Tag: Write-Plotting

Editing Rant: Prologue Use

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Oh, good grief.

Why do I have a prologue for a short story? No – oh, no – why are there prologues for three short stories in this collection someone is trying to sell my publisher – and the fourth short story has a flashback? Do you not understand how short stories work? …. What prologues are for?

I get it. Fantasies have prologues, but not.every.single.time. Especially in a short format where laser focus is needed. Just because (fill in the blank, famous-and-now-dead high fantasy author) used prologues back in their day, does not mean you get to use them now.

Well, this one is an easy decision. My publisher hates prologues. Unless there is a great reason to have it – and I have seen them used properly once in a hundred uses – the submission is a reject. Only six more to read today. (Yes, I want to accept submissions, but I have two slots this year and a hundred submissions. Bad prologues go into the “no” pile.)

For the most part, what I was seeing are prologues used as a big info backstory dumps for lazy writers who can’t figure out how to integrate backstory into the narration (I’ve touched on how to do backstory integration elsewhere). That said, if done right, providing a hint to the story which raises questions instead of just answering questions which haven’t been asked yet, prologues are useful. One example I read was a beautiful pre-story explaining something that affected every decision the point-of-view (POV) character made, but she did not know how this childhood event changed her as a person. The reader sees it, but the POV character doesn’t know and cannot know and therefore cannot share it in the primary narration.

Another good use of prologues is in murder mysteries where you meet the victim and witness the event of the murder before the detective character shows up. In both this case and the previous case, the camera through which we are witlessness the main story does not have access to the information. Also in both cases, the prologue was written like part of the story – action-oriented. In the info dump case, the long history of everything which went before on the fantasy world told by a historian is BORING, and often irrelevant to the story. I love worldbuilding, but not reading it dry. I didn’t like dates and places in history class when I was in school, and I don’t like them now. I do love history though and have been part of a recreation hands-on group for years.

So don’t do info dumps – not for prologues and certainly not in short stories. You might need to write them up during the first draft, but remove them and set them aside during the second draft.

I’ll close with an exchange I had with some editors.

***

Erin Penn: I’ve never realized just how bad prolog-itis is until I started reading slush.

Editor One: LOL

Editor Two: It is an epidemic.

Erin Penn: Affecting over 50% of the population.

Editor Two: We need a vaccine.

Editor Three: It’s particularly virulent in fantasy authors…

Editor Four: And like most bugbears of writing, the infestation of bad ones ruin the possibility for a really good one. Because it is possible to have a good prologue, but almost nobody does.

People want to dump all that exposition in early so they don’t have to worry about it any more – they want the Star Wars opening crawl through space. The thing is, if they can just restrain themselves, they DON’T have to worry about it. If the story matches the exposition, the exposition will come out as the story unfolds.

Erin Penn: Stealing for a some-day blog post!

Writing Exercise: Start at the End

Erin Penn

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash – Adjusted by Erin Penn

Have you ever read a story out of order? Sometimes authors lead with the end of the story and the mystery is how the person ended up in that situation. “Dude, where’s my car?” and “The Hangover” are just two recent movie examples where people wake up after a night of debauchery wondering what happened to them and have to backtrack the night.

For writing, often a writer will drop readers in the middle of the action and in the second chapter backtracks a couple hours or days and fill in the backstory once the reader is hooked.

Today’s writing exercise is to create an out-of-order flash. Normally, this would be frowned on because the flash medium is too short for backstory and timeline confusion. But breaking the rules to learn a new skill is okay.

Often when setting up a story in this manner, the first action is set in present tense and the remembrance portion is written in past tense. When the action catches up to present, the verb tense returns to present tense.

Example starts: “I stopped digging when the hole was deep enough.” “Blood is not my color, but at least it was washing out.” “The hangover wasn’t bad until I moved my head into the sunlight. When I opened my eyes, I realized it wasn’t sunlight.”

Remember the mystery is how the person got from a “normal” state to their present craziness when writing timelines out of order. This focus keeps the reader on the hook until the end.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write out three things that will happen in a flash in time order, and then write the flash with #3 as the first piece of information presented.

***

My Attempt

Flash Title: Too Big
I stopped digging the hole when it was deep enough. Mud covered me from head to toe which covered the blood. I hoped the mess would wash out, but burning everything remained an option. I had a stack of wood under a lean-to close to the house from clearing underbrush this summer which would provide a good firestarter. I didn’t want to run around starkers at home, but I’ve done that before chasing kids when I was younger and fitter and the young escape artists were slippery from their baths. Somehow the clothes would be taken care of before I went inside.

I wasn’t tracking evidence inside my home.

I guess I should start at the beginning.

Yesterday was normal. Wake up, take the kids to school, drop the spouse off at work, run errands, do the laundry at home – walking the dog between loads and picking up after the kids and setting up for dinner and paying bills and the hindered of other tasks needed to keep a house of six people alive. I work weekends while Samantha works weekdays, that way someone is always home with the kids. It does mean the two of us don’t spend time together much, but considering number five is on the way, we do spend enough time together for some things.

Then I got a call from school. Mardi had gone missing with two other children off the playground. I don’t remember getting to the school, but the time between me hanging up the phone and signing in at the office was four minutes. The school is five miles away.

She was still missing when I got there, police were arriving behind me. One of them may have been following me for speeding. Don’t know, don’t really care, but I didn’t get a ticket for it. The two other missing kids were eleven year-old girls, dark hair, dark skin, just like my Mardi. She takes after her mother but has my high cheekbones and narrow nose from my Native American ancestors. The two other girls were also mixed races.

The police didn’t like that pattern at all.

Well, long-story short, since this story should be about 500 words. The police have the bodies of the human traffickers. Well, the low-level guys.

Their boss is too big to fail.

The clothes burned fine once they caught fire, and Sam hosed me down once I got out of the backwoods. Not my woods, mind, the woods owned by the guy too big to fail. One of my buds who wasn’t able to help me today already is calling in an anonymous tip about a suspected body being ditched.

Too-Big-to-Fail is going to have a bad day tomorrow. Worse than mine was today.

(words 459, first published 02/25/2020, 

Editing Rant: Possession is not Romantic

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Sira Anamwong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

No, no. NO!

Possession is not romantic.

Slavery romance is not a kink I have, and it is one I don’t think is ever healthy for the participants. Avoid it. Period!

In a recent romance, the prince kept saying “mine” – and, f-no, not when the female has been ripped from her home and enslaved. Don’t care if it is insta-love, don’t care is the woman is super-strong-were, don’t care if the prince had his own problems and has my sympathy, don’t care if the prince wants to free her – the possessive term, while sexy when both sides have the option of agreeing to equal possession is NOT okay when one is wearing a slave collar and the other holds the leash (even though he really, really doesn’t want to).

Aside from possession terms, the romance had the perfect use of insta-love, woman is super-strong-were, romantic hero (a prince) has problems which create great sympathy, and a story overall was way too big for the 62 pages it was stuffed into.

But romance is about equals coming together. Both of them bringing something to the plate. I love it when a strong man and strong woman say “mine” to each other. If only one side (usually the male) says “mine”, and the other side doesn’t immediately agree that – yes, I am yours but I also own you in equal measure – then the power dynamic is off.

Watch out for this in your writing. I see it far too often where someone holds leash-level power and stakes a “romantic” claim to someone who isn’t in the position to say no.

That’s slavery. Not a relationship.

In this month of the celebration of love AND black history, learn to tell the difference.

Editing Rant: Homeschool Plotting

Erin Penn

Photo by Tong Nguyen van on Unsplash

Several of my sisters homeschool their children and one with several in her brood texted me about a writing issue she was having. Below is the whole exchange, spelling and grammar errors corrected for clarity.

 

“How do you tell your authors that they need a plot? (or at least a conflict/dilemma and resolution)”

“Since we (Falstaff books where I edit) are action adventure genres, conflict is fairly integral.

Age of the offender?

Mostly I focus on beginning middle end. What is the BME of the character development, and what is the BME of the action development? You aren’t saying something is missing so much as asking for them to define it for you and they then know where to beef it up. By asking for both, you hide where you think the problem is and make them find it. I do this with newer authors when they ask me to quickly look at their stuff. Those under contract would not have gotten the contract if they are missing plot.”

“K is 12. For language arts she was to write a story. I thought the conflict was going to be the last part of her outline, but it wasn’t. She wants it to be a different part, but does not want to make the protagonist work for the solution, nor to express distress beforehand, nor satisfaction with the resolution.”

“So the question is where is the change, or why is there no change? Mom went grocery shopping and brought back food, is a change in the house. She didn’t bring back food is a different story and also interesting.

Sounds like you also want to see both a climax and a resolution. The solution and the reactions to the solution. That one I do need to talk to authors about. The emotional need of the reader to be released from a story …. otherwise known as why people hate cliffhangers.

A question to ask her, maybe, is why is the main character interesting? How is the reader identifying with her? Do you want to show thinking, feeling, action, or reaction to have the reader know her? What character have you read or watched recently that drew you in? Why? What did they do or feel? Were they satisfied with the story resolution? How do you know?

Just realized she is still mostly a concrete thinker. Asking her to think like a reader or the character is likely at the edge of her abstract thinking. A good learning experience, but an additional layer to the lesson.”

 

Yes, I am that wordy texting on my phone. Sister didn’t get back to me about how things turned out with K and her plots. I remember the fights I had with creative writing at that age. Abstract thinking, figuring out how the reader sees the words is tough. And I have seen adult writers not wanting to make a protagonist work for a solution. Torturing your characters – these parts of you being put on paper – is tough, especially when they look up from the page with distress. Be interesting to see where K is after a couple more years of brain rewiring from concrete to abstract.

Editing Rant: Repair the Pants

Erin Penn 3 Comments

Image courtesy of ladywriter55 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What the…?

Okay folks, it is great to be a pantser. Break free of the constraints of outlining and worldbuilding. Just write things out and get it on paper. Fresh, new, exciting.

Then edit that draft!

Just read a story where the author was obviously a pantser. The action was constant, the plotting – not so much. The reveal of what the human female was and her ongoing issues felt very “slidey”; things were added during the pantsing writing and not fully integrated during subsequent editing passes.

Oh, let’s have her not just be human. First meeting of ex – helpful and healthy – oh, but wait … won’t it be better if he was poison as she starts a new relationship. Great additions, really help the story pop – but created an unevenness in the presentation, a feeling of being tacked on instead of full integration. 

Image courtesy of the internet Hivemind

I understand that draft stage is boring. You know the story now. But this is the difference between telling a haphazard story among friends and creating a coherent manuscript.

Pants it all you want – just remember the tradeoff. With plotters, they do a lot of the prep work before hand. This is the exciting part to them. Writing it out is hard. For pantsers, writing out is fun, it is the draft work that is the chore. One way or the other, details and sorting things out for a full well-written document worthy of publication requires effort.

Go back and repair those pants.