Yet reader perception is truly important. It means the difference between a book that’s enjoyed to the end and one that’s put down—maybe thrown down—before the reader has finished it.

Reader perception is what readers bring to your story. They may have an idea what the book is about through the recommendation of a friend or critic. Or maybe they read the back cover blurb, and that was enough to have them buying or borrowing the book, anticipating the adventure you’ve prepared for them.

If the perception of your book is one that appeals, the reader will read. And he’ll develop more perceptions right from page one.

He’ll feel the tone—is the opening scene light, maybe humorous? Readers should pick up on that. And if they do, they’ll expect the rest of the story to adhere to the tone of the first pages. Not that they expect only humor or humor on every page, but they will expect some. Those first pages have primed the reader’s expectations and they’ll want you to deliver what they think you’ve promised.

Now, you can say you never promised humor, but perception is reality, until the reader learns otherwise. If a reader feels you’ve made a promise, he’ll be looking for fulfillment of that promise.

Readers can read a lot into the first pages—that’s one reason they’re so important to get right.

If the language on those early pages is poetic, readers will expect the poetic throughout the story, at least when dealing with a particular character.

If the words are crude, rough with cussing and locker-room language, that’s what they’ll expect later. So, if you start with the four-letter words, know that the reader will expect them to continue. Maybe not to the same degree. But they certainly won’t expect rainbows and kittens to replace them.

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These perceptions can cover any subject matter and any writing element.

I’ve spoken to two writers recently about the presence of a child in the opening pages. Neither of the stories was about children and in one, the child was simply used in the opening scene, he was not a featured character and would never be seen again.

The presence of children early in a book can signal readers that the book is for or about kids. Or, that may not be true at all and a child may just be a device for introducing the lead character or the plot. But if a reader doesn’t want to read about kids or a story he thinks is written for kids, he may put the book down.

Or the reader may read on because a book with children appeals and then discover children aren’t featured at all. And that’s when that reader throws the book across the room.

It seems such a little thing, doesn’t it? But perception is strong, and it can take readers a place you’d never intended.

On the other hand, when you’ve set up the perceptions, you can lead the reader exactly where you want him to go.

If you want the reader agitated, feeling suspense in the early pages, set him on edge. Write a scene that knocks the reader off balance and keep him off balance for a while. Use what readers already know about story and about a genre and use the expectations he brings to your story to pull him deep right from the start.

Look at book covers. No, most writers don’t have much say about their covers, but covers do a lot for reader perception. A pink cover with fluffy white clouds sets up one perception. The same cover with one addition—a dagger dripping crimson blood—creates a different perception.

The same thing this visual does for the reader, you can do with words. Get the reader on your side by creating a perception that matches what your story will deliver.

So, what does this mean in terms of writing the book?

It means that you might have to change your story opening to match the climax and resolution you actually end up with.

If means that the first pages need to match the tone, the style, the word choices, the character personalities, the dialogue patterns, and the action you want the rest of the story to offer.

It means you need to be aware of your audience as you write, and more importantly, as you edit. You need to remember that readers open that first page knowing nothing about your main character, your antagonist, and the challenges ahead for both of them. So, you need to read as a reader would.

What is there in the early pages for a reader to discover, to latch on to, to use to orient himself in your make-believe world? What expectations have you established? What perceptions will a reader bring to the first page and then, once he’s read those first pages, carry to the rest of the story?

I don’t mean to imply that readers only have perceptions at the opening of a book. But when perceptions are not met there, you can lose the reader before he’s gotten involved. If he’s already involved in your plot and with your characters and then you seemingly mislead him—because that’s what a perception that’s messed with will feel like—you might be able to keep him reading. If he’s just got to know what happens next, the miscue can be forgiven.

I’m also not saying that characters can’t grow and change. But that change will be an outgrowth of the story, not a decision by you to make the character more (or less) appealing halfway through the story. If the reader’s perception is that the protagonist is a decent man, even though he’s made some mistakes, he may not take well to the revelation that the protagonist actually killed his neighbor’s dog, on purpose, by running over him with his car.

Yes, of course you could write such a revelation. But you’ve got to know the strength of reader perception and the consequences when you manipulate it too far. Surprise the reader, yes. But don’t write a setup for one story and deliver a different one. If you’ve revealed a character’s personality through dialogue and action and thought, and then admit it was all a lie, you can expect readers to react. And more than likely, react unfavorably.

Be aware of reader perceptions. Put them to work for you rather than allowing them to work against you. If you know what the reader will think when you write Before heading out to the cliff, Amy taped a note to the bathroom mirror that said she’d always loved the theme song from M*A*S*H, but you don’t actually mean to imply the depressed woman’s going to kill herself, then change what you’ve written. If she liked the song because it reminded her of nights around the TV with her parents and siblings, help the reader discover that.

Give serious thought to the effects of your words on your readers. Acknowledge perceptions.

But please, don’t write wearing a straitjacket. Be aware, but not bound. Know what expectations and perceptions you’re creating and then use them. If you find one that’s not appropriate for the rest of the story or for tone or character or genre, change it. Anticipate reader reaction but don’t overanalyze.

Put any and everything to work for your stories.

Write with awareness.

Put perceptions to work.

***

And adults who are denied either plot ways to get what they want by another method or they’re plotting revenge against the individual responsible for the denial.

You can manipulate your characters—even the sweetest, most agreeable ones—into heinous behavior by denying them what they most want.

And not just denying them, but promising or hinting that they’ll get it if they first do something, say something, be something. And when they give all to do or say or be that something and you still deny them what they want, well then you can certainly see what kind of person those characters are by their reactions.

Use denial to increase conflict between characters and between one character and his world.

Use denial to goad characters into rash acts, into acting without thought to consequence or to the considerations of others.

Pour on the denials so that when the character thinks he can achieve a second desire in place of the first, he is thwarted there too. And deny him again when he thinks trying harder should bring success.

Denial makes us dig in and push to get what we want, what’s been promised, what is our due.

Denial also makes us angry. Makes us irrational. Makes us rash.

Denial is marvelous for stories. Use it to stir up characters, to make a character unlike his everyday self, the person he is when his desires aren’t threatened. Use denial to show what a character is made of, what he values, the lengths he’ll go to satisfy himself at the expense of the desires of others. At the expense of his reputation. Perhaps at the expense of his very self.

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 Can you see how denial can work against a character but work for the story?

Characters who are denied either retrench and try harder or they look for ways around whatever blocks them from the object of their desire. They could also seemingly give up in the hopes of tricking other characters, but if they truly give up, there’s not much more you can do with that denial. If characters are thwarted and do give up, the conflict is eased and the tension diffused. Instead of increasing conflict, you’ll have erased it.

But characters who either keep pushing—as if strength or character alone might propel them past the denial point—or who look for ways around the denial keep readers interested. They keep the conflict high and they add trouble to problem to predicament.

Repeated denials allow characters to develop character—and perseverance and drive and boldness.

Denial matures characters. It can also lead them down paths, both for good and evil, that they’d never imagine traveling had they not been denied.

Variety of Denials
To introduce variety, vary the type of denial or change the method of denial. If Johnny Orlando at first can’t travel to Europe because his family can’t afford it, make the second denial of the trip come when he’s got money and opportunity but a pregnant wife on bed-rest and two toddlers running around his home.

Or maybe Marsden only wants to be left alone to paint in his cottage by the sea. Deny him that solitude by giving him a neighbor—in the only other house for 10 miles—who can’t stand being alone, who suffers from insomnia, and who thinks the artist needs pampering with food and wine those longs nights he’s up painting. Deny Marsden any peace by having him knock the neighbor down the stairs—accidentally of course—breaking her leg on one side and spraining her wrist on the other. Since she has no one to care for her, Marsden, feeling guilty, must of course offer his own home for rehab.

Vary the intensity of the denial, the character that the denial comes through, the reason for the denial, and the effect of the denial on the character. That is, don’t repeat yourself.

Make the denials logical for the story; think them through ahead of time.

Make characters face denials of different types and for different situations or different desires at the same time.

Build up the effect of denials so that by the time the character is ready to blow, all it takes is the simplest of denials to get him steaming.

Reveal a character’s personality by the way he handles denial. Not every character is upset by every denial, especially at the story’s beginning. Yet, if he’s quick to be agitated by someone telling him he can’t have what he wants, let him be consistent. And give him an antagonist, or even a friend, who is quick to tick him off just to watch him get angry or get creative with his responses.

It’s true that some people agitate others just to see their reactions. You can write this kind of character into your story to stir up your protagonist.

Since even the most accomplished man or woman doesn’t always get what he or she wants, build denial into your stories. Give characters a reason to push back or to go outside the law or outside the accepted manner of obtaining something they want or feel is their due.

Tell them no and then watch them pitch a fit or get even. Watch them achieve their goals by pushing against barriers all the way to breakthrough and success.

Or watch them push through those barriers to find spectacular failure.

Make them determined. Make them selfish, in at least one area of their lives. Make them stubborn. Make them do what they swore they’d never do.

Make them hurt others to get what they want. Make them regret that they hurt those they love. Make them fear they’ll do the same thing again.

Make them proud of their stubbornness. Make them ashamed. Make them sorrowful.

Let them accept the blame for their actions and the catastrophic results of those actions.

Let them cast blame on others.

Give them insight and character growth based on what happened when they pushed past denial.

Allow them to pretend that repeated denials and their response to denial never affected them.

Let them learn something.

Let them pretend to learn nothing.

*******

Use repeated denials to drive your character where he needs to go, to levels of higher emotion and deeper personal needs.

Use denials to set the character on his story course and set the reader on edge.

Deny your character what he wants and what he needs. And then watch him go after those wants and needs with determination and ingenuity and passion.

Deny your characters what they want, but give your readers everything.

Write good story today.

Write reaction-provoking denials.

***

So, we spend much of our early years learning how to stifle emotion, honesty—because you can’t tell Mrs. Arlington that her dress is hideous—and our confusion.

There are individuals, of course, who ignore their parents’ training or whose parents don’t encourage polite manners. These children are the ones who pitch fits in the grocery store or who bully other kids on the playground. We’re not going to talk about these people, children whose emotions run wild and who grow into adults whose emotions run wild. Or into adults who use their volatile emotions or the mere threat of them to control those around them.

No, I want to talk about people—in our case, characters—who hold back their responses.

Women who’ve been trained to be polite rather than assertive.

Men who are told tears—and even the grief that prompts them—are unmanly.

Men and women who don’t speak their minds over matters either insignificant or noteworthy because to do so would be impolite or rude.

People who’ve been repressing their emotions or their thoughts, their preferences or dislikes or their opinions,  for years. For decades. For so long that they have no room for one more repressed thought or unvoiced emotion.

Characters so close to letting loose and breaking down that one nudge more will send them over the edge.

Ah . . . Can’t you see it? Feel the tension? Sense the volatility of the middle manager who’s been forced to stand behind others for his entire career, waiting to make his move, waiting for recognition. Never causing a fuss, never venting even when he was wronged. Can you see him, pushing down and pushing deep his emotions? And can you see him at his moment of triumph, when he should be finally making his mark, can you see what happens when his grand idea is shot down or he’s asked to once again support the plan of a lesser man? For the good of the company, of course. Maybe for the good of the industry or for the sake of the planet.

What happens when this man can’t take any more, won’t take any more? Does he go quietly into the night?

Not if he’s a character in a novel.

No, our middle manager explodes at his wife, pre-empting the news of her promotion, her pregnancy, her cancer diagnosis.

He hits the tipping point, but it’s the worst conceivable time for him to lose it. He gets a big scene—spewing his disappointment, spilling his rage—and the story tension soars. Then when his wife is sympathetic but also shares her news, and his needs must once again take the back seat to someone else’s, they go at each other and conflict jumps.

Such conflict—and the resulting tension between characters and within the reader—creates involving, absorbing, unforgettably powerful fiction.

Or is that involving, absorbing, powerfully unforgettable fiction?

When a character rages, when he falls apart and lets go and breaks down, then we’ve got a scene that engages readers. That rips at their own emotions. That touches and moves them. That breaks and shakes and shatters them.

When the reader has drawn close to that character, when he can empathize with him, the breakdown is even more disturbing or moving.

It can even be cathartic.

Catharsis is the purging of emotions, usually when those emotions have built to an explosion point. Catharsis is a cleansing, a washing clean and clear.

Characters who explode—in rage or grief or fear—give themselves a release as well as providing a release for the reader.

You’ve watched such scenes in movies, when the star gets a chance for a tour de force moment, when he explodes with passion and reveals the true character he’s been hiding for most of the story.

Such scenes can become unbearable to the point they’re difficult to watch. The power of the released emotion—the long-repressed emotion—pushes every button of the audience. And it pushes the character.

Pushes him to say what he’s never said, what he’d been afraid to say, what he probably, in polite society, would never reveal. But when he gets to throw out and throw up the seething repressed words and feelings and truths he’s been hiding, wow. The release changes him. Brings him peace or at least some relief.

Maybe brings him guilt. Maybe healing. Maybe more trouble if his release comes at the expense of his boss or a foe or even a child who doesn’t understand why Dad went wacko for a while.

You can include such moments in the lives of your characters, moments when the inner person comes to the surface and reveals himself without apology and without fear. Moments when the repressed is freed. Moments when characters let ‘er rip with no thought to consequence.

Consider giving your protagonist—maybe your antagonist—such a scene. Let your lead character cast off society’s rules and be honest with himself and those closest to him. Use a character’s catharsis to send the story in a new direction.

Necessities for a satisfying character rant . . .

Reader identification with the character—be sure the rant doesn’t occur too early in the story or before readers empathize with the character

A character who has something to rant about, a topic that will engage other characters and/or the reader

A character who hasn’t already been ranting or breaking down throughout the story—a passionate catharsis will be most striking if it comes from a character who’s been constantly repressing rather than venting

Consequences, negative and positive, to the character or those he loves as a result of the character’s blowup

The character and/or story moves into a new direction as a result of a character’s emotional release

The moment or scene of a rant is of a sufficient duration without going so far that you lose the reader’s attention or his ability to empathize

Word choices that convey the emotion the character is feeling and word choices that elicit the emotion you’re looking for from the reader

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Strongly consider giving your main character his own tour de force scene, one that readers will remember because it not only touched their emotions, it pulled and twanged and stomped on them. Consider such a scene especially if your character hasn’t done much changing or emoting through the story.

Consider such a scene if the story doesn’t need another action scene that arises from outside forces but could use one that’s prompted by character needs.

Consider an emotional cleansing if it’s past time for your character to speak his mind.

Shake up your readers by shaking loose your characters. Make readers witnesses to the most personal moment of a character’s life. Let them see. experience, know a character at his most vulnerable.

Make a strong character human by allowing him to break down in a spectacular fashion, in a way that changes him. In a way that opens the eyes of those who thought they knew him.

Show your tough guy’s emotions, your intellectual’s heart, your timid mouse’s backbone and passion.

Let truth emerge through unrestrained words and unfiltered emotions. Let the character make himself foolish and not care, at least in the moment of his release. (Afterwards you can give him remorse and embarrassment and all sorts of painful fallout.) Push beyond your own limits to make yourself uncomfortable at the raw emotion you let spill out of your pen and your head and your heart.

*******

Allow your characters to tell off the world and allow yourself to be impolite, to butt in where no one belongs, to tell secrets that shouldn’t be brought to light.

Give your characters a catharsis.

Write good fiction.

Write powerful rants.

***

Which scenario fits your story? You probably know the characters pursuing your hero, but have you given equal attention to their props? To their setting? To the social and political and historical details of their lives?

If you haven’t, you should.

Readers find it more than annoying to be rolling along with the fiction, lost in the action and characters, only to be stopped by an object or event or social practice not common to the setting of a story.

Are your female characters all women-libbers—in the Seville of 1792?

Do your kids use Velcro in 1939?

Do your Regency men strike safety matches pulled from a match box with an attached strike plate?

If your characters do any of these things, they’re doing the impossible. At least for the era or the date of your story.

This article is a reminder for writers and editors to check facts and dates, to check setting details and social practices and character attitudes against the available products and practices and attitudes of a story’s date and locale. We take care to choose words to fit plot and characters and genre; we also need to take the same care fitting detail—facts and dates and inventions and products—to our story date and place.

You may think of other categories of facts to check, other specific details, but I’ve listed a few to consider, especially if you place your story in a time or country (even a region) different from your current date and location.

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Dates

Real events
If you mention historical events, verify the dates.

Verify, also, that your characters could know of events of their era. That is, before modern communication abilities, news traveled slower. Would your characters know of events from across the globe? Would they care about them?

Methods for dating
Do your characters follow the modern calendar? An older calendar? Do they use religious references (feast days and so forth) to keep track of time rather than using months and days of the week?

Events/News of the day

What was happening in your time period and location that would affect your characters? A worldwide flu epidemic might be known to your character, might affect him. A prize for an invention, earned halfway around the world, may mean nothing.

Include what would be known to your characters, not necessarily what is known to you looking back on historical events.

Animals

Available animals
Do the animals of your locale fit? Were they a presence in the era you’ve put them in? Or, if animals were missing for some reason, have you noted that in your story?

Domesticated animals
Which animals were domesticated in your story era?

National boundaries/country names

Name Changes
Are your country names correct for the story dates? Some countries go through turbulent times, with names changing as often as leadership does. Make sure your country names fit your dates.

Boundaries
Country boundaries change during war and through other events. Make sure areas in your stories are in the country you’ve said they’re in on the date you’ve used.

Country References
Do your characters think of their country or their people by one name while outsiders refer to them by another name? This is a common practice. Use the country name each character would use.

Growing seasons and produce

Check growing seasons in your setting. What crops grow on the farms in that setting? What fruits are available in the wild? When are the different crops harvested? Who does the harvesting and what tools are available to them? What harvest rituals are followed? 

Natural disasters

Did your story location ever face natural disasters? Do any of those disasters happen during your story? How did they affect the area afterwards—what changes did the people make as a result of those disasters? What was life like before the catastrophe? Do characters think of the earlier times, try to return to them?

Imagine New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. Imagine Pompeii before, during, and after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

Available Products

What products are available to your characters? Where are those products in the product cycle? Are they new and novel to your characters? Do they marvel over them or use them without thought? Which products are used by the poor, which by the wealthy? Think in terms not only of era but of locale.

When you’re checking the availability of your products, remember to consider—

Technology

Weapons

Clothing

Household items

Musical instruments

Vehicles

Food

Types/Sources of foods
What foods are available to your characters? In what form is that food available—raw, fresh, frozen, packaged? Do characters have to hunt?

Storage/service options
What food storage options are available? Consider markets, grocery stores, inns and restaurants. Who prepares the food?

Alcohol/beverages
Do characters make their beer, grow grapes for wine? Is there fresh water? Who, if anyone, drinks milk?

Slang

What are phrases common to the era? Which cuss words are appropriate? Which words would fit your characters but date your story? Would you be better off using less slang?

Remember corporate speak and jargon—use words to flavor the story but don’t overburden your characters or readers with too much of a good thing. 

News sources

What news sources are available to your characters? What magazines do they read? How did news travel in the days before television and the Internet?

Entertainment/Pastimes

Fun
What TV shows, movies, books, and games are known to your characters? What do they do for fun?

Sporting events
Are sports used for exercise, as training for war, to keep the masses entertained, or simply for fun?

Gambling
What games of chance are popular in your era? Who is permitted to participate?

Science

What was known of the sciences in your era? Would your characters have known of them?

Social Issues

Are your characters up on the social issues of their era and setting? Would they be?

Languages

Language choices
What languages do your characters speak? Were they actually spoken in the locale and era of your story? Were languages both written and spoken?  How do neighboring tribes converse? Is there both a common tongue and a formal or restricted language?

Regional differences
Keep in mind regional or group differences, even within same language groups. Which would your characters drink—pop, soda, drink, Coke, soda pop.

Political Setup

Political alliances
Is the political situation stable or undergoing turmoil? Is it even a factor in the story? If it isn’t, did something so momentous happen in history that your characters should be affected by it?

Are there alliances within governments or between nations that should influence the events of your story?

Types of governments
Do your characters live under a monarchy, republic, democracy, dictatorship, or under tribal leaders ?

Treaties
What treaties existed between nations? What was covered in those treaties?

Laws
What national or local laws have an impact on—or should have an impact on—story events and characters? Do your laws match the era you’ve chosen for your story?

Holidays

Are holidays actually holy days of religious celebration or are they national events or family celebrations? What holiday practices were observed by the characters of your era and setting?

Available Materials

What building materials, what fabrics and cloth, were available in your era? Would every character have access to all materials?

Farming

Was a man/family responsible for farming? What tools were available for farming? Do the farming practices of your characters fit the practices of the day?

Methods of travel/communication

Travel
How do characters of your story era get around? Are there several options to choose from? Does social class have an effect on transportation options?

Do you allow enough time for travel? Are characters inconvenienced by poor travel options?

What of the sounds/sights/smells of travel?

Consider the smell and sound and sway of horses or carriages pulled by horses. The noise of early autos. the smell of diesel. The motion of ships.

Communication
How do characters communicate? Have you chosen the most up-to-date communication options or the ones most likely to be used by your characters in their circumstances?

Superstition/myths/religious observances

Include rites and social practices—fertility rites, quinceañera, bar mitzvah,  graduation, and so forth. Such practices evolve with time, so be sure any details you include are appropriate for the era or date and the locale.

Wedding practices
Wedding traditions vary from region to region and across times. Consider dress colors, the practice of giving away the bride, the bride price or dowry (which are not the same).

Funeral practices
Are human bodies buried or burned? Thrown into the sea? Do funerals feature celebration or sorrow?

Birth celebrations
How were births noted in families and communities? Have you given a birth the emphasis people in your era would understand?

Education

Do characters attend public schools or are they schooled at home? Is schooling a formal practice or do children learn as they go through their days? Are tutors popular in your era? Governesses?

Does your story era feature master/apprentice relationships?

Is education available to all or only to one class? Do characters accept the education available to them or do they strive for other opportunities?

Flowers and vegetation

What grows in your story world? Where does it grow? What flowers are in season during your story’s time? What trees are available in your region?

Time

How is time measured and referenced in your era? What timepieces are available to your characters?

Is time even an issue for your characters or do they take events as they come?

What is time based on? Hours, seasons, events?

Social Classes

Is the populace split into social classes? Do characters recognize the classes? How does the social structure influence character thought and behavior?

What happens when characters from society without formal classes travels to a society with rigid social classes? What if a character travels from a class-conscious society to a more egalitarian society? Have you noted the trouble a character would have moving in or out of a society different from his own?

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Obviously there are many, many details that can add authenticity to stories.

There are just as many setting details that can pull readers right out of the fiction you’ve so carefully crafted if those details don’t match the time and place of your story.

Check your facts. Don’t distract readers by including facts that don’t match the historical record or by writing characters or events that don’t make sense in terms of history or the practices of the day.

Put specific objects into the hands of your characters, but only objects that would have been available in your story’s place and time.

As is often the case, stories of time travel have a bit of leeway. Yet, you still want to account for facts or dates or objects that might seemingly be out of place.

NOTE: Make sure that what’s new or unfamiliar to you isn’t seemingly unfamiliar to your characters. That is, don’t make a big deal out of describing something that your characters are fully familiar with just to familiarize your readers with it or because you’ve learned all about some product or ancient practice.

If characters know how to use a bootjack, they just use it. There’s no reason to point out each step in a description to the reader.

*******

Have fun with facts. But make sure they fit your story setting. Put words and sentiments of the era into the mouths of your characters. Have them think era-appropriate thoughts.

Give them objects and practices common to their day.

Steep your story and your readers in the reality of your setting.

Write convincing fiction and entertain your readers.

***

A question both tricky and simple.

We all know that novels tell stories and that to tell those stories, writers use people, events, and location—the character, action, and setting of fiction.

Characters need to communicate with one another, so that’s where dialogue comes in. Yet dialogue can be part of story events, so dialogue can also be considered an element of action. When characters speak, something is happening. And the plot should be progressing. And conflict is probably escalating.

We need to hear our characters speak and other characters need to hear them as well. Dialogue is one very easy way to reveal a character’s personality, to establish a character as a certain type of individual.

Dialogue can also be used as a way to cover a lot of ground in a story. Two characters who go at it through conversation can reveal back story, can shoot conflict high, can tell us something about themselves and about other characters, and spew out goals and motivation, their reasons for pursuing whatever it is you’ve got them pursuing in their story.

But dialogue is only one element of fiction that can accomplish these necessary story tasks. Yes, dialogue has its place. But it shouldn’t take over a story.

You never want readers saying, Enough talk! Get on with the story already.

You can make them anxious to move forward, set them on edge with your writing style; you don’t want them angry enough that they’ll toss your book across the room.

So, how much dialogue is too much? To decide, consider the moment, the scene, and the full story. Understand your tale and know what you hope to accomplish with it.

Genre and style conventions
Some genres may allow for, or encourage, more dialogue than others. A wise-talking detective in a murder mystery needs the opportunity to talk wise. The protagonist in a literary coming-of-age novel might not have that same need to talk to others all the time, especially in a first-person narrative where readers have direct insight into the character’s mind and emotions.

Know your genre and the style of your story. Use both to guide your choice concerning the proper amount of dialogue.

Character personality
Some characters, like 3-D people, simply talk more than others; some don’t talk much at all. Know your characters. Know when a well-timed barrage from a man of few words will rock your story world. Know, too, when silence from a garrulous man will leave other characters and your readers gasping. Write dialogue that fits your characters. And know when and how to write against character type.

Needs of the scene
Have you just written a couple of fast-moving action scenes with little dialogue? Perhaps it’s time to slow the pace, let your main characters ponder what they’ve learned, share details of their day over a long dinner. You may need to deliberately add a scene heavy with dialogue to counter the weight of several scenes with almost all action.

But if your scenes have been all talk and no action, it’s probably time to introduce an action event or two.

A scene doesn’t have to be all action or all dialogue—although it could be—so consider adding action to a scene of unrelenting talk. That is, you can alternate between scenes of nearly all action or all dialogue or you can weave sections of both into your scenes, so that the balance is nearly even for a series of scenes.

Characters who don’t shut up are just as annoying as real people who don’t. And readers have little incentive to keep listening when there’s no payoff. Keep readers interested by your choices; don’t run them off.

Conflict
When it’s time to up the conflict, dialogue can be your tool of choice. Put a couple of characters together, have one tick the other off, and your story conflict is ramped up to the next level. Such dialogue can last a few lines or a couple of pages. What amount of dialogue would suit the story moment? Which, shorter sections or longer, would have a greater impact? Which fits the characters better? Which would be more surprising for the reader?

Remember to follow up conflict from dialogue with a character response.

If characters only talk, if they don’t respond to the conflict with action, then that conflict isn’t accomplishing as much as it could. Be sure that something arises out of conflict. If characters talk but nothing happens as a result, readers will lose interest. Why follow a couple of talkers if that talking leads nowhere, if nothing of note happens as a result of their conversations?

Variety and balance
A story that’s all talk doesn’t make for an engrossing tale, so consider variety and balance as you write scenes with dialogue.  Readers will quickly tire of a story that’s all talk or all action or all description or all exposition. While one story may quite easily lean toward more action and another toward more dialogue, each should have variety and some kind of balance among the story elements.

Have there been stories of nearly all dialogue? Of course. Could you try such an experiment for your story? Again, of course. Yet always keep in mind your readers. You might want to see if you could construct a decent story using almost all dialogue—and doing so might be a marvelous writing exercise—yet you can’t blame readers if they don’t lust after your book. Some readers will enjoy the novelty and skill of such a story. Other readers will have no trouble telling you that a story of all dialogue is no story at all.

Weave dialogue in with your action and exposition and description. Give readers a rich mix of elements, a mix that will keep them both involved with your characters and unsure of what’s coming next.

Predictability can bore readers. So can the same element repeated again and again. As too much action at a high level can inure readers to excitement, too much dialogue can have them flipping ahead, searching for action, craving something different.

Themes, preaching, and pet causes
Unless the sole purpose of your story is to convince others of a particular point of view about a topic or belief (a practice not in favor with modern readers), keep your characters from preaching, from speaking about their own beliefs without challenge, about always being right about everything they say.

Today’s readers aren’t keen about being preached at or having points hammered home by fictional characters. Yes, you can share messages. But those messages should fit your character and the story and not be merely your favorite theory in the mouth of a character. Think subtlety if you want to make a point or highlight a theme, especially those not universally accepted. (And what is universally accepted?)

Also, people don’t let other people speak without interruption, and your characters shouldn’t let other characters get away with hogging conversations either. Make characters interrupt and talk across one another. And cut excess words. Get to the meat of communication in dialogue rather than letting characters speak with perfect grammar and diction and with an elegance found only at a White House dinner.

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Hints that you have too much dialogue and helpful fixes—

~  Your scenes feature talking heads. This means two or more characters are talking but you’ve neglected to sketch in their location. They don’t interact with the props of their setting or move around in that setting. You might not have revealed the setting at all and might just as well have propped two heads in space and set them to talking.

Fix—Describe setting and make sure characters interact with it as they talk. Use the setting to make dialogue even more intense and conflict heavy. Even if a character is confined to one spot, give her body movements to break up dialogue and to show readers a person, not a machine or disembodied head, is speaking.

~  You or your beta readers are bored with all the talk.

Fix—Cut back the dialogue in a scene; add action in the middle of dialogue; go longer between scenes of dialogue; vary the amount of dialogue from scene to scene.

~  The pace is too fast or too slow. Pacing issues can arise from many factors in fiction, yet a story that races along may have too much dialogue. Remember that dialogue allows more white space on a page and pages with a lot of white space read faster than text-rich pages.

Too much dialogue without relief, however, can slow a story. All talk can take readers out of the fiction, make them want and look for something different. The story then begins to drag. Once you’ve lost the reader’s attention, you’ve got to do something—something different—to regain it.

Fix—See if the pacing issue is indeed a result of too much dialogue. Add exposition or action, or cut dialogue.

~  Characters talk too much about the past at the expense of current action and events. If your characters spend their time going over back story or telling one another what they already know (you know, Bob), then you’ve probably got too much dialogue.

Fix—Use flashbacks for variety if you absolutely must give readers more than a little back story. That is, dialogue is just one option for revealing back story. If you’ve got a lot of revelation to cover, consider other options as well.

~  The manuscript is over 150,000 words and you haven’t reached the story’s mid-point yet. If characters are sharing every moment of their lives—whether or not those moments have anything to do with the present story—they’re talking too much.

Fix—Keep to this story’s plot. Realize that readers don’t need to know everything—don’t want to know everything—about a character to enjoy the trouble you’ve currently dumped that character into.

Get to the point. Keep to the point.

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We all know people who talk a lot.  Sometimes what they have to say is fascinating. Sometimes their words are drivel.

As writers, we can use this knowledge to our advantage. We can play up our characters’ speech, giving them a forum to showcase their words, a platform that reveals their personalities and insecurities and strengths.

Yet dialogue is only one component of successful stories. And we can’t allow story conversations to take over and crowd out the other necessary components.

We wouldn’t use the same word 90,000 times and call the resulting manuscript a story. Nor should we overburden our tales with too much of any one element, dialogue included.

Dialogue has its place. Make sure it takes that place clearly and cleanly, leaving room for the other vital elements of fiction.

*** 

I’ve covered this topic before, but I find it not only vital for writers, but fascinating on its own.

The right words can change an otherwise blah or common story into one with depth, emotion, and meaning. The right words can elevate a character into one who resonates with readers, into a character whose life touches those readers. The right words at the climax of a novel can change a reader’s life, send him on a new direction in his own life.

Words can be serviceable, getting the job done. Your intent may be to finish a manuscript, not necessarily create the novel of our time. But with a little, just a little, attention to word choice, your so-so story can become a memorable one, a story that sticks with readers after they close the book or set aside the e-reader.

One powerful but often neglected way to achieve a memorable story is to use words that fit your characters.

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How Do Words Fit?

What am I talking about when I say that words should fit a character?

Just as clothes reveal personality (or social or financial status) in our world, so do words reveal and reflect our characters—their personalities, attitudes, emotions, and concerns.

Characters wear words. Words are what we use to clothe the people of our stories, to give them personality. And that wear may be a bad fit, a great one, or a neutral one that doesn’t tell us much.

We’ve all felt the jolt when the wrong words come out of a character’s mouth. We feel the bad fit, know when a character would not say a particular phrase or word.

But we don’t as easily recognize when the words are simply bland or only slightly off. That is, we may not be jarred when we read words that aren’t too bad a fit. Yet, if we were to tailor the words for our characters, readers would notice. They’d notice the cohesion. They’d notice the impact. They’d notice the strength in phrases that truly reflect a character’s motivation and background and attitude.

Words that truly fit, as opposed to those that are a so-so fit, lead readers deep into story. Great-fitting words strengthen the ties and threads that lace a story together, making it an integrated whole, a story with purpose and substance.

As clothes make the man, words make the character. And the right words used by a character, as well as those spoken about him, create memorable characters who resonate with readers.

Description
As soon as we write a character description, we’ve clothed a character. Not in a flashy outfit, but in personality. Our word choices  give readers a sense of who a character is, what she’s like, what she wants.

If we say a character is anal, readers know exactly what we mean. If we describe a character as generous with time or money, we’ve clothed that character with a giving personality.

We can paint description by showing how a character dresses, what he eats, how he walks, and the details of his speech patterns and habits and mannerisms. We also clothe a character with personality when we let other characters describe him, when they react to him.

We may use description both to show and to tell.

Ed was a hard man.

OR

Ed, assistant principal at Hobart High School, ate fiber cereal—no milk—for breakfast, black coffee at ten, and out-of-control freshmen for his afternoon snack. 

Mood
Word choice is one of the major influences on mood. Words convey tone, they bear emotion and nuance. Words can rattle readers, tugging and pulling and twisting their emotions into a response that they’ll carry forward through the story.

If we want a dark scene, we must choose words that not only provoke darkness, but words that give darkness a place to dwell, that create a framework that can be built upon and utilized by the darkness. When we want to establish a mood in a scene, we match word choice to the mood we want.

If we’re going for somber, characters won’t be cracking jokes (though dark jokes could find their way into such a scene).

Unless we’re using words for deliberate contrast, we don’t want light and fluffy, sunny words in a dank cellar filled with decomposing bodies. For a mood to fit the scene, we must choose words with deliberation, with purpose in mind.

On the other hand, a lighthearted feel won’t be achieved through a character who speaks with the slow and deliberate and near sorrowful words (and cadence) of Eeyore.

Match words to tone and mood. And remember that readers have varied experiences—not every reader will feel the same mood because of word choice. If one reader had a vivid negative experience with a clown, he might not read a scene’s mood as lighthearted, even if a dozen clowns romp with abandon.

Attitude
Use pointed words to convey your character’s attitude. If he’s surly, give him short words that make him sound surly. If your character doesn’t care about something tragic that’s about to explode around him, don’t put words such as worry, concern, hesitation, or fear into his dialogue or into his thoughts.

Match word to attitude. Match word to the attitude a character hopes to have.

A character may fool others but not himself or himself but not others. Choose words that allow a reader to know both his true attitude and the one he hopes to project.

Emotion
Do the words you choose fit the emotion you want to convey or induce in the reader? They should.

A reader who feels an emotion while reading a scene or book is invested. He’s touched. You’ve got him experiencing a bit of fiction as if it were really happening.

That’s powerful. That’s one of our goals as writers. And that can be difficult to achieve.

Choose words that get a rise out of the reader. Let your character tick someone off or spout off with a nasty speech that would stir anyone’s emotions, then put a strong response in the mouth of another character.

Refuse to play it safe.

Write with boldness. This is no time for squeamishness or for holding back. Go for the emotional jugular and don’t let go.

If you don’t tap into reader emotion—if you don’t give readers a reason to feel emotion—you haven’t done your job as a writer. If characters don’t convey their feelings through thought or dialogue or action, readers won’t feel. And you will have lost your chance for entangling readers in your fictional world.

What am I talking about here?

Have you chosen the best word or phrase for the moment? Do you use the word concern? Would worry be better? How about fear? Dread?

Have you pushed enough or do you hold back? Holding back should not be your first choice. Yes, you might go overboard. But you can always tone down the emotional words. But try pushing the emotions first. Make the character and the reader feel. Make them feel exactly what the scene calls for. Put emotion-laden words on your character. And watch how they’ll not only sparkle, but spark, spark stronger writing and more emotion and a deeper level of intensity for the reader.

Background/Experience
Characters have a history, whether the story delves into it or whether you’ve actually developed one for them.

For realism, characters should use words that fit their experiences and backgrounds, areas that include education, income level, parents’ interests, and family social background.

If your character is a dockworker who dropped out of school at 14, he shouldn’t sound like a Ph.D. in linguistics. And your Ph.D. shouldn’t sound like a woman who’s never read a newspaper.

Workplace words
Have characters speak and think words that relate to their jobs. This is a great trick for keeping the reader subconsciously thinking about all the facets of a character’s life.

So a carpenter, even when he’s not working, might pound (Kirk pounded up the stairs), might nail (“You nailed it, buddy,” Kirk said to his son), or he might  join or trim or smooth.

An accountant might keep a running total of all the grievances against him.

A baker might decorate her life with friends who ask nothing of her.

Workplace or job words can go a long way, so you wouldn’t want to overdo on their use, but they can be quite effective for pulling a story together in terms of cohesion.

Interests
Just as a character can be dressed in words from her history and experiences, so can she wear words that reflect her interests.

If you’ve given a character a hobby, give her words—in thought, dialogue, and description—that reflect her hobby and her affection (or loathing) of that hobby.

Dreams and Fears
While a character may not always wear her dreams and fears where other characters can see them, she should wear them at some time. Maybe when she’s alone or when she’s allowing herself to be vulnerable, open to another character.

Readers should see the dream coat and the fear garments; the words you choose need to convey your character’s dreams and fears. Even her motivation.

Your words should be accurate and specific and fitting for character, moment, action, setting, era, genre, and plot.

Specifics
Word choice is key for crafting engrossing characters, enthralling plots, and powerful emotions. And sometimes the simplest word can steer the course of a story.

Does a character fume or ponder or think? Does he wait or anticipate or simply hang on? Does he walk across a room or saunter or race or lope? Does he eat a meal or wolf down his burger or choke over every dry mouthful?

Does a woman look up at her lover? Maybe. Maybe look up at is perfect for the scene and the woman and the lover and the moment. But look up at isn’t always perfect. Sometimes a woman needs to gaze at her lover. Other times she might want to study him, inspect every line on his face, search his eyes for the words he couldn’t say.

Maybe she blinks up at him or peers up from under her lashes, hiding her own feelings.

This may sound as if I’m asking you to simply find synonyms for common words, yet that’s not my intent. I am asking you to find words that fit, words appropriate to your character at this moment in her life.

Have you clothed her for the conditions, given her what she needs in order to face other characters, the setting, and the action to come?

You need to. You need to clothe your characters appropriately. Refuse to send your characters naked or ill-clothed into your scenes. Give them clothing that not only fits but is useful.

Give them words that reflect who they are, what they want, and what they’re willing to try as they go after their goals.

Give them not only the best words, but the best-fitting words. If the word means nothing in another context but means everything for your character, use it. And then join your words into sentences and scenes and chapters that produce a cohesive whole, a story that fits because you’ve given your characters words that fit in every way.

***

Punctuation marks—comma, exclamation point, question mark, dash, semicolon, colon, ellipsis, slash, quotation marks, parentheses, and period—have their places in our writing. Beyond doing the necessary, they can also be used to steer attention toward a word or phrase, add emphasis, or distract. Punctuation choices can be used to change pace and manipulate tension.

But when a writer uses weak words and instead relies on punctuation to both create and sustain the drama, the story suffers.

An exclamation point in every sentence of a scene does not create an exciting scene. It does create a visual on the page. A distracting visual that can annoy the reader as well as proclaim that the writer had no idea how to make words work the story.

Punctuation used beyond the expected purposes can slow the reader’s progress. Any time a reader has to stop to figure out what’s going on, has to re-read or backtrack, that reader is pulled away from the fiction.

We all hate when it happens to us. We’re rolling along with Pete Martini, dodging bullets and wisecracks and wise guys, when suddenly we’re pulled up short by a phrase that makes no sense. It could be the words, a typo, or an odd sentence structure. It could be a wacky piece of punctuation that draws the eye and causes us to mentally shake our head and think, “Huh?”

As readers, we don’t like it, and as writers, we shouldn’t do it. Put yourself in your reader’s shoes, especially when you’re rewriting or editing, and take out anything that would slow the reader’s journey through your tale. 

If it’s distracting or unclear, fix it or take it out.

The Nitty-gritty

Use exclamation points sparingly. They have their place in children’s stories and for select moments in adult fiction, but they lose their punch when overused. Instead of the exclamation point, use words to convey excitement or menace.  Shorten sentences to add snap or tension. Insert a one- or two-word paragraph into a free-flowing passage for impact.

Never use both the exclamation point and the question mark together. Choose one. Is it more important to show the question or the exclamation? If you’ve included evocative or powerful or pinpoint-accurate words, your choice should be obvious.

Don’t be a lazy writer. You’re the author; you get to do the work. Don’t make readers decide a passage is frightening because you’ve thrown in an exclamation point at the end. Choose words that convey fright and make that fright clear throughout the passage.

Don’t tell readers what to feel via punctuation. Do introduce emotion through word choice and the unfolding of the action.

Don’t overuse any punctuation mark. Even used correctly, some punctuation just jumps out at the reader. The exclamation point, of course, can be quite noticeable. So are dashes, the ellipsis, quotation marks, and parentheses. Use them, yes. But don’t use them in every paragraph or even on every page.

Substitute italics for quotation marks where possible. Use commas rather than parentheses, if you can.

Consider the visual effect of punctuation. Look at your pages without reading the words. What do you see? If you’re relying on the visuals to snare the reader, reconsider what you’ve written. Readers are expecting fiction in novels, not a layout of words and punctuation that reminds them of business reports. Tell the story as you have to, but don’t forget what it looks like, on the surface, to readers unfamiliar with it.

Change sentence format and structure. If all your sentences meander, with many, many commas and semicolons, change up your format every once in a while. Those many commas will start to jump out at the reader, especially over the length of a novel. And they’ll bother him. And no one wants readers too annoyed to finish a book.

Consider your approach to character asides. Some writers use parentheses exclusively to indicate a character’s side revelation to the reader. Yet, if you’re using first-person narration, you’ve already given readers access to a character’s thoughts. Determine if it’s necessary to add the visual of parentheses to highlight those thoughts.

I strolled on the south side of the First Avenue (a cheap way to up my tanning time) and prepared to meet Gus Costanza, Mr. Remington’s enforcer.

I strolled on the south side of First Avenue, a cheap way to up my tanning time, and prepared to meet Gus Costanza, Mr. Remington’s enforcer.

Limit uses of unusual punctuation in a sentence or paragraph. Unusual punctuation marks do stand out, so don’t overburden any single section of writing with too many of one kind (or even too many of a mix of marks).

The em dash is often used in pairs. Does a sentence really need more than one pair? It could use them, but is it necessary and does the use hinder the flow or does it enhance the drama?

Barry—head held high and chest pressed forward—raced toward his sister while she—equally proud and stubborn—ran the other direction.

Personally, I think this sentence works well. But would I like to see a lot of this? Not in every sentence. And I wouldn’t like to see the dash combined with parentheses.

Barry—head held high and chest pressed forward—raced toward his sister while she—equally proud and stubborn—ran (or more accurately, jogged) the other direction.

Can you break the punctuation rules? You know my answer to that—of course you can. But choose your rule-breaking opportunities for maximum impact. And play by the rules when doing so enhances the story.

Always remember the reader. Make the experience of reading your fiction one of satisfaction, even if your story is intended to rile the reader. Let the plot or a character drive readers mad rather than leaving that to a poor use of punctuation.

Let the story—words and action, dialogue and character and emotion and conflict—draw the reader’s focus. Push punctuation to the background, where it can work without pulling attention away from the plot and impinging on your characters’ lives.

Use words to tell your story. Use punctuation to frame it.

***

As writers, we sometimes forget that we need either plot or characters to be the driving force behind our stories.

I’ve read a handful of manuscripts over the last months where either plot or character have been seemingly forgotten. The stories are well-crafted in terms of the mechanics, so it seems the writers were so involved in the technical issues that they forgot the elements that interest readers.

We’ll look at character at another time; for this article, let’s examine the importance of plot, specifically action in our plots.

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Action is anything that happens in a story. It can be an event, it can be dialogue, it can be reaction to an event or dialogue or even to another character’s reaction.

One weakness of many new writers is that they shirk away from strong events or actions to open their stories.

They want to build up to something exciting rather than open with dialogue or action that will immediately capture the reader’s attention.

While buildup is necessary in other parts of the story, and is a potent tool for ratcheting up tension and creating conflict, capturing readers from page one is almost a necessity in our day.

Books are in competition with many other forms of entertainment, entertainment that starts big and bold and moves up from there. To ensure you’ve got the reader’s attention, you have to give him something attention-worthy. And you don’t get more than the first page or two to prove your story is worth reading.

Yes, some stories can begin slower than others. No, you don’t need to kill someone or blow up a city to capture the reader. But you do need a compelling opening.

And you achieve a compelling story opening by introducing an unusual character or an eye-catching setting or by presenting a shocking action or dialogue rife with conflict.

Remember, readers come to fiction to find something they can’t get in their daily lives. Show them you’ve got a world for them to explore, characters to root for, plot that will entice them.

And do that at the top of your story.

But don’t stop there.

Something has to happen in your stories. Something that makes the reader think or feel. Something that can hold the reader’s attention when other—real-world—events are pulling and pushing and prodding at him. Your story events and problems have to be more compelling, at least for a few hours, than job and family and hobbies. You have to create events and characters so entrancing and real, so engrossing, that a reader will give up other pursuits to play in your fictional world.

One method to engage readers is to entice them with action.

For this article, I’d like to divide action into two types.

There are major events, plot twists and turns that direct the story into new paths and deeper developments.

And there are common actions, gestures and physical movements and everyday actions that carry characters from one scene to the next.

You need both kinds of actions to make your stories read as if they’re possible. And not only possible, but true.

Readers know that novel events aren’t real, but when they feel real, the reader is satisfied. Events and stories that are implausible don’t create the same satisfaction in a reader. In fact, readers may quite likely toss aside books where the actions are implausible and the characters unbelievable.

Action—Major Events

Major events are those that push the story forward or into new directions. They’re often the result of conflict—a character is faced with one or more untenable options, is forced to make a choice, and then makes that choice, often with much angst. The character is changed because of his choice, and the story moves into a new, inevitable, path.

Actions at story opening
Major action events are found at the beginning of the story—when a character is faced with something unusual in his day. That action—death of a friend, conversation with an estranged brother, the discovery of a secret—interrupts the daily tenor of the character’s life. That first action, called by some the inciting incident, in turn leads to the character doing something.

This something is another action. This one takes the character to a place he’d not intended to go that morning when he awoke. A character forced to do other than what he’d intended to do is a character out of balance, off-kilter. And his story is off to a strong start.

Once these first two action events have been established, the character and his story can progress in a calmer mode, with the character trying to regain his equilibrium and trying to fix the problem that’s been introduced. No other major event has to happen right away. Instead, conflict and tension can be increased through minor actions and dialogue. This is a good place to introduce other characters and allow them to react to the opening events.

Yet, you could follow a major action with several others. There’s no law against piling on problems right from the start. A character, especially one who can handle a lot, could be hit again and again until he responds in a way that surprises everyone but himself. He may know he’d break at a certain point, thus the reason for the protected lifestyle he’s pursued for years. A letter from his brother plus a visit from his ex-wife plus the news that his father had another family might be the triggers that it takes to stir this man to action.

Of course, there is such a thing as too much. Don’t overburden your main character in an unbelievable way. Don’t do it at the top of the story and don’t do it mid-story.

Let the character’s problems be believable and inevitable, not melodramatic. Unless you’re writing The New Perils of Pauline, you don’t want readers thinking about impossibilities and feeling incredulity. You do want readers thinking that the events you’ve written are not only possible but that they actually happened. You want to make the reader both think that something happened and have an emotional and/or physical response, one that tells them that the story events actually did occur.

Mid-story action
Other major events must occur throughout the story. Such events pull characters deeper into their problems even as they search for a way out. Such events also pull the reader deeper. And this is a key for successful stories.

Readers must be engaged. And they’re engaged when something happens to characters they have an interest in. (Thus the need for creating both enticing plots and intriguing characters.)

There are no set times for adding major actions and story events, though there are recommendations from those who’ve studied successful story structure. Yet even those who make suggestions based on the long history of plays and storytelling don’t agree. Some recommend the three-act story, others a four-act setup, with their suggestions for major plot events coming at different places in the story.

All agree, however, that story needs events. And events of sufficient impact to challenge characters and keep readers interested.

And all remind the writer that a major event must happen somewhere near the top of the story, whether that means page 12 or a quarter of the way into the story or at the end of the first third of the story.

This major event has been named the call to action or the inciting incident or simply the call. (The inciting incident can refer to one of two events, depending on who’s doing the referring. Wherever it is found, it’s a key event in a story.)

This event is what sets a character on his trek. Whatever happens in this incident, it’s sufficient to make the character turn his back on what he had been doing and seek a new path, a new goal, a new answer.

The event is an action of some kind and the character’s response is another action. The two are separate acts, independent and dependent at the same time. These two intertwined events are often the most memorable events in fiction.

They don’t have to be big and splashy in visual terms; they do have to be compelling and potent. They do cost the character something—his time, his self-respect, his other plans. In the long run they could cost him his job, his family, his health, his sanity, or his life.

This call to action should also affect the reader, but without him consciously thinking about it. The reader should feel the inevitability of the moment but he should also feel the tension, feel that he is making the same choice the character made to pursue the goal set before him.

This is a great place to engage the reader, especially his emotions. If he is caught up in the tale, he’ll be pulled even deeper into the story, just as the character is.

Beyond these early moments of event and action, story events must enfold to keep both character and reader engaged.

Something has to happen.

The most elegant writing can’t hide a lack of plot or story events.

If you want the reader turning pages, you have to give him something to read. Entice him with anticipation and then satisfy him with action that embroils the lead in even more difficult problems.

Build on events that have come before and introduce new problems through events the character either didn’t anticipate or anticipated, but hoped wouldn’t come to pass.

Make use of physical action—fist fights and arguments and tiptoeing through dark cellars—and psychological action—phone calls and innuendo and common events that could have sinister meanings.

Use dialogue to hammer blows for a character who can’t use her fists.

Follow a series of physical events with dialogue that shocks or beats down.

Follow dialogue with an unexpected physical response or event.

Shock the character and reader with an event that no one saw coming, but that was, of course, inevitable.

Or, set up a shock with teases and anticipation and false incidents.

Vary the pattern of your major actions and events. That is, don’t always write two physical actions followed by a page of dialogue that explores those actions.

Keep the reader both guessing at and satisfied by the inevitability of story events.

Black Moment, Crisis, Climax
The second very important action moment will be the climax. You’ll have given the character and the reader other major actions and events to deal with, but everyone should recognize the story’s climax. This is when hell breaks loose and when the lead must prove himself.

Several actions and events may make up this moment, one leading to the next and to the next. But whatever those somethings are, they must add up to a major plot event.

This is what the story’s been building toward. This is the moment the reader has been anticipating. This is it, where all that has come before explodes into what the story has been leading to.

And your climax had better deliver.

It needs to be sufficient for the length of the story and for the type of story events that preceded it. It must satisfy the reader. It must address the major story issue, bring the protagonist face to face with his problem, and end his search or trek or quest.

The climax includes actions of both antagonist and protagonist. It may have both physical and psychological components. It will hit protagonist and reader on several levels.

It will make the previous 300 pages worth reading.

Resolution
A few actions will follow the climax, and while they’re important, they won’t have the power of the climax. These events and actions have a different purpose—to tie up loose ends and explain what was unexplained and settle both reader and character to what has taken place. Actions in the resolution may lead to anticipation of another book.

Common Actions

Common actions are story events that occupy characters as they move through the story.

As with major action events, these actions can be physical or psychological or they may be sections of dialogue.

These actions give personality to characters and allow them to move through the story setting.

Think in terms of habits—biting nails, twirling hair, whistling, or chewing gum. Think of the way characters move—languidly or with purpose or always racing out the door. 

Keep in mind that characters, like real people, do more than think and experience emotion. They move. They interact. They touch and play and sing and dance. They’re involved in sports, they work in the garden, they eat.

They pound dough for bread or edge cakes with icing. They make love, they weep, they dive from airplanes.

They visit banks and hairdressers and grocery stories and the dry cleaner. They yell orders into the drive-thru speaker and spill ketchup on white pants.

Characters act and react and act again.

Common actions ground the reader in the fiction, allow him to see what’s happening. Stories without these normal actions can seem empty or unreal; stories overburdened with such actions are tedious.

Adding and manipulating the common and everyday actions of their characters is a necessary task for writers. They must decide what to include, what to exclude. They must decide appropriate times and locations for the common. They must decide when these actions add value to the story and when they detract.

Most writers know that if they don’t include action beats in long passages of dialogue, the characters become talking heads, adrift somewhere with no ties to their setting. Yet writers may still forget to keep the character involved in his world. Or, they may give their characters actions that don’t fit the character or the moment or the other events taking place.

Characters shouldn’t rub a lucky penny when they should instead be slapping another character. They shouldn’t talk about the taste of their mahi-mahi when another character just dropped a bombshell at the dinner table.

They definitely should not be noticing the window displays as they chase a murder suspect down a crowded city street.

Action events, even the most common of them, should fit the story. That means a fit for genre, characters, tone, and the importance of the moment.

Knowing which actions to include and how to include them is a skill, one that writers can improve upon with each manuscript. It’s a skill that should be sought by writers.

The right actions in the right places can make a story. The wrong actions or the lack of action or action in the wrong place or to the wrong degree can stop a story, at least for readers. And it’s the readers who matter.

If action isn’t your strong point, write your first draft without much of it. When you rewrite, look for places where dialogue goes uninterrupted by physical movements or action events. Add action to increase conflict and to keep readers involved.

Take out action that adds nothing to the plot or that doesn’t reveal something new about a character or that doesn’t increase conflict.

Don’t overplay character habits, but make sure your characters act like people. Give them physical movements that reveal personality or that reveal their turmoil.

Include both major action and everyday actions. Include physical events as well as dialogue in your scenes.

Make something happen, whether that means a major event, an event that steers the plot, or an action that shows characters interacting with one another or their setting.

Don’t keep readers waiting forever for something to take place. Teasing and anticipation are great storytelling tools, but story must have action.

A story without action events is no story. It’s a character sketch or an essay. If you’re writing a novel, you need events to make a plot. You need action. And your readers need action too.

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Plots entwine readers in the lives and adventures of characters they’ve just met and characters they know well. Good plots snare readers from page one. They make it impossible for readers to turn away, impossible to keep from following characters through the most troubling periods of their lives.

Impossible to put the books down.

Yet not all plots are created equal. And some plots are overshadowed by sub-plots or pushed aside in favor of digressions that lead nowhere.

We all have a friend or family member who tells a story from their day by mentioning every possible event and snippet remotely related to the event they’re describing. To be honest, we know people who, while sharing a story, tell us everything from their day whether it’s related to their main story or not.

Writers can do that as well.

And while we put up with the annoyance—sometimes—for friends and family, we’re not as forgiving when we lay out money for a book. We expect sub-plots to actually lead somewhere interesting. We expect cohesive story lines and not random tangents.

We expect story that makes sense from beginning to end.

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Sub-plots can bring depth and richness to our writing. They can also get readers hyped about an issue or event or a character that we never intended to make a focus of the story.

But if we—through the words, the attention, the intensity, the emotion, the time given them or the focus on the characters involved in them—emphasize a sub-plot or side story, we make readers care. And if they care, they pay attention.

And then they expect a resolution to that sub-plot in keeping with its importance in the story.

Unfortunately, they don’t always get what they want.

Sub-plot
A sub-plot is simply a secondary story line. It could be a love story in a mystery or suspense novel, a child’s death and its fallout or a business dilemma and its ramifications in any style of story, or even a health issue dealt with by one of the major characters.

A love story between secondary characters is a popular sub-plot in some contemporary romances.

Sub-plots are used to give depth to characters. They allow characters to have interests other than the singular one dealt with in the major plot. They are a way to reveal more of a character’s personality.

Sub-plots are also a way to distract characters from their stated course, a method for keeping them off balance when all their attention should be focused on the main problem.

Secondary plots are great for piling on problems. You want to make a character feel overwhelmed and overburdened? Add another problem through a sub-plot.

Think distraction, diversion, unbearable weight. Think of the character who’s already at the breaking point with one issue now having to face another heart-breaking or life-altering issue. Or maybe it’s not an issue that’s of major importance to him, but one that is important to someone he loves.

How does a character handle someone else’s life and death issue?

Adding an emotion-charged sub-plot works well to tie your characters in knots, change their way of thinking, push them into risks.

Look for a way to add not only a different level of problem, but a different type of problem.

Give a character a physical or emotional dilemma if the major plot line deals with a psychological problem. Attack your character’s family or his home, his health, his friends.

Challenge his dreams or career goals.

Twist the knife. Make him choose between fixing one problem and pursuing the other.

Yet always remember that your main plot should carry the story’s focus.

Don’t give your secondary plots more dynamic words or more dashing events than the main plot. Don’t give them more page space and emphasis. Don’t involve more characters in a side plot than the main one.

Don’t make a sub-plot’s climax and resolution more exciting than the one for your main story line.

Sub-plots don’t have to affect protagonist or antagonist directly. A sub-plot touches the main story, but it doesn’t always require direct action on the part of the main character or his antagonist.

Digression
Literary digression in its formal meaning is a deliberate ploy of writers to steer story away from the main plot. One of its uses in the past was to add explanations or to allow the writer to delve into the history or purpose of some element they included in the story; think of digression as a writer showing off his knowledge and what he learned while researching his book.

This use of digression definitely stops the forward motion of a story and can remind readers they are reading something that never happened, thus pulling them out of the events you so carefully arranged and crafted to seem real.

When I refer to digression in this article, instead of talking of this traditional literary meaning, I simply mean the little rabbit trails and small offshoots of story that branch off from the main story.

These digressions are not as fully integrated into the story as is a sub-plot. Nor are they as complex. Think of digressions as a writer adding a line or two of commentary. If not too long or involved, a digression can be added into the main story line with little notice by the reader. Little notice, that is, that the digression really has no true part in the unfolding plot.

Picture digressions not so much as plots or sub-plots but as short trips or author asides.

While you might employ rabbit trails for mysteries and in other stories to purposely mislead the reader, a digression that goes on for too long or that reaches too far in its distraction becomes a problem.

Author intrusion, no matter how well intentioned, is still author intrusion. And if it’s noticed as such, the wall between fiction and the real world is broken.

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Sub-plots shouldn’t take over. They can’t assume the burden of moving characters and readers toward the story’s goal to the degree that the main plot should do. If they take on too much importance, if the foundation or frame of the story rests on them, they become rivals to the main plot.

(Digressions definitely shouldn’t take over. If you include them, keep them short and simple.)

Sub-plots shouldn’t hog story time and page space and the characters’ thoughts and the readers’ expectations.

Sub-plots and side plots also can’t lead nowhere. They must have a purpose.

They should have meaning for the story and the characters without becoming the major focus.

Sub-plots should, like every other element in story, work to advance the main plot, reveal character, and/or increase conflict. They can also stir reader emotion or affect tone.

They should work with and not against the main plot.

Sub-plots need beginning points, high moments, climaxes, and resolutions.

Don’t leave sub-plots dangling—unless you plan to complete them in another book. And if you do, make sure readers know that’s your intention.

You might forget you’ve left a sub-plot without resolution, but your readers won’t.

Use beta readers to tell you if a sub-plot is too involved, if it overwhelms the main story. And trust them if they tell you they expected more out of your secondary story line, that it didn’t do much for the story. If they wonder why it was even there, your sub-plot needs work.

Beta readers might have trouble explaining a problem with a secondary plot that’s too detailed or that overshadows the main plot. Yet if several readers tell you they like a secondary character more than your protagonist or that a second bad guy makes a better antagonist, you’ve probably invested your sub-plot with more compelling events or dialogue than your main plot.

Pros of sub-plots

Can cure a flat story; keep stories full

Allow characters to be multi-dimensional

Pile problems on for the main character

Set up characters for a multi-book series

Distract characters and readers so they don’t catch on too quickly

Cons of sub-plots

Can take over the story and prove too distracting

Can be more fascinating than the main story

May be resolved insufficiently, leaving readers dissatisfied

May be boring

Can dilute the impact of the main plot

Turn reader focus to relatively unimportant events or characters

Can pull readers from the fiction if they don’t fit the main plot

May not fit the style or tone of the rest of the story

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Use sub-plots to create layers and depth, yet don’t feel that you need a true sub-plot for every story. Characters with complex lives and histories and competing goals may serve just as well.

But know that sub-plots can enhance your fiction. Can make your characters even more seemingly real.

No one lives in a vacuum; we are touched in many ways every day. Giving your characters multiple plot lines can make them more like the rest of us.

Save digressions for stories, and moments, when you intend the author’s voice to be heard and recognized. Modern fiction doesn’t make much use of true literary digression, but a momentary digression here or there might work for your stories. If, however, you intend to keep readers immersed in the fiction, stay away from digressions.

When the reader’s wondering why you included the history of sword-making in your modern mystery, that reader is no longer involved in the fiction. And you risk losing him as a reader for your next book.

Write engrossing plots and use sub-plots to your benefit. Don’t be tempted to destroy the aura of fiction for your readers.

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~  Learn the craft. That means learn how to put a story together in terms of fiction elements and writing elements. Learn the ins and outs of plot, character, dialogue, and setting. Learn how to write conflict. Learn how to write scenes. Learn how to write.

~  Familiarize yourself with the writing tools.

~  Learn what you can do with punctuation, syntax, and diction.

~  Read. Anything that appeals to you and many things that don’t.

~  Welcome criticism. Put it to work for you.

~  Write something new.

~  Find a critique partner or group that challenges you.

~  Refuse to quit.

~  Change your story ending, your story opening, your story’s premise.

~  Learn how to critique.

~  Learn how to self-edit.

~  Write when you feel good.

~  Write when you feel bad.

~  Write when you feel nothing.

~  Ask questions. Of other writers. Of editors. Of those with the knowledge you don’t have.

~  Rewrite. More than once.

~  Aim high. Prepare yourself to reach what you’re aiming for.

~  Submit something. To agent or publisher or critique group.

~  Try a new style, genre, subject matter, POV, or era.

~  Realize that your work will not be universally loved or praised.

~  Write short, sharp sentences.

~  Write long, flowing phrases.

~  Finish a manuscript.

~  Be bold—know what you can do.

~  Know what you can’t do. And start studying.

~  Work at your weaknesses. Practice writing.

~  Remain unique but learn when following the rules is the best option.

~  Take the time to get it—all of it—right.

~  Don’t bad-mouth your agent, editor, or publisher in public.

~  Don’t settle for so-so.

~  Change something when it doesn’t work, even if what doesn’t work is your protagonist or plot.

~  Don’t make excuses.

~  Conquer the blank page. Conquer the problem plot. Conquer your writing fears and defeat your personal demons.

~  Assume that you don’t know it all. Assume that you can learn it all.

 ~  Create characters with conviction.

~  Spend more time writing than talking about writing.

~  Make bold promises on page one and deliver them by story’s end.

~  Remind yourself that not everyone will like your work.

~  Remind yourself that most of the time when someone doesn’t like your work, the dislike isn’t personal.

~  When someone doesn’t like your work and it is personal, remind yourself you could never write something to please that person.

~  Learn to look at your writing dispassionately.

~  Write to serve the story and not your ego.

~  Remember both characters and readers when you write; give them what they need.

~  Stand up for yourself and your words.

~  Your words aren’t Holy Writ. Be willing to change  a word, a sentence, an event, a scene, a chapter, a direction.

~  Be serious about your writing, but don’t always take yourself seriously.

~  Realize that you will have differences with your agent, your editor, and your publicist.

~  Don’t fear the reviewer.

~  There’s more than one way to say everything. Find the best way for the scene, the character, the conflict, and for the emotional impact.

~  Teach others what you know.

~  Push yourself. Challenge your limitations. Reward your successes.

~  Understand that being published once doesn’t guarantee a long and successful writing career.

~  Consider that you will fail far more than you succeed.

~  Don’t give up the job that pays the bills.

~  Dream big, plan realistically; there’s only one JK Rowling.

~  Move beyond the novice stage. And quickly.

~  Realize that you might not be a writer.

~  Polish the whole manuscript, not only the first three chapters.

~  Write fiction that others will want to read.

~  Realize that you might not yet be ready or skilled enough to write the masterpiece rumbling around in your mind or the one clawing at your heart.

~  Create memorable characters.

~  Note that writing novels is not a sure-fire way to fame or riches.

~  Learn the craft.

~  Did I already say that last one? Well then, how about this:  Don’t shun intentional repetition.

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Are you writing today? Here’s hoping that the story that will one day satisfy your readers is satisfying you as you create it.

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