Writing About Writing – Part III

If you really can’t stand a side character, and they’re not supposed to be the villain, look at what’s going on with the story. What does the character do or say that furthers the plot? Try something like “I kept getting distracted by [character]’s presence in the story, because they kept taking actions that I wanted to react to, or that I was hoping the other characters would react to. Consider dialing this character back a little.” Then make some suggestions for what that means to you: should the character show up less frequently? Would that help keep them from being distracting? Does the character need to be nicer in order to be less of a distraction, or to take some different actions?

The main ingredients of a story are 1) a character; who 2) wants something; and 3) can’t get to it because [plot]. If you’re bored by the characters, it’s likely because either you can’t figure out what they want, or you don’t care if they get it. This doesn’t just apply to main characters! Every character in a story should be a real person, with real wants and needs. Even if those wants and needs aren’t met in the story, they’re going to shape how the character reacts to things. One suggestion you might make is for the author to list for you each character’s main motivation during the time the story takes place. If they can’t do that, they’re going to need to flesh out the characters a little more. Those motivations might be as complex as saving the world or as simple as getting through their workday without being fired, but if you don’t know both what Our Hero and The Clerk want in this drugstore, the interaction where the Hero can’t find enough money to buy a bandage isn’t going to be nearly as interesting or realistic.

Fun fact: sometimes this is a tough issue to spot. Some writers write so beautifully, their prose is so engaging, and their metaphors are so well-placed, that you don’t notice that literally nothing happened in the story. But pro editors and competition judges will, so if your friend is polishing up this story for submission, this is something you need to look out for, on their behalf. It’s easiest to spot if you try to summarize what happened:

• Anna came into the room, looked at a piece of wire, and had a feeling.
• Kavya sat down, thought about Tolya, sighed, and stood up.
• Hak-Kun walked up to the door of the house.
• Jonath looked at his catamaran.

Yes, in each case, the author probably revealed important information about this character’s background, motivations, and interests while the character was having thinky-thoughts, but that’s not the same as a story happening to the character. What you probably have in front of you is everything that happens before the beginning of the story. So how do you tell your author that nothing happens?

Start by telling them what you liked about the character and how interested you are in them. Then move on to “but I felt like this left me waiting for the story to start.” Suggest that they edit what they’ve got down (they almost certainly can, unless you’re in some kind of 100-word story competition, and even then I bet it can be done) and tell the story that’s about to happen to the character. Because readers, and you, want to know what happens, now that you’re familiar with who the character is.

There are two potential causes for this issue. One is too many details, and the other is too few. Either the author is being too coy with the plot or they’ve put in every last little thing until you can’t, as a reader, tell what you’re supposed to prioritize. So how do you break the news?

Remember: Bear the burden of the misunderstanding. Lead with a compliment. So:

• I was having trouble following your story. I liked…
  • the characters, but the writing was so [edited down / subtle ] that I felt like it underexplained what was happening. Knowing more in [specific places] would have helped me stay with you.
  • the plot, but there were so many extra details that I struggled to keep track of what was important and what wasn’t. Dialing it back [specific instances or places] would help keep the focus on what was happening, and highlight the lushness of your descriptions elsewhere.
  • the summary, but I struggled to link it up to anything specific in the story. I worry that important plot points might have been edited out. For example, when [character] does [action] it doesn’t seem like they’re [description from summary].

If there are important details in the summary (Setting? Character motivation? Names?) that didn’t make it into the story, it’s your job to point that out and suggest places they could be included. Remember how it’s nice if you bear the burden of the misunderstanding? Try saying something like “I wouldn’t have known that Jess was black if I hadn’t read the summary, and it’s an important piece of information because it explains some of their interactions with other characters. Consider including [description, or descriptive detail] when you’re talking about [plot thing].” And if you have tips for this like “we don’t use food words to describe POC because it equates them with consumables,” go ahead and drop those in so that the writer can do a good job.

Be careful with this one. Truth sometimes really is stranger than fiction. But sometimes you have to let truth be strange, and dial your fiction back a little bit to avoid raising eyebrows. Try “[action or event] seemed a little implausible. Did you do research on that? Maybe we need to weave that in a little bit more, or think about how to make this intuitively possible.”

If you’re reading a story and you’re an expert on the subject matter, and the author includes something that you know is wrong, take a breath and do a two step analysis:

• Is this actually wrong or does it just lack nuance?
• If it just lacks nuance, will the average reader be bothered by that?

If the thing is actually wrong, you need to bring that to the author’s attention pretty quickly. Depending on what it is, it may make sense to edit the thing out entirely (if it’s not important to the plot), correct it (if that doesn’t destroy the plot), or replace it (with something that’s correct and still supports the plot).

Did you notice how many times I used the word “plot” up there? Yeah, this is a big piece of feedback to give, because you’re fairly likely to destroy the plot as written. Be prepared to make constructive suggestions about other things the author might do to preserve the story they’re trying to tell. Make sure you’re not eliminating a mandatory prompt with your suggestions.

If the thing just lacks nuance, check yourself: is it good enough for the lay reader, giving enough information and moving the plot forward without misleading? Make a note that it lacks nuance, say “if you’re writing for an audience where you think someone’s going to be an expert on this, consider adding…” and move on with your life.

After you’ve been reading professionally (or at least semi-pro) for a while, you’ll start to notice that some words and phrases crop up a lot. If the writer who’s asked you to critique their work uses one of those phrases, you can bet whoever they’re submitting it to has read that at least as often as you have. When submissions editors see unoriginal phrasing, the story is much more likely to get passed over, and judges tend to downgrade for this issue, so it’s in the writer’s best interests for you to tell them this is happening in their story and suggest a way to rephrase or redescribe what’s happening.

I took a poll of editors, competition judges, and pro writers in my life and came up with the following brief collection of phrases to get you started:

• [anything] homed in on [anything else]. Did they really? Is there a better way to describe the process of noticing and becoming intrigued by the thing, which gives you any insight at all into the character?
• A single tear rolled down [character’s] cheek. Y’all there’s an entire tag for go cry emo kid. There are so many better ways to describe wistful sadness. This is just deeply, overly dramatic and unrealistic. Let’s face it: anyone as sad as your character is should be having an ugly cry right now.
• It felt as though there were no air in the room. I’m not debating whether this is realistic. It is. It’s absolutely the way that particular feeling works. What I’m also not debating is how overused the phrase is. It leaves editors and judges rolling their eyes and waiting for you to get on with the story.

I’m sure you can add your own to this list.

Like trite phrasing, overuse of an author’s pet phrase or metaphor will bog a story down. Probably the metaphor is fantastic: I’m currently editing a book where the author uses almost exclusively water metaphors to describe a desert landscape. But they also use the metaphor for feelings (“I was drowning in her eyes”) the sky (“we swam in a sea of air”) and just about everything else. Because the book is long, I’ve cut about 2/3 of the instances of water as a metaphor. In a short story you might want to use it maybe three times tops.

The same issue applies to phrases and even individual words. Another book has characters that almost universally grin. Sure, they’re having a good time, but there’s a point at which you have to settle down, is all I’m saying. Shrugs. “Signature gestures”  like “she bit her lip” (I’m looking at you, Anne McCaffrey, as well as at EL James, and probably I’m the first person to equate the two of you, but how do your heroines not need lip balm all the time?) can be overused as well.

Trust me. People notice. So what do you say? “I love this description but we need to use it once, maybe twice, in a story this length, or it will lose its effectiveness.”