Write well. Write often. Edit wisely.
Story passages have a rhythm, a pattern, a sound. Yet I don’t want to talk about rhythm so much as I do flow.
Rhythm can affect flow, but it’s only one element that can. Let’s look at other story elements that can interfere with flow.
Stories should flow, move along without impediment, and lead ever forward. Stories should draw the reader deeper into the tale and ultimately dump him out at the end, satisfied at having taken the adventure with your characters.
Yet a smooth flow isn’t inevitable. The writer has to work to create it. And a writer could inadvertently disrupt flow, could accidentally drop roadblocks into story, obstructions that keep the reader from smoothly following the tale.
Impediments
These obstructions come in several forms. One impediment is simply bad writing. When the reader can’t follow the meaning or the sequence of events, when he has to go back several lines or paragraphs or pages to figure out what’s going on, that reader isn’t following a smooth story flow.
Challenging a reader can be good. Frustrating a reader with sentences that make no sense or story lines that lack logic is never good. Let your plot and characters rile your readers; let the mechanics of writing remain invisible.
~ Stilted writing is another impediment. Stilted writing can come from a writer’s insistence on not using contractions or from the use of formal words, especially in dialogue. If a character is loose and easy, don’t put formal or fancy words in his mouth when he’s in an argument. If you have to look up the word, it’s likely that such a character wouldn’t know it and certainly wouldn’t use it when he was emotional. Yes, be creative in your use of words. But maintain your character’s personality with his words.
Use contractions, no matter your time period. Humans have contracted and combined words for thousands of years. Find a different way to highlight or differentiate speech of a people group or era.
If you want one character to use a more formal tone and not use contractions, make sure all the others do use contractions. And keep non-use of contractions to a minimum. Your readers will thank you.
~ Repetition of ideas or information can impede flow. Instead of it easing readers through a passage, repetition can slow them down. They start to think, “Haven’t I already read this? Didn’t the author tell me this before?” Once readers start thinking about the story mechanics and setup rather than the plot, they’ve been pulled from the fiction. You don’t want readers thinking of the words on the page—you want them thinking of what those words on that page mean in terms of what’s happening. That is, you don’t want readers thinking of the individual words at all, not even about how wonderful they are. You do want readers swept away by the meaning or tone of the words as they relate to the story.
~ Confusion is another block to good flow in story. If readers are confused about characters because they’re too much alike or about who is doing what or about the possibilities of the actions you’ve described, story flow is interrupted.
Always keep the reader in mind. He wants to get lost in your story, has picked up your book for just that purpose. Don’t make it difficult for him when instead you could keep his attention with just a bit more diligence on your part. Use one of your editing passes to look for confusion.
Note: If you trip over any sentence or passage or even a single word, fix the words that trip you up. The reader will have more of a problem than you do, so if anything snares your attention as you read, that’s a sure tip-off that the words need work.
~ Dialect can get in the way of a smooth read and impede flow. Use a single word or phrase to establish dialect, or let the reaction of other characters reveal that someone speaks in dialect. Spelling out dialect in dialogue most definitely slows a read.
~ Redundant phrases may not only impede a reader’s journey through a story, they can also drive readers crazy.
She nodded her head in agreement.
She nodded. (We know it’s her head and we know a head nod signifies agreement.)
“Yes, I can do it,” she said in agreement.
“I can do it.” (Yes by itself is also acceptable and often preferable, but a simple yes doesn’t always reveal the character or her attitude or emotion.)
What about possible responses to this question?
“Do you think he can handle the new duties as well as take on Mr. Big?”
“Yes, I think he can handle the new duties as well as take on Mr. Big.” [Sounds like an essay that’s been padded for word count, doesn’t it?]
“He’s good.”
“He can do it.”
“Mr. Big won’t know what hit him.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“He’ll slip right in, get us set up. Don’t worry so much.”
Responses that don’t repeat the question allow the story to move forward. They reveal something about the speaker and can also reveal information about a character that the speaker is talking about.
Note: If a question is not answered right away and either story time or distance on a page separate question from answer, repetition or a reminder of the question is not only allowed but encouraged. The goal is to keep the reader flowing with the story—don’t lose them when a few words will keep them on track.
~ Unnecessary punctuation can impede flow. If a reader is confused by punctuation that’s out of place, he’s not flowing with the fiction. Brush up on punctuation and put it to work for you.
Keep in mind that periods are full stops. Too many too close together will produce stilted passages.
~ Time and the order of events can contribute to a smooth flow or create chaos, at least in the reader’s mind.
The order of events can have to do with both logic and the unfolding of plot, and sometimes you just don’t want to tell the story in a linear fashion. But once again I’ll remind you of the reader. Challenge him if you want to, but don’t forget that a human is trying to follow your story. Most readers expect story to present oldest events first and then follow with subsequent events. If you have a purpose for not following such a pattern, remain aware of reader expectation. And be sure to compensate for that expectation.
~ Breaks affect story flow. Choose your sentence, paragraph, scene, and chapter breaks with care. The way the chunks of words are broken and interrupted and connected will affect the flow.
Longer sentences create a different feel than do short, choppy sentences. But long sentences with many digressions can also be choppy.
~ Fit words to story, to character, to genre, and to reader. We all want variety in our words, but words that don’t fit can jar the reader. And books that should be accompanied by a dictionary place a burden on the reader.
No, there’s nothing wrong with using a well-chosen word, even if it’s not a common one. But what is your goal? To use the best words for the story or teach your readers a new word? Think cohesion in terms of story elements. Think readability for the audience.
~ Combine sentences to smooth the read. Not all phrases need to be separate. You can combine in dozens of ways to smooth the feel and sound of sentences. Use conjunctions and punctuation and variety in sentence structure to please both the ear and the eye.
_______________________
Writing is not only about tricks and tools and forcing words into patterns that tell a good story in an entertaining manner. Sometimes you just simply need to write, to let the words flow from your subconscious to the page. And that flow is as important to the feel of your story as the flow achieved through attention to the mechanics.
Write with freedom; compose your plots and dialogue unfettered. You can always rein in phrasing that’s too loose. But if you don’t write loose at least some of the time, you’ll never achieve the particular flow that comes through letting go, letting yourself fling words on the page with no thought to meaning or logic or consequence.
Planning each word has its place. But so does working without a plan. Be sure you tap into both methods so your writing gets the benefits of both.
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Ensure that your plots flow without impediment and that readers flow right along with the story. Don’t be shy about getting help—ask beta readers how a passage flows. Ask them where they get tripped up in a chapter.
Pay attention to flow, to the forward motion of your stories. And remove impediments—no matter how small or how involving—so your fiction moves easily, without bumps that jar readers out of the fantasy you’ve crafted for them.
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Tags: flow, writing styles Posted in: Craft & Style
[…] How Goes the Flow in Your Story? […]
[…] Storytelling has essential elements, whether you a senior executive presenting to the board of directors, an IT manager hoping to increase budget, or a startup founder pitching investors. Consider shaping the story in a narrative arc, which can also be summarized in four stages: exposition, rising action, climax, and falling action. In summary, good stories have a particular kind of flow. […]
[…] Storytelling has essential elements, whether you a senior executive presenting to the board of directors, an IT manager hoping to increase budget, or a startup founder pitching investors. Consider shaping the story in a narrative arc, which can also be summarized in four stages: exposition, rising action, climax, and falling action. In summary, good stories have a particular kind of flow. […]
[…] Have a look at this great article from Beth Hill – http://theeditorsblog.net/2011/10/01/hows-goes-the-flow-in-your-story/ […]
The reader will focus on what stands out. Turn the reader's attention where you want it to go.
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Copyright © 2010-2018 E. A. Hill Visit Beth at A Novel Edit
Write well. Write often. Edit wisely.
Wow! I love this article. Thank you, Beth. I see flow like this: you meet a stranger on a long train trip and start a conversation. If it flows without interruption, it doesn’t really matter what the subject is about because the conversation becomes enjoyable anyway. I’ll be adding some of your tips to my editing checklist.
Justin, I’m glad you found something useful.
Your example is spot on. And then there are those conversations with strangers that don’t flow. Time passes slowly, slowly, slowly and you only want to escape. We definitely don’t want our readers feeling that way about our books.
Thanks for adding to the discussion.
This is a great article. I think writing with is all about balance, like you said, let your writing experience the best of both loose writing and controlled. Sometimes I find it a bit difficult to achieve the balance. I tend to focus much on a characters emotional state,which I think makes the reader connect more with the character yet sometimes I become repetitive. My first novel, Beyond Gavia, is being published by a small press, but my second,Conquered, I want to take a stab at self publishing. I don’t have the funds to hire a professional editor, so I’m editing with the help of friends and family. I feel like I am having problem with the flow, too much talk about the main characters emotional state maybe. How could I break this up? Any advice?
Crystal, if you feel there’s too much of something, then it’s likely there is definitely too much.
Instead of talking about emotions, show them. If your character is moping and all we’re getting are her thoughts, show her getting irrationaly angry at a child or a pet and lashing out and then instantly regretting the action. Get out of the character’s head and show the results of the emotions—binge eating or drinking, anger, tears, irrational buying, a car accident.
When people’s emotions are out of whack, they act strangely. They could even experience chest pains or headaches or be sick to their stomachs. They could be up all night because they can’t sleep, which will affect their behavior and thoughts.
A character could forget appointments or drive and get lost, not knowing where she is.
To fix too much of any one element, give the reader something else. If there are too many thoughts, get into dialogue. Too much dialogue, go to action. Too much description, give us an action scene.
Even real people get tired of hearing themselves think. Show a character tired of his or her own thoughts. Let him or her want something new.
I hope these ideas help. You definitely don’t want too much of any one fiction element to take over your story. Readers will get bored.
Lovely article. It flows even though it’s quite substantial. Thanks.
Thank you, Aditya. I’m glad you liked it.
This was a really great article! I’m getting my 1st novel published at age 15, (hopefully) and trying to put together the structure and beginning of a sequel. That being said, it can be hard to compare a work of literature I’m proud of with something barely started.
Your article opened my mind and helped me with a thing most new writers lack and need assistance on: flow. With your extra precautionary tips, I’ll be sure to incorporate them into my second novel as well as short stories! Thanks, again for such a lovely article!
Eileen,
I’m not even sure if you will see this comment although I hope you will.
You would be 16 or 17 now, but I am just wondering how things went with your book. I am writing a book myself, well, trying too. You don’t have to answer any of these questions. I am just curious though, how did you stay motivated to write the book? I am finding it difficult to stay focused on the story. This is partially a writer’s block but even before I would only work on it for like 20 minutes a day maybe a couple times a week. I am just wondering how you finished the book. Also, how long did it take to write it?
And just wondering do you have any tips for writing a book?
Also, just to let you know, I am in sort of the same situation as you were when you were 15. Well, age-wise. I am not going to give out my specific age for safety purposes although I am around that same age.
So those are just some questions I have and please, don’t feel that I expect you to answer. I don’t expect you to answer at all. For all I know I don’t even know if you’re alive. So I’m not exactly expecting an answer.
~Mily
I have really big problem when writing just i like i do now. The most common problems for is repetitive words and also breakage within one idea to another. It’s really difficult for me to improve no matter how much i tried. In short what you suggest that will improve my writings with good flow?
Meija, you’ve mentioned a couple different issues.
Don’t worry about repetition as you write—just write. Get the words out there. Then when it’s time to clean up your writing projects you can work to eliminate repetition. If you have trouble seeing the repetition, try reading from a printed version rather than from a screen.
For breakage between ideas and thoughts, consider connections. How are you linking ideas in your mind? That is, what makes you jump from one to the next?
Your mind is making some kind of connection between ideas—you just need to include that connection on the page so that your readers also make the connection.
Again, this can be done later, after you get the main thoughts down. Look back at what you’v’e written and add connecting words, sentences, or even paragraphs between ideas that seem to have no connections.
Readers can’t see into your head to understand your leaps from thought to thought, so you have to include the connections on the page.
Use connecting words such as so, therefore, because, due to, for this reason, and so on.
There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that you’re making a connection and moving from point to point.
If you’re only listing items—maybe they’re all examples of something but are not related to each other in other ways—write them as lists. (This advice is geared more to non-fiction than fiction.)
As for flow, try being less picky about word choice and punctuation and grammar as you create, as you are first getting the words down. Trying to be exact and stopping to punctuate correctly, stopping to find the perfect word, can create choppy phrases and sentences with no flow.
Simply write. Write long and rambling sentences. Write one-word sentences. Write without thought to the mechanics and to effect. Those issues can be addressed when you rewrite and edit.
If passages are choppy, with fits and starts, start combining sentences and give readers fewer stop points. Take out commas and replace them with coordinating conjunctions. Allow yourself to ramble a bit.
You can always rein in too much rambling, but sometimes that ramble is exactly what a passage needs to loosen it up.
As an exercise, try writing long sentences that take up half a page. Just write. Pretend you’re an excited child who’s seen some fascinating sight and who can’t get the words out fast enough.
Then Ruthie picked it up—she picked it up, Mommy—and she swung it around over her head, around and around and around. And then she threw it at Ricky and he ducked but Billy jumped up and grabbed it and . . .
———-
Does that help?
Thank you so much! My friend and I are working on a book and we cannot seem to make it sound like a real published novel. It might just be because it is on the screen. Will it help if it is printed? Also, we need to make it longer. Any ideas other than being more descriptive?
Molly, I wish you and your friend great success with your writing.
Printing a manuscript is a great way to proof it for problems and errors, but there could be dozens of reasons it doesn’t read like a published novel. I’ve got a longer explanation and some suggestions for you, but my comments will probably require an article. I’ll try to get it up for you in a couple of days.
Okay thank you so much!
Molly, the article (Why Doesn’t My Story Read Like a Published Novel) ended up being a long one. Thank you for the questions—I think the discussion will be helpful for a lot of readers. Let me know if you still have questions or if you have comments on the article.
I really Like this article. When, I write for fanfiction, and when I read my own stories, I feel like they are a bit choppy, like it’s missing something but I don’t know what. Also is it too much to describe what the character is wearing?
Desiree, choppiness sometimes comes as a result of stringing together scenes without enough connections. Scenes and events need to be connected, and sometimes spelling out those connections is necessary to make smooth transitions. Sometimes it’s as simple as adding connecting words—so, because, and. Sometimes the connections need to be more detailed, maybe paragraphs of transitions or even character thoughts that link one scene to the next. Allowing the viewpoint character to pause for reflection on what has happened and what might happen next can be a good way to smooth out transitions.
As for description of a character’s clothes, that all depends on the needs of the story’s current moment.
Given what’s going on around him or her and given the character’s personality, would a character describing the clothing even notice it? Which items in particular would the character notice? (Maybe the character loves/hates the color red. Maybe the character collects hats. Maybe the character can’t understand why anyone would wear a suit under the circumstances.)
If you’re asking whether or not the viewpoint character would describe his or her own clothing, I would ask if that’s likely. How often do real people think of their clothing as they’re walking through their day? It’s not as likely that they’ll think of the style or the color as much as they’ll react to something that happens to the clothing or the way it restricts them.
So both the real person and a fictional character might note the blob of mustard on an otherwise pristine white blouse. They might notice that a skirt is too tight to sit in comfortably or to allow the woman to crouch to the floor to picked up a dropped item.
A coat or sweater may prove too hot or too itchy. A scarf meant to be fashionable might keep getting caught in things—drawer, car door, the handles of a purse.
Rather than simply describing a character’s clothing—especially if we’re talking the viewpoint character—put the clothing to work as part of a scene. That way readers get the description but not as a list—they see the clothing in action.
Does that get at your question?
Hello, I was wondering if you had suggestions on time flow? I always have so much happening and it’s only been a couple days. How do you move time without pointing it out?
Karen, see if this article—Marking Time with the Viewpoint Character—is any help. If not, let me know.
Sometimes you do point out that time is passing. Other times you show what’s happening and let readers deduce the passage of time because they know how long those actions take. And sometimes we use narrative summary to indicate time passing.
Are you saying that you need more time to pass, that you have too much happening too quickly? Keep in mind that you can skip periods of time. That is, you only have to account for the passing of time—you don’t have to show what happens during those time periods. You might find this article—Mastering Scene Transitions—helpful as well.
Hi,
I really love this blog site. The tips are awesome! My problem is, that when I go back to proof read my story, I feel uninterested. I think it’s because I know what’s going to happen, and stuff, but I just don’t feel like proof-reading it anymore. Could this mean that it isn’t good enough? Or that it’s boring?
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