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No, this isn’t about backing up your work on another device or keeping a printout. (Though that kind of backup is vital if you work on a computer.) This is about one way to diagnose and fix a problem you have while writing, and it’s related (no surprise) to the problem you might have untangling yarn.
When your yarn (or story) has gotten itself in a tangle, you can either keep pulling forward, on the grounds that it will sort itself out (and sometimes it does, when you’re pulling yarn from the inside of a ball–the entire guts of the ball may come out, or just a small bit that the yarn has looped around) or you can work backwards from the tangle to find that loop or knot and pick it loose. This post is about the backing-up kind of fix.
It’s not my favorite way to deal with a stuck story. I will almost always try forging ahead first, in the hopes that what appears to be a tangle is actually not, just a lot of new material that needs to be laid out in order, and the tension of moving the story forward will pull it into line. That works often enough to keep me using it as a first choice.
Second choice is the simpler “backing up” approach, which is to go back and read the story from the first, looking for the place where the trouble started. But stories, like yarn and tree branches, have a grain–a direction in which they flow smoothly and can slide the reader right past the start of trouble, and a direction in which they resist that slide. So unless the problem’s start is really obvious (suddenly the feel of the story changes a lot) this method doesn’t help as much as I want it to. I do it because if it does work, it’s easier and faster than the real backing up method.
Backing up is time-consuming and difficult precisely because the story does not want to be read backwards. But like turning a picture upside down to see exactly where it doesn’t work (wonder why that arm looks just a little wonky? Turn it upside down and it’s obvious), working backward through the story reliably locates the start of the problem area, even if you wrote pages and pages beyond it before being yanked to a halt.
To do this, it does help to have done the easy thing first. Say you have 250 pages of your new book. It was going along briskly until somewhere over page 200, when it began to feel slow and “thick.” You kept going, hoping it would straighten itself out, but instead it went slower, and slower, and now–after several days of staring at it and struggling with it, you can’t go forward. You then went back to the beginning, paying attention to how you felt writing it. You remember now that the slow-down began around page 225, but you can’t see anything wrong with that, or subsequent pages, until 245, where you were clearly feeling annoyed with it.
So you have to do the full backward thing. For safety’s sake, go back to 220 (if you’re confident of your perception that it began to slow down at about 225) or even as far back as 200, when you’re sure it was still chugging along happily. Now you will concentrate on the problem area…backwards.
But what are you looking for? Not anything you learned in high school English: the problem is not a typo, a misspelled word, a punctuation error, a run-on sentence. The problem is structural, either at the level of design (if you outline, it’s a problem in the outline) or construction. If your book is a house, then it’s a house with no foundation under one end, no way to get into one or more rooms, or a stairway that doesn’t reach the next floor…that kind of problem.
So what do you look for? In fiction terms, design problems often turn out to be errors in conceiving a character, so that the character’s behavior is not grounded (has no foundation) in motivation. Just as stairways that go up to a ceiling and stop there make no sense in a house, actions that have no cause make no sense in a book.
You might think outlining would prevent such errors, but not necessarily. It’s all too easy to outline a story based on what you want to have happen–a neat idea–and not on the characters’ motivations for the actions. If you outline, you can save yourself grief by explicitly stating why the character did such-and-so, ensuring from the outline level that the story makes psychological sense.
If you write without an outline, the likeliest causes of a design problem partway through are losing your own focus on the point-of-view character (so that you are not letting the character’s internal motivation drive the story), pushing for daily word-count (so that you rush past your awareness of the character, and are winging it), and following a brand-new, bright shiny idea right off the track.
So you’re looking for places where the connection between character and motivation as causes of action aren’t clear or don’t make sense, and a Shiny Idea that might have dragged you off the character and onto a false trail.
Read the last five pages backward (and forward, if you need to). Or you can work scene by scene, however many pages the scene is. Jot down the character’s motivation for each action. Does it make sense? Would that character do that, and why? And are the consequences of the action believable, in the terms of reality you set for this book? No problems? Move on to the next five pages (or scene.)
Why, you may wonder, start at the end, far from where you now think the problem started? One reason is to find out if the problem was time-limited (it had a defined beginning in one working session and from there on out your construction was sound–though you were now building a different structure) or whether something internal was blurring your creative vision for all the days from problem inception to the present. That’s important to know, once you’ve diagnosed the problem and begin to correct it.
In the simplest case, as you work back you find that you know why the characters did A, and you see that the results of A were believable. Causes preceded result. Then, as you near page 225, you see it. Perhaps it’s a Shiny Idea (“What if John isn’t really John Anderson, but was adopted and never knew it, and he gets a letter telling him he’s really Marcus Ivanovishky and his father was an international terrorist 30 years ago…?”) Perhaps it’s a failure of connection to your POV character on the day the phone rang and you got important news about something else (or even that book as in “If you can get the book in by X, your editor says they can make it a lead title…there’s a hole in the schedule.”) You got excited, distracted, and charged into the next chapter full of glee or fear or whatever…and because you weren’t focused on the character, you have the character do something that makes no sense for him (for the movie, maybe), or the consequences are unbelievable.
You realize that the character wouldn’t do that, or if the character did, the consequences would be different, and…there’s your tangle. Now you know where you went wrong, and if you’re really at the heart of the problem, you will know how to fix it. What does John Anderson really being the adopted son of a terrorist add to the story you were telling? Nothing. It’s a red herring so big it warps the whole story. Sure, you could write that other story, but it would be a different story in the first 200 pages, and you’d need to rewrite them with this as a major plot driver. Pick your story, and do what’s necessary to make it one story. If the problem is the character doing something that makes no sense for him…can you find a way to make it make sense? If not, have him do what he would do, and then work forward, straightening it out one paragraph at a time. If there’s a part of his character you haven’t shown yet, that would make it plausible, then figure out how you’re going to reveal that possibility, and then his motivation at the moment of the previously uncharacteristic action.
But in the more complicated form, something clouded your vision for days at a time…as you worked backwards, you found place after place where effects came before their cause, where the characters’ actions made no sense, where they ignored what they wouldn’t have ignored, etc. The whole thing, from, say, page 220 on, has an increasingly spiritless feel to it…it’s as if the whole limb of a tree had been replaced by a plastic limb. Finally you remember that when you were writing page 220, you had a distraction that occupied part of your thinking from then to now. It could have been bad news–a favorite uncle died and you keep remembering times you were together, and how much you loved him. It could have been good news–that chance to be a lead title for your publisher if you could just push the book along faster–but it was a distraction that persisted, without your being aware that it was damaging the book.
Now that you know about it, you can (probably, if it’s not too great) force yourself to put it out of mind long enough to work on the book. Once you know what caused the problem, you can say, for instance: “I will not think about Uncle Ted for the next hour,” set the alarm, write, and then (when the alarm goes off) deliberately remember Uncle Ted and that fishing trip or that family picnic for a few minutes. You can also be more alert to the connection between character and plot, the motivation within the character that causes action, the effect of action on others, the consequences…and make sure these things work.
So backing up–being able to work backwards to analyze what went wrong in a story or book–is a valuable tool in the writer’s tool-kit.
Comment by LarryP — January 15, 2014 @ 3:50 pm
sort of doing a jigsaw puzzle with on boxtop picture to guide..I would go nuts good thing I am not a writer… leave the work to the pros is what ill do.
Comment by pjm — January 15, 2014 @ 5:47 pm
It sounds a bit like (but only a bit like) adding a column of figures down, then up. If you do something the same way twice you are likely to make the same misteak.
About the mechanics. I expect you read a sentence, then the previous sentence, and so on. Or is it by paragraph? By page?
Sometimes I suppose you must plan backwards. Siniava is to be captured by Paks, so she has to be at the right place and time, so she is ordered there because … But reading backwards sounds like hard work.
Peter
Comment by elizabeth — January 15, 2014 @ 11:20 pm
LarryP: Every writer finds a way to work that works for that writer. It’s not always the same way. I don’t outline. Lois McMaster Bujold outlines extensively. (I may outline when I run into a problem, to help figure out what went wrong…but not before I write, except in nonfiction.)
pjm: I don’t plan backwards…or forwards. Or, not in enough detail to do it backwards. I sort of know that the protagonist will or won’t be alive at the end of the story, and that it’s going to be a difficult journey, with major problems…but I don’t know what they are, when I start. There is a sort of unconscious planner at work, that I call my Plot Daemon…I just follow characters around and trust that they will (usually) generate some plot, if they’re the right kind of characters. I didn’t know, for instance, that Paks would capture Siniava until right before she did, though I knew she would be instrumental (somehow) in his downfall. My conscious thoughts are mostly too obvious and easy to be good plot points (Paks facing Siniva in battle and defeating him.) What actually happens often surprises me.
It works when I’m deeply inside a character, but goes wrong when I lose that focus. That’s why there’s a lot of cutting to do in revision, because being inside a character often means writing down a lot of unnecessary activity (as a friend said “I understand marching in the mud is exhausting and painful…you do not have to show every single step they take…”) Someone else once said (and I forget who, or where, or in what context) that although you may have to show the reader that a character is bored, you have to do it without boring the reader.
Comment by GinnyW — January 16, 2014 @ 12:53 pm
Do you ever teach? I am learning so much from these comments on the writing process. You make the process of working out a story do-able.
I can see from your description that sometimes the problem is that as a story develops the main character develops in way that disconnects to the action. Does the main character always have to do the action that moves the plot? Can it work to have someone else do the action, and have the main character react to the conseqences?
I love the offhand way that you produce characters like John Anderson and Marcus Ivanovishky.
Comment by Nadine Barter Bowlus — January 16, 2014 @ 10:42 pm
These glimpses of the process that you provide make the reading experience richer for me. Thank you. Also am going to tell my niece about this post. I think she will find the “lecture” 🙂 helpful for her own writing.
Comment by elizabeth — January 17, 2014 @ 12:23 am
GinnyW: I have taught…like a lot of writers, I think I began teaching too soon after my first work came out, and realized at one workshop I should back off for awhile. And I did.
You ask whether the main character always has to do the action that moves the plot. There’s no one right answer–nor a simple one. And I think that’s going to require another whole post, but I’ll try something that will at least hint at the direction of it.
Story (as opposed to other forms of narrative) has an innate structure that satisfies a certain kind of itch in readers. That structure is the skeleton of the story, and (though there are dangers in thinking this way, too) can be considered the plot.
Plot, in this sense, requires a chain of causality that is made up of challenge-response-creating another challenge that demands another response. Taking the timeline forward, any challenge may be very, or partly, predictable…or a complete surprise to both character and reader. Taking it backward, the plot line acquires inevitability…how it worked is revealed.
But causality itself is not just in the hands of the protagonist. The protagonist reacts to things other people do and to events outside his/her control. Last fall, I had a doctor’s appointment, and had dressed and was ready to leave when my husband came in and said the old horse was down. In a book, that would be a decision point, a fork in the day’s road, a moment when the character’s decision (go or stay) will move the plot one way or another. But I didn’t decide to avoid the doctor’s appointment by having the horse lie down and die…so in that sense I did not start that particular sequence. What I did was stay with the sick horse until the end…I did make the decision to stay, and that meant my day was very different than if I’d handed off that responsibility to my husband and gone to the clinic. But before that–my husband made the decision to tell me Illusion had gone down even though he knew I was about to leave. (A good decision, by the way.)
We all live like this. We all have intentions, make plans, and then sometimes have events blow right through those plans. Sometimes we stick to our plan (or try to) and sometimes we change course in a moment. We all have motivations at many levels, from physical to spiritual, jostling for dominance; my own expression for this is that the action we actually take is the result of internal (and often not very conscious) vector calculus calculation.
It’s like that with characters generating plots. The kind of story I write has multiple characters; they interact each from a unique perspective, from within a person formed of innate traits and lifelong experience, all those traits and experiences creating the complex of motivations.
Now in stories with one character (for instance, if you write a story about someone injured while hiking in the woods–just the story of that person) all the motivation comes from one source, but the accidents–the terrain, the weather, the specific rocks and plants and so on–are external forces to which the character will react. Damaging the ACL ligament on relatively flat ground less than a mile from help in dry weather means a very painful, difficult, slow hike back…but the same injury in severe weather (cold, snow, heavy rain, etc) and much rougher terrain twenty miles from help raises the stakes to possible death. But in either case, you have just one character who can generate plot.
In multi-viewpoint stories, with several strong, important characters, they will all be involved in creating the plot. Each will (or should–if the writer can hold the focus) act within his/her nature as each new event, each new interaction, each new accident comes along.
(And now it’s after midnight and my brain is rapidly going to mush, despite dark chocolate. More later, when I can think clearly again.)
Comment by pjm — January 17, 2014 @ 6:03 am
The mush was as tasty, as tasty could be..
And early next summer it grew to a tree.
The insights into the writing process are fascinating. Thank you for sharing with us.
Peter
Comment by Genko — January 17, 2014 @ 1:15 pm
Yes, yum…
Comment by Jonathan Schor — January 17, 2014 @ 2:45 pm
This is why Ms. Moon writes and gets the credit for Paks et al. I could not do it. It is also why authors are not paid nearly enough – it it really hard work.
Comment by Linda — January 17, 2014 @ 7:21 pm
Ayup! I love to read you writing about writing too.
I had a non-fctiion writer friend argue with me years ago about what fiction writers thought about while writing. He seemed to be of the belief that it was just chance that we the readers perceived some writers to be more skilled than others … that storytellers just told their stories. I’d love to say “Here, look at this … it is a learned skill, and it is deliberate!”
And I would also love to take writing lessons from you … however I realize that at my age I’ve got to concentrate on getting better at the things I can already do, rather than haring off after things which look “fun”.
By the way, speaking of fun, at one of the local stables, horse agility is the latest thing for older (mainly) folks and horses who love to be together but who can’t do the show jumping or whatever it was that they were good at. I’ve been writing articles about local agriculture and this story has me agog. I thought watching dog agility was fun, and cat agility was unbelievable, but horse agility is beautiful too. Reading about the fox hunting in the Seranno books brought it to mind.
Comment by elizabeth — January 18, 2014 @ 6:57 pm
Writing is a learned skill, and the learning part is deliberate–and so is the editing part. Not so much in the writing part. In the writing part you’re using the skill you learned in earlier reading and writing and thinking about the difficulties you had–and then you leap into the next story and bit by bit…it becomes natural, like walking or eating.
Way back in college I wrote a little poem (of sorts) after one of those late-night discussions college students get into. I don’t remember the whole conversation, but it turned to “What do you want most? What do you wish someone would give you?” And my mind went blank and then…by the time I was back in my room…the answer sort of dropped in, word by word, like rocks dropped deliberately in a pond.
“The things I want most
No one can give me.
I must carve them out of myself
By using them.”
I stared at the page, knowing that was true, in some way, but otherwise clueless. I did realize, in a vague way, that what I wanted wasn’t “things” as in the discussion, but qualities, abilities, skills. I wanted to be a certain kind of person, doing certain kinds of things for certain kinds of reasons. Looking back, I see that I sent myself the right message, not only for a writer (because every writer must make his/her own tool-kit out of reading and writing and living), but for everything else. You learn to ride a horse by getting on the horse over and over and over. You learn to knit by picking up needles and yarn and pulling one loop through another over and over and over. You learn to play a piano, or sing, or cook, or solve equations by doing that–badly at first, but later much better. You learn to write by writing…over and over and over. Each time you are shaping your future skill by present action, and that action draws on what you’ve done before. We are–not just writers, but all of us–both the block of marble with the statue waiting to be revealed inside it, and the chisels and hammer that cut away “everything but the statue” as Michelangelo put it.
Yes, of course, accidents happen to us–some idiot drops the marble off the back of a truck, and it breaks. Some dolt decides to spray-paint graffiti on what was intended to be the face. Turns out there’s a flaw in the marble itself, something not noticed until the work is underway. Things we wanted become impossible because of something that happened, even an accident of birth (race, gender, place), so we have to come up with a new design for our lives. It’s happened to me, for sure. But still. Whatever you want to be, practice it. Works for writing. Works for singing. Works for any skill, including the ones labeled virtues. And eventually, the work becomes habitual, natural, just the way you are. (How long “eventually” takes I don’t know, since I’m not there yet. But I do have stretches of being “in flow” when I’m not thinking *about* writing while writing the story.)
Comment by GinnyW — January 19, 2014 @ 12:13 pm
It is the learned skill part that makes writing stories (as you do) different from daydreaming or telling yourself a bedtime story (which I do). That, and the conviction that your stories have meaning for other people too.
I am still processing on the complex relationship between protagonist and main plot line. Thank you for the cogent response to a difficult question.