Twitter
Facebook
RSSThe Missing Pieces: 3 Absolutely Essential Elements In Your Story
Jan 30
A Writer's Blog Comments Off
I recently completed and then shelved a writing project because it was missing something. Well, let’s face it, if you had read it you might have suggested it was missing a few somethings. My editor did.
That’s how it goes that even when you know what needs to be there, you can spend months writing and still not quite capture it all.
But these really aren’t nebulous components. While it does depend on what kind of story you are writing, unless you are James Joyce, you are virtually required to include the following:
Someone to Love
The word protagonist is sometimes defined as “the hero” and sometimes more simply as the central character of the story. But it’s not enough for you to create a central figure around which everything rotates. Your book has to have a character your reader can love and admire.
A lot of writers get halfway there but then fail to make the spark. Whether you treat your character like an old friend, a lover or a parental figure, you have to inspire absolute devotion in your reader. It’s just like real life; you are a lot more invested when you care about the person.
In the book I wrote, I’m not sure I ever quite got there with my main character. I liked him, but even in 150 pages, I never quite connected with why you should like him, too.
And someone to hate
The best stories have the best villains. I’m not a big fan of the notion that villains need to have that nugget of goodness on the inside. If it makes them more interesting, go for it. Just remember, your villain’s job is to antagonize. Not just the other characters, but the reader too.
Does every story really have to have an antagonist?
One of the biggest flaws of my work was the missing villain. My character was mad at the world and he took it out on his friends. So I never quite settled on who was the bad guy. Was it him? Was it “the world”? Was it his friends even? You know, it doesn’t necessarily matter who the bad guy ended up being, but the fact that I didn’t know the answer pointed out a huge problem.
Storytelling of all types is about creating a bubble of empathy. Your job is to transport the reader into this world so completely that it blankets out the real world. While they are reading the book, they are in the book. It always, always, always starts with the characters.
A central thread
For the work that I shelved, I never fully developed the thread. I know that more than anything else, I was missing the core that kept all the individual chapters bound together.
I’ll give you an example. Dungeons and Dragons has been the template for epic fantasy since Lord of the Rings was published in the 50’s. (The series of books based on Dungeons and Dragons is officially called Dragonlance). If you pick up any of those titles, the books are massive tombs filled with dozens of central characters each with their own stories to tell.
But the brilliance of the works is that any one individual book has its central thread that you can trace from the first pages to the last – regardless of how many characters come and go, how many different locations they travel to or how many pages the book is.
For most books, the central thread is the plot. It’s the answer to the question ‘What is the book about?’ But it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes the connecting thread is a dominant theme or a character. Writers need to be more skillful to pull this off. But ultimately, think of it as the wick in the center of a candle. Without one, there is nothing to burn.
My work is shelved not because it lacked a central thread, but because I wasn’t skillful enough to pull it off. It’s hard to invest so much time into a project and then abandon it, but it’s important to know when it’s not good enough at that time. There may come a point when I dust it off the shelve and try again with that story. I now know what’s missing, I just need to make sure next time I get it all in there.
__
Writer’s Income is a weekly blog that covers all aspects of writing for publication. Topics include writing, publishing, and marketing with an emphasis on doing all the work yourself.
