Welcome to my six-part
writing series: Narrative Traction. This week is Part Six: Troubleshooting,
Plotting and Identifying.
OPENINGS
The two most
valuable questions you can ask beta readers are: 'Did the opening paragraph
grip you?' and 'Where did you start to lose interest?'
If the opening
paragraph doesn't grip someone, it has no narrative traction. It is not
promising something more interesting will happen if you keep reading. It has
failed as an opening paragraph.
Anywhere a reader
loses interest is where the narrative traction has dropped. Usually because you
left it too long to introduce another traction thread, or missed opportunities
to raise the pull of the threads you already have in place.
PROMISE
– WITHOLD – RESOLVE
The opening narrative
traction thread is usually called a 'hook' something to hook the reader in and
drag them through the novel. You need to identify your first hook and open with
it as strongly as you can. It needs to be something that gets the reader's
attention immediately and keeps them interested.
You must then
withhold that information. However, you can't withhold the wrong information.
Sometimes I go to give feedback on a manuscript, and I just have no idea what
is happening. There's a mystery all right, the mystery is who or what the
character is, where they are, what they are doing and why they are doing it.
That's not narrative traction. That's just poor writing. Ideally, you want to
give readers enough information to make them comfortable and feel centred in
the story, that is what allows them to be interested in the hook you are
offering them.
And then you must
resolve the hook while the reader still cares about it, but not too soon. I
realise this sounds a bit 'how long is a piece of string', however how long you
withhold depends on what you are withholding and why. If you open a romance
novel with:
'All Renee had ever
wanted was to be kissed by a girl with blue eyes and freckles.' You might not
give readers that kiss until the final scene. Or you may offer it at the end of
scene one, but somehow it leads to a complete disaster that kicks off the rest
of the plot. Maybe Renee never kisses a girl with blue eyes and freckles, maybe
she falls in love with a black woman with lips that make Renee's knees buckle
and a hair so big it brushes the door frame as she walks through.
You must develop
that skill yourself, and the best way to do it is to read consciously and note
how other brilliant authors do it.
TELL
THEM WHAT THEY WANT
Imagine for a
moment, Renee gets her kiss with her blue eyed, freckled girl in the last scene
of the book. Imagine the first line of the book was actually 'Renee had a
secret, she liked girls' and the line before the kiss, at the very end of the
book was: 'All Renee had ever wanted was to be kissed by a girl with blue eyes
and freckles.'
Maybe you, the
writer, knew that from the start. However, if you forget to tell the reader,
then the fact that this payoff is FINALLY happening, has no impact. Because
they reader had no idea. Or maybe you mentioned it at the start of the book,
and never again, so the reader forgot. Either way, the impact is completely
lost. The narrative traction isn't there.
It seems overly
simple, but to introduce narrative traction to readers, the easiest way is to
tell them what they want. Or tell them what they don't know. Give them
information that allows them to have expectations for what is coming.
If we opened the
book with: 'All Renee had ever wanted was to be kissed by a girl with blue eyes
and freckles.' Then the book turned into a horror with no romance or kissing of
any kind, it would be kind of stupid, because we would be wasting the opening
line on something irrelevant, but it would also be misleading. With that
opening line, we are telling the reader Renee will kiss a girl with blue eyes
and freckles, or that we will subvert their expectations, and have her kiss
someone else through some sort of personal growth or development.
Don't make promises
you don't intend to keep, but also don't
keep promises you never made in the first place.
So once again, the process
is:
1. Make a promise
that the reader wants to see fulfilled.
2. Withhold that
promise to keep them reading.
3. Fulfil that
promise in a way that makes them want something else.
PLOTTING
& IDENTIFYING
If you are a
pantser, I wish you all the luck in the world. However, if you are a plotter,
you would be well served making a note of your narrative traction arcs in your
synopsis. How you go about this depends greatly on how you write your synopsis,
however mine a laid out something like this:
Chapter
One – Day One
Scene:
Opening line: “What if the whole family moves to New York for me, and
I’m not good enough?”
TELYN and WYNN are
walking home. Wynn is worried about the move to California because their
parents SOPHIE and JACOB are giving up their jobs so WYNN can pursue his acting
career. Telyn is excited about the move, desperate to get out of their very
boring small town where she is being bullied and reassures him it will be fine.
They are confronted
by COOPER, a local deadbeat, who attempts to mug them. He grabs Telyn and the
BONEFALL occurs. The sky rends and a leviathan skeleton crashes down on the
town. Lightening rips through all of them and most petrol tanks and gas lines
explode.
Purpose: 1. Introduces WYNN, TELYN and
COOPER. 2. Introduces setting. 3.
Introduces primary conflict.
Hooks:
1. Wynn worried
about the affect his career will have on his family, worried about failing.
2. The mugging,
will they be injured?
3. The Bonefall,
what is happening? What is it? How is it happening?
4. Will they
survive the explosion and lightning strike?
Beats: Action/adventure. Mystery.
Wonder.
Characters: Telyn, Wynn, Cooper (Vivian,
Sophie and Jacob mentioned).
From this chapter
and scene, hooks 2 and 4 will be resolved in the next scene—though with ongoing
implications for the rest of the book. Hook 3 will be sustained not just
through book 1, but through all three books of the trilogy. Hook 1 is rendered
completely moot by hook 3. This chapter is designed to be around 3500 words
long.
At least as many,
if not more traction lines are introduced in chapter 2.
I haven't noted
when the threads will be resolved, because that is something that comes quite
naturally to me. However, having all the hooks listed in your synopsis can help
a lot, since when you are editing, you can check you didn't forget any.
Everyone hates dangling plot threads.
TROUBLESHOOTING
Troubleshooting is
usually going to happen with those two questions I mentioned at the start. 'Did
the opening paragraph grip you?' and 'Where did you start to lose interest?'
Generally, you need
beta readers to fix narrative traction issues. People who will be honest about
these things are the best beta readers in the world. Love them, cherish them,
even if what they say stings a little. Places where the story loses narrative
traction are places where you have failed to convey your excitement about the
plot. Unless you also find the scene boring, in which case you knew it was
flawed before it went to the beta reader and you deserve it.
If you have worked
to put in narrative traction, it can be very hard to find where it drops,
because the problem is one of clarity and communication. There are ideas you
have not explained to the reader. You might have forgotten to tell them what
they want. Which is why a virgin pair of eyes is vital.
The worst-case
scenario is that your ideas just aren't big and interesting enough, which is
going to require a lot of re-writes and reconsidering of your plot. However,
remember, sweet romances sell well and they have very little in terms of plot
and high stakes. They do have a huge depth of emotion though, so if your
narrative traction is lacking, it might be an emotional problem, rather than
one you can fix with more explosions.
Generally, if your
characters don't care, your readers don't care either. So even if the stakes
are high, if your character is blasé about it, the reader will be too.
Remember the line
is 'All Renee had ever wanted was to be kissed by a girl with blue eyes and
freckles.' ALL SHE EVER WANTED. That's a lot of emotion right there. There is
yearning in that. 'It would be hot to be kissed by a girl with blue eyes and
freckles' does not have the same pull.
FINALE
You have reached
the end of the narrative traction series! I hope it was as amazing for you as
it was for me. Pacat's lessons on Narrative Traction boosted my understanding
of writing tenfold in about an hour. While I didn't manage to do it as
succinctly or elegantly as she did, I hope you learned a lot you can apply to
your own writing.
Remember to follow
me on twitter if you want updates of what my cats look like on a daily basis.
POSTS
IN THIS SERIES:
1. What Is
Narrative Traction
2. Types Of
Narrative Traction
3. Infomational
Narrative Traction
4. Event Based
Narrative Traction
5. How To Create
Narrative Traction
6. Troubleshooting,
Plotting & Identifying
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