X Research source If you're having issues coming up with good ideas, try these: The idea should be something you're interested in, something that’s really important to you if you're not passionate about it, that will come through in your writing. All books start from a small idea, dream or inspiration that is slowly transformed into a larger and more detailed version of that same idea. Even in situations such as this, though, don’t overload dialogue with factual world-building. Haymitch can explain some of the rules of the Hunger Games and how to do well in the competition in his dialogue because that’s explicitly his job. A good example of this is the relationship between Haymitch Abernathy and his mentees Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series. For example, if you have a mentor-mentee relationship between characters, you may be able to include more exposition in their interactions. This can get in the way of smooth storytelling and distract the reader from engaging with the characters. The narrator will also frequently drop in to explicitly remind the reader of who a character is and what their function is. For example, Charlaine Harris’s popular Sookie Stackhouse novels have a bad tendency to spend the first few chapters of every book “catching up” on everything that happened in previous books.Using info-logue is a common mistake among beginning writers. This type of expository dialogue is sometimes called “info-logue.” While it may be an easy way to give the reader background information, it tends to sound unnatural unless it is handled very carefully.Think about it: When was the last time that you gave your entire backstory in a speech to someone you’d just met? Or recapped everything that happened in a previous encounter, in detail, in a direct address to a friend? Don’t have your characters do that, either. Dialogue needs to sound natural for the characters speaking it. These types of stakes are usually best reserved for fantasy and epics.Īvoid exposition-heavy dialogue. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, in which the characters’ failure to destroy the One Ring will result in the destruction of Middle Earth by evil. Sometimes, the stakes literally are the end of the world, such as in J.R.R.For example, whether or not a heroine gets to be in a relationship with the person she loves probably isn’t going to be the end of the world for everyone else, but it is something that should be very important for the character.Stories that don’t have clear stakes are very hard for readers to engage with. Vonnegut once said that “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” X Research source The main character needs to want something and be afraid (for good reasons) that they won’t get it. These don’t have to be world-shattering, but they do need to feel important to the characters. To be engaging, your fiction needs clear stakes for its characters. The problem of finding husbands for these women forms a major part of the novel, as does the challenge of the mother’s troublesome meddling.Įstablish the stakes early. One of the inspirations for Twilight, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, also sets up a central problem within the first chapter: a new, eligible bachelor has moved into town and the heroine’s mother is desperate to set up one of her daughters with him because the family is poor and needs to marry off the daughters for them to have a hope of comfort in their later lives.This conflict, that she’s interested in a person she’s also confused by, sets the rest of the action in motion. For example, in the first chapter of Stephenie Meyer’s massively popular novel Twilight, all of the basic conflicts are established: Bella Swan, the heroine, has moved to a new place where she doesn’t feel comfortable or know anyone, and she meets the mysterious hero, Edward Cullen, who makes her uncomfortable but whom she also feels drawn to. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.” X Research source Hopefully, cockroaches won’t eat your story, but if you have several initial chapters of ordinary people doing ordinary things without any challenges or problems present, readers may not see why they’re supposed to care. Famous short story writer Kurt Vonnegut once gave this tip: “To heck with suspense. Fiction depends on conflict, and that needs to be set up as early as possible. While some writers do start very slowly and let their stories build up dramatic tension over time, this requires a level of practice and skill that most beginning writers just haven’t developed yet.
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