Beats are the back-and-forth, action-and reaction, cause-and-effect elements of fiction. Progressions are beats arranged in a way that flows and creates intensity, revelation, and the sense of rising action. Carry through on the wider consequences of your action to create energy and complexity within and across scenes.
Rule of thumb: you can drop every third beat of a fight scene and it will be quicker, but still make sense.
#wonderbook
From Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook:
A scene dramatizes at least one character in the moment – showing, not telling, or at least conveying to the reader the sense of being shown. The ratio of dialog and actions unfolding in the present to exposition, flashback, description and summary is actually very flexible.
A half scene is a mini scene consisting of a few lines of dialog and description, embedded into summary or a different scene to provide more depth and drama.
Summary or exposition describes action or thought without dramatizing it – tells rather than shows. You can get away with a surprising amount of this if you make it interesting enough.
#wonderbook
Originally shared by Mike Reeves-McMillan
So, would you be interested if I wrote a blog post series (leading to an ebook) on “The Well-Presented Manuscript: How to Stand Out When Submitting to Editors”?
It would mainly address the short story market (context: I’ve done a lot of short story submitting in the past year, have made several sales, and most of the rejections I’ve had have been personalised, which is a sign I’m getting past the slush readers). I have also been an editor in a major publishing house, though, and a lot of the advice would also apply to submitting to trad pub.
The premise is: most of what gets submitted to editors is rejected immediately because it doesn’t meet basic standards of competence in presentation and language use. Here’s how to meet those standards – and, by the way, meeting them will help with self-publishing too, since some readers also reject books that don’t meet them.
Topics I would cover include:
– How editors select what to publish (and what not to publish)
– How to find short story markets
– Basics of Standard Manuscript Format
– Commonly confused words and how to distinguish them
– Apostrophe wrangling
– Befriending the comma (that one would require a few posts)
– The dangling participle and how to avoid it
– The past of the past: how not to make your reader tense with confusion
– Tricks to ensure that you haven’t missed words from your sentences
– Varying your sentence structure for fun and profit
– Concise, active writing
I’m open to suggestions on what else to include.
Note: this isn’t about writing the actual story, which is another set of skills above and beyond these. This is about meeting the basic standards that will get your story read in the first place. I review a lot of books, and I see the same errors over and over. Most of them are simple to correct.
Originally shared by Karen Woodward
Loved this analysis by Mike Reeves-McMillan of Lord Dunsany’s “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth“.
#shortstorychallenge
http://csidemedia.com/gryphonclerks/2014/01/21/short-story-challenge-begins/
This is what my current Pieces profile on The Submission Grinder looks like.
I’ve worked hard on “Something Rich and Strange”.
It’s been through five versions and is currently on submission to its seventh market. After feedback from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, I tightened up the beginning. After another rejection or two, I expanded the middle and gave the protagonist more agency. And I’ve just sent it back to The Overcast, whose editor mostly liked it but wanted me to give it a stronger ending.
Hopefully, they’ll like the changes.
#shortstorychallenge
So it looks like I’m already about halfway through drafting The Well-Presented Manuscript, my only-what-you-need-to-know guide to looking like a professional when you send your writing out into the world.
There will be about 16 chapters, maybe 20,000 words. That seems like a good balance between “covers the material adequately” and “goes into too much detail”.
In the latest post on The Well-Presented Manuscript, I give you just enough about the punctuation marks (other than apostrophes and commas) to help you look professional.
Bear in mind that every mistake I talk about in this blog series is something I’ve seen in a published book. Often more than one.
http://csidemedia.com/wellpresentedms/punctuated-equilibrium/
Here’s my review of Jack M. Bickham’s Scene and Structure, which I just finished reading. I found it excellent and very clearly laid out. As I mention in the review, the closer your book is to being a thriller, the more relevant you will find the advice (and even then it may not all work for you, but what advice works all the time)?
I’ve also posted extensive notes under the hashtag #sceneandstructure if you want to look through them.
Jack M. Bickham, Scene & Structure, Chapter 14 (and last): The Scenic Master Plot and How to Write One
Every writer has a (different) general idea of what a novel is and how it should be structured. The more conscious that model is, the better you can manipulate and vary the scene-sequel structure to fit that general pattern.
A “master plot” is the way one writer sets out to write one novel – the kind of things that may happen and their sequence. It’s flexible, not prescriptive, and not fill-in-the-blanks or paint-by-numbers.
The master plot is a tactical plan for achieving linear story development (a story starting in one place and ending in another through logical development step by step, involving rising action).
Each new twist (scene disaster) adds more for the character, and reader, to worry about. And most novels also have subplots.
Bickham now gives a sample “master plot”. He emphasises that it’s an example rather than a template.
A prologue may or may not be used. If it is, it usually isn’t from the main character’s viewpoint, but establishes intrigue and hooks the reader, hinting at what might be wrong or mysterious. It can take place some time before the first chapter, or immediately before.
The time span of the first three chapters should be very tight, keeping the pressure on until the reader is properly hooked. The first chapter needs to start quickly and hook the reader hard, showing, in the main character’s viewpoint, the major change that alters the status quo and puts the character’s self-concept in jeopardy. By the end of the chapter, the MC has either the major story goal or a short-term goal that will make matters worse, or both.
In the subsequent chapters, you could (you might put some of these on cards and shuffle them if you’re short of ideas):
Establish the villain, the villain’s goal, and the villain’s capabilities and attitude (typically powerful and ruthless).
Establish supporting characters: best friend, minor antagonist, romantic lead.
Establish the hero’s background and show the hero pursuing the story goal with dedication (motivation drawn from the background).
Develop secondary characters and their subsidiary story goals, starting major subplots.
Characterise the hero, villain, situation or all three through the eyes of a secondary character.
Raise stakes suddenly with a “shocker question”.
Run a short-term ticking clock.
Bring in more background on the supporting characters and their motivations.
Introduce red herrings and false leads.
Drop in side quests and sub-quests, all leading towards the attainment of the story goal, all resulting in disasters which seem to take the hero further from its attainment.
Show confrontations with the villain in action sequences, providing big “peaks” and running straight on into more action.
Progress the romantic relationship through the hero’s struggles to deal with defeat and disaster.
Advance the villain plot onstage.
Give the hero a pause to rest up, heal, recover, regroup and reconsider. Answer the question “Why not just give up?” by restating the story goal, perhaps in different terms in light of what’s happened so far, and leave the hero newly determined and moving back towards new action.
Avoid the “boggy middle” by using a short mini-story across several chapters, fast-paced, related to the central story question but with side issues, if possible involving a ticking clock, with lots of development of the situation – towards the point where things can start to be resolved.
Flow action scenes into one another without a pause for a sequel.
Reveal the villain’s plot and/or motives to the hero.
Resolve a mystery, in a way that makes it look like the hero won’t live to use the answer.
Take the hero to the brink of ruin.
Switch viewpoints just at the critical moment to one of the secondary characters, then link back into the main plot – too late to rescue the hero (who should be self-rescuing).
Switch to review and analysis and backstory in a major subplot, just when the main plot is looking particularly dire.
Take away some support the hero has been counting on.
Hero and villain both escape their confrontation, but it’s not over.
Resolve some red herrings or bring major subplots towards conclusion.
Put the romantic lead in danger. [I find this one cliched and annoying.]
Show the connection of the prologue to the main story.
Kill off a secondary character or villain’s minion to show how dire everything is getting.
The hero must choose between the personal and the important.
Lead into a hero/villain showdown.
Showdown is one long, exciting, extended scene. A lot of plot threads resolve in this scene, leaving only the main question and the romance. By the end of this scene, both the main question and the romance seem doomed.
Villain gets the upper hand and offers a devil’s bargain: your integrity or your life. Hero chooses integrity.
Top everything you’ve don so far. Go large. No, larger than that. LARGE.
Hero finally wins – but was it worth it? Downside is apparent.
Tie up any remaining loose threads in the final chapter, including those for the secondary characters, but in the main character’s POV.
Resolve the romantic subplot.
(Again, this is an example “master plot” for a specific kind of suspense novel. It isn’t a template for writing every kind of fiction.)
#sceneandstructure