be gracious in your response to them, regardless of it you agree with their feedback on not.
On that note at the end of the day only you can know the correct vision for your story. You don’t need to implement all changes your beta readers suggest, nor should you. What you are looking for is a general consensus. If two thirds of readers felt the pacing was uneven, then its quite likely that the pacing of your story is uneven. If eight out of ten people love your main character but two find him whiny and annoying then feel free to ignore that those two opinions.
How Long Does It Take To Beta Read A Novel?
You can grant your beta readers any amount of time you like to read your novel. Though I’d say two weeks is too short a time for people to read and critique a novel, and six weeks is too long. As mentioned above, most people will leave it till the last minute anyways, so the longer you give them, the longer they will leave it for.
What Type Of Feedback Should I Ask For?
You can ask your beta readers to focus on any aspect of your story that you like, though as mentioned earlier beta reading tends to focus on the readers response to the story structure. Some of your beta readers may do little more than note things like: ‘LOL’ and ‘I thought his coat was red?’ while others (like myself) won’t be able to help but line edit as they go. Both forms of feedback are fine. They all add to giving you an overview of your novel.
I provide simple instructions to my beta readers ask them to flag the following areas (credit for the system belongs to Mary Robinette Kowal):
A – Awesome: Let me know anything you think is awesome so it doesn’t end up on the cutting room floor
B – Boring: let me know where your attention wandered.
C – Confusing: Let me know anywhere you felt confused and why
D – Didn’t Believe: let me know anything you didn’t buy into and why
E – Expectation: Let me know where you think the story is going next.
What If The General Consensus Is My Novel Sucks?
Ouch. That’s going to hurt.
Getting beta feedback can be tough at the best of times. If you have ten people beta read for you and your novel is 300 pages long that’s 3000 pages of people nit-picking at your work that you have to wade through. Even if people predominately liked the story the weight of all the feedback can start getting to you, but you just have to soldier through it. And maybe bolster your spirits with a glass of wine, or a hot chocolate.
Trust me, if you don’t have tough skin at the beginning of the process you certainly will by the end. Either that or you will have been swallowed by a pit of despair and vowed never to write again.
As mentioned earlier, if two thirds of people flag an element as problematic you’re going to want to look into it, whether you end up implementing changes or not. If most people didn’t finish your novel, or only finished under duress because they felt obligated as your friend/family member/partner there’s a problem there. Online readers are not going to be as forgiving and your book will end up on their DNF (did not finish) pile. You may also end up on the receiving end of a scathing review.
Put simply – if people consistently don’t finish your novel, there’s a problem with your writing.
It could be the story structure; it could be the prose or any number of things. Go back to the feedback you received from your writing group and beta readers and see what you could take on to improve your story.
If the response to the story is overwhelmingly poor the novel may be a ‘trunker’. Put it away in a box under the bed or in a folder on the computer and start a new story. No words are ever truly wasted. They all add to your skill and experience. Take the lessons you learnt on this novel and apply them to your next project. Now you can get busy making a higher level of mistakes and receiving a whole new level of nit-picking.
Regardless of whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, using scene cards can help you stay on track as you work through your first draft, as well as help to ensure that less of your writing ends up on the cutting room floor. When you write without a plan, your risk of wastage is twofold. One, in wasting a writing session on ‘pointless’ prose. And two, in wasting another writing session editing that ‘pointless’ prose out. This is where scene cards can help you, even if you want to pants the whole novel from, ‘Once upon a time,’ to ‘The End.’
But before we can get started, we need to understand what constitutes a scene.
“A scene is a unit of story that takes place at a specific location and time. If one of these changes, you have a new scene.”
Any time your story moves to a new location or jumps forwards (or backwards) in time you have started a new scene. New scenes in novels are typically denoted using a ‘section break.’ Section breaks create separation between two passages of prose, thereby giving the reader a heads-up that the next passage of prose has changed time, location or POV (point of view.) This helps prevent readers from feeling disorientated as they move through the story.
Section breaks can be denoted in several ways; either with extra line spaces or by using symbols, lines and flourishes.
What Purpose Does A Scene Serve?
Ideally, a scene should:
Reveal new information – either about the characters, the plot and/or the world-building
Advance the plot – that is, move the story forward to its next logical step
Increase the conflict – XYZ just happened, so now things have gotten worse for the characters
Increase the stakes – thanks to this new scene the character/s now have even more to lose personally
If you have a scene in your novel that does only one of the above, you have two options; either remove it or make it work harder by making.
If you have a scene in your novel that can be cut without the story falling apart, then that scene can, and should, be cut from your story. This is what they mean by ‘kill your darlings.’
Scenes and Sequels
Not every scene you write needs to do all four of these things at once. Stories tend to have a natural ebb and flow of tension and pace, with some scenes increasing the speed of action, and tension, and other scenes relieving the tension and slowing the pace. These two different types of scenes are called a ‘scene’ and a ‘sequel.’
A scene scene is a unit of story that introduces a goal, conflict, or disaster (thereby upping the tension and stakes).
A sequel scene is a unit of story composed of a reaction, reflection and/or decision making.
Scenes tend to be action-packed with a lot happening. Sequels tend to be slower, as characters reflect on what has occurred so far, and makes decisions about what they will do next. A great piece of advice I heard from Lauren Clarke was to rate each scene for tension on a scale from one to ten (once your draft is complete).
For any scene that you rated as under five for tension, ask yourself:
‘Is this an intentionally slow scene? Or is it a stagnant scene that is not doing enough heavy lifting?’
If the scene is stagnant you know what to do. Either make it work harder for you, or cut it from the story.
Using Scene Cards To Plot Your Character-Driven Novel
This year I read Lisa Cron’s ‘Story Genius,’ and fell in love with her philosophy for writing character-driven novels. According to Lisa, characters come into the start of your story carrying a life-long set of beliefs that may or may not be accurate. These beliefs are what the character uses to understand the world around them, to interpret what is happening, and to decide what they will do next. Once you have unearthed your character’s set of beliefs and misbeliefs, there will be only one or two logical options for what they do next after each scene. Using scene cards based on Lisa’s book can help you clarify what that is.
I have created a free scene card template here that you can download and use. I have also created a less pretty Word Version that you can access for free here.
I have found the use of these scene cards helps me get clear on what the purpose of each scene is before I write it, and what I want to achieve by the end of the scene. I use the Word template and free write my way into the scene, using stream of consciousness as I ‘tell’ myself the scene’s purpose. The result is not pretty or ‘clever’ and doesn’t need to be. It just needs to help you get clear on what you are writing next, and why. Before I write a scene, I ask myself the following questions:
What is the main plot point of the scene? What role will this scene play in the external cause-and-effect trajectory of your novel?
Why is this scene necessary?
What is the scene’s main job?
What do you see in your mind’s eye when you imagine this scene?
What do you want the reader to feel in this scene?
Questions To Ask Yourself Before Writing A Scene
Why Is This Scene Necessary?
What integral role does this scene play in your character discovering new things about themselves and their world?
In what way does this scene advance the plot?
Why would the whole story fall apart if this scene wasn’t in it?
What Is This Scenes Main Job?
What does this scene do to advance the character arc?
What does this scene do for the reader?
What role with this scene play in the external cause-and-effect trajectory of events (aka the plot.)
What role will this play in the character’s inner journey (aka the ‘story.’)
What Do You See In Your Mind’s Eye When You Envision This Scene?
When you imagine this scene, what do you see?
When you imagine this scene, what do you hear?
When you imagine this scene, what do you smell?
When you imagine this scene, what textures do you (your characters) feel?
When you imagine this scene, what emotions do your characters experience?
What Do You Want Your Readers To FEEL In This Scene?
By the end of this scene, I want my readers to come away feeling….
By the end of this scene, I want my readers to come away thinking…
By the end of this scene, I want my readers to come away believing…
Using Scene Cards To Map A Character’s Inner Journeys.
When all is said and done, stories are not about the plot*. They are not about the events that happen, no matter how amazing they are. They are not about world-building, no matter how fresh and unique the setting.
Stories are about what people believe and how these beliefs do, or do not, change over the course of the novel.
If the character has a set of beliefs that are challenged by events over the course of the novel, and by the end of the story the character has changed and grown in some way, then you have written a ‘comedy’ (in the traditional sense of the word.)
If the character has a set of beliefs that are challenged by events over the course of the novel, and by the end of the story the character has refused to, or has been incapable of, change, then the character falls victim to their own fatal flaws, and you have written a tragedy.
Either way it’s the way a character changes or fails to change that a story is really about.
*the exception being thrillers, which are usually all about plot and little else.
By using the scene card templates I linked to above you can track both your novels plot (the series of cause-and-effect events that happen) and story (the character’s inner journey.) By being familiar with your character’s story you can avoid the pitfall of finding your characters standing in a tavern one evening, with no idea of what you should have them do next.
Even if you are a 100% pantser, completing a scene card before writing each scene should make it clear to you what your character would inevitably feel compelled to do, both in the current scene and the one that follows it. By using these scene card templates you can also avoid the pitfall of ‘idiot plotting.’ That is, having your characters do something unrealistic, or out of character for them, merely to achieve some predetermined plot point.
Conclusion
When writing a novel, you need to track two things – the external cause-and-effect trajectory of events (the plot) and the inner journey your character undergoes (the story). The use of the scene cards linked above can help you get clear on the purpose of your scene BEFORE you write it, thereby saving you time and heartache from writing prose that will later be edited out of the novel. Using scene cards can help to ensure that your scenes are doing enough lifting by making sure that they do at least more than one of the following: advancing the plot, developing the character, increasing the tension, and raising the stakes.
Okay – that’s it! Please let me know if you found these scene cards of help, or if there is anything else you think they could benefit from. Have you used scene cards before? Were they like these scene cards, or something different?
So NaNoWriMo has come and gone. The challenge was to write 50,000 words in 30 days, which I did.
In fact, I wrote 72,143 words in 30 days (78,143 in total), and this is how I did it.
Step 1 – Randomly decide to compete in NaNoWriMo at the last minute because you heard all your writer friends talking about it and it sounded cool.
I attended the 2018 Writing Excuses cruise and it was a life changing experience. I met many cool people and partook in many fascinating conversations, one of them being about NaNoWriMo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month. (See my previous blog post for an explanation of NaNoWriMo). People talked about NaNoWriMo with such enthusiasm that I vaguely contemplated doing it. And then promptly forgot all about it.
Fast-forward a month and I’m back home in Australia. Two weeks before NaNo starts I suddenly decide (and I blame twitter for this) that I will participate. I had no planning done. I had only the vaguest concept in mind for the book I was going to write next. I had not had any time to daydream about it (a fundamental of my writing process). Due to health issues, I had not written creatively for most of 2018.
And yet here I was committing to writing 50,000 brand new shiny words in thirty days for an as-yet-to-be-conceptualised novel.
Step 2 – Panic. Wonder what you’re going to write about for 50,000 words.
I am in the process of writing a series of stand-alone-yet-connected books that all take place at a pivotal time in the ShadowStar lands. I have written three already (The Fated Sparrow, The Truth About Dragons & Where The Wolf Dreams) and during my research for those, I stumbled upon an article that gave rise to the concept for my fourth novel.
Yes, this idle thought was the entire premise with which I was to create my NaNo novel.
Step 3 – Start planning your novel. (Also known as ‘do I need pants for this?’)
How? How does one plan a novel? This was my fourth attempt and I still can’t tell you because I am still refining the process, and discovering what does and doesn’t work for me. I find my novels tend to be a bit thin in the third quarter. I know how they start. I know how they end. I know the individual character arcs and the emotional resonance I’m aiming for. I can get my characters to the catalyst moment and then throw them out into the world, but in the shenanigans section of the novel, my writing tends to get a little wobbly. So I am always seeking new ways to plot through these troublesome spots.
Plotting Versus Pantsing
Some people like to have every plot point accounted for before they start writing. This way they can better manage the stories twists and turns. Some people go so far as to have every scene mapped out in an Excel spreadsheet before they start writing. I have tried this and many other plotting methods, such as the Snowflake Method, but I personally find them too stifling. They smother the creativity within me. When my novels are plotted like this I am bored of them before I even start writing.
Pantsing (a.k.a flying by the seat of your pants). I wrote my first novel from beginning to end, figuring out what would happen in the following day’s chapter as I lay in bed each night. The novel was (still is) terrible. But the experience taught me two things:
1) I needed to go and seriously study the craft of writing.
2) 100% pantsing a novel wasn’t going to yield me my best results.
Since then I have been cobbling together an outlining strategy that combines the elements of both plotting and pantsing. It is important to remember that novel planning occurs on a spectrum. Very few people are 100% plotters or pantsers.
Step 4 – Outlining
I loosely use the Brandon Sanderson ‘story bible’ method to sketch my first outline of a novel. I use a Word document and the Headings tool to make the document easy to manipulate as you can see below.
First I write down anything I already know; Moments of Awesome, scenes I see in my mind’s eye, how it starts, how it ends, snippets of dialogue, the ultimate fate of each character etc. That usually leaves me with about 90% of the novel to still figure out.
After that, I apply a story structure to sign post my way from point A to point B to point C.
For The Truth About Dragons, I used the classic Hero’s Journey story structure. After all, if it worked for George Lucas in Star Wars, why not for me?
Here’s what the Hero’s Journey looks like:
When I started writing The Truth About Dragons I adhered closely to this storytelling format but as The Truth About Dragons progressed I deviated from the hero’s journey because hey! I’m a natural pantser and also a dead-set rebel. Nobody tells me what to write! Though if I looked closely I’m sure I’d find I’ve still subconsciously hit most of these beats.
With my fourth novel, Wolf Moon Rising, I decided to loosely use Blake Snyder’s script writing formula from ‘Save The Cat’.
I liked that once I had my post-it notes up on my board the story structure was very easy to see and understand. Instead of each card referring to a certain page number in the script and a certain number of minutes in movie time I allotted each one 2,000 words. 40 cards times 2,000 words equals an 80,000 word novel.
Act 1 – the hero is an orphan (be it literal or metaphorical) – 20,000 words 1. Opening Image 2. Theme Stated 3. Setup – At Home 4. Setup – At Work 5. Setup – At Play 6. Catalyst 7. Debate – At Home 8. Debate – At Work 9. Debate – At Play 10. Call To Action (break into the second act)
Act 2a – The hero is a wanderer (they have been cast out into the new world) – 20,000 words 1. Intro the B story (usually the love interest) 2. Fun and Games 1 (The protagonist is doing all the cool things in the film. He is investigating the case, chasing down the bad guys, taking exams, or whatever conflict is the routine of his new upside-down world) 3. B story part 2 4. Fun and Games 2 5. B Story Part 3 6. Fun and Games 3 7. B Story Part 4 8. Fun and Games Part 4 9. Mid-Point Part 1 (The false victory. Hero gets everything he thinks he wants. Or if it’s a false defeat, the hero loses everything he thinks he wants. Either way, the bad guy discovers who the hero is, or where he is, the A and B stories cross, a time bomb drops, and the pace quickens) 10. Mid-Point Part 2
Act 2b – The hero transforms to warrior (the Hero hero’s-up and prepares to face what lays ahead) – 20,000 words 1. Bad Guy Closes In – External Doubts From Others 2. Try/Fail Cycle 1 3. Bad Guy Closes In – Internal Self Doubt 4. Try/Fail Cycle 2 5. Bad Guy Closes In – External Doubts From Others 6. Try/Fail Cycle 3 7. Bad Guy Closes In – Internal Self Doubt 8. All Is Lost 9. Dark Night Of The Soul 10. Break Into Three (This is a proactive decision by the protagonist to move forward in response to the All Is Lost)
Act 3 – The hero transforms from warrior to martyr (the hero succeeds or not and prepares for life in the new world order) – 20,000 words 1. Gather The Team 1 2. Gather The Team 2 3. Storm The Castle 1 4. Storm The Castle 2 5. High Tower Surprise 1 6. High Tower Surprise 2 7. Dig Deep 8. New Plan Triumphs/Fails 9. Dénouement 10. Final Image
Here’s what my storyboard looked like before I started writing Wolf Moon Rising:
Here’s what it looked like by the end:
Okay, well that was the ‘planning what to write’ part. Now what?
Step 6 – Actually writing The Thing. Every. Day.
NaNo is all about developing the habit of writing regularly and getting words on the page.
If you were to start with 0 words on Day 1 and finish with 50,000 words on day 30 you need to write an average of 1,666 words a day.
The average typing speed is 40 words per minute (I asked Google and Google would never lie to me).
That means to write 1666 words at 40 WPM you need to set aside 42 minutes of writing time per day. That doesn’t sound too hard does it?
I started recording my words per minute to see just how fast I really typed and the results are below:
The thing that the ’40 WPM average’ doesn’t factor in is that we’re not just typing, we’re creating worlds as we go. And that process sometimes slows us down. It also doesn’t factor in that I’m easily distracted by shiny things, such as Twitter, Facebook, making breakfast and research for that new character’s name.
As you can see, remembering to start and stop a clock is not my forte. What I did learn though was when I am in ‘flow’ I write about 25-30 words a minute. When it’s a struggle I write about 10-15 words a minute. So – I’m not a fast writer (having psoriatic arthritis also contributes to that).
What I do have going for me is that I naturally write a chapter a day when writing a novel. Finishing each writing session at the end of a chapter gives me the sense of closure and achievement I need.
I treat my writing like a professional career, and because my work days are so full I spend my weekends writing to ‘catch up’. I will typically do 8 – 16 hours of writing and writing-related work each weekend (web site maintenance, blog posts, social media management, editing, critiquing, attending writing groups etc).
So, now that I was not working, how many hours a day did I spend writing creatively?
Anywhere from one hour to four hours a day. This was about all the ‘new’ writing my brain could handle before feeling burnt out. (I still did other writing though, editing, critiquing, blog posts etc) Having this amount of time at my disposal definitely gave me an advantage during NaNoWriMo.
Step 7 – Freak out. Ignore the Outline.
Despite having a lot of free time, trying to meet my NaNo word count of 80,000 words was still extremely gruelling. It was a chore. So many days I had to force myself to stay seated at the desk and get the words out when I just wanted to go play outside in the sunshine with the dogs.
Sometimes the writing experience was great and I discovered aspects of the story and world I really liked. Some days I intuitively knew what I was writing didn’t work on some level but I didn’t have the luxury of figuring out why (because I had to meet that all-important word count).
Most days I was [square bracketing] things I knew I needed to come back and fix later such as: • character names • place names • time elapsed versus moon phases (it is a novel about wolfkin after all) • layering of the senses. (I particularly want to come back through and focus on smell being the first sense used) • blocking for fight scenes and so on
Also, that precious outline? It was frequently scrapped or changed as the story took on a life of its own. (This is the reason why I don’t fear my stories being too formulaic when applying a story structure to them). Here’s an example:
As you can see, none of what I had originally planned here came to fruition.
I also discovered that staying at home writing is hard work, but it’s hard work I want to do. I’ve always hated working in an office and dreamed of working from home so I wouldn’t be chained to a desk. The reality is I’m still chained to the desk. I still wake up early (I let myself sleep till 5 am now that I am not working) come to my desk and start writing. I did that this morning and I’m still here. It’s now 2 pm and I haven’t moved except to make breakfast and lunch. The difference is now I am working on things I care about.
Step 8 – I won NaNo. Now What?
Congrats! You won NaNo.
You wrote 50,000 words or 80,000 word or some amount of brand new, shiny words. What to do now?
If your novel isn’t finished, FINISH IT.
Pretend NaNo is still happening until you can write The End. That’s my advice to you. And once you have written The End, put that novel in that metaphorical draw and leave it alone. It needs to steep. And you need to rest. Go, give yourself a pat on the back, and have a break from it for a while.
Go work on something else, and then when you feel ready, come back and read your NaNo novel. Discover the story you really wrote versus the one you thought you were writing. Discover the themes you didn’t even know you were laying down. Make acquaintance with the characters and the world and see who they really are for the first time.
And then once you have read your NaNo novel through it is time to start the editing process.
I’m not going to lie. Revising is haaaaard. And although there is no escaping the many revisions of your manuscript I have come across a little trick that helps reduce continuity issues and that is ‘pack before you go’.
Or to put it more precisely, dress your characters and pack their bags before you start writing so you know what they’re wearing, you know what colours and materials their clothes are made out of and you know what items they have brought with them on their adventures.
Of course, you may need to add, remove or change things as your novel twists and turns and takes on a life of its own. But knowing exactly what your characters are wearing and carrying with them BEFORE you start writing will reduce the number of continuity edits you will have to make.
And this will give you more revision time to focus on things like crippling plots holes and derivative one-dimensional characters….. :p
I hunt down clothes and items for each of my characters and save the photos in their character file on my PC. I then dump these pictures in a Word document and print them out and stick them on the wall by my writing desk. I am a very visual person, so I love being able to look up and have an at-a-glance reference as to what each character is wearing and carrying.
Here’s an example of what a character from my current WIP carries with her:
Here’s an example of what some other characters wear (this is an approximation only):
I have also just recently (I’m late to the party I know) started building Pinterest boards for my places, characters and novels. Anytime I see a picture that captures the look, tone or feel of a place or character I pin it, hoarding it like a squirrel staring down the barrel of winter.
I often do this pinning when I am too brain dead to write or revise but I still want to be working on my writing in some format. This way I can ‘watch’ TV and world-build at the same time.
And it’s FUN! Trawling the internet for hairstyles, clothing, body-types, faces and places that bring to life the world you see so vividly in your mind is an enjoyable past time.
Here’s a link to my Pinterest boards (about half of them are ‘secret’ at this stage).
Do you use Pinterest to world build? If so drop a link to your boards in the comments below – I’d love to check them out.
