Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 6, Volume 6

BUILDING A BELIEVABLE CHAIN OF EVENTS (CONT’D) BUILDING A BELIEVABLE HERE, ACTION MOVES FROM CAUSE TO EFFECT. There’s no need to explain afterward why Reggie opened the cupboard. The narrative flows naturally. Too often, novelists show an event and then explain why it happened. This disrupts the pace and Available on Amazon disorients readers. Unless you have an overwhelming contextual reason to reverse PRESS “CONTROL” THEN CLICK “BUY” TO PURCHASE ANY BOOK the order, show the action and then the result—in that order. HERE’S ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HOW NOT TO DO IT: Suzanne stepped into the shower. She needed to relax. As the water washed over her, she thought of the time she nearly drowned when she was nine. She let the water rinse across her skin. Finally, shuddering, she hastily toweled herself dry after turning off the faucet, and tried not to think about that traumatic day at the lake. As it stands, most of the events in this paragraph happen out of order and sometimes inexplicably. (For instance, Suzanne remains in the shower instead of leaving it right away when the painful memory returns.) HERE’S THE EDITED VERSION: Suzanne needed to relax, so she stepped into the shower. She let the water rinse over her, but it made her think of the time she nearly drowned when she was nine. Shuddering, she turned off the faucet and hastily toweled herself dry, trying not to think about that traumatic day at the lake. Written in this way, no follow-up explanations are needed for why she does what she does. The actions make sense and move the story forward, and readers don’t have to ask why things are happening. Study your story. Can readers see how one ball affects the movement of the others? If not, try reversing the order of events so they string together causally. Move the narrative forward, action to reaction, rather than action to explanation. DOES EVERYTHING IN A STORY HAVE TO BE CONNECTED? Unless your novel centers on the absurdity of life, every subsequent event (after the initiating one) should follow naturally and logically, otherwise the story won’t be cohesive.  NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2016 Analyze every scene, as well as every paragraph, to weed out causeand-effect problems. Pinpoint the connections between events. Does each action have an appropriate consequence? Does the emotional resonance of a scene fit in congruently from the actions within that scene? Do realizations or insights occur a er the event that caused them (as would naturally happen), or do I have things in the wrong order? PAGE 24 WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 6, Volume 6 | Page 32