How Much Do You Hide From The Reader

We all love a great cliff-hanger. We love that feeling as a reader of wanting to know more and the author getting us to "read just one more page" even though we promised to stop reading at one in the morning. However, there is a fine line between holding information back from the reader and giving us too much information.

I was recently reading a story where the author was doing just that. The author wanted to keep secret from the other characters what one of the main characters was doing. This is fine. This is what we want to happen. The other characters in the story are held in suspense of what is going on. However, here is where the author didn't pull it off just quite right. The author also held that information back from the readers. 

Now, if this was the bad guy in the story, there would be no problem (in most cases). This became a problem because what the author was holding back was part of the character profile that established the GMC of the character. For the readers, we didn't know WHY the character was acting the way the author had written the story. We didn't need the full backstory of how we got there, but without that information, the readers are simply lost.

It is OK to give us little nuggets of what is going on with your characters. We promise, we will keep the secret safe from the other characters in the story. 

We see this also when writers send in query letters to editors and agents. They have been told, when they write that blurb about their story, to model it after back cover copy material. While this is true, we need to know what is going on in the story and YES, we need to know "if the butler did it." That secretive back-cover material is used when we finally publish the book because, obviously, we don't want the reader to know what happened.

I always look at giving out information to the readers with a "need to know" approach. What information does THE READER need to advance the story and keep it moving on? What information does THE READER need to get a three-dimensional image of the character? Along the same lines, how much do we need. In the case of the earlier example, we just needed to know why the main character was acting that way. A single line or maybe a paragraph. We don't need the whole story, just a single mention is all it would take to satisfy our needs as readers.

Commit: Go Big Or Go Home

I was working through some edits with one of my clients this weekend and this concept came up. It was about an element she was using in her series she was working on. I don't want to go into too much detail on the concept here but, we were doing something kind of unique. In any case, in her first book of the series, she used a bit of this concept, enough that made it important enough to the storyline. Now, here is the kicker. When we hit the second book, that concept was barely noticeable which was reading amazing without it. Ugh.

This is when I got thinking. What do we do? We have two options now: 1) eliminate the concept in the first book; or 2) add the concept in the second? Technically, either way works... maybe????? Or does an option ruin one of the books?????

When it comes to doing something unique in your stories, you have to fully commit to it. You have to decide to, as the title of the blog says, Go Big Or Go Home. You cannot half-way do things. Let me give you a couple of examples where I see this happening a lot.

Authors who try multicultural romances. I think these are great stories. This is a chance to truly dig into the cultural experience. The problem, however, is that they don't Go Big Or Go Home. Just having the two characters with different skin colors is not a multicultural romance. Sorry, it isn't. First of all, do not get me started on the concept of culture here. My wife, who is a communication instruction who specializes in this will get on my be all over this blog, but culture is more than skin color. It goes MUCH deeper. These stories have to really have culture literally being a character in the story. 

Think of it this way. While I loved the TV version of Bridgerton, changing the ethnicity of the characters did nothing to change the storyline of the story. 

It did not suddenly make this a multicultural story. It is still the same Julia Quinn novel.

Does that make sense?

Authors who want to write "hot steamy stories". I get this all of the time from authors who send queries and tell me that they know that hot steamy stories are the new "in thing" so they have written one. But do they? No. They often take two approaches. They either spend the entire novel writing nothing but erotica and what they think is hot writing (which ends up as nothing more as graphic sex scenes with no plot), OR, they write everyday stories and then, in the middle of the story, write one scene that is very out of place with a hot scene, which is often writing the same thing that previous author did, but just one time. 

Not what we are talking about.

Those hot steamy stories are the ones where the characters are hot and steamy through the whole thing but guess what? It is not about the graphic sex. It is not about how many times we can use graphic words and descriptions. If you want to write these stories, GO BIG OR GO HOME. Really tell the romance and make it true. 

Authors who want to write time travel. Ugh...I am going to leave it with this one. Again, GO BIG OR GO HOME. These stories have to be just like those multicultural stories. Remember how culture had to be a character? Well guess what? The time travel has to be as well? Just transplanting your heroine in the Regency period and calling it quits is not time travel. It is now a historical. If you think about Outlander, Claire and Jaime are constantly having to deal with the issue of knowing too much about the future, about what Claire knows about how to get back, about what if she goes back and leaves Jaime, about the fact that her kids can go back and leave her family.... the list is endless. Time matters. It IS a character. This is not just a historical. 

Get the idea?

Tropes Are Not Your Story

So, let's talk about tropes today. First of all, if  you are a literature person, in other words, you graduated from college with a literature major, your brain is thinking a different definition of trope than most of us. So, for this post, I would like to thank my father (who unfortunately is no longer with us for my birthday present for sponsoring this post) for the definition of Trope from the OED.

"A figure of speech which consists in the use or a phrase in a sense other than that which is proper to it"

Now, over the years, we have seen a new use of the word trope in literature which many of you have been using. In this case, I am going to reference an article "What is a Trope" Oregon State University Associate Professor of Medieval Literature who defines it as: 

... is a story telling convention, device or motif; specific tropes might be a characteristic of a particular genre of storytelling. For instance, one trope you see all over the place in folktales is the "rule of three" - where three characters or events create a predictable pattern (usually two failures and a success). We might think of the Three Little Pits, the magic lamp that grants three wishes, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Cinderella and her two stepsisters, and so on.

I bring this up today, especially for you romance authors who seem to now believe the trope is EVERTHING. You all seem to believe the trope is the plot.

The problem with this is that you have now created a story that is not amazing, not unique, and not something editors and agents are going to be excited about. In fact, if you get a reject letter back that says your story is to "trope" (is this even a word)"  or that your story is too "trope heavy" this is what they are referring too. You have literally drowned the reader in the trope. You are barfing trope!

What you have to remember is that a little trope goes a long way. 

There is nothing wrong with throwing a trope in a story. You want a forced marriage. Fine. Toss it in just for kicks. Spend all of 80,000 words on it? TOO MUCH. Secret baby? Sure, surprise the hero at the end of the story. Walk in on page 1 with the little rascal who is now in her second year of college and is $120,000 in debt with college loans and NOW YOU WANT TO BRING IT UP? Ummmm, no. 

Just think of it this way. If you watch those cooking competition shows and they slam the contestants for using too much sesame oil or truffle oil.

The same goes for tropes. Use too much...

And you will be CHOPPED!

When A Good Story Idea Isn't Enough

One of the most common reasons for my rejections of manuscripts all come down to a story that goes no where. When I read the query letter, the premise of the story sounds amazing. Maybe it is because the author does a fantastic job crafting a great query. Maybe they see a story that they really didn't write. In the end, then I read the partial and the full synopsis, that premise simply didn't stand up!

So what happened?

This is something that actually happens to more authors than you think. You are driving your kids to work, sitting in the middle of a board meeting, doing laundry, out for a jog or at the gym, and then, in the middle of whatever else you were doing, you come up with "the most amazing story." 

This is the story that will sell. This is the story that will have editors and agents begging for you. With that in mind, your get to your computer as fast as possible and start writing. Your fingers cannot type fast enough. It seems that the story is writing itself.

The problem, however, is that you don't see what is really happening. That great premise you started out with turns into a chain of thought style of writing. You quit looking at the big picture and only see the scenes in front of you. 

Your story has to be much more than a premise. Remember that the concept of premise is that it is simply the "initial idea." It is the beginning of a bigger argument. It is a hypothesis. If you look at his from a logic standpoint, it is up to the person arguing the premise to follow it up with something substantial to prove the point. For authors, that initial idea might have had "something to it" but it wasn't enough.

A lot of times, the idea you have for a story is not really enough for a story, but could certainly be used as a piece of a larger and better story. When, I say larger, it is not just about word count (although this is a factor), I am referring to a more complex and deeper story. 

So how do you work yourself out of this predicament? Don't rush it. Don't throw out the premise but think it out. Plot it out. What are all of the things that are going to happen in the story. What is the bigger conflict. Just take your time. 

Beware of Forced Plotting

Over the weekend, I had a run of submissions that ran into this same issue. The author was forcing the plot. Let me explain.

Too often, writers get a great idea for a story. It often revolves around some great character they came up with, or even a small little nugget of a story idea. No problem here. So they start off writing those stories and get to a point that they aren't sure where to turn. The author may have gotten to the end of the story before reaching a word count to make the story marketable. The author may have suddenly realized the conflict was not enough, or the conflict was too easily solved.

So they turn to forcing a new issue into the plot. 

Suddenly the hero has an "unexpected" thing that happens in his life, or surfaces that is so out of the blue. Suddenly the heroine finds out that her long lost brother with terminal cancer needs her.

Sometimes it is an issue that the two main characters really never have a reason to be in the same room with each other, so the author crafts this far-fetched idea, and forces them together. 

There are a couple of solutions to this problem.

The first deals with the story getting finished too quickly. Plot the story out. I know some of you hate this idea, but before you waste too much time on that project, figure out if the story truthfully has enough depth for the story you want it to be. If not, scrap that idea and move on. Don't just create something else to shove in the book to make it reach word count.

The second deals with the characters doing things that seem a bit too out of the blue. Think like your characters. What would a "normal person" really do in a situation such as the one you put them in. Would someone, who just found out their significant other cheated on them, take off and move to some distant, hole-in-the-wall community and start a business they knew nothing of? Probably not. They would simply move on with their life, just a bit angrier and more cautious of who they were dating. 

Your story is what it is. Don't try to turn it into something it isn't.

What Do We Mean By Your Story Needs To Be Unique?

This is an area that I think far too many authors are missing. In an attempt to be unique and different, authors are creating stories that are far too different, to the point the story is simply not marketable. With that in mind, I wanted to take the time today to try to explain what we mean.

First of all, when we say that we want stories to be marketable, we are talking about projects that the current market is actually interested in and buying. Please note that when we say people are buying the projects, we are not talking about your small group of friends that like your stories. We are talking about the mass public. Considering this, you have to do your market research to see what is hot and what is not. This, of course, takes time. 

Now, with that in consideration, look at your story. What unique twist to that marketable line do you bring to the table. Simply moving it to another country is not it. We are talking about voice, plot lines and so forth. 

I always like to think about the idea of standing on a line. You want to have your feet on both sides: something marketable and something different. 

No Your Purpose BEFORE You Write

 I was talking to one of my clients last week about a group she is part of at her college. She and several other instructors get together once a month in an informal critique group. They share their writing and provide feedback. Kind of a nice way to break the monotony of grading papers. She noted that one of the instructors was working on a piece and it was really going no where. His writing was fine, the voice was great, but everyone in the group kept asking one question over and over again...why?

The problem for this author is that he really didn't know where the story was going. He didn't really have a purpose. Apparently, he had thought of this great character and wanted to tell his story. The problem was, even he did not know why he wanted to.

Having a purpose for your story, essentially the theme of the story is crucial for any author. Before you even start writing, you need to establish that purpose. In the business world, we call this "the take-away." What is it that you want the readers to take away from the story? You can have great characters and action in the story, but everything needs to have a reason. Everything needs to head to that one ultimate "take-away."

In the academic world, when you write research papers, you always start with a thesis statement. This is the thing you are trying to prove. Once you have that thesis, when you go out and gather your evidence and start to organize it, all of the evidence has one goal - to prove the thesis. When you add that evidence, you provide analysis that supports that thesis. Writing a novel is no different. 

There are a lot of times when I read a submission and love the writing but struggle to know why the author wrote the story that way. They insert characters that are certainly interesting and write action scenes that are truly beautiful writing, but without a reason, these become nothing more than vignettes in a random collection of pages. 

Now, a lot of authors I talk to will try to convince me that they often "discover" the theme after they write. While this might sound like a valid approach to writing, authors are still just putting in scenes and words that have no real purpose other than to fill space. 

This is all an issue of pre-writing activities. Go ahead and find those great characters, just like the instructor did, but before you really get going, ask yourself what you want to tell about this character. What journey do you want them to take? Once you get that, everything you do in the story will now have a purpose. 

Plotting Out Your Plot

Yes, we are going to venture into that argument that is one of the greatest in all of history. No, it is not whether the toilet paper roll pulls from the top of the bottom. This is the one dealing with being a plotter or a pantster. I know there are a ton of you who scream plotting "ruins my inspiration and creativity." For you people, I want you to know that this is far from the case and a little bit of plotting will make your writing go so much better.

Let me start first with the diagram...

We all probably remember this from our days in junior high or high school when we were in our early forms of literature study. Please, those of you who are pantsters, don't jump ship yet. Let me clear something up for you. The plotting that I am talking to is simply a matter of creating significant markers throughout your story to get things going. Think of this as taking a long distance trip. You create for yourself places that you plan on stopping along the way. How you get there and the time you spend to get there is entirely up to you.

I want you to also remember that this chart is pretty flexible. The length of the exposition or the rising action can change a lot. The climax of your story might also change. You could even have two climaxes and the second one is the major turning point in the story.

So, let's talk about some of these points.

The EXPOSITION as the chart defines, is where we get the setting and main characters showing up. Please note that this is not an information dump. We need to have a sense of where the story is happening (the world building) and who the main characters are. Giving us information that we don't need until later in the story should not happen here. The goal is that we get just enough to move those characters from 2-dimensional to 3 dimensional. In other words, what makes them tick.

From this point on, you will start plotting out key moments in your story. This will be the INCITING INCIDENT and the RISING ACTION. You might even get to the CLIMAX of the story. My bet is that, as you thought out your story, you had images of scenes you know you wanted to include. Figure out where you think those might occur. Put these in a logical order along your rising action. In all honesty, I would should for 5. Will you have more along the way

Let's talk about those next three steps in the chart.

The INCITING ACTION is where we see the central CONFLICT of the story take place. Let's look at a fictional contemporary romance idea. Heroine has been working in her own small PR firm but due to recent economic problems in the economy, making it on her own is simply not working out. Not only that, but she has really struggled with creating promotional plans for companies run by men. The women loved her designs but the men were all still stuck in a belief that women should just do women things. She has been looking for new larger companies to move into and potentially shift from PR to standard advertising and marketing. NOTE: All of this information is in the EXPOSITION. She is contacted by a head-hunter who has seen her work and believes that one particular company is a perfect fit for her expertise. Enter hero...

Hero is your classic Alpha Male. He runs his business with a strong male presence. His mother died early on in his life so his entire life was spent around his dad's way of thinking (I'm thinking very Hemingway focused). Now comes the INCITING ACTION. The board of directors of his company is making a huge shift and has decided to take the company in a new direction and are bringing in this new marketing/advertising expert.

This has led us to the CONFLICT of the story. Heroine wants to prove herself in a male dominated company and hero has to come to grips that men may not know anything.

Not an over the top concept but this should be enough for you to see how this is going to play out.

At this point, you would just focus on those key scenes along the RISING ACTION where you want significant things to happen. Just create lists here. Each scene or event should be adding on to the story and moving the characters along in a forward direction. Each contributes one more piece to the puzzle.

Once you determine the conflict, figure out a couple of things that have to happen to make the world all better. This is the FALLING ACTION. Here you might only have two things that have to happen. In the case of this fictional romance, I would have the heroine getting fed up and quitting and the hero realizing his one home for saving the company and this relationship is having to get her back.

The RESOLUTION is the easy part. In our fictional romance, we could see two things happening. First, how will she finally save the company and for him, how will he turn this into a relationship that lives on as a happily ever after..

What I want you to see here is that I am not plotting out EVERYTHING that happens in the story. I just create a few roadmaps a long the way. Can we add to these? Sure. Can some of these things change along the way if some new and better event shows up? Sure. But we have a rough idea as to where the story will go.

Does this make sense?

Tomorrow, I will talk about using this early plot to create a synopsis.

Stupid Things You Do With Your Plot

I love this commercial. Geico really nailed it on the head with this one. But, I want you to think about your own writing today. Are you making your characters do these same type of things in your stories?

Too often, in an effort to advance your plot, to add tension, or to create conflict, writers often have their characters do things, or say things that frankly, no human being would ever do. Although you might think it is a small thing, the reality is that your readers will not be so kind.

So, what have I seen?

• Cops deciding it is OK to date the key witness?
• Heroines being stalked by a killer thinking, at that key moment in the chase, stopping and having a "thing" with the hero is a good idea.
• Ministers thinking adultery is OK

I think you get the idea.

So, take the time to look at the things going on in your story. Is this something that would really happen?

The Basics of Plotting

I know that some of you are freaking out at this moment. "I can't plot!" you scream, "It will ruin my creativity!"

And I say no way!

The problem with people who say plotting is bad, simply do not understand the concept of plotting. They have gotten into their heads that plotting means that every page, every narration, every dialogue sequence is figured out before you even start writing.

Which is not what we mean.

I have also talked about a method that works really good for figuring out your story by doing a little math. Calculate the word count you need (because you have done your research and know what the publishers want), figure out the words per chapter, and from that, build your plot. Where do you need to be by chapter 5, 10, 15, 20? And of course, when I mentioned this, the pantsters of the world were up in arms screaming that this is formulaic and true creativity can not be done mathematically.

They did not get what I meant.

The idea of plotting is simply figuring out where you are in the beginning of the book and where you need to get to. It also means having a clear understanding of the benchmarks along the way you need to hit to get to that final destination.

Think of it this way. Let's take a Road Trip!

The pantsters approach out be this way.

"Get in the car and start driving. Stop when you want to stop. Take any road you want. See where you end up.

Now, while this sounds interesting, this is not real life. We all have a schedule and we do have limitations. We likely do not have unlimited time and we likely do not have unlimited resources to do anything we want. This trip, using this approach, simply will not work.

So, let's try it the plotter way. I did this right after my wife and I got married.

We had spring breaks that did not quite over-lap. Her family decided that it would be great to have everyone go to Disneyland together for a couple of days. They flew. I drove. This meant I had variables to work with.

• I knew when I had to be in Anaheim.
• I knew when I had to be back to school
• I knew the starting point  (Seattle) and the end
• I knew I had two places I definitely wanted to see (Napa Valley and visit friends up in Sequoia National Part)

The trip was plotted. As long as I knew where those benchmarks were, I could take any route I wanted, stop and see anything I wanted, but I had to stick to the timeline.

It was a good trip.

When it comes to writing your novels, THIS is what we mean about plotting. 

5 W's & an H: Today we talk WHEN

We are now on Day 4 and the focus today is about the WHEN part of our novels. In this case, it really is about setting but it is all about marketing as well.

This is one of those issues where authors need to do their research BEFORE even starting that story, and when I say start, I am talking about any research or planning. This is really where so many authors screw up.

The reality is that it doesn't matter about the quality of your writing, if you are writing a story that simply is not going to work in the current market, it is not going to sell. This is not an issue of the publishers having a limited scope of writing, or trying to control things. This is a matter of what the readers are currently interested in.

I remember right after 9/11, there were authors who really wanted to bring up a story that rode on that emotion. The problem is, that while the author might have had a great story, the world was simply not ready to face that emotion at that time.

There is also an issue to plotting. The time of the story really is a backdrop to the entire plot and needs to really be there for a reason, and that reason needs to be significant. Like our discussion of setting yesterday, the time of the story also has to be there for a reason.

I remember one author pitching a story that sounded like it had some potential, but this author set the story in the early 70's. This was a romantic suspense and she wanted to set it in a time where there were no cell phones or the Internet. This was not a great approach because now, she had to not only try to tell the story, she had to add in all of the world building. This was world building that was non-essential to the story.

If you are writing a contemporary story, make it contemporary. You readers will relate to the story better because it is a time they understand and live in. It also makes your life easier when you try to connect the reader to the story.

If you are writing anything historical, ask yourself if this is truly a time period that will work right now. It might not be the time to tell that story. Put it aside for now and focus on something that would sell.

Just something to consider. 

5 W's & an H: Today WHAT

We focused on the WHO yesterday. Today it is about WHAT.

In today's post I want to address WHAT you should include in your story and WHAT you should leave out.

Authors often take the extreme side of this when writing. They either put too much in the story, or too little.

When authors add too much, I can easily see this in the synopsis. In this case, someone has a great idea for a story and then ruins it by adding more and more things to it. Instead of focusing on one single, powerful conflict, the author then makes the character go through a ton of other issues.

Consider a women's fiction piece. The main character is now dealing with an empty nest situation. Nothing wrong with this. Each kid is now at college or has gotten married. That would be a great story. But no, then they add in a husband who is cheating on her, then she gets cancer, then there is a divorce of one of the kids, then one of the kids "comes out" then another...

This is too much.

Writers will often also go too much into detail on transition scenes. The characters are at home and arguing about something. Now they have to go to dinner with friends. Instead of just transitioning from the home to the restaurant, the extend the scene on the ENTIRE car ride there.

Again too much.

On the reverse side, authors leave out details that would immerse us in the story. They leave out the three-dimensional side of the story. We see characters doing things but don't know why. They have the characters move from one scene to the next but don't know how or why they did.

This is really a tough issue. Too much or too little will really kill a story and you have to find the "happy medium." There is no formula. You simply have to ask yourself, is this too much, or is this not enough.

A Trope IS NOT The Whole Plot

I wanted to revisit the idea of tropes today. In recent months, I have seen far too many authors

misinterpreting the idea of using a trope in their stories. Instead of using the trope as a part of their story, they are literally copying the entire story and claiming to make it their own.

Now, before I go any further, I know there are a ton of you who will start screaming that "there are no new stories out there." I am sorry to say this, but there are new stories. This becomes an easy excuse for someone writing that might not have a lot of creative ideas running through their head.

So, let's begin with what a trope is. In simple terms, it is a common character type or story premise that an author uses as the foundation to their story. For example, we can have the "Upstairs/Downstairs" trope where the servant and someone in an upper class get together. We can have the Beauty and Beast trope where there is an ugly side of someone that only love can seem to see past. We can have the Cinderella story or the Rags to Riches story. When it comes to characters, we can have the classic, ruthless business person, the ditzy best friend, the gay best friend... the list is endless.

As authors, we use these as nothing more than a plot device to facilitate something we want done in the story. The key is that it is a part of the story. But here is the problem. Authors are not just using this as a plot device but as an entire story.

Let's take a Cinderella trope vs. story. As a trope, we would have this girl from a lower station in life doing "good things" and through those good actions and proper moral compass, she is able to rise to being "a princess" or something more than what she saw herself as in the beginning. As a story would be something like this.

She is a mail person in a large company and is now transferred to a different department where there is a ruthless and uncaring female supervisor who has her two daughters working for her getting all of the perks of the job. Those daughters also make her do all of the work. It is now time for the company Christmas party where bonuses are given out, but she is unable to go until she gets all of her work done. Fortunately, the custodian at the company knows a few secrets and comes in to save day....

Do you see what I mean here? While this might seem like a new story, the similarities are just too obvious.

While it might be easy to say, "But these stories sell," the reality is that it is not the story that sells, but the trope that we like to see.

If you really want to make it out there in the publishing world, it is really important to know how to work the whole trope thing into your writing. We want YOUR story and YOUR voice. We don't want a carbon copy of someone else.

Plot Dictates Content

A couple of days ago, one of the social media groups I follow was discussing how much steam and sex to put in a story. In this case, the author was asking about whether or not editors told them to add more or tone it down some. This got me thinking though about how an author decides what things to put in a story and how to approach a story. It also got me thinking about this in terms of the recent discussions about diversity in writing. 

In the end, it is the plot of the story that dictates what you put in the story. Let me explain it to you this way with academic writing.

When writing research reports, and academic essays, we always start with the thesis of the essay. This is the guiding force for everything we do. I often tell students that the thesis is the list of rules for the game. What you put in your thesis establishes the parameters of issues you will discuss and approaches you will take. Consider this.

The task is to write a character analysis of Hamlet. At this point, because it is so broad, you have to discuss pretty much everything. If, however, you limit this to the brother/sister relationship of Laertes and Ophelia and how it relates to current day sibling relationships, you have limited your focus a lot. This also becomes essentially a cause and effect paper (the external effects of the relationship) and a compare/contrast essay (Shakespeare vs. present day).

Now, when we look at novel writing, there is really no difference. If your story does not require sex scenes, or, because of the characters, that element of their life is always behind closed doors, the you take that approach. If, however, you have created characters that are hot and passionate about every thing they do in life, the sexual tension may clearly be over the top. Look, if you have a girl who is a 100% virgin (not just physically but also emotionally) she is not likely going to pair up with a Christian Grey and not likely to go to the level of what he "liked." 

The same goes for the type of characters you put in your story. Are you creating an interracial relationship because this is something that would have happened in that world and is necessary to the plot? Or are you inserting this relationship to just make the story relevant? Again, it is the plot and the "thesis" of your story that will dictate that approach. 

Knowing the approach you take is, once again, a reason why authors need to take the time to study the craft. It is the reason why you as an author need to stop and examine everything you do in the story and know why you are adding that element and what the effect is on the reader. If you don't know, then you are not ready to write that story. 

Write What You Know

Writers here this comment all of the time. Write what you know. Write what you understand. This statement could not be any truer, and yet, time and time again, authors ignore this rule and dive into

subject matter that they cannot comprehend.

I remember sitting in a conference listening to the great Jo Beverley. She had stated that there was a reason she wrote only in one particular time period. In simple terms, she understood it. Could she write in another time period and be successful. Knowing her, yes she could; however for her to do so, it would require a lot of outside research just to fully understand that time.

But there is another aspect to this that writers might not understand, and that is the impact on your story and plot development.

When you are writing a story, you include information that you know the readers will need to fully grasp what you are talking about. That is understandable, and I think all of you would agree with this. But if you as the researcher now, need to know more and more information to be able to include that in your story, your brain starts to think the readers will need that information as well. As you include that information, you are now getting distracted from the original plot you had in started with.

I remember working with a student in a research class who ran into this same issue. I cannot remember exactly what he was researching, but it was something that was truly over his head. As he dove into the research, he would read something in an article that he did not understand... so he went off to research that new tidbit. I am sure you can see where this ended up going. When he finally got to writing his research paper, he had all of these additional blocks of information that really had nothing to do with his original thesis.

Now, am I saying that you should not try new things. Of course not! But, when you are writing, always stop and ask yourself how much of that information your reader really needs to have. If you can just tell them it is a fact and that is good enough, then stick with that.

As I always tell my writers, follow that phrase we were taught in school. K.I.S.S.

How Much Is Too Much

Many writers share the same problem when it comes to creating a reason for their characters' thoughts and actions in their books. They simply add TOO MUCH! Most likely, due to a critique partner or a beta reader, someone said "I like this character, but I need a reason for this person to act this way." That part is fine, however, when an author goes a bit overboard with this, the story ends up with too much drama. This really happens a lot in romance and women's fiction.

Let me explain what I mean by the "too much drama" element. If we have a heroine who is a bit shy about wanting to date, the author, in an attempt to "explain this" has the heroine coming out of a

family where maybe the dad was abusive and then her first marriage or fiance was cheating on her. Really? Do we have to go that far to explain things?

Here is another one. The hero is a corporate CEO. He is determined to make this company the best ever and tends to be pretty tough, rude and insensitive. That part is fine, but again, in an attempt to justify the behavior the author has him being the son of a an equally tough father. He was sent away to boarding school or a military academy because the dad thought it would teach his wimpy son to be a man. Again, too much.

There are several negative effects of this on the story and certainly also with the readers. The first is that the author now has to spend valuable word count on explaining this whole back story. If the author would just mention this, the reader would then demand to know more about this back story, and now we are detracted from the main story and plot. When I see this and pass on a project like this, I often say that the author has now lost the focus that the readers need.

The second effect deals with the author-reader connection. We want the reader to be drawn into the story. We want them to connect with the characters, to feel what they feel, and to share those same emotions. Adding all of those other layers now distances the reader because their situation is not the same. They could relate to a real character, but with someone who has this much baggage, we lose that connection.

So, how do we fix this. The solution is really easy. People in the real world have natural tendencies. Some of us are workaholics. Some of us are overly organized. Some of use cannot organize our lives at all. That is just the way we are. So leave it with that. "Michael had always been a true leader. Even in school when they had group projects, it was always Michael who took charge and demanded perfection. Now running XYZ Company it was no different."

You can also just work this in as a plot issue. Why doesn't our heroine want to date Michael? Because she just doesn't believe office romances work. Again, no back story.

You will find that keeping your story focused like this will make the stories stronger. It will also give you that word count space to add the depth to your characters making them more three-dimensional.

Looking For Alternatives

Running into roadblocks with our writing is certainly an issue I think all writers face. We are in a serious role with our writing and then, all of a sudden, you don't know where to turn. This is really an issue that I do believe can be solved with several strategies: 1) Plotting; and 2) Feedback.

This popped into my head a couple of days ago when I was doing absolutely nothing other than playing video games, in particular, Flow.

If you have ever played this game, you know the strategy. Your goal is to connect the dots. The early games are pretty easy, but eventually, you end up with more dots and more squares. In many ways, this is what happens when you start developing more complex story lines. And, like this game, you will often find your self stuck.

So, how do I get out of these issues with this game? I go back to square 1 and pick a new color to start with. I do this simply because there are times when we get stuck in a rut knowing that the blue color HAS to go in one way. Taking another color will often shape the board in a way to allow me to see the correct route for the blue.

When it comes to your writing, you can do the same thing. There will be times when you see only one path with your story. You want that hero to do one thing but it is not coming into alignment with the heroine. So, an easy solution is to back up and approach the story from her point of view. Change the point of view and see if you can get the two together with another path.

One of my writers plays Bridge and when she runs into an issue like this, she uses a term Bridge players are fully aware of. I am having "transportation issues." You know how you want to get there, but can't see the path at that moment. She too does the same thing I do with the flow game. She just backs up and tries the story from a different angle.

The positive part of this is that you can often get to where you wanted to go WITHOUT losing that element of the story that was holding you up the first time. You will just get there in a different fashion.

Fix Plotting Problems EARLY

One of the things I have stressed with all of my authors at Greyhaus is to let me see the work early in the writing process. Editors will also do the same thing when they want to see a partial of a project before the author moves on. The reasoning behind this is clear. It is easier to fix problems BEFORE
the issue becomes nightmarish.

What we generally see from authors is that they run into a plotting issue early in their book. But instead of fixing the problem, they continue writing those stories. With each new plot twist the problem becomes worse and worse. Now, instead of having one problem to fix, the author now has multiple issues, all intertwined together that probably impact parts of the story that would bhave been good.

Although you might be one of those people who don't want others to see the work until it is fully finished, waiting may result in literally having to re-write the entire book. I don't know about you, but I don't have that much free time on my hand.

If you don't have an agent yet, make sure to get a great critique group going. Share that work with each other. Make sure to constantly think about where you are now and where you need to be. If you get that feedback early on, you will find your life gets a lot easier.

What Is The End Goal In Your Story?

There are a lot of times we as agents find a piece of writing where we struggle a lot. The writing is fine. The dialogue is fine. The characters are fine. And yet, something is not right. In most of these cases, I find myself questions, "but what is the point?"

Each of your stories you write needs to have an end goal. What is that big take away from the story you want the readers to leave with. This goes a bit further than simply the theme of the story. This involves really asking yourself, as you plan your story and as you write your story, "what is the point of all of this?"

For a lot of writers, when I pose this question to them, they will often respond in one of two ways. The first is to spout of the theme of the story, "This is a coming of age story." OK. So what? I get that we watch the characters coming of age but so what? Why is this an important story to tell now? Why is your story the platform to tell this story, and in the end, what was your whole goal of writing the story?

The second response I will get is often defensive. "Can't a story just be there to entertain?" Sure, that is an author's intent, but again, the question has to be, what is the point of the story. What is it that you want us to walk away with? It is that big question of why?

Now, when we read a story like this, we can start to see trends in the writing. There is often a lot of repetition in scenes or ideas. It gets pretty darn episodic. The same goes for a constant repetition of the same techniques and devices the writer uses. For example, the writer might frequently return to a banter between two characters that worked really well for a single scene, or one every now and then, but too much, becomes repetitive. As I write this, I am thinking of that banter we saw in the TV show Moonlighting. Fun yes, but it was almost predictable in each episode.

If you are finding your story is just sort of sitting there, the reason might simply be the lack of an end goal for your story. You simply do not know the "Why" of your story. This might help a lot.

What Is The Underlying Problem?

About 10+ years ago, I was teaching a program called Future Problem Solving. This is fantastic program. Students work in small groups and study a scenario to eventually solve problems in a timed setting. One of the pieces that I always go back to is a first step the students go through. This is the identification of the underlying problem. I wanted to bring this up because it is something I see so many authors missing when it comes to editing and revising those projects.

For many authors, especially those who don't plot, they often find themselves sitting at a point in the story where things just unravel. It looks like there is no hope without completely throwing the entire story out and starting over. Obviously, this is not something any author would want to face. And yet, over and over again, I see authors doing this.

But they don't have to.

The best approach is to look at that story and determine exactly what the underlying problem is that has created your roadblock with your writing. The odds are, it is not a full blown plotting issue, but more likely a small issue that, if tweaked, can take care of the entire issue.

I remember working with an author on a project. Her editor came back with this huge issue of the hero and his motivations. The editor was looking for adjusting the plot that would have entirely re-written the story. The impact was not just fixing the hero, it was also forcing the author to change the heroine, the conflict and, if I remember right, the setting of the story.

This is just too much work. I am personally someone who, if I can find a quick solution, I will take it. In this case, we looked at the underlying problem, and the issue was not the plot, it was the motivation of the character. Our solution? We added one paragraph where the hero had his first love die due to a simple disease. He simply did not want to have a relationship because the pain he went through is something he did not want to go through again.

In this case, the underlying problem is what we tweaked.

So, if you are facing issues with your story, take the time to really study the plot. Go for the underlying problem and you may find that you don't struggle as much as you have in the past with editing.