writing the first draft

Why Your Opener Isn’t Working

November 18, 2024 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

One of the chief mistakes I see in the opening paragraphs of my clients’ work (and let’s be fair, my work, too!) is a missing story element. While there’s no true recipe for writing a banger of a story opener, when it comes to genre fiction, the large majority of great openers* rest on three solid pillars:

They ground the reader in place and time by establishing setting
They connect the reader to a character
They establish a purpose for that character

You might think, damn, that’s a whole lot to do in a paragraph or two, and you’re not wrong! But part of what separates a good writer from a great one is the ability to pick, with laser-like precision, the exact right opener that lets them get all three on the page immediately.

Most effective openers are either written in-scene, or, if they start out of scene (up in the protagonist’s head, in memory, in recollection, etc.) they quickly zoom into real-time writing. When we talk about in medias res writing, that’s really what we mean—starting in-scene. It’s hard for the reader to find their footing when the character’s head is in the clouds!

Likewise, it’s also hard for them to find their footing when the story opens so directly in the middle of the action that time, place, and purpose become unclear. Chase scenes, for example, can be difficult for this reason. If the character is running for their life, it can be challenging to give the reader a good look at where they are, who they are, and why they’re being chased. The hook isn’t in bombastic explosions; it’s in the immediacy of the reader’s connection to character and world.

Let’s take a look at how to develop this connection by using examples. This might be a fun one for anyone who has read my backlist, because I’m starting with the opening lines of Wicked Waters. I wrote this version of the opener around 2016 and haven’t touched it since then.

Foul air clung to the town like a pestilent blanket. The breeze had died days earlier, leaving the inland provinces to suffer in sweltering, stagnant heat. A thick silence reigned. Even the animals had fled. Nothing moved but for a few wisps of smoke rising from smoldering ruins.

What’s off about this? Nothing tremendous, but it’s missing both character and purpose. In other words, the opener is imbalanced, and through that imbalance, misses an opportunity to connect to the reader.

To fully rewrite this, I’d need two paragraphs—but feel free to judge the strength of the rewrite on the first paragraph alone.

Foul air clung to the town like a pestilent blanket. The breeze had died days earlier, leaving the inland provinces and all the unfortunate souls within them to suffer in sweltering, stagnant heat. Valory bar Adrianth counted himself among those unfortunate souls, but duty was duty, and if he didn’t haul his men to the arse end of nowhere in the name of keeping the border secure, who would?

Not that there was much left of Lannoch to secure. The town lay silent and still when they arrived, for even the animals had fled. All that remained were wisps of smoke rising from still-smoldering ruins—a lonely blight upon the province’s arid grasslands.

This version of the opener starts with the same distant overview of setting, but quickly zooms in to mention people in the general sense, then name the POV character directly. Not only does this introduction establish character, but it connects character to setting by showing the reader what he thinks about it.

We also learn quite a bit about Val throughout these lines: that he’s duty-bound to keep the border secure, that he’s a leader in charge of others, and that he takes a somewhat sanguine tone when confronted with tragedy. In other words, we don’t just get character, but we get purpose and voice, too.

The next major change happens in the following paragraph when the town itself gets connected to a broader setting. In the original, the town isn’t positioned within the story’s broader world—it isn’t even named! In the new version, the reader gets a clear picture of a lone town in the middle of arid grasslands.

It’s still not perfect (I rewrote it about ten minutes ago, to be fair), but it’s much stronger hook, no?

So, what actionable advice can we take about world, character, and purpose? For my part, I’d say that writing a good opening scene is about giving the reader:

A vivid visual of the setting
A keen and quick sense of who the character is
A hint at how character and setting are connected to one another, ie: why is this character here and/or what is this character trying to do here?

*Caveat: there are plenty of ways to write an opener, and I’m sure you can come up with examples of books you’ve loved that haven’t hit all three of these bullet points. That’s fine! Art is gooey and subjective, and there’s no true formula for hooking readers in. But in the full version of this post (which you can find at the AuthorShip+ tiers on my Patreon), I’ve fleshed out my theory with more examples from some of this generation’s best Fantasy writers: Jemisin, Chakraborty, Lee.

With all that said, here are some questions for you:

What do the opening scenes you love have in common? What elements of setting do your favorite writers tend to focus on in order to get the most powerful, impactful image onto the page? How do they use the vividity of those settings to hint at character purpose?

And how do they connect the reader to character? Through description? Through narrowing psychic distance and using deep interiority?

The only practice better than picking apart the works we love is taking the time to work and rework our own writing. Pick an old opener of yours, pull it apart, and try to figure out why it didn’t land right. What’s it missing? How might you tweak it to create a sharper hook?

I hope you find the exercise as helpful as I just did!

Do Your Characters Have Stage Fright?

November 4, 2024 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

Note: this is a preview of a post that’s fully available on Cee’s Patreon.

Do your characters ever suffer from a case of “stage fright?” Y’know, that initial awkwardness which bleeds its way into their words and actions as you try to figure out what they’d do/say? The shy hesitation, as if they’re waiting for their cue to fully step into the spotlight of your novel?

You’re not alone. As authors, we often find ourselves playing the role of directors, coaxing our characters out of their shells and guiding them toward a captivating performance.

Crafting a character’s personality bears some similarity to coaching a fledgling actor. It takes time, dedication, and the creative energy to work out exactly what’s going on in their head whenever they’re on the stage. And that says nothing of the patience it takes as we slog through those first few chapters with stiff, difficult characters who haven’t yet blossomed into the rich, multidimensional personalities we had in mind.

Characters get stage fright not because they’re actual actors feeling nervous about tackling our novel’s first few scenes, but because we’re nervous as we write—with how little we really know about them now that they’ve left the nebulous wisp of our daydreams and been locked into words on a page. In other words: we might think we know them when we picture the handful of scenes we’re excited to write. But a novel is more than a handful of scenes, and eventually, we’ll hit scenarios for which our daydreams didn’t prepare us—scenarios in which our characters no longer confidently lead us across the stage.

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “what the heck would they do or say in this situation?” this post is for you. I’ve put together five thought experiments / writing exercises to guide and enrich the character development process. Grab your metaphorical director’s chair, and let’s dive in!

#1 Tick, tick, boom

The ‘ticking clock’ is a metaphor used by Lisa Cron in Story Genius to refer to the countdown of events that happens before the clock ‘strikes midnight’ at the story’s inciting incident. She uses this metaphor as a way to help writers figure out where their opening scene should sit.

Although one of the first things we figure out about our story is where it starts, we don’t often think about what’s happened immediately before the beginning of our story—the days, weeks, and months leading up to the opener—in more than vague terms.

When we say stories start in medias res, we mean that our stories begin on a day in the middle of the protagonist’s life. One of the best ways to get to know them is to do a ‘tick, tick, boom’ writing exercise for the four or five ticks prior to the first scene. Use the immediate run-up to the opening scene as a tool to understand how the character’s decisions and behaviors set them on track to end up center-stage at the beginning of act one.

Consider: The Fellowship of the Ring opens on Bilbo’s 111th birthday party, and the events that follow predispose Frodo to saying ‘yes’ to bringing the ring to Rivendell. But what happened in the days leading up to this birthday party? The weeks leading up to it? The months leading up to it? If I were Tolkien, I could get a better handle on Frodo’s character by picking a timescale that best suited him and his story, then writing a scene for each ‘tick’ leading up to page one.

Write the four or five scenes that precede the opener of your story, paying particular attention to your protagonist’s voice and GMC (goals, motivations, conflicts). These scenes can take place once a day prior to the story start, or once a week/month/year—the choice of timescale is yours.

Walking backwards can help you get a better handle on your characters by forcing you to think about who they are and what they want outside the driving motion of the external plot.

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Are You Telling a Story or Writing Alt Text?

October 28, 2024 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, I posted a TikTok posing this question to writers:

Are you telling a story, or are you writing up the alt text of the movie that’s playing in your head?

Some writers tend to focus almost entirely on the external when writing, often leaving context via narrative interiority by the wayside. When this coincides with an overabundance of external action, sometimes called “stage direction,” it can feel like we’re reading descriptive alt text instead of an actual story. At a minimum, the reader’s connection to character will suffer. At worst, the reader will get bored and close the book.

I’ve since followed up with videos (and a blog post!) about braiding interiority into prose and varying narrative style, but have also received questions about what scenes look and feel like when they’re just alt-text-like.

To that end, I’ve typed up and taken screenshots of a relatively* random page from Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education, the first book in a YA Fantasy trilogy.

*It wasn’t entirely random because Novik’s character is quite chatty and tends to editorialize, so I chose a page where external action created more of a braided style.

The first screenshot is the story as Novik wrote it. The second screenshot has everything except the ‘alt-text’ blacked out.

Any typos are mine.

Now let’s check out the alt-text version:

Yikes, that’s a lot of context gone, right?

And that’s precisely the issue with alt-text narration. Because it focuses primarily on stage direction and (sometimes) physical interiority (ie: stomachs clenching and hearts beating), it tends to leave us with a relatively shallow understanding of what’s going on in a given scene. Since this page is from the first few chapters of A Deadly Education, that missing context would be a huge missed opportunity for Novik, who managed to work worldbuilding, character development, and backstory in between lines of action in order to enrich the reader’s understanding of the story.

Hope this helps provide a stronger visual for anyone wondering what I mean when I talk about “alt-text,” stage direction, or interiority — and feel free to hit me up in the comments with any questions.

-Cee

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Commonly Misused Dialogue Tags

October 4, 2023 by Cameron Montague Taylor 2 Comments

Kermit The Frog Reaction GIF by Muppet Wiki

The most frequent dialogue-related errors I see when editing manuscripts have to do with how authors tag and punctuate their dialogue. To be more specific:

Authors tend to confuse dialogue tags with common, mouth-related action beats.

This isn’t going to be a post knocking said-bookisms. While I’m a big fan of reducing the number of said-bookisms in our writing (because I think they’re a crutch), alternative tags have a time and a place, and I’d never presume to tell authors to leave them out of their writing entirely. However, I’ve found that a proliferation of said-bookisms within an author’s manuscript often correlates with the improper punctuation of action beats.

To explain what I mean, let me briefly go back to basics:

What’s a dialogue tag?

Dialogue tags are words that:

Identify the speaker
(Sometimes) give a clue re: pronunciation or delivery
Are verbs which must have something to do with the production of speech

Said and asked are the most common dialogue tags, but said-bookisms like whispered, hissed, or spat are also common in published works.

In fact, here’s a whole list of the most commonly used tags I see in fiction:

Said
Asked
Replied
Exclaimed
Shouted
Muttered
Whispered
Yelled
Mumbled
Spat
Cried
Murmured
Snarked*

*Why an asterisk for snarked? Stand-by; I’ll get to it in the second half of this post

Notice that all of these words hit bullets 1 & 3; they identify the speaker and have to do with the production of speech. Everything but said/asked/replied also serves as a tone-tag.

Contrast those with action beats.

What’s an action beat?

When referring to dialogue passages, an action beat is a brief physical movement made by the speaking character. Beats are most obvious when they’re short phrases:

Rubbed the back of [her] neck
Bit [his] lip
Folded [their] arms
Ran fingers through [zer] hair

Action beats have to do with what the speaker is doing while they’re talking, but aren’t related to the production of speech itself. For example:

Gestured
Nodded
Sighed
Shrugged
Grimaced
Smiled
Grinned
Smirked
Sneered
Huffed**
Gasped**
Laughed**

Here’s the tricky part: many of these one-word beats have to do with the head, nose, mouth, breath, or sound one makes before, after, or alongside speech. While they don’t have to do with the production of speech itself, the simultaneity and proximity to speech means they’re commonly confused with or treated as dialogue tags and not action beats.

Why does this matter?

Because dialogue tags and action beats are punctuated differently.

Punctuating dialogue tags vs. action beats

Consider the difference in punctuation between the following examples:

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“I don’t think so.” She smirked.

When using a tag, the dialogue finishes with a comma instead of a period, and the word that follows the end quote isn’t capitalized. When using an action beat, the dialogue finishes with a period, forming a complete sentence, and the word that follows the end quote is capitalized.

Here’s another example:

“Oh, really?” he asked.

“Oh, really?” He grinned.

Or, to make a direct comparison, let’s take a look at correct vs. incorrect examples:

❌ “I don’t think so,” she smirked.

✅ “I don’t think so.” She smirked.

❌ “Oh, really?” he grinned.

✅ “Oh, really?” He grinned.

In other words, while it’s easy to mix up dialogue tags and simple action beats—and it’s arguable that conflation doesn’t matter from a storytelling perspective—this confusion creates a grammatical error which won’t reflect well on the writing. Improper tagging isn’t always a make-it-or-break-it error, especially for action beats that might slip beneath the average reader’s radar, but when it’s so simple to exchange a comma for a period, why chance it?

“But standard tags just don’t have the same meaning!”

I suspect the conflation of tags and beats happens because action beats add flavor and meaning to the dialogue, enriching it in a way a simple tag can’t. This is understandable! However, there are a number of structural workarounds that let us preserve the intention of the beat while adhering to style guides like the Chicago Manual of Style.

(And keeping our copyeditors happy ;))

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty examples!

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Keep Readers Engaged (even when the story gets gloomy)

September 9, 2023 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

One of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever heard comes from Fantasy author L. Penelope and her podcast My Imaginary Friends.

Penelope says that one of the greatest ways to drive tension in the story and ensure that both internal and external arcs remain interesting is to “leave blood on the floor.” By that, she means that authors ought to take advantage of potential pain points for their characters and ensure we don’t pull our punches when we’re hitting them.

Need a character to flee a safe house?

Burn it down.

Need your character to get sidelined from a fight?

Break their arm.

Need a couple to spend time apart?

Have them blow up at one another over a conflict that’s real, genuine, and hits at both of their backstory wounds.

If the story isn’t coming together or things feel like they’re dragging, take whatever pain-point or problem your character is currently facing and find a way to make it worse.

In other words, ask yourself: what’s the worst possible situation you can put the character through that still lets them get up and continue driving the story forward, even if (especially if) at great cost? Then find a way to put your character through it.

Twist the knife, so to speak.

But when we’ve twisted enough knives—especially in longform or series writing in which our character may very well receive several such twists—it’s easy to accidentally swing hard in the other direction and write a story that’s entirely doom and gloom.

The right balance is tough to strike. Not enough blood on the floor, and the story might feel plot-convenient, easy, or slow. Too much blood on the floor, and the story might be so grim that it’s no longer fun for readers.

Readers in different genres and subgenres have different tolerances for doom and gloom, but most have a Do Not Cross line somewhere. What that looks for your readership and your work will be different from the next writer, but you likely know what mark you’re trying to hit. So, the question becomes: how do we hit it, and what can we do to make sure they don’t get dragged through the mud alongside our characters?

Let’s dive into a two-part technique that keeps readers hooked even through dreary storylines.

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Power Up Your Descriptive Writing

April 14, 2023 by Cameron Montague Taylor Leave a Comment

Feeling like your descriptive prose is falling flat, or your worldbuilding and setting details aren’t hitting the page quite right? That could be because you’re not giving these details a ‘face.’

Readers are relentlessly interested in the humanity of your story: the myriad ways in which each element of setting, backstory, and worldbuilding impact the people who populate your universe. Thus, when our setting descriptions fall flat, it’s often because we get stuck on describing things instead of the relationships people have to those things.

For example:

When describing a city that recently endured an air-raid, we might be tempted to write something like:

A bomb had gone off, leaving wreckage along the city block.

There’s nothing wrong with this sentence on the surface. It’s to-the-point, and it creates an image in the reader’s head. But is it the most evocative depiction of warfare possible? Perhaps not. Thus, the question becomes: how can we give the city a face?

The bomb had left only rubble behind. Lara picked her way through the street, pausing when a flash of red caught the corner of her eye: a single child’s shoe, abandoned by its wearer.

The shoe is the human element. It takes setting description and connects it to a character—even a character the reader hasn’t and will never meet—which in turn punches up the emotional impact of the description.

This might seem like a cheap ‘win’ in prose, because harm to children and animals tends to garner an emotional response from anyone who isn’t a complete sociopath, so let’s look at a more mundane example. Many stories feature some kind of storefront, shopping, or market scene. How can we add interest into such a common setting? Try zooming in from the general to the specific, and ensuring the specific has a single, human subject at its heart. Compare:

Merchants sold their wares

with

A merchant with yellow-stained fingertips organized his display of hanging spice baskets.

Here, we narrow the focus from ‘merchants’ to a single merchant, one who works with (presumably) saffron, based on his yellow-stained fingertips. While this description is significantly longer than the simple and general ‘merchants sold their wares,’ it arguably condenses the power of a paragraph of exposition into a single sentence, and gives the reader a much clearer mental picture.

Even when zooming in, however, we tend to focus on visual details. Don’t forget about the power of the other senses: sound, smell, touch. Take a simple, general description like:

When the first fires lit, they fled the city in droves

and punch it up with sensory details that evoke the human element of that exodus.

Wagons lined the roads, filled to the brim with hastily stacked belongings and overseen by thin-lipped matrons. Impatient horses whickered at the slow pace, made nervous by the acrid tang of smoke carried westward on the breeze.

By calling upon multiple different senses, we capitalize on the descriptive power of our narration and help our readers immerse themselves in setting.

This is, at its heart, the difference between showing and telling in descriptive writing. In one excerpt, we inform the reader that residents are fleeing the city. In another, we show them what flight looks like in an immediate, visceral way.

There will be times when telling is necessary; we use descriptive summary in order to dispense less-important information to the reader and quickly move the narrative focus from one place to another. Often, we might begin our description with a ‘tell’ to give the reader an important piece of information, then zoom into little human details to ‘show’ them what that information means.

Combining the two descriptions from the last example would yield a strong result:

When the first fires lit, they fled the city in droves. Wagons lined the roads, filled to the brim with hastily stacked belongings and overseen by thin-lipped matrons. Impatient horses whickered at the slow pace, made nervous by the acrid tang of smoke carried westward on the breeze.

The first sentence is weaker without the sensory zoom, but provides the groundwork upon which a ‘human element’ can rest.

That’s not to say description must include a human face in order to work; environmental or setting description can be moody, atmospheric, and beautiful on its own. But by searching for connections with the human element, you can allow atmospheric descriptions to shine without over-relying on the inanimate to build your story’s backdrop.

Details like yellow-stained fingertips or a single red shoe can give resonant, emotional context to the inanimate. By adding a ‘human face’ to specific moments in your setting and worldbuilding description, you can help readers feel present in each scene, and deeply connect them to and immerse them in your world.