James Scott Bell: Fiction Writing Mistakes

Hello.

Please read this article if you are writing a novel or screenplay. This was sent to me in a newsletter From Writer Digest.

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By James Scott Bell   

The best fiction writers write like they're in love-and edit like they're in charge.

First drafting should be a wild and wonderful ride, full of discovery, dreams and promises. But at some point you have to settle down and make the book really work. You need to approach your manuscript with sober objectivity and knowledge of the craft.

Having reviewed hundreds of manuscripts over the years, I've identified the five mistakes that most regularly turn up. Start your revision by addressing these, and you'll immediately change your story for the better.

1. Happy People in Happy Land

Chief among the most common problems, in first chapters especially, are scenes presenting characters who are perfectly happy in their ordinary worlds. The writer thinks that by showing nice people doing nice things, readers will care about these pleasant folk when the characters are finally hit with a problem.

But readers actually engage with plot via trouble, threat, change or challenge. I call the first hint of this the opening disturbance. It can be stunning, as in Jodi Picoult's Lone Wolf, which begins:

Seconds before our truck slams into the tree, I remember the first time I tried to save a life.

Or it can be something quieter, a single item that is off kilter, as in the opening of Sarah Pekkanen's The 

Opposite of Me:

As I pulled open the heavy glass door of Richards, Dunne & Krantz and walked down the long hallway toward the executive offices, I noticed a light was on up ahead.

Lights were never on this early.

Although Happy People most commonly appear in Chapter 1, that doesn't mean you can let your guard down once you've opened with a bang. As your novel progresses, look out for stops in Happy Land.

While revising my novel Don't Leave Me, I noticed a scene in which my protagonist, Chuck Samson, a teacher recovering from his wife's death, goes with his autistic brother to a colleague's apartment for dinner. The host, knowing that Chuck used to do magic when his wife was alive, asks him to do a trick. Chuck resists but is cajoled into it. In the original version he performed a disappearing knife trick successfully, and everyone was pleased until the cops arrived at the door at the end of the scene.

I decided this was too happy. In my published version, Chuck blows it:

... the knife slid off his lap and hit the floor with a clank.

"Oops," Stan said.

Chuck had not blown that trick in twenty years. He looked at his hands like they were foreign objects that had betrayed him.

Wendy laughed good naturedly. But when Chuck looked at her, she stopped laughing.

Trouble is your business. Make more of it.

2. A World Without Fear

The best novels, the ones that stay with you all the way to the end-and beyond-have the threat of death hanging over every scene ...

To continue with the 5 Biggest Fiction Writing Mistakes (& How to Fix Them),click here. 

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