Tips for Picking up the Pace in Your Fiction

by Jodie Renner, editor, author, speaker  


Readers of fiction often complain that a book didn’t keep their interest because “it dragged,” or “the story meandered,” or “it was slow going,” or “it was boring in parts.” Today’s readers have shorter attention spans. Most of them/us don’t have the patience for the lengthy descriptive passages, the long, convoluted “literary” sentences, nor the leisurely, painstaking pacing of fiction of a century or two ago. Besides, with TV and the internet, we don’t need most of the detailed descriptions of locations anymore, unlike early readers who’d perhaps never left their village, and had very few visual images of other locales to draw on.

While you don’t want your story barreling along at a break-neck pace all the way through – that would be exhausting for the reader – you do want the pace to be generally brisk enough to keep the readers’ interest. As Elmore Leonard said, “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”


Condense those set-up, backstory and descriptive passages.

To increase the pace and overall tension of your story, start by cutting back on setup and backstory. Here’s what Donald Maass has to say about setup: “‘Setup’ is, by definition, not story. It always drags. Always. Leave it out. Find another way.” Some backstory can be essential, but marble it in on an “as-needed” basis, rather than interrupting the story for paragraphs or pages of explanation of character background.

Also, to pick up the pace, keep your descriptive passages short and vivid, and concentrate instead on scenes with action, dialogue, and lots of tension. Show, don’t tell – use vivid, sensory imagery, and just leave out the boring bits. 

In general, develop a more direct, lean writing style.

That way your message and the impact of your story won't get lost in all the clutter of superfluous words and repetitive sentences. I cover specific techniques for cutting down on wordiness in my upcoming article, “Streamline Your Writing.”

Of course, the best novels do vary the pace to allow the reader brief respites to catch his breath, but generally, your story needs to move along at a good clip to keep the readers interested.

TIPS FOR THOSE FAST-PACED SCENES:

Here are a few easy techniques for picking up the pace at strategic spots in your novel, to create those tense, action-packed, nail-biting scenes. 

Write shorter sentences and paragraphs.

For a fast-paced scene, use short, clipped sentences, as opposed to long, meandering, leisurely ones. Even sentence fragments. Like this. Use short paragraphs and frequent paragraphing, too. This creates more white space. The eye moves faster, so the mind does, too. This also increases the tension, which is always a good thing in fiction. 

As Sol Stein points out, “In fiction, a quick exchange of adversarial dialogue often proves to be an ideal way of picking up the pace.”

Here’s an example from The Watchman by Robert Crais, one of my favorite authors. My favorite hero, Joe Pike (Jack Reacher is a close second), is protecting a spoiled young heiress from enemies who are closing in. Pike starts out.

 “Pack your things. We’re going to see Bud.”

She lowered the coffeepot, staring at him as if she were fully dressed.

“I thought we were safe here.”

“We are. But if something happens, we’ll want our things.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“Every time we leave the house, we’ll take our things. That’s the way it is.”

“I don’t want to ride around all day scrunched in your car. Can’t I stay here?”

“Get dressed. We have to hurry.”

“But you told him noon. Universal is only twenty minutes away.”

“Let’s go. We have to hurry.”

She stomped back into the kitchen and threw the pot into the sink.

“Your coffee sucks!”

“We’ll get Starbucks.”

She didn’t seem so wild, even when she threw things.


We get the undercurrent of tension in Joe, who’s trying to hustle her out without alarming her. 

It isn’t necessary to use dialogue to pick up the pace – short sentences and frequent paragraphing can have that effect even without dialogue.

Lee Child, another one of my favorite writers, is a master at lean writing and short sentences. Here’s a short excerpt from Worth Dying For. Our laconic hero, Jack Reacher, has a very painful broken nose that’s bent way to the side. He has to reset it, and he knows that when he does the pain will be so excruciating he’ll pass out from it, so he has to do it right, and fast, before he passes out:

He closed his eyes.

He opened them again.

He knew what he had to do.

He had to reset the break. He knew that. He knew the costs and benefits. The pain would lessen and he would end up with a normal-looking nose. Almost. But he would pass out again. No question about that. …

 And it goes on like that.


Skip ahead for effect.
 
Skip past all the humdrum details and transition info, like getting from one place to another, and jump straight to the next action scene. Delete any scenes that drag, or condense them to a paragraph or two, or even just a few sentences.

Jump-cutting is a more extreme version of skipping ahead. This is used a lot in movies. You jump straight from one scene to another, with no transitioning at all in between. Your protagonist leaves her house. Add an extra space or * * *, then show her at her workplace office having a conversation with a colleague. Or in a restaurant with her gal pals or a date. Or jogging through the park, or wherever. The reader can easily fill in the gaps. No need to show her getting into her car, driving to her destination, etc.


Some other techniques for increasing the pace:

- Use shorter, more direct words – mostly powerful verbs and nouns.

- Cut way back on adjectives and adverbs.

- Avoid unfamiliar words the reader may have to look up.

- Use active voice instead of passive: “The bank robber shot the teller,” rather than “The teller was shot by the bank robber.”

- Use cliff-hangers at the ends of scenes and chapters.

- Start each scene as late as possible, without all the warm-up, and end each scene as early as possible, without rehashing what went on. (Thanks to Peg Brantley for the reminder about this one!)

  Do you have any techniques to add, to keep the readers turning the pages?
  

© Copyright Jodie Renner, March 2012

Resources:
Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel
Sol Stein, Stein on Writing
Robert Crais, The Watchman

Lee Child, Worth Dying For

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Captivate Your Readers, Fire up Your Fiction, and Writing a Killer Thriller, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, Quick Clicks: Spelling List and Quick Clicks: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity, incl. Childhood Regained – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie at www.JodieRenner.com, www.JodieRennerEditing.com, her blog, http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/, and on Facebook and Twitter. 

Enter the Culture Police: Home Slaughter Rituals

by Tom Adair, thriller author and forensic scientist


As an undergrad I studied cultural anthropology and it made me a better criminalist. That education forced me to recognize that people engage in a myriad of cultural practices and beliefs. Some of these may seem quite odd, offend our morality, or be classified as criminal acts under our laws. Over the years I've spoken to criminalists from all over the world, and those conversations remind me that our perceptions and values are influenced by these practices. As people, we sometimes have a hard time understanding cultural practices outside our own, even among people of the same "society". These differences can sometimes be problematic for detectives and crime scene investigators because the activity does not conform to what we may consider "normal". Take the United States for example. We have a very diverse culture, even among people of the same geographic area. A prime example of this is food preparation.

A few months ago I saw this BLOG posting about a Polish ritual at Christmas time that involves the home slaughter of carp. It was the photograph of the bloody bathtub that really caught my eye and I immediately began wondering how I would react to seeing a tub full of blood at a crime scene. Most people don't have blood spattered all over their bathrooms. Then I remembered a trip I took to a small town in Iowa. A sign in the motel bathroom asked hunters not to clean their game birds in the bathtub. It's all a matter of perspective you see.

 Killing an animal for food might seem very strange (even cruel) to people living in a city with a grocery store down the street. On the other hand, paying "good money" for a steak seems bizarre to a cattle rancher. I've been to crime scenes with goat heads in the refrigerator and live chickens scurrying around the house. At another scene, a cow's tongue was found hanging from a tree. The tongue was filled with tiny scraps of paper bearing the names of people. Out of a cultural context one might think they have stumbled into the home of a serial killer. More often than not though you've just expanded your cultural understanding of the world.


The reason I bring this up is that these cultural misunderstandings can lead to fireworks in life, and in your novel. As writers we tend to write what we know. What we "know" is often bound by our cultural practices. After all, it's hard to imagine some of the various rituals and ceremonies that exist outside our comfort zone.

This is especially true of food. People are much quicker to change their manner of dress or speech over diet. But just like real life detectives, writers should be mindful of the limitations of our accepted reality. We should embrace cultural differences because they can enrich a scene. As a reader I love being surprised. Nothing kills my desire to turn the page faster than one predictable scene after another. Predictable stories never challenge your views, never force you to look at the world in a new light. Cultural differences can momentarily scramble your brains, put you off balance. That makes for a memorable scene.

So as you are developing your characters ask yourself how you might use cultural differences to the delight of your readers. The more culturally diverse your scene setting is, the more likely your characters will encounter foreign practices. The same effect can happen in reverse too. If, for example, your character is placed into a foreign "homogenous" setting (think Crocodile Dundee). An easy place to start is the varied methods of meal preparation. Read up on various cultures and see if something catches your eye. If nothing else, you may find a great recipe!

Appeal to the Senses — and Emotions

by Jodie Renner

Often, in my editing of fiction, I see dialogue on the page, but with no indication of where the characters are, what they’re doing, what they’re seeing or sensing, and how they’re feeling. In order for your story and characters to come to life, your reader needs to be able see what the viewpoint character is seeing, hear what he’s hearing, and smell, taste or feel along with him.

And we need to see/feel their reactions and thoughts, too. Readers won't empathize with or bond with a character if they don’t even know how she’s feeling and reacting. As Jack M. Bickham says, “Dialogue without any sense impressions, thoughts or feelings of the viewpoint character gets totally abstract; it stops making sense; the reader gets lost.”

So if you’ve written a page or more of almost all dialogue, or a page of exposition/description, here’s a list of what your reader needs to know, sense and feel to get involved and absorbed in your novel.

To bring your scene and characters to life, the reader needs to:

·         See what’s happening – but only what your viewpoint character can see – physical impressions of the scene. And best to just include relevant information – we don’t usually need a detailed description of everything in a room, for example.

·         Hear sounds around – anything your POV character can hear.

·         Smell anything that might be pertinent (bread baking, bacon frying, a dead body decomposing).

·         Taste (in general, or occasionally) some of the things the character is consuming, or know their reaction to what they’re eating or drinking.

·         Touch  – feel any possible tactile sensations of the viewpoint character.

·         Know any thoughts the protagonist or POV character might be having

·         Feel any emotions of the viewpoint character, to help assess and respond to what’s going on in the scene

·         Be aware of the scene goal and intentions of the viewpoint character, so we know his reactions to what’s going on, and why he’s acting as he is, or saying what he’s saying.

(Adapted from a list by Jack M. Bickham)

So if you want to write compelling fiction (and who doesn't?), don’t have your readers stumbling around in the dark, wearing ear plugs. Provide them with varied sense impressions of your viewpoint characters, and show them what the characters are thinking and feeling, too – their reactions to what’s going on around them. Then your readers will empathize with and care about your protagonist, and be truly engaged in his plight, worrying about him and cheering him on.

Resource: The 38 Most Common Writing Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them) by Jack M. Bickham.

Copyright © Jodie Renner, January 2012

For more info, see "Show Those Feelings -- and Reactions!", Jan. 15.

  Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Captivate Your Readers, Fire up Your Fiction, and Writing a Killer Thriller, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, Quick Clicks: Spelling List and Quick Clicks: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity, incl. Childhood Regained – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie at www.JodieRenner.com, www.JodieRennerEditing.com, her blog, http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/, and on Facebook and Twitter. 

Don’t Lecture Your Readers

-          by Jodie Renner, who posts craft of fiction articles here on CFC every second Monday.

Have you ever been reading a novel when suddenly the author interrupts the story to give you background or technical information about something, or he/she tries to sneak in some info via a dialogue, only it's really a monologue, with a character going on for a half page or more, uninterrupted, lecturing about something? Fortunately, this rarely happens to this extent anymore. Unlike 100 years ago, today's readers of fiction won't stand for this kind of heavy-handed, clunky imparting of information within a story.

Savvy authors know that readers choose fiction to be entertained and swept away by a compelling story. Stopping to fill them in on a topic as an aside jars them out of the story, slows down the pace, and runs the risk of boring many of them. If readers want to find out more information on a subject, they can do that very easily these days, through internet searches.

So unless you’re writing a historical saga like those of James Michener, or the one I’m reading right now, New York by Edward Rutherfurd, where readers welcome background info on historically relevant times and locations, I don't think fiction is the place to interrupt the story to insert a lot of detail on a particular subject. And of course, if you are writing a saga, it's best to include the info in a natural, character-specific way, so it doesn’t come across like a history textbook. (See below for some hints.)

So be careful not to dump a bunch of factual information willy-nilly into your story. A novel or short story is no place to give a lecture on a technical subject –- or to get on your soapbox about a topic that's dear to your heart or makes your blood boil. Readers will feel annoyed, patronized or manipulated, when what they really want is to be entertained and captivated by your tale.

Here's why most readers of contemporary fiction don't like having their story interrupted by author explanations:

• It takes them out of the character’s viewpoint, so the illusion of being right there in the story is shattered.
• It creates a jarring interruption to the story line, which you then have to re-establish, and hook your readers back in.
• Readers may feel you’re lecturing them or preaching to them, which has no place in fiction.
• It’s distracting, annoying, and often boring.

What about info that’s essential or relevant to your story? There are ways to slip that in without interrupting the narrative flow or dumping a pile of information on the readers. For example:

• Your viewpoint character has to recall some critical information she once knew, and works to remember or find it.

• Your protagonist asks another character (or several) to fill him in on some info he’s fuzzy on –- but be sure it’s in a conversational way, and keep the information-imparting as brief as possible. (more on this below)

• Your protagonist is researching critical information on the computer or in the library. Show what she learns as thoughts or in dialogue –- but only what is essential for the plotline. And give her emotional reaction to what she’s learned, and to how the new info changes things.

•  Your character is interviewing people to solve a problem. Show some of the interview in real time, with dialogue.

• She’s reading the newspaper or watching the news or other TV show, where she learns some new information on a subject.

• For backstory, use flashbacks and play them in real time.
  

And of course, don’t let your characters lecture or pontificate in dialogue, either. It’s just not natural, and will bore the readers just as much as an author aside or intrusion. Avoid “info dumps” in the guise of dialogue –- in real life, no one likes to be lectured to in a casual conversation. Replace long monologues of information with questions and answers or a lively discussion, and keep it relevant to the scene question. And, for more interest, insert some tension in the give-and-take –- a little (or a lot of) arguing about facts, or their significance, for example.

So if you need to give your readers some background or essential information, work it in as you go along, in natural, brief, interesting ways, with lots of interaction and some tension or out-and-out conflict. And perhaps rethink whether any more detailed information is really needed in your story. Remember, if any readers want to know more, they can always google the topic. Leave the lectures for the classroom, articles, or nonfiction books –- the goal of fiction is to entertain the readers with a riveting story. Period.

What are your thoughts on this, as a reader or a writer? Agree? Disagree? Why?

Writers - what are some techniques you've used successfully to impart some information to your readers without interrupting the narrative flow?

 
Jodie Renner, a sought-after freelance editor, has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Writing a Killer Thriller and Fire up Your Fiction, which has won two awards to date, and is a finalist for two more. Her third book in the series, Captivate Your Readers, will be out in fall 2014. For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, her group blogs, The Kill Zone and Crime Fiction Collective, and find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. To be the first to hear when Jodie's next book is out and to receive links to valuable, timely blog posts, sign up for her newsletter here. 

Those Crucial First Five Pages

by Jodie Renner, editor, author, speaker 

Once you’ve finished the first draft of your novel, it’s time to go back and polish up your first few pages. Then later you can do a third—or tenth—rewrite of that all-important first few paragraphs to create the most enticing hook possible. For today, we’ll talk about the essential ingredients of the first five pages, as most agents and acquiring editors, and readers will stop reading by the fifth page—or sooner—if the story and characters don’t grab them by then.

Last February, I attended a workshop by literary agent Kristin Nelson at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference, in which she had attendees anonymously submit the first two pages of their novel. She started reading the submissions and stopped at the spot where she lost interest. In many instances it was after the first or second paragraph! Sometimes she made it almost to the end of the first page, and in one case, even halfway through the second page. Then she told us why that manuscript, as written, would be rejected. (Not a single one of those made it.)

In the latest issue of Writer’s Digest (Oct. 2011), Kristen gives four examples of submissions and where and why she stopped reading three of them (all on the first page): “too much dialogue,” “overuse of description,” and “lack of tension.” In her workshop, “lack of clear protagonist,” “unsympathetic protagonist,” “boring” and “confusing” were other reasons given.

After Ms. Nelson's workshop, I heard a lot of “If she’d only read a little further, she would have seen that…” or “That wasn’t fair. She didn’t give me a chance. How can she judge a manuscript by only reading one page?” Unfortunately, agents get tens of thousands of submissions a year, and if you don’t grab them within the first page or two, the sad reality is that your book will probably be rejected. And of course, as readers, most of us will read the back cover and maybe the first page, then decide based on that whether to buy the book or not.

 One of the main reasons agents, acquiring editors and readers will reject a book after reading the first few pages is that they’re confused. They need to get a picture right away about whose story it is, why we should care about that person, and roughly where and when the story is taking place. Once readers have a handle on the main character and the setting, they can relax and settle into the story world. Of course, you also have to spark their interest with a problem early on—put your protagonist in some hot water so the reader can sympathize with them and start rooting for them.

Whose story is it?

It’s important to start out the novel in the viewpoint of your protagonist, as the first person the readers read about is the person they start identifying with, and they’ll feel cheated if suddenly, after they’ve invested some time and effort into getting to know this person and bonding a bit with him, he suddenly turns out to be not someone they should be rooting for at all, but in fact the antagonist, whom they’re supposed to be hating, or worse yet, someone who gets killed off a little while later.

As Steve Berry, bestselling author and sought-after writing workshop leader, told a packed room of eager aspiring writers at Craftfest, part of Thrillerfest 2011 in New York, “Always start your book in the point of view of your protagonist.” I think this is excellent advice, as the readers—not to mention agents and acquiring editors—want to know right away whose story it is, who to start bonding with and cheering for.

Why should I care about this character, anyway?

Readers aren’t going to invest time reading a story about a character they don’t like or can’t identify with, so make sure your protagonist is likeable and sympathetic, to draw the readers in to identify with him or her. And make them well-rounded and complex, with hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses, and inner conflict. And of course have them confronted with a problem—an inciting incident—within the first few pages, as conflict is what drives fiction forward. A perfect character with an ideal life is both annoying and boring—not a formula for compelling fiction!

Where and when is the action taking place?

Without drowning us in long descriptive passages right at the beginning, give the readers a few hints very early on—definitely on the first page—of the setting of your story: Contemporary? Past? Future? Country/Culture? Urban/rural/wilderness? And so on. Don’t confuse and frustrate your readers by making them wonder where on earth all this is happening, and whether it’s in the present or some other time.

Why should I read this story?

Show your stuff in your first five pages or so. Draw the reader (or agent or editor) in with a great first scene, well-written, with interesting, complex characters, some intriguing action, and compelling, natural-sounding dialogue. Include your inciting incident and initial conflict, and hint at greater problems to come. Introduce or hint at a worthy adversary—a cunning villain or attractive but maddening/annoying possible love interest. And write your first pages in the same tone, style and voice you’ll be using for your novel, so the readers will have a good idea of what they’ll be getting into. And of course, continue in this same tone (suspenseful, humorous, serious, romantic, etc.) for the rest of the novel, so the reader won’t feel cheated or misled.

But don’t get bogged down trying to perfect your opening pages in the early stages – wait until you’ve got all or most of your first draft written. By then, you’ll be “in the groove” and you’ll know your character and his/her problems a lot better, so this part will flow so much more easily.

© Jodie Renner, August 2011

Jodie Renner, a freelance fiction editor specializing in thrillers and other fast-paced fiction, has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER and STYLE THAT SIZZLES & PACING FOR POWER. Both titles are available in e-book and paperback.

For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, or find her on Facebook or Twitter.

Writing a Killer Thriller, Part III

by Jodie Renner

More techniques for writing a compelling suspense-thriller…or any other page-turner.

In Part I of this series, I passed along some tips for creating a compelling opening, complex characters, and a tight point of view. In Part II, I discussed creating a riveting plot with lots of conflict and suspense and a tight, to-the-point writing style. This final post in this series covers tension, dialogue, pacing, passion, and crafting a satisfying ending.

Put tension on every page.  

This applies to all fiction, but even more so for thrillers. As Jack Bickham says, “Virtually all the high points of most stories involve conflict. It’s the fuel that makes fiction go. Nothing is more exciting and involving.”

Bickham continues, “In fiction, the best times for the writer—and reader—are when the story’s main character is in the worst trouble. Let your character relax, feel happy and content, and be worried about nothing, and your story dies. Pour on all sorts of woes so your poor character is thoroughly miserable and in the deepest kind of trouble, and your story perks right up—along with your reader’s interest.

          “The moral: Although most of us do everything we can to avoid trouble in real life, we must do the opposite as writers of fiction. We must seek out ways to add trouble to our characters’ lives, putting just as much pressure on them as we can. For it’s from plot trouble that reader interest comes.”

In his chapter called “Tension All the Time,” Donald Maass emphasizes giving your protagonist (and other characters) conflicting emotions and inner conflict.

All dialogue needs tension, too.

As Ingermanson and Economy say, “Dialogue is war! Every dialogue should be a controlled conflict between at least two of the characters with opposing agendas. The main purpose of dialogue is to advance the conflict of the story.” So definitely leave out the “How are you? I’m fine. And you?” blah-blah-blah, and cut to the chase. Unless of course you’re trying to show seething resentment or subtle tension boiling up from under surface politeness. As Donald Maass says, “Conflict in dialogue can be as polite as poison, or as messy as hatchets. The approach is up to you. The important thing is to get away from ambling chit-chat and get right to the desire of two speakers to defeat each other.” So follow James N. Frey’s advice: “Decide you will have fresh, snappy dialogue and not a single line of conversation.”

Vary the pacing.

Although thrillers are generally fast-paced, it’s important to slow down the pacing from time to time, to give your readers a break. As Jessica Page Morrell says, “because readers need to put down a book from time to time, and because pacing can’t be as relentless as a runaway train, you need to bring down the temperature and tension in a story at intervals. A win for your character, as well as a slower or interlude scene, provides the pauses and quieter moments needed.”

Give your scenes conflict, intensity and intrigue.

Start and end your chapters and scenes with questions and intrigue. James N. Frey’s advice is to end each scene or section of dramatic narrative with a bridge, a story question to carry the reader to the next one.

Every scene, according to James Scott Bell, needs a degree of intensity. A moving force in the scene is trying to make something happen. Opposition or obstacles are keeping the POV character from meeting his objective. And the outcome is often not entirely satisfactory. In fact, Bell advises us, “Design your scenes, for the most part, so the lead is in a worse position after the scene is over.” This will keep the reader reading to find out how the protagonist tackles the new challenges and survives her new predicament.

Put passion into your writing.

Donald Maass, in The Fire in Fiction, feels that the key ingredient to a page-turner is passion. “What do I mean by passion? … A passionate author has us in her grip. Passionate fiction is not bogged down, wandering, low in tension, or beset by the many bugbears of by-the-numbers novel writing, like stereotypical characters, predictable plots, cliché-ridden prose, churning exposition, buried dialogue, and so on.[…] When the purpose of every word is urgent, the story crackles, connects, weaves, and falls together in wondrous ways.”

          How to develop that passion as a writer? Maass believes in learning from others. “Everything we need in order to understand the techniques of passion lies within the covers of novels that you will currently find on the shelves.”

Create a thrilling, satisfying climax.

Frey points out, “In almost all damn good thrillers, the hero is nearly killed in the climax, but then manages to kill or capture the villain and to foil his evil plot. Audiences find this motif satisfying….” An effective, satisfying climax has a surprise or two, good prevails over evil, and often the hero discovers something about himself or gains insight into the human condition. Don’t disappoint your readers by having a nebulous, wishy-washy, or tragic ending. Leave that to literary fiction, not your killer thriller!
 

Resources:

James Scott Bell, Revision and Self-Editing
James N. Frey, How to Write a Damn Good Thriller  
Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction
David Morrell, The Successful Novelist
Jessica Page Morrell, Thanks, But This Isn’t for Us

Jodie Renner, a freelance fiction editor specializing in thrillers and other fast-paced fiction, has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER and STYLE THAT SIZZLES & PACING FOR POWER (Silver Medalist in the FAPA Book Awards, 2013). Both titles are available in e-book and paperback.

For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, or find her on Facebook or Twitter.

Writing a Killer Thriller, Part I

by Jodie Renner
(a small section of Jodie's bookcase above)

- Some key techniques for writing a compelling suspense-thriller…or any other page-turner. 

To unwind, I love reading thrillers, romantic suspense, suspense-mysteries, and other crime fiction, as they provide just the escape I’m looking for after a long day of ... editing crime fiction! Here are some tips I’ve gleaned from writing gurus and my own editing experience on writing a suspense-thriller—or any other story—that will keep your readers up until the wee hours.

First, what’s a thriller, anyway?

See my article on Thrillers vs. Mysteries. In a nutshell, as James N. Frey says, “the main ingredient of a thriller is pulse-pounding suspense.” The time-honored formula for successful thrillers is, according to Frey: “A clever hero has an ‘impossible’ mission to foil evil. The hero is brave; he or she is in terrible trouble; the mission is urgent; the stakes are high; and it’s best if the hero is self-sacrificing for others.”

So what makes a compelling suspense-thriller, the kind you can’t put down?

Most thriller writers and readers would agree that some of the essential ingredients for a thriller that sizzles are:

• An opening that grabs you by the collar and drags you in
• A likeable, resourceful hero
• A ruthless, cunning villain (or more than one)
• A riveting plot with a powerful story question and lots of intrigue
• Plenty of tension and conflict
• Fast pacing, with tight, to-the-point writing
• An unexpected, satisfying conclusion   

But how do we achieve all that and more? In this post and two more to follow, we’ll discuss some techniques that can help you create a page-turning, adrenalin-inducing thriller. 

To start with, As Frey, says, “To write a damn good thriller, you need a killer attitude.”  For Part I, we’ll just touch on your opening (first page), characters, and point of view.

~ Write an opening that hooks ‘em in.

Put your protagonist on stage right away, in media res – in the middle of things. As James Scott Bell says, “Give us a character in motion. Something happening to a person from line one. Make that a disturbing thing, or have it presage something disturbing.” Start with a powerful story question, and get that inciting incident, the first threat, in there quickly. Don’t open with a description of the setting or weather, or with interior monologue. A dialogue with tension and some action is much more dynamic.
But don’t stress over getting the perfect opening for your first draft – just get your story down, then come back at a later date to revise and spice up your first paragraph and page. For more on writing compelling openings, click on my article “Act First, Explain Later.”  

~ Create complex, compelling characters.

Your lead character, according to James Scott Bell, needs “grit, wit and it,” so make him or her gutsy, smart, witty and charismatic. Your hero should be strong, resourceful and likeable, but not perfect. As Bell says, "Leads, to be realistic, must also have flaws and foibles.”

         According to Jessica Page Morrell, “Your characters can be neurotic or despicable, vain or shallow, but they must always be vivid, fascinating, and believable, and their actions, decisions, and motives must propel the story to an inevitable conclusion.”

James N. Frey takes it a step further: “All damn good dramatic characters are larger than life, theatrical, determined to overcome the obstacles that are put in their path. They are an extreme of type, larger than life, and they have a ruling passion that defines who they are.” This applies to both the hero and the villain.

Frey advises us to create characters that, “in addition to being multifaceted, are interesting in the way real people are interesting. They’ve done things, they’ve been places, and they have unusual views. In other words, they’ve ‘lived.’ Such characters have an individuality that stamps them as fresh.” And give your characters internal conflict, moral dilemmas, and tough decisions and choices to make, as these help develop and define them.

And make your antagonist a nasty but believable villain, powerful, cunning, relentless, unpredictable, selfish, and cold-hearted. But not 100% evil – give him depth and complexity by showing us how he explains and justifies his actions.

For more on this topic, check out my blog post, “Creating Compelling Characters.”

~ Zoom in on your hero.

Limited viewpoint, where we experience the story from the point of view of the protagonist(s),  gets us “up close and personal” with the main character, so we start to identify with him right away, and get emotionally engaged fast, which is critical for effective fiction.

As Maass says, when discussing the weaker manuscripts his agency rejects, “Too many manuscripts begin at a distance from their protagonists, as if opening with a long shot like a movie. That’s a shame. Why keep readers at arm’s length?

“Novels are unique among art forms in their intimacy. They can take us inside a character’s heart and mind right away. And that is where your readers want to be. Go there immediately. And when you do, show us what your hero is made of. If you accomplish that, then the job of winning us over is done.”

And as David Morrell points out, “Modern readers have a mania about credibility. To the extent that the omniscient narrator intrudes with godlike information, the illusion of actuality is broken.” Steve Berry says, “Don’t let you, the author, enter the story.”

So for more impact and to draw your reader in more to your story world, get us into the head and heart of your protagonist right away. Then express each scene, including the setting, from your viewpoint character’s point of view. Colour the description with their feelings, attitude, reactions, etc., rather than stepping back and describing the scene from a more impartial, distant authorial stance.
 

See Jodie's three articles on Deep Point of View:

POV 101: Get into Your Protagonist’s Head

POV 102: How to Avoid Head-Hopping

POV 103: Deep Point of View, or Close Third

Also, see Part II and Part III of this article (plot, suspense, conflict, dialogue, tension, pacing, style) and Jodie's book, Writing a Killer Thriller.   

 Resources:

• James Scott Bell, Revision and Self-Editing
• Steve Berry’s 8 Rules of Writing, Writer’s Digest, September 2008
• James N. Frey, How to Write a Damn Good Thriller
• Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction
• David Morrell, The Successful Novelist
• Jessica Page Morrell, Thanks, But This Isn’t for Us

Jodie Renner, a freelance fiction editor specializing in thrillers and other fast-paced fiction, has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER and STYLE THAT SIZZLES & PACING FOR POWER (Silver Medalist in the FAPA Book Awards, 2013). Both titles are available in e-book and paperback. For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, or find her on Facebook or Twitter.