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5 Tips for Setting Achievable Writing Goals

by Angie Hodapp

Many of you are probably familiar with Masterclass, the subscription-based website where luminaries from a wide array of specialties—typically business, lifestyle, and the arts—offer in-depth, high-production-value courses you can take from the comfort of your home. Writing instructors on the platform include, among many others, Margaret Atwood, RL Stine, James Patterson, Walter Mosley, Neil Gaiman, David Baldacci, Joyce Carol Oates, Salman Rushdie, Amy Tan, and NK Jemisin.

While obviously the best content lives behind the paywall, Masterclass.com offers some excellent free content as well. As 2022 draws to a close and countless writers around the globe begin to make goals (dare I say resolutions?) for the new year, here is a link to “5 Tips for Setting Achievable Writing Goals.” And while you’re there, consider splitting the cost of their 2-for-1 offer with your BWB (Best Writing Buddy).

7 Tips for Writing Powerful Endings

by Angie Hodapp

Let’s face it. In the fiction industry, there’s a heck of a lot of emphasis heaped on your opening pages. Your opening is what gets judged when you enter a contest. It’s what you submit to agents when you’re looking for representation. And, after your hardcover is published, it’s how a bookstore-browsing reader makes a $30 spending decision.

Why don’t we place equal emphasis on endings?

Well, not every reader makes it to every book’s end—which, of course, is a function of the effectiveness of the book’s beginning and middle. So here we are, back at the importance of openings again, right?

Kind of. Here’s how I think of it:

  • A good opening gets a reader to the middle of your book.
  • A good middle gets a reader to the end of your book.
  • A good ending gets the reader to your next book. Plus, the complete package of a good beginning, middle, and end gets you additional contracts, foreign-rights deals, and TV/film options. That’s the stuff writing careers are made of.

A memorable ending is like the dessert at the end of a fine meal. It’s the impression that readers carry with them into their world long after they finish reading your book. It’s proof you’re a master not just of prose and scene work, but of storytelling.

Endings are important. That said, endings are hard—like everything else about writing fiction. Here are seven tips I hope will make them easier.

Slow down.

How many of you have gotten 50, 60, 70,000 words down before you realize you have no idea how your story is going to end? Probably a lot. And that’s fine! But no matter your process (plotter, pantser, or hybrid), slow down at the end. Don’t rush it. Pretty much every full manuscript I’ve ever read over the years gets exponentially sloppier in the last 10-20%—proof positive that writers accelerate when they see light at the end of the tunnel. Resist that urge. Instead, put as much thought and care into your final act as you did into your opening.

Consider alternatives.

Close your manuscript and open a clean, new document. Write the summaries of at least three different ways your story could end. More than three is even better. Explore and exhaust the possibilities. For each possible ending, identify the predominate emotion you hope that ending will evoke in your reader.

Retrace all your threads.

Reread your manuscript from page one. Make a list of all the story questions you planted—all the things you planned to (and promised the reader you would) reveal later in the story. Did you? Which threads remain untied? Your ending should tie up those threads.

Be judicious with cliffhangers.

Related to retracing your threads, a good cliffhanger is singular. Of all the story questions you planted and all the reveals you set up from page one, tie up all (if not all, then most) of them. Leave one, strong, compelling story question unanswered to entice readers to pick up the next book in your series. Too many untied threads come off as sloppy story craft.

Apprentice yourself.

Read ten recently published books in your genre or watch ten movies that would appeal to the same audience as your book’s. Stop when you reach 75% or so. Then write down the ending you anticipate is coming based on clues in the story, the characters’ arcs, etc. Don’t just think about it. Write it down. Don’t skip this part. Forcing yourself to put your thoughts into actual written words is where real learning happens. Then read/watch the ending. Which ending was better: yours or the writer’s? Why?

Rewrite history.

Think about your favorite, time-tested books and movies. Pick three and write alternate endings to each, staying true to the story and character arcs already in place. Or don’t! If your preferred ending would require changes in the beginning and middle, what would those changes be? What did your endings do that the original endings did not?

Take a break.

If you’re really struggling to come up with your story’s ending, put the whole thing in a drawer and walk away for a couple weeks or even months. Sometimes coming back to a story with the fresh eyes that only time can give you is just the thing.

(Photo by Ann H. on Pexels)

Never Let the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story

by Angie Hodapp

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story” is one of those fun pieces of campfire wisdom sure to elicit a laugh. It encourages hyperbole, color, embellishment. It places greater value on the experience of a well-told story and the skill of the storyteller than on the mundanity of whatever really happened. But interpreted in a slightly different way, this adage offers a useful lesson for fiction writers.

I’ve read many a manuscript in which the author has become so bogged down in truth that they forget they’re telling a story. This happens in all types of fiction, but it’s especially prevalent in historicals. The author has done a ton of research—and rightfully so!—on the particular time and place in which they have decided to spin their tale. But then they frontload their novel with all that research…which, sadly, does little to engage the reader.

I’m sure the impetus is to establish both an authentic setting and narrative credibility. Good things to establish. But if the reader isn’t immediately pulled into the story by character, concept, and conflict, then no amount of careful research or meticulously described setting in the world will make the novel successful.

What do I mean by frontloading with research? I mean that the writer spends too much time and energy “papering the walls” with details that don’t drive story. Often in historicals, such opening chapters feature:

  • Food (what it is; how it was prepared, seasoned, and served; what rituals or traditions exist around eating it)
  • Clothing (what it looks like, what it’s made of, how it was put on, what all the various articles are called)
  • Dialect (phonetically spelled accents, regional phrasing, occasional foreign words in italics)
  • Music (Cyndi Lauper’s new song “Time After Time” comes on the radio)
  • “Current” events being mentioned or discussed in the background (the Berlin Wall is coming down)

All this is wallpaper in your novel unless…

  • the food is poisoned
  • the character dressing herself is stowing the Golden MacGuffin she has just stolen in a hidden pocket in her underskirts
  • the dialect causes a misunderstanding that launches a war
  • the protagonist believes the song on the radio was written for him
  • the fall of the Berlin Wall sends the protagonist on a journey to discover the fate of the child she was forced to abandon on the other side thirty years earlier.

OK, obviously not every setting detail has to launch a plot or subplot. But I did want to illustrate the difference between wallpaper details (yes, #notallwallpaper is bad) and plot-driving details.

Details are also wallpaper if they appear only in the opening chapter and never again. To wit, I recently read a 1980s-set manuscript in which every (teen female) character in the opening chapter was clad in carefully described acid-washed jeans, crimped hair, neon slouchy socks, and Keds. But once the story got off the ground, no character’s appearance was ever mentioned again. It was almost as if the writer thought, “There! I got all that setting stuff out of the way, so now I can just tell the story.”

Does this mean you can’t open with food, clothing, dialect-laden dialogue, music, or references to current events? No. But avoid overseasoning your dish. Too much too soon hits the palate too hard. When I encounter an opening chapter that falls into this trap, one note I’ll send the agent is, “The writer’s research is showing.”

Another example—one that can happen at any point in a story, not just the opening—is when the writer goes into extensively minute detail about a particular real-world place:

“I walked into the mansion’s grand foyer and stared in wonder at the glory all around me. Approximately five feet to my right was an ornate bench upholstered in red-and-gold brocade. It was two-and-a-half feet wide and twelve-inches deep and fourteen inches high, and on either end sat two small pillows. They were ten inches square and made of red velvet with gold tassels tied to each corner. I turned to my left, where, approximately eight feet away, a statue of a knight stood guard. He was made entirely of gray marble with veins of white and black and tiny flecks of purple. He was about ten feet tall and holding a sword high above his helmeted head that stretched out over the foyer like he was pointing the way. I took exactly fifteen steps forward, crossing the tiled floor, noting that the tiles were royal blue and arranged in a parquet design and that each tile was exactly the size of my size-six Louboutin pumps…”

You get the idea. I can’t tell you how many passages like this I’ve come across. When I suggest that the author cut them, the objection is, “But I’ve been there! It’s a real place, and that’s exactly what it looks like!”

My response? “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Photo by The Lazy Artist Gallery

Writing Excuses

by Angie Hodapp

NLA’s podcast pick this month is Writing Excuses. Hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler.

Hugo Award-winning Writing Excuses offers quick, fifteen-minute episodes—58 so far—for writers at every stage of their journey…”because you’re in a hurry and we’re not that smart.” Episodes cover a wide range of topics, like genre, the writing life, career building, character development, and story structure. In addition to the core crew listed above, additional hosts include Maurice Broaddus, Wesley Chu, Aliette de Bodard, Piper J. Drake, Amal El-Mohtar, Valynne E. Maetani, and Mary Anne Mohanraj. Check out their website or listen now on Apple or Spotify.

Give Your Women’s Fiction a Glow Up

by Angie Hodapp

We here at NLA were talking a couple weeks ago about women’s fiction. The consensus is that WF seems to be transforming. Expanding. Shedding dusty old tropes. Reinventing itself. It’s having a glow up, and more readers than ever are showing up for it. We as an agency want to show up for it too. So if you write women’s fiction and want to catch this train with us, here are some tips to get you started.

Defining Women’s Fiction

Women’s fiction is generally written by women, about women, for women; therefore, the themes and conflicts that drive the stories are deeply, personally familiar to, well, women:

  • Fertility, motherhood, empty nesting
  • Marriage, infidelity, divorce, loss of spouse, love after loss
  • Caring for aging parents
  • Complicated female friendships
  • Family secrets, dysfunctional families, sisters
  • Homecomings, returning to one’s roots
  • Balancing any or all of the above while also…
    • navigating societal expectations that women do/be/have it all
    • building a career
    • re-entering the workforce after raising a family
    • searching for happiness and personal fulfillment
    • dealing with life-altering tragedies

In sum, WF has traditionally boiled down to one thing: Women overcoming obstacles.

Women Overcoming Obstacles: Handy but Dangerous

It’s handy when an entire genre can be distilled into three words. But it’s also dangerous. What we’ve found after reading a few thousand WF submissions over the years is this: Too many WF plots can also be summarized “woman overcomes obstacles,” and that isn’t a concept that will support the full weight of a novel. In fact, it’s not a concept at all. (For an excellent class on what concept is and isn’t, read Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves by Larry Brooks.)

In other words, just because the genre can be summarized that way doesn’t mean you should write a manuscript that can be summarized that way. In today’s WF marketplace, editors, publishers, and readers demand more.

Why do so many WF manuscripts get rejected?

We just covered one possible reason: too much suffering or victimization, too many run-of-the-mill obstacles, too many tropes that haven’t been twisted, subverted, turned upside down, or otherwise made unique. Another possible reason is that you’re using tired tropes but you don’t realize they’re tired. Here are a few we’ve seen in submissions far too many times to count, plus some possible ways to start thinking outside the box:

  • Tight-knit mommy or friend groups comprised of stereotypical Mean Girls in Lululemon or Balenciaga that our protagonist feels inferior to.

Instead, maybe play with developing a diverse ensemble of unique humans, each three-dimensional and complex, with her own secrets, goals, stakes, etc.

  • Yoga, spin class…and running. So much running.

Somewhere it is written that a WF protagonists must be runners. We know, we know: A lot of bestselling WF features protagonists who de-stress with a quick 5K around the park, but it’s become so overdone that it’s almost comical. Instead, what surprising, interesting, or unique ways might a female character address her concerns about her health, those extra pounds, or her stress levels?

  • PTAs that are the high-school cafeteria writ large: the Mommy Mean Girls sit over there, single dads over there, the problematic president’s cronies over there…

As mentioned above, what unexpected characters can you develop for your PTA, and what surprising motivations might you give them to have joined? Further, what unexpected—rather than typical—conflicts might arise among members?

  • PTAs grappling with problems that feel too typical or too familiar—anything from the outlawing peanut butter to installing gender-neutral restrooms.

Whether you’re going for comedy or drama, what surprising “no PTA has ever had to deal with this” issues could you force on your fictional PTA? How did that predicament occur, and what even more surprising outcome will feel brand-new to readers?

  • The opening scene in which the protagonist is dealing with a screaming toddler, a food-flinging baby, a phone call from the PTA president (“Don’t forget you promised to bake cupcakes for Principal Johnson’s retirement party today!”), and a flustered husband who can’t find his car keys. Conversely, the opening scene in which the protagonist is spreading organic sunflower butter on gluten-free bread while her cute kids finish their breakfasts and pouring freshly brewed French roast into her husband’s travel mug as he pecks her on the cheek and heads out the door to the Tesla in the driveway…all while feeling so alone and overwhelmed.

Whether it’s the “I’m a complete mess on the outside” or the “I’m a complete mess on the inside,” these opening scenes are like siren songs to WF writers. Which makes sense, because they cut right to the heart of the universal, the relatable. But that means a ton of other WF writers are using these opening scenes too. So instead, in what surprising, unique way could you open your story? (Reminder: Avoid running in the opening scene.) What’s a hookier entry point or more compelling introduction to your character?

The Familiar: Also Dangerous

If your WF places too much focus on the familiar or too much hyperbole of the familiar—too much “it’s funny/sad because it’s true”—then your story lands more as satire than well-conceived, concept-driven fiction. Step outside that box! Explore stories, characters, settings, scenarios, and concepts that, while perhaps rooted in the familiar, also provide readers with an escape from the familiar.

How do I give my women’s fiction a glow up?

If you’re searching for that singular concept that will feel like a must-have to agents and editors, then start by upping your market awareness. What’s on the bestseller lists right now? Read the back-cover copy and zero in on the concept. Remember, “woman overcomes obstacles” is not by itself a concept, high or otherwise; it’s a genre. What are bestselling WF authors adding to that to the idea of women who overcome obstacles? How are they elevating it? Which tropes are they using and which are they perhaps inventing?

Don’t skimp on the stakes!

This one’s so important I’m giving it its own heading. Far too many WF submissions are far too light on stakes. If what’s at stake in your story is emotion based (“at the end of my story, my character will be sad or disappointed if X happens or doesn’t happen”), then your story might be in trouble. Sadness or disappointment are not compelling stakes. Again, circle back and make sure you have a strong concept, and then raise the stakes in any way you can. Do only this, and right away, your submission will stand out in the slush pile.

In WF, we at NLA are currently excited to see:

  • Stories that show women exercising their power and agency in a plot-driving way from page one rather than stories about women who don’t discover their power and agency until the end.
  • Sister, mother-daughter, or best-friend stories that dive deep into the complexities of those relationships throughout the whole story rather than stories about relationships under stress that are reconciled at the end.
  • Hopeful, funny, poignant WF with charming ensemble casts we wish we knew and could hang out with in real life.
  • Contemporary WF with speculative or magical-realism elements—like time travel (Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow is a current obsession).
  • Dark, twisty, suspenseful stories or domestic thrillers that are rooted in women’s power and agency rather than solely in their victimhood, jeopardy, or struggle.
  • Stories where no character is either completely good or completely bad (think Liane Moriarty).
  • Stories that play with 80s, 90s, or 00s nostalgia in plot-driving ways rather than as fun “wallpaper” for the background of the story.

Photo by cottonbro: www.pexels.com

Writers, Ink with JD Barker, J. Thorn, and Zach Bohannon

by Angie Hodapp

This month, the NLA team wanted to spotlight another cool online resource for writers…and not just because one of Agent Kristin’s clients, the inimitable JD Barker, is one of the hosts!

Writers, Ink is a podcast that, according to its tagline, promises to be “your backstage pass to the world’s most prolific authors.” Turns out, with 145 episodes produced since its inception in December 2019, Writers, Ink more than delivers on that promise. Hosts JD Barker, J. Thorn, and Zach Bohannon have interviewed not just some of today’s most prolific authors, but also some of the most respected and recognized bestselling writers of our time. Recent episodes feature conversations with Blake Crouch, Barbara Graham, Emily St. John Mandel, Don Winslow, Gillian Flynn, and Dean Koontz. From inspiration, process, drafting, and revision to tenacity, publication, branding, and professionalism, Writers, Ink touches on everything writers at any stage of their careers need to know.

Find Writers, Ink here and drop us a comment below letting us know your favorite episode. Know of a cool online resource for writers? Drop us a comment about that below, too!

Rhetorical Story Development

by Angie Hodapp

This month, let’s tackle a narrative device that lots of fiction writers use, one I’m calling “rhetorical story development.” It’s when writers have characters ask themselves rhetorical questions as a means to deliver character or scene information to the reader. Here’s how to recognize this device, understand why it tends to lack depth, decide when to use it (and when not to), and approach revision.

A rhetorical question is one that’s asked merely for effect with no answer expected. Here’s an example of how fiction writers use it as a narrative device:

James stared at Rob, fists at his sides. How could Rob accuse Anna of such terrible things? Didn’t Rob know that Anna was the love of his life? Didn’t he care that after this they could never be friends again? “Take it back,” he said through clenched teeth.

Here’s another:

I stared at the mysterious symbols carved into the tree. The last symbol was an arrow pointing into the woods. I shivered. Should I follow the arrow? Allow myself to be swallowed up by the shadows? What choice did I have? This was the first clue I’d found in months. Was there any other way to find out what really happened to my sister? I squared my shoulders and marched toward the treeline.

­Writers who use this device are giving us a glimpse of what’s going on inside the POV character’s head in moments of confusion or indecision. Nothing wrong with that, per se. In fact, fiction writers should give us that glimpse; otherwise, if they’re only writing what can be seen and heard, they’re probably writing scripts in prose form rather than fully developed fiction. (Which is why “show don’t tell” can result in bad scene work, but that’s a topic for another day.)

However, here’s a caution. When the rhetorical-question device is used too often, a piece of fiction can begin to sound like a choose-your-own-adventure story narrated by someone outside the scene rather than in it, living it, being acted upon by it. When you look at the device more closely, you can see that it fails to give meaningful insights into how a character thinks—that is, what makes that character unique and interesting. In other words, if they’re asking themselves the same questions anyone would ask themselves in the scene’s particular situation, they risk becoming everyman or template characters.

In the immortal words of Jo Bennett to Dwight Schrute on The Office, “Stop asking yourself easy questions so you can look like a genius.”

OK, a little comic relief there. I get that characters aren’t pulling a Dwight and trying to look like geniuses—they’re often just trying to figure out what to do. But easy questions make for weak narrative. One way to do get your characters to stop asking themselves easy questions is to simply turn those questions into statements. Complete thoughts. Instead of showing us your character’s confusion or indecision, show us their belief or their resolve. Then show us how they’re applying that resolve to their decision about what to do or say next. If you do, then right away, you’ll be opening the door to more meaningful character development.

Let’s take a stab at revising our examples:

James stared at Rob, fists at his sides. No way would he let Rob get away with accusing Anna of such terrible things. Sure, he and Rob had been best friends since kindergarten, but Anna was the love of his life. No one—especially not Rob, who always got every girl he ever wanted—got to talk about Anna that way. “Take it back,” he said through clenched teeth.

Notice how James comes across as much more resolved in this revision. He skips over the questions and gets straight to the heart of what he’s really thinking in that moment. But what if James is the type of character who really is always questioning himself? Then try:

James stared at Rob, fists at his sides. He had two options. One, back down the way he always did, walk away and let Rob’s lies about Anna hang in the air between them. Or two, stand up for himself and the love of his life once and for all, thirty years of so-called friendship be damned. “Take it back,” he said through clenched teeth.

There are myriad ways to develop or stay true to a character in a moment of analysis and decision without using the rhetorical-questions device.

Let’s revise the second example:

I stared at the mysterious symbols carved into the tree. The last symbol was an arrow pointing into the woods, where shadows hung like shrouds from gnarled branches. I shivered. Everything in me wanted to turn and run, but this was the first clue I’d found in months. Someone in those woods knew what happened to my sister. Soon, I would know too. I squared my shoulders and marched toward the trees.

In this case, questions like “Should I follow the arrow? Allow myself to be swallowed up by the shadows?” can just be cut. They waste space that otherwise can be used to paint atmosphere (“shadows hung like shrouds from gnarled branches”), clearly express internal conflict (“Everything in me wanted to turn and run”), or develop tension (“Someone in those woods knew”).

None of this is meant to say that you can never use this device or have your characters ask themselves rhetorical questions. It’s just to point out that overuse of any device is a good thing for writers to be aware of and, hopefully, add another tool to your self-editing toolbox.

(Header Photo by Olya Kobruseva)

Making It Up with Carter Wilson

by Angie Hodapp

This month, the NLA team wanted to share with you our latest, greatest writers-in-the-know online find: Making It Up. This web series, launched in March 2021 by USA Today bestselling thriller author Carter Wilson, has already racked up nearly 50 episodes. In these candid conversations with writers of all genres and backgrounds, Carter gets his guests talking about influences, creativity, luck and loss, tools of the craft, and the highs and lows of publishing.

Our favorite part of each episode comes at the end, when Carter and his guest pick a random sentence from a random book on Carter’s shelves and use it to create an impromptu back-and-forth short story. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll leave the lights on. Nothing like a little on-the-spot creativity to wake up the muse!

Check out this impressive episode list (especially episode 44, which features NLA client Katrina Monroe), and then head on over to the Making It Up YouTube channel and hit subscribe. And, hey, pick up one of Carter’s tense-as-heck thrillers while you’re at it.

Ep 1: Alex Marwood
Ep 2: Julie Clark
Ep 3: Joe Clifford
Ep 4: David Bell
Ep 5: Sean Eads
Ep 6: K.J. Howe
Ep 7: Lynne Constantine
Ep 8: Mark Stevens
Ep 9: Steven James
Ep 10: Julia Heaberlin
Ep 11: Graham Hurley
Ep 12: Emily Bleeker
Ep 13: Erika Englehaupt
Ep 14: Mark Sullivan
Ep 15: Sabrina Jeffries
Ep 16: Clare Whitfield
Ep 17: Xio Axelrod
Ep 18: Brad Parks
Ep 19: Barb Webb
Ep 20: Adrian Goldsworthy
Ep 21: Stuart Turton
Ep 22: S.A. Cosby
Ep 23: Daniel Handler
Ep 24: Maureen Johnson
Ep 25: Sarah Fine
Ep 26: Matthew Fitzsimmons
Ep 27: Robert Dugoni
Ep 28: Farrah Rochon
Ep 29: Alverne Ball
Ep 30: Drew Magary
Ep 31: Dr. Ian Smith
Ep 32: Yasmin Angoe
Ep 33: Gabrielle St George
Ep 34: Amanda Kabak
Ep 35: Lynne Reeves Griffin
Ep 36: Allen Eskens
Ep 37: Daniel Jude Miller
Ep 38: Alex Finlay
Ep 39: Aaron Philip Clark
Ep 40: Lara Elena Donnelly
Ep 41: J.T. Ellison
Ep 42: Erica Ferencik
Ep 43: Katie Lattari
Ep 44: Katrina Monroe
Ep 45: Ananda Lima
Ep 46: D.P. Lyle
Ep 47: Jess Montgomery
Ep 48: Elle Marr

Are you a writer with a favorite go-to website or writerly online resource? Drop a comment below and share it with us!

When Your Entire Manuscript Turns Out to Be a Prologue

by Angie Hodapp

Stories should start on page one. This we know, yet every seasoned fiction editor will tell you that most stories don’t. Most stories start on page five or ten. Or thirty. Or fifty. Hooray for critique partners, beta readers, and editors who can spot when our stories truly begin—and double hooray for writers who revise accordingly! But here’s a similar, more puzzling phenomenon I’ve been running into lately: when stories don’t start in the first book.

This is when I get to the end of a full-length manuscript and realize that I have more questions than answers. That the author left more threads untied than tied. That the entire manuscript read like a prologue to something bigger.

When I call this out to the authors, the response I often get is something like, “Oh, don’t worry, I’m going to answer all that in book two.”

Yikes. There are three red flags here.

First, we have to sell book one before book two.

From a publishing-industry standpoint, the likelihood that we’ll sell book one if, on its own, it doesn’t tell a satisfying story from beginning to middle to end is pretty low.

The Fix

Treat every book you write as if it will be the only book you write. Make it as self-contained, complete, and satisfying as you can, even if—especially if—it’s part of a planned series.

Second, we worry you got lost in the weeds or are resisting revision.

A “prologue novel” tends to read as though the author found themselves approaching 100,000 words and realized they’d better wrap things up (for better or worse), yeet some query letters into the world, and cross their fingers. Maybe they really do intend to resolve all the unanswered story questions in a sequel, and maybe they know exactly how. But again, without delivering close-the-book satisfaction with book one, we can’t reasonably expect publishers or readers to plunk down more money for another tale that might also feel unfinished.

The Fix

Getting lost in the weeds or overwriting can mean that a writer struggles with one or more of the following:

  • Prose (word economy)
  • Pacing (scene economy)
  • Plot (structure; beginnings, middles, and ends)
  • Revision (a skill far different from drafting)

Start by knowing which is your greatest opportunity for improvement. Then get thee to a critique group. In a lot of critique groups, you’ll find The Prose Person, The Pacing Person, The Plot Person, etc. Cozy up to the person who is really good at your area of opportunity and offer to trade beta reads.

If the whole idea of revision intimidates you (or, worse, if you’re laboring under the hope or belief that first drafts are divinely inspired and shouldn’t be messed with), then please pick up a copy of James Scott Bell’s Revision and Self-Editing for Publication: Techniques for Transforming Your First Draft into a Novel that Sells.

Third, the writer might not know how their story ends.

By promising a second book in which All Will Be Revealed, the author might be kicking the literary can down the road, buying time to figure out the answers for themselves—and hoping for a second contract and another advance in the process.

The Fix

As advised above, find a mentor or critique partner who is good at endings. Ask them to help you figure out a satisfying ending for this book—not for your planned series of books—and then work backward to make sure your pacing and scene work lead toward that ending in a tight, satisfying way, in a genre-appropriate number of words.

What about series?

Of course, novels in a series do leave questions unanswered—hooks that entice the reader to continue reading. So, yes, you can do that as well. Here are two strategies:

  1. The Episodic Approach: Wrap up each book, making sure all the story questions are answered, and then at the very end—like, seriously, the last page or two—tease a new story question for the next book.
  2. The Series-Arc Approach: Think in terms of building both story arcs and series arcs. Each book has its own story arc complete with a beginning, middle, and end, but the series also has its own arc—an open-ended story question that will not be answered until the last pages of the last book in the series. This approach requires more forethought, but the potential for a satisfying payoff is greater. A good example is the TV show Monk. Every episode sets up a crime that Monk solves by the end of the hour, but there is one crime Monk has never been able to solve: the murder of his wife. That thread, that question, that arc, is pulled tight across eight seasons until at last it is solved in the two-part series finale.

Photo credit: Matt Deavenport, Flickr

Balancing the Explainable with the Unexplainable in Speculative Fiction

by Angie Hodapp

Any fiction writer who deals in speculative elements must eventually decide: How much of this story requires a realistic, grounded explanation at the end, and how much can I leave unexplained because, hey, it’s magic, supernatural, paranormal, metaphysical, or miraculous? Can’t I just get to the end and say it was all unexplainable and leave it at that?

My short answer is no. In broad strokes, stories ask questions and then answer them. The human brain has some hardwired, logic-based pathways where story is concerned. Part one: Set up the pins. Part two: Knock them down. Sounds simple, but let’s be honest. It’s not.

The first half of any manuscript is easier to write than the second—which is why millions of would-be authors never finish anything. It’s fun to set up lots of evocative, compelling, mysterious, hooky questions at the beginning of a story. Then you get to the halfway point, and you must come up with answers. And not just any answers, but satisfying answers. Meaningful answers. Twisty answers. Worthwhile answers. Delightfully shocking or surprising answers.

That’s hard.

I attended a panel of speculative-fiction writers at AWP many years ago. One panelist admitted that he, years prior, wrote 150 pages about a guy who lived in a house with a door to an upstairs room that couldn’t be opened. Every now and then, a light would come on in that room and shine through the cracks in the door frame. Although the author was having fun writing about this guy and his creepy house, he eventually abandoned the novel—he himself couldn’t figure out what or who was behind the door. He had some ideas, but he knew that after 150 pages of setup, readers would be expecting a big payoff, and he just didn’t have it.

Stephen King tried three times over several decades to write what eventually became Under the Dome. He knew he wanted to write about a town suddenly and mysteriously trapped under a massive, impenetrable bubble…but he didn’t know where the dome came from. He knew he couldn’t write the story without that key piece of information. His understanding that readers wouldn’t accept “the dome just was”—and his unwillingness to accept it himself—is part of what makes King a master storyteller.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill is based on a stellar, high-concept premise: An aging rock star who collects occult objects buys a haunted suit on the internet. It’s not enough to ask readers to just accept that the suit is haunted and be satisfied. Readers are literally reading the book to find out the answers to who is haunting the suit, and why, and what the suit wants from the protagonist, and how the protagonist is going to defeat it. Why is the antagonism between them viscerally personal and not merely incidental? Couldn’t anyone have bought the suit on the internet? Turns out, no. And that is part of the mystery that makes Heart-Shaped Box such a satisfying read.

The fun thing about being a speculative-fiction writer is that your explanations can be spectral. They can defy the laws of our natural world. They can presuppose technologies that don’t exist, discoveries that have not been made. But that’s also what makes writing spec-fic more challenging. Since spec-fic writers can leave some things unexplained, they must search for their story’s best ratio of explainable to unexplainable.

For instance, in Heart-Shaped Box, we suspend our disbelief only so far as is necessary to accept that a vengeful ghost inhabits the suit. That’s all. For everything else, readers’ logical story brains require rational second- and third-act explanations. How did the ghost end up in the suit? How did the suit end up on the internet? How did our protagonist, who was the intended buyer all along, happen to be browsing the internet at just the right time and click “buy” before anyone else did? If Hill had said, “It just worked out that way because it’s supernatural,” the book never would have been published.

Leading readers down a path that ends with “it was all supernatural” is too easy—and whatever is too easy for writers is often not satisfying for readers. Think about the relationship between real life and fiction. In real life, people get obsessed with some dark mystery or true-crime drama, like the Amityville Horror house. We search the internet and watch all the documentaries and movies and TV shows and interviews about Amityville. We feed our imaginations with information. The question of what really happened there is just too compelling to let lie! We consider rational explanations (it was just a crazy kid killing his family with a shotgun) as well as supernatural ones (the evil entity that resides in the house made the kid do it) as we try to arrive at our own conclusions. All the while, we are driven almost mad by the reality that we can never actually know the truth.

That is exactly why fiction is so satisfying! Because the author takes us where reality cannot. The author gives us conclusions and explanations that in real life we will never have. The author answers all the hard questions in ways that our logical story brains accept—at least for as long as we are inside that story world, and sometimes longer. Sometimes, with the very best fiction, forever.

After all this, I wish I could give you some magic ratio of explainable to unexplainable that will make every story you write satisfying. I can’t. Every story is different. Every speculative subgenre shoulders its own set of reader and fan expectations.

What I will offer is this: Readers won’t suspend their disbelief if you’ve given them nothing to suspend it from. The more suspension of disbelief you’re asking of readers, the stronger your story’s logical, rational, realistic framework has to be. Build plausible conditions in which your speculative conditions can thrive, and tie up all your loose ends. If you want happy readers, that’s a good place to start.