We read the last page of a book, feeling something, knowing something we hadn’t felt or known 350 pages earlier. We’ve raced through unfamiliar cities and countries, chasing or being chased by spies or killers or angry spouses. Chased by our fears.

Chased by our dreams.

We’ve wept at the chime of bells from a medieval cathedral, fingered the brittle bones of a mummy, perspired under the night air of the tropics.

We know the heat of Tahitian sand under our toes, the grit of blowing Saharan sand in our eyes, the dry clawing of Tombstone dirt in our throats.

We’ve fallen in love. We’ve fallen out of love. We’ve declared ourselves free from love.

We’ve been betrayed by someone dear to us.

We’ve betrayed someone dear to us.

We do in two or three hours—between the covers of a book—what we never imagined doing when rolling out of bed in the morning, when brushing our teeth or feeding the dog.

We plan a heist to steal a fabulous gem. We plan revenge. We plan a murder.

We live without encumbrance, without the strictures of society. We live fervently, sometimes with joy, often times with fear.

We live wildly. Boldly. Never safely. We dream big and succeed big.

We fail with the whole world watching.

We are shamed.

We sometimes die.

And it’s all in story, words on a page. Letters strung together to create complex realities out of barren nothing.

Out of nothing.

Story takes us where we can’t safely go in our daily lives, perhaps satisfying our yearning, perhaps stoking it until we can’t resist making our real world mimic the fictional ones in which we play.

But wherever we go and whatever we do, whatever we escape from and escape into, story is a power that grabs us. Whether it’s a need in our brains or a desire of the soul, story is necessary, vital, for us to thrive. It’s necessary for our very survival.

Imagination—in the mind, on the screen, between the pages of a book—satisfies our need to explore, to wonder what if. To step beyond what is and into what could be.

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How amazing that words—imagined people and imagined events and imagined places—can make us cry. Can inspire us. Can reduce us to whimpering children hiding under the covers, fearful of the unknown.

Story entrances, pulling us away from duty and boredom and the common, introducing us to those who embrace duty to the point of death, those whose lives have never known boredom, those who transcend the common on their way to immortality.

Story gives us hope.

It takes us outside self, far beyond our limited worldview and experiences.

It reaches deep, revealing the strengths within our own spirits.

Story draws us in. Story draws us deep. And story ultimately lets us go.

But story, in all its power, keeps drawing us back.

***

***

Baxter raced through Nashville’s wide streets, dodging the occasional drunk and the groups of youthful hopefuls who gathered on street corners after the bars closed. He spun the wheel to head north, only to reverse direction when he caught sight of his quarry heading toward him, racing as he did, through caution lights and over newly patched asphalt.

Damn but she could drive.  He leaned forward, peering into her side window when she approached.

Laughing. Head boppin’ to that crap music she liked, no doubt. She thought she’d gotten away. But she’d only slipped by Al.

Baxter had anticipated that she would.

He spun the wheel again and pulled up behind her. He checked the sidewalks and road ahead—empty of pedestrians. He accelerated until he was nearly locked to her bumper. Then he punched the gas again, knocking her forward.

She hesitated the barest second—amateur!—and he slammed her again.

Then she gunned her candy-assed, candy red ‘Vette and screeched down the street, the middle finger of her left hand pointing to heaven—and consigning him to hell—for just a second outside the driver’s window.

Maybe not perfect prose, but action that moves, that keeps readers involved in the fiction.

What if the passage read . . .

He spun the wheel again and pulled up behind her. He checked the sidewalks and road ahead—empty of pedestrians. He accelerated until he was nearly locked to her bumper. Then he punched the gas again, knocking her forward. But he only hit her hard enough for her to feel it and he was careful not to hit at an angle. He didn’t want her to spin out.

She hesitated the barest second—amateur!—and he slammed her again. He slammed her the second time because he wanted her to know who had the upper hand.

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How do you feel about stories that interrupt a great action scene with a line or two explaining the reason a character can’t or won’t follow a certain path?

Or, maybe you read a line that explains why a character takes a particular action.

Does it annoy?

It certainly can.

Readers caught up in the fiction, especially if they’re deep into an action scene or overwhelmed by the emotion of the moment, do not want to be interrupted by the writer—or the writer’s representative in the form of the narrator—explaining why something is or isn’t happening.

Readers want the fiction. They don’t want a little voice explaining the whys and why-nots of story events.

So don’t stop to explain.

Instead, write the scene so any explanation is either evident or unnecessary.

Luther, hacking and sawing, cut the ghoul’s head off. He did it so the perverted ghoul wouldn’t rise up and come after his family again. He lifted the head by the absurd ponytail at its crown and flung it into the street.

Have you already revealed that cutting off  ghouls’ heads would keep them from coming back to life? If so, no explanation is necessary. If you haven’t, why haven’t you? Why dump that info into the middle of the hair-raising action, destroying the fiction of the moment and the emotion you just induced in your readers?

Why interrupt the action for explanation that doesn’t need to be made?

Grinning, Pinkie ignored the phone call from her stepsister. She did it so Grace would be forced to come by. She leaned back on the couch, planted both feet on the coffee table, and turned to the clock, wondering if Grace would beat her record for travel from Mom’s house to Pinkie’s.

Is there any reason to explain Pinkie’s reasoning? Doesn’t the next sentence—which keeps the reader involved in the story—provide the necessary information?

I won’t say there’s never a reason to write an explanation. But if that explanation interrupts story flow or action or disrupts emotion, you have to ask if it’s worth including.  Is a tiny bit of information worth the disruption of the fiction?

It quite often isn’t.

And it’s usually the writer, not the reader, who feels the great need for an explanation.

Readers aren’t demanding to know why a character does a certain act, not when the story shows them why. Readers are smart. They’ve read other books. They know there are reasons for character behavior. And they’re good at guessing those reasons.

Now, if your character does something bone-headed for no reason, then you might have readers wondering what’s going on. But for action typical to your story and characters, readers will willingly go along without demanding explanations.

Just be sure to make actions logical for the character, the genre, the intended purpose, and the plot. If character actions and reactions make sense in terms of the story, readers won’t be confused, they won’t be wondering why your character did something, and you won’t have to stick in a story-stopping explanation.

Check your own writing for unnecessary explanations. They often sneak in where writers feel they haven’t given sufficient character motivation or when a setup for a story event was incomplete. Many times the fix is simple—add character motivation or an action setup earlier in the manuscript. The story will be stronger for having it there rather than plopped in as explanation just when it’s needed.

Think of weaving story threads through the whole of the story. Revealing information only when necessary makes readers think coincidence. Weaving information in before it’s needed makes for tight plot.

Words used in explanations include because, so, and since. You don’t have to rewrite all sentences with these words. Use them, however, to help you search for and eliminate distracting explanations.

Exception
There are always exceptions to every rule and every bit of advice. A clear exception to advice about not explaining concerns the narrator who always explains.

If the narrator explains as part of his personality, then let him explain. Don’t overdo, because this practice can still annoy, but let him toss out explanations as part of his asides and commentary.

Parenthetical Asides
A lot of writers add parentheticals as a way to add commentary without weaving that commentary into the body of a passage. So instead of showing a character’s response through action or dialogue, the writer adds an aside, in parentheses, to a sentence. Parentheticals are one common method for providing explanations.

But while parentheticals may be one way of revealing a character’s thoughts and personality, the practice also has negatives.

Any unusual punctuation in fiction stands out and slows the reader. If you want readers to lose themselves in the story, you don’t want them pausing over punctuation. Parentheses definitely stand out.

Also, these asides, a character speaking to the reader outside of the boundary of the story, are a clear breakdown of the wall between fiction and reality, between character and reader. Think of film or theatre actors speaking directly to the audience—as soon as they turn from story events and step out of character, they remind the audience that what they’re watching is not real. Writers do much to create and maintain the fiction of a story. Why destroy that effort by deliberately reminding readers what they read is unreal?

If you use first-person narration, you don’t need parenthetical asides at all. You’ve already invited readers into your character’s head, so they hear and see and feel with the character. Why insert distracting parentheses in an aside, as if whispering to the reader? There are less distracting methods to share the character’s thoughts.

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Resist the urge to explain.

When you absolutely feel that you must explain, maybe because you haven’t provided a motivation, make a note of that driving urge to explain and the reason for it. Then weave the missing motivation into the story at an earlier point so that readers have what they need when they need it and you won’t have to stop the story momentum with unnecessary explanations.

Let your characters be bold in their villainy or romance or do-goodingness. Don’t force them to apologize or explain to the reader. Don’t make them stop their lives mid-action to make clear something you should have already made clear.

Instead, make them proud in their thoughts and actions. They have enough to handle with the other characters you pit them against and the problems you write them into; don’t make them worry about pleasing the reader too. That’s your job. Let the characters be themselves without apology or explanation.

Keep them inside the fiction.

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Back story and info dumps are large-scale explanations. They come with their own rules and restrictions. We’ll save discussion of those rules for other articles.

***

You also create people. And events. And new products or foods or languages.

Writers design and produce new objects every day of their lives.

Rather cool to think about, isn’t it? That writers devise tools and places and nations and holidays and world-changing historic events.

Writers are often reminded they’re like God in the way they create people and direct their lives, but they also create so much more than people.

Let’s talk a bit about world building and the writer.

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Sci-fi and fantasy writers know a lot about world building because they often start from nothing and create full worlds for their stories. These worlds can have their own natural laws, standards and practices that allow characters to do what they can’t do on Earth in our own day.

Characters in these other worlds may be able to fly or teleport or disappear or read minds. Rules must be followed, however. Writers still have to write situations and events that make sense according to the logic of the world they’re creating.

If events and actions and character abilities don’t match the world in which they’re used, readers lose that suspension of disbelief and instead begin to disbelieve everything.

And if readers are pulled out of the fiction because events or characters don’t fit, the writer has lost them.

Writers, then, must prove trustworthy. They must deliver what they promise. And one promise from every writer is that he or she will create worlds with consistent laws that make sense.

Yes, writers can do whatever they want to do in a story, but they really can’t do just anything in a story. That is, once a writer builds a world, he has to abide by the restrictions he himself sets up. If people in his world can’t breathe the atmosphere of certain planets without using breathing devices, he can’t set a rescue on such a planet and allow characters to run around, freely and easily, without such devices.

He has to abide by the rules.

Can you imagine a world in which anything could happen, a world without rules? The people would go crazy not knowing what would happen when they lifted a hand or spoke to another creature. Without natural laws, there’d be no consistency. No ability to plan. No assurances that what you set out to do you could actually accomplish.

If putting one foot in front of another sometimes led to walking and sometimes led to flying and another time led to the sudden appearance of a still steaming apple pie and still another time led to a broken wrist, would anyone ever take one step? Without consistency, real people would be psychotic. Characters too would fritz out over an absence of natural and/or physical laws.

So, writers have to put their fiction in worlds with rules and laws. And then both writer and characters must abide by those rules and laws.

Beyond that, what does a writer do for world building?

~  He creates a look and a feel for his world. He uses sense elements to not only decorate his world but infuse it with physical characteristics that enhance its reality.

Give readers a sense of the world by describing its odors and tastes and sounds. If the earth constantly rumbles, make the readers feel the rumble and the constant irritation. If the south side of a city reeks like soured laundry, remind readers of the odor. If an unincorporated area of a town is home to a paper factory, don’t let the smell go unremarked upon or unnoticed by a visitor.

Make use of the senses to captivate both characters and readers.

You can also use sense elements to influence tone and mood. Layer the elements so readers can’t see through them to the writer on the other side. Create complex, concrete fictional worlds.

~  A writer makes his worlds real by putting in them objects that characters use, use and touch and taste and not just look at.

Give your characters world-specific objects or decor or buildings and put them to use. Don’t describe a device that can change a person’s hair and eye color and then ignore it. Instead, take advantage of the unusual in your worlds by making them useful and used. 

Let characters interact with those novel items to make them familiar to the reader. Make the unusual a natural part of the fictional world; make the elements of the fictional world seem wholly natural in the hands of your characters.

Don’t apologize for the gadgets and devices and imaginary objects you introduce in your worlds. Instead, allow your characters to use them with ease and comfort.

~  A world is also made real by characters treating it as real and normal. If a three-headed tiger-man is a normal part of a world, characters will think nothing of it. They, and the writer behind them, can’t treat the natural as something unnatural. When characters treat the oddities of their worlds as normal—as would be natural for them—then readers feel the naturalness of that interaction and go along with the fiction.

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Fictional worlds need not be wholly different; stories can take place in our present-day physical world. Yet something in that world will be imagined. Beyond characters and situations and dialogue, writers might create events for their characters—for entire cities or states or countries—that never take place.

Do you ever think about that, they way you direct politics or the weather or the economy in your stories? You start the doings in your world in one place—in terms of what’s happening and what could happen—and then you let loose. You burn things down or burn things up, you topple governments or you cripple characters, you lead insurgencies or blow up rebel bases or talk tough at the peace table.

You introduce characters to lifelong addictions to lifelong love and to lifelong neuroses.

You make things happen.

And not only do you make the imaginary happen to your characters, you make the not-so-imaginary happen to your readers.

You make readers laugh. You make them weep. You make them snort soda through their noses at the outrageous antics your characters get up to.

You bring readers nostalgia and hope. You make them tremble in fear. You stir them to lust and to anger and to indignation.

You create imaginary worlds with real-world effects.

You touch people. You give them ideas. You transport them into adventures undreamed of and worlds never before seen.

Writers are world builders. You are a world builder. And the more realistic your world and the contents of it, the more convinced the reader is that what you’ve said has happened could have happened. At least in the place and time you said it did.

You’re a world builder. You dream of gadgets that don’t exist, but one day could. And maybe one day might.

You dream up cures to diseases that don’t even exist, but a young woman might read your work and be set on a course to develop a cure for a disease that does exist.

You’re a world builder. You dream big dreams. You create big worlds. You stir real emotions.

Don’t hesitate to create and build the different and the new and the odd. Maintain consistency within your world, but don’t be shy about reaching beyond the knowns of this world. Use what you know of relationships and history and politics and hope and love and fear to build your world from the inside out. Give it a strong foundation. Make it rich and full and whole. Don’t skimp in your world building—be generous, lavish even, in what you add to your world.

Keep in mind that what you purposely exclude from your world may be just as important as what you include.

Build your world with purpose, but don’t be afraid of the unexpected. Actually, take advantage of the unexpected. Your subconscious can add flourishes that your rational, conscious mind might never imagine.

Build your worlds with depth and color and the eye-catching and the attention-grabbing. Build your world with the everyday and the normal.

Build worlds that will spotlight the characters and plots that you weave into them.

Never forget that you are the creator. What you put in your worlds will color them forever; what you keep out cannot be added later. Have fun building worlds while realizing that world-building requires effort and attention to detail.

Give your characters a world worthy of them.

Give your readers a worthy read.

***

The original of this article was written in 2007 and posted to A Novel Edit in 2009. I’ve posted it here for easier access for readers of The Editor’s Blog. This is an expanded version of the original.

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Are there words that work for one story but not another, that fit a non-fiction article but stick out, rather obviously, in a short story or novel?

The short answer is, of course.

A business report will not likely contain quaint country axioms and slang. It will use company-speak and jargon typical for the industry. A reader expects those terms, and such words foster communication between writer (or those who’ve commissioned the writer) and readers.

In the world of fiction, word choice can also be critical. Will your character say ain’t gonna and homeboy or will he say I will not do that and companion? Perhaps his words will tend toward the average—I’m not going to and friend. Each character will have his own speech style, though terms used would be similar for those in a close-knit home or community.

But why is word choice important?

A work of fiction invites us into a make-believe world, unreal by at least one measure. That is, we may people our fiction with characters from history or use actual events as a starting place, but something—the events or plot or dialogue or other characters—are solely the work of our imaginations. Our imaginary world may be one completely unknown to us in the sense that we’ve never experienced it—a medieval court, a 1928 speakeasy, or the outer moon of Aldon-Five. Or, we may choose a contemporary setting but invent everything and everyone in it.

The more our words reflect the genre and setting and time period and characters, the stronger the connect for the reader.

You don’t want to shock your reader out of your story because you’ve used the wrong words. Okay in pre-Revolutionary France? Automation in the Spain of the Moors? Tigers on the wrong continent? Crops grown where they could never grow? That willing suspension of disbelief that the reader takes into a story is tested, if not broken, by words that don’t suit a story. Poorly chosen words can shatter the wall between fiction and reality in an instant.

On the other hand, words that fit your story—the characters or locale or time period or genre—will pull the reader deeper into your tale. The right words will wrap the fiction tight around your reader, allowing him to fully enjoy the world and events you’ve created.

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Words, like sounds, are evocative. They can create instant feelings or images in the reader. Words that reflect an era, words such as speakeasy, booze, coppers, doll, gin mill, scram, and swanky, can draw your readers in by instantly identifying time and at least partial place. The words themselves, without elaboration and without much work on the writer’s part, can produce an image of your scene or raise an emotion in the reader. They evoke feeling and images beyond simple words on a page.

We must remember, however, that a reader may have attachments to certain words, aversions to others. And not all readers will have the same feelings and images from a word. You’ll want to use words that reflect or establish the era, but words that create the right emotion in the reader as well.

Choose words for not only era or setting, but for character too. A policeman in 1928 Chicago wouldn’t necessarily use the same words that a mobster uses. A college student would use slang different from his father’s business jargon. A leader of New York society would use words different from those of a Kansas farmer.

When your farmer uses comparisons, does he use the same words a sailor might? He shouldn’t. Perhaps he describes a man with a head the shape of a cabbage and just as dense. The same farmer might compare his neighbor’s ability to get out of a mess to the antics of an elusive piglet.

Characters should use words they’d be familiar with, not words plucked at random from a thesaurus and definitely not words from the author’s experiences. Characters thinking and speaking words specific to their backgrounds and experiences deepens the fiction for the reader. Using such words is a simple way for writers to make the imaginary seem real.

What colors does the farmer know that the sailor has never seen? What textures and odors? The farmer’s words will reflect the earth; the sailor’s, the sea. Both may be familiar with storms and seasons, but they won’t necessarily see such things in the same light.

How about the contemporary private eye who lives in Las Vegas? Would he use the same terms as the street kid in 1810 London?

The urchin might know every slang phrase for policeman. He might know everything about his neighborhood and nothing about politics or history or even the gentry. He might be ignorant of horses, so he couldn’t use references to their size or speed or endurance. But he could compare a friend to a sneaky, fleet-footed rat.

Would the Vegas detective use the same words? Not likely. Might he be a smooth talker where the street kid was rough? Or maybe they’re both rough and both uneducated. Yet the contemporary detective will use words familiar to his world and the kid will use words from his.

Which verbs best reflect a character? Would your shop girl grab or grasp or pick up or cradle or stroke a silk scarf? (Should there be a shop girl at all, or should the character be a male clerk because women didn’t work in retail establishments in your time period?)

How does your character move? Use comparisons that fit the character and the time period. Does your protagonist stroll with the languid pace befitting a man of leisure in the tropics? Or is he all hustle and bustle, standing out against his more sedate companions?

Another way to fit words to story is to use verbs that reflect the character’s profession or trade or hobby. A carpenter or woodworker might hammer or pound or polish or join or build—and not only when working on his craft. Words that reinforce elements of the character’s personality keep those elements in the reader’s mind, once again tightening the ties to the fiction.

Create similes and metaphors and comparisons that make sense for the character and place and time. 

Take as an example a description of darkness using the color black. (And please excuse the clichés.) Would your character say—or would those in your time period understand—black as coal, black as pitch, blacker than a cave, as black as a dragon’s innards, or as dark as the lip of a black hole?

The right words make all the difference between a competent story and a work of literature that has depth and layers. Weave the strands of the story by your word choices. The tighter and more entwined you make them, the harder they are to unravel. And none of us want our tales to unravel.

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 How do we make our words story specific?

Take a few minutes to consider the time period and ask yourself some questions.

What products are available?

Is new technology a big deal?

What is the political mood of the era? The religious?

What foods are common?

How do the people travel, communicate, educate their children?

What do the people know about the world outside their village, city, planet?

How are the people affected by war, prosperity, famine?

Is your time period accurately portrayed?

Imagine household items your characters use. Straight razor or safety razor or electric razor?

Determine how long travel would take for the period and available transportation.

Do your words reflect this era? The technology of the day? What about the politics, religion, and social mores of the time you’ve chosen?

Do your characters think as a man or woman of the year 2007 or 1940 or 1653 or 2499 might?

Look at setting and locale.

What is the weather like? How does it affect the characters? What words best describe it?

Is this city or country or small town or the interior of an apartment? Are characters isolated by location or by their mistrust of others? Are neighbors friendly or nosy or absent?

Is the landscape rich or barren?

What would be available to your characters? What wouldn’t be?

Do you convey more than description with your words? Do you give a sense of claustrophobia or open spaces or clutter? Do your city streets echo with car horns and jackhammers and the bells of ice cream trucks or do your characters (and thus your readers) hear nothing as they walk Lexington Avenue?

Study your characters.

What is the educational level of each major character? Do speech and word choices reflect their differences? Their similarities?

What are their professions? Their hobbies? Their life experiences?

What do they read? What are their dreams? What do they know of the world? What don’t they know? What can’t they know?

What about genre?

Does your romantic hero talk like a hard-bitten detective? Is he an anti-hero, better suited to a suspense story? How does he act and react and think? What does he wear?

What is common to the genre, expected by its readers?

Have you chosen words familiar to readers of the genre? Will readers of sci-fi feel comfortable with your words? What about romance readers? For those who love political thrillers, are you using words that deepen intrigue? What of words that refer to gadgets or conspiracies or government secrets?

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Have you written for the specific and particular rather than the general? Would your words fit any story or are they peculiar to one tale?

Story-specific words add an extra dimension to a story. They reach beyond correct punctuation and grammar. They press deeper than plot and characterization. They go to a third level of writing, a level that deals with layers and symbols and meaning and rhythm. Mastery of the elements at this level assures the writer that each story he produces is not only a good read but a great work.

***

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Favorite stories—what are they?

Are they the cold, emotionless tales that report facts and figures, rather like a business report?  Or, are your favorite stories—books that you return to for a second read, novels you recommend—are they instead tales that have touched your emotions?

Have you spent the early part of an evening devouring Stephen King and the remainder of the night in suspense, tense and trembling at every sound?

Do you laugh at Stephanie Plum’s antics, cry with Travis and Old Yeller?

Does a brutal murder steal your breath?  An erotic scene get you hot?

Do books make you tremble with anger or steam at injustice?  Does your heart race?  What about your nails—ever chewed them off during an intense read?

Most of us like our fiction to touch us.  And not only a simple nudge.  We want to be prodded and pulled and pushed.  We want tears and laughter and shivers and breathlessness.  We want to feel the more-than-normal emotions that fictional characters experience.  If we didn’t, we’d be satisfied with the business report and the newspaper article and our magazines.

For writers, this is key.  Whether we intentionally write a scene to stir emotions or we go back and add words that engage the reader’s passions on a rewrite, we have to do it.

We’ve all read books that are technically perfect but emotionally barren.

Where’s the life?  Why couldn’t we, as readers, engage?

Often we find books cold because the author hasn’t raised the emotional level.  Hasn’t considered emotions at all.

Details and description have their places, but emotions flavor a story.  A whodunit can engage a reader’s mind and for some readers of mysteries, that may be enough.  But for the romance lover or the reader who craves action/adventure, a writer must add more.

A writer need not feel an emotion when writing, but he must be able to tap into it.  He must know how to convey it.  Never lost a child to violent death?  How about a beloved pet?  Transfer that feeling of loss over Fido to your character as she fights traffic, intent on getting to her child’s side in the ER, knowing that she’s already too late.  We all know the impatience stirred by traffic.  Exacerbate the panic and fear and helplessness for the mother as tears blind her and her breath is stolen by terror.

Emotions pull readers into the story faster than most anything else a writer could try.  They are instant connection points.  Think of emotions as tentacles reaching to the reader and tying him to your tale.  Wrap him tight so he must stay with you until the end.  You do want your readers to stay with you for reasons other than the $23.95 paid for the book, right?  You want them to become involved.  You want them to read your next story and the one after that.  So don’t shortchange them.  Give them all of you, including your private emotions and memories.

Writing to create emotional responses in your reader will cost you.  You will reveal part of yourself.  You will show that you know what moves others, what touches your readers.  You’ll be proving that you’ve been moved at some point in your own life.  Writing to stir emotions may also rouse some of your own.  And to do it effectively, you may have to expose yourself.  We writers like to think we’re private, but we often reveal our deepest selves when we write.  Especially when our characters’ strongest emotions influence our readers.

———-

Put your protagonist in an absurd situation and let her react with aplomb.  Or let your klutz of a character skate through a scene oblivious of the chaos he leaves behind.

Ratchet up fear and suspense so your readers feel like hiding under the covers.  Write to trigger adrenaline surges in your readers.

Make your readers cry.  It’s okay—they want to.  They want to laugh and scream and tremble.

Why engage emotions?  To create a good read.  So yours will be the books that readers come back to again and again.  So your characters will be remembered.  So your novels will be recommended among friends

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Need practical tips and strategies for inducing emotions in your readers? Read Creating Emotion in the Reader.

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Two major keys for writing better fiction are:

Write something that entertains.

Write clearly, so readers will understand, so they can be entertained.

Both of these keys focus their efforts ultimately on the reader. The reader must be entertained. The reader must understand what you’re trying to say.

This article is presented in video format, with suggestions on how you can write better fiction.

You can write good fiction. You can be both clear and entertaining. You can please your readers and have them clamoring for more.

We, of course, know that both character and plot are central to entertaining fiction. But the general impression is true—literary novels take time to delve into character. The author spends pages showing who the characters are, what drives and moves them, what they want, why what they want is important, and how they’re changed by story’s end.

Genre novels may do the same, but often to a lesser degree. In mysteries and romance and suspense novels, the plot drives the story. The emphasis is on events—what’s happening, the impact of those events, the pacing of events.

Literary novels may move slower, both between story events and during scenes. Genre novels tend to be quicker paced, jumping between locations and events.

Consider the contrast in these terms—languid vs. speedy, thought vs. action, psychological vs. physical.

True all the time? Of course not. Nothing ever is. This is just a generalization, a way to understand the differences. And if you intend to write, specifically, either genre or literary novels, you need to know those differences.

If you’re writing a literary novel, look at your characters. Have you revealed who they are? Have you delved into their thoughts and motivations? If you’re writing genre, how is your pacing? Are you moving fast enough for your readers—is something happening?

Or, flip the story and look at it from another angle—

For the genre stylists, are you spending too much time in the head of a secondary character? Do you find the psychological makeup of a character more interesting than the plot? If so, you may want to reconsider the style of novel you’re writing.

For the literary stylists, are you emphasizing events over character, forgetting to clue in the reader to a character’s motivations and intentions and his mind? If these are true, you may want to reconsider the direction you’re headed.

Literary novels are often considered more highly stylized, written for a more educated reading public. Again, not always true but true enough that literary novels often appeal to a smaller audience and genre novels to the masses.

Can this preference be traced to the style of writing? Perhaps it’s word choice? Maybe it’s topic or plot.

Literary novels, from the standpoint of those who don’t read or write them, may seem elitist. Genre novels, viewed from those who don’t read or write them,  may seem common, without literary merit.

Rather than defending or attacking one view, why not write the best story you can, no matter the style or genre? Write to meet and exceed the expectations of your audience. Write for your own pleasure. Write to pay the bills.

Write well.

Both styles,  when well written, can entertain. Can draw in readers. Can make people think. Or maybe help them to not think for a while.

Both styles can introduce new worlds, new expectations, new viewpoints.

Up for a challenge? Read a literary novel this week if you’re usually a genre lover. (It won’t be that bad, I promise. Find one with a topic you already love or one you’ve always wanted to explore.)

Read a genre novel if you’re a literary lover. (Again, it won’t be that bad. I promise. Find one that takes place in an area of the world or in a time period that appeals to you.)

Something to make your task easier, especially if you think you can’t stand the other style?

Literary novels can be short—find a short one to satisfy the challenge. (To Kill a Mockingbird is much shorter than War and Peace.)

Genre novels move fast—find one that a friend said he read in one sitting. (One of Dick Francis’s mysteries will take less reading time than a techno-thriller from Tom Clancy.)

No, shorter and faster isn’t necessarily better. But it is easier to see the end for someone who might be gritting teeth while counting pages.

What is NaNoWriMo? It’s a month of writing like a mad person, getting words to a story down on paper, and aiming for a total of 50,000 in thirty days.

Yep. Write a novel in a month.

You can do it. Yes, you can write 50,000 words in a month. That’s less than a chapter a day.

The folks at NoNoWriMo are encouraging and entertaining—they’ll hold your feet to the fire in the kindest way imaginable. They can give you ideas, tell you where to meet with other NaNoers, inspire your weary brain.

If you need a spur to write something new, if you want to have some fun, if writing is a chore or moving too slowly or is just plain boring, join NaNoWriMo and go after a story with zeal.

Reminders of how to succeed with NaNoWriMo:

Write every day

Turn off your self-editor

Have fun

Expect to write something exceptional

Expect to write something lousy

Know that you won’t write every day

Don’t yell at the spouse, the kids, or the dog if they interrupt your creative flow

Did I say have fun and shut off the self-edit witch? Just write. And write some more. And then add a little bit more.

By the end of the month, you’ll have a start on your next story. It won’t be perfect, but face it—not one of your first drafts is perfect. It’s a draft. Let the imagination soar. Be brave. Be bold.

Write untethered and free.

Be a NaNoWriMo winner.

When students of literature are asked to identify elements of a novel or short story, they’re pressed to pinpoint what the story is about.

They could answer with plot details, something about the actions of the characters.

However, they could also go for a behind-the-plot meaning, something less about events and more about significance, perhaps even a conclusion they’ve drawn from the book.

I’m talking about theme.

Theme is sometimes defined as the moral of a story, though theme doesn’t have to be a moral. Morals that double as theme include these: cheaters never win, honesty wins the day, and good guys finish first.

Of course, a story may just as easily prove that cheaters often win, liars quite often succeed, and bad guys beat out the good guys.

But a story’s theme may not come out as a moral at all.

Themes are often a declaration of the human condition. Or a truth that explains human behavior.

Consider an author whose books seem similar. You may even tire of them, saying they’re all the same. What do you mean by that?

Maybe each is about mothers and daughters. Maybe the author pursues the same theme in every book—the relationship between mothers and daughters is complex.

There’s no moral there. But there is a theme to the body of work and to each story in that author’s list of books. The theme is a recognizable one that speaks to the human condition.

Themes may deal with a specific group—pre-school boys are fearless; immigrants are both clannish and brave; pirates live out the maxim, I’m looking out for number one.

Themes may deal with principles and abstractions rather than people—love means sacrifice, hope is painful, death stalks each of us from the moment of birth.

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Themes don’t have to be true in the real world—they are true in terms of the story they come from. That is, you don’t have to believe the theme is true in your daily life; you may actually hold the opposite viewpoint. But if the story has been written such that the theme is obvious to readers, the theme is true in terms of the people and events in the story.

Theme is often stated in absolutes: someone/something is/does something.

Themes tend to be universal. The theme love conquers all can work for peasants in 1350 Europe, wealthy owners of a 1880 New York townhouse, colonists on Nebulus 5 in 3535.

Themes tend to be serious, even in humorous works. When you describe the way people behave or how big concepts (such as love) work, you’re getting into people’s beliefs and strongly held opinions. You might hear an argument from a reader who disagrees. You might hear from legions of fans who agree. You might start a war between factions from both sides. (Which could only help sales and bring attention to your writing.)

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Writers can decide upon theme before writing: this story will be about the hypocrisy of love, the blindness of love, the pain of love. Then the writer crafts words and scenes and character and events to point to his theme, love stinks.

One problem with deciding theme before writing a story is that the book can come out very, very preachy. With everything pointing to the foregone conclusion, there’s no opportunity for characters who disagree or situations that might lead to a different conclusion. Stories written with a theme clearly in mind are often heavy handed. (Not always, of course. But especially true of new writers with a cause to promote.)

Writers can write with no theme in mind, waiting until the first or second draft is complete before determining where the story went, what theme has emerged. Then, the writer can tweak—with a light hand—phrases and scenes to highlight the theme.

Writers can also completely ignore theme, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. And readers will. They will usually finish a book and have strong thoughts or feelings about it. Theme is something they’ll take away without intending to. When someone asks what the story was about, they may tell the plot. Or, they may report the theme—it was about love conquering in the face of hatred. It was about fear being stronger than common sense. It was about how strangers can work together to overcome a common enemy.

Stories that are written well always have a theme. Maybe several. Well-written books are tied with threads and common elements that speak to theme, that allow readers to draw conclusions about life.

Poorly written books, with unrelated plot threads, characters, and events, may not have a theme. The story elements may be so far apart that the reader can draw no conclusion about the tale. The story may lack unifying elements and cohesion. There may be no theme. A story that’s not about anything is probably not one readers will remember. It’s probably not one writers want to write.

A good theme can be a unifier. An ill-formed theme can make a book incomplete and unsatisfying.

Books may produce several themes. One reader, going through a divorce, may read one theme from a story. Another reader, one focusing on the freedom of being away from home for the first time, may read a different theme.

If you’re asked about theme for a school project, be ready to defend your choice for theme. Look for character dialogue or thoughts that lend themselves to theme—what conclusion does the character make? Look also to characters’ actions—characters act on what they believe. What they believe is an indicator of theme. Study the change in a character, how he’s grown throughout the story. What made him change? What conclusions has he drawn about life? Character growth and insight also point to theme.

Themes can be old, new, reworked, and restated. They can be softly spoken or boldly shouted. Themes from one book to the next—even for the same author—can be contradictory. Remember, a theme is true for the book it comes from, not necessarily for life or for other works of fiction.

A writer doesn’t have to believe a theme he writes into a story.

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Familiar themes—

Greed is bad                       Life is fragile

Hope deferred hurts            Children are innocent

Quitters never win               People will let you down

Evil men can’t change          Everyone lies

There’s no such thing as love

You could, of course, play with these—

Greed is healthy                  Living is for the tough

Hope is an illusion                Children are born in sin

Quitters live longer              People are good at heart

Reformed men know how to toe the line

People want to tell the truth

Love touches everyone at least once

Variations on a single theme—

Everyone lies                        Lies are painful

The truth is painful               Liars want to be caught

Lying is healthy                    Lying is unhealthy

Lying breaks up families        Lying bonds people

A lie is in the eyes                The truth hurts

The truth is always best

The truth isn’t always best

A lie will always be exposed

People want to tell the truth

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Theme is a natural product of good storytelling. It doesn’t have to be planned, but it can be enhanced. Overemphasized, it makes for bad story. Played just right, with the right emphasis by character and situation and revelation and word choice, theme becomes another satisfying element in good fiction. An element that will remain with the reader far longer than plot or character quirks, setting or dialogue.

We understand that a good opening chapter sets the tone and introduces lead characters and gets the plot rolling.

We know almost as much about the final chapter, the final paragraph, and the final words. About how to finish a story so that it’s complete and satisfying and induces the reader to want more.

Yet, where’s the advice for chapter two?

What do we do to move from that compelling first chapter—the one that’s seen more rewrites than all other pages combined and multiplied by 10—and into the meat of the story?

We certainly want to continue the tone we’ve established. And we want to draw the reader in. But are there practical ways of doing that? Are there tricks or practices that work to move us from introduction to story path?

Sure there are.

Where should a second chapter start?

1.  At the time and place of the ending of chapter one—but with a twist. Michael opens the door at the end of chapter one expecting his ex. He was fortified with a drive-thru burger, a couple of beers, and two hours of playing the memories of their less than stellar marriage through his mind. But chapter two begins with the door opening to . . . Michael’s ten-years-dead brother. The father who left him at the ballpark when he was 12 and never returned. The slacker who stole away his wife with his five-million-in-sales company. The call girl he’d hired last weekend in Vegas.

2.  With the introduction of a new character, a new scene, an unrelated thread. Don’t give the reader what he expects. Do keep him entertained. It’s okay to turn your back on what happened in the last chapter. Really. It is. You’ll get back to it. (If you doubt this can be done well, read a political or techno-thriller. The best ones weave a half dozen story threads, loosely at first, and draw them tighter as the story progresses. A powerful technique to keep readers interested and guessing.) But for now, give us a chapter two that’s just as compelling as chapter one. Don’t worry about connections between the two chapters and events. You have plenty of time to fill in the blanks later.

3.  With that flashback that you really wanted to use to open chapter one. If you have to have one—and do you?—use it in chapter two to slow the tension-inducing action you introduced at the end of the first chapter. (And to keep it away from that opening chapter. First chapters are for the now of stories. The before stuff can come after that first introduction to your characters and plot.)

If you do introduce back story or flashback, keep it in sync with the genre and feel of the story. Flashback can be exciting—if your story’s a suspense, paint the flashback with suspense. If you’re writing romance, don’t give us straightforward facts in a flashback or recite events as if you’re writing a report. Give us emotion.

4.  With dialogue. Go from the inner thought of your lead character at the end of the first chapter to dialogue. Let the reader hear someone’s voice. Overheard crosstalk on a cell phone? Complaints from the lead character’s mother or boss or lover or client? The main character himself, mumbling as he’s running through the rain to put up the cover on his vintage convertible, the one taking on water as if Noah hadn’t finished his construction on time?

5.  With the unexpected. You don’t want your readers feeling too comfortable. You definitely don’t want them predicting every word of dialogue and every action. Yes, events need to fit, as if they’re inevitable. But you don’t want them guessed or known ahead of time. A tough trick, I’ll admit. But one way to go for the unpredictable is to imagine wild events happening when that door opens in chapter two. Maybe a herd of cows is moseying down the street. Perhaps the quite beautiful leader of the local Girl Scout troop—in her daughter’s short and tight uniform—stands on the other side of the door, looking to borrow a cup of sugar. Perhaps aliens are landing on the lawn, a Publisher’s Clearinghouse van has pulled up, a neighbor kid is body surfing down the power lines, or a sonic boom and noxious fumes knock out our lead when he opens the door.

Let your imagination run wild. You may find yourself with a secondary character who’s key to the plot. You may find yourself with a new and better plot. You may add depth to a thin story, finding a thread you can layer in throughout the tale.

And if you couldn’t have imagined that crazy plot twist, you know your readers won’t have. And they’ll be surprised and even more involved in the story.

Start your second chapter with spice or delight or fun. Write action. Write dialogue. Slow the pace or speed the pace.  Make chapter two even more interesting than chapter one.

After the invitation of chapter one, draw the reader deeper into your fiction. Give him a reason to stay.