GENREALITY

I sometimes think that after publishing seven novels, with three more on the way over the next year, I ought to know what I’m doing, right?  I should have it all figured out by now.  Nope.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve revised two novels and two short stories.  (I’ve been busy.  Really busy.)  Three of them  had pretty much the exact same problem.  Wow, was that ever eye-opening.  So, I’ve learned something about pacing.

What was the problem?  Withholding information unnecessarily to create a false sense of tension.

We want to build a sense of mystery and suspense so our readers will keep turning the pages to find out the answers to the questions we raise.  But sometimes this backfires.  Instead of creating mystery, we create vagueness, confusion.  We obfuscate parts of the plot that should be clarified.

Here’s what happened in the short story.  My main character has a traumatic incident in her past that affects her standing in the community, making her almost an outcast.  Most of the other characters in the story know what the incident is.  In my first draft, however, I didn’t reveal what trauma actual was until about two thirds of the way through.  Then I had a nice long talk about the story with my first reader.  Now, my intention was to create a sense of mystery about this character’s past.  How did my reader react?  He was confused.  Instead of paying attention to the story, he kept wondering what the secret was, and he was frustrated that I wouldn’t tell him.  And when the secret was revealed, it didn’t justify that confusion.  Especially when every other character already knew it.  Instead of letting the reader into the world, I had kept the reader out.  My very wise first reader suggested putting the secret in the first paragraph.  Lay it out right from the start.  Then, we understand exactly why everyone else treats the main character the way they do, and exactly where the main character’s stress is coming from.  Now, the tension in the story isn’t about what her past is — it’s about how she’s going to overcome her past and succeed in her goals.  Which is a much, much more interesting story.

Here’s how it worked in the YA novel I revised:  in the first draft, I kept the identity of the antagonist secret until the second half.  I was trying to make the mystery, “Who is the bad guy here?”  It turns out, that wasn’t as interesting as identifying the bad guy early on, making it clear just how powerful he is and what his bad intentions are, and drawing suspense from figuring out how the heroes are going to defeat him.

In a nutshell:

First Draft:  Something’s wrong.  I wonder what?  We need to figure out what’s wrong!

Revised Draft:  Here’s the problem.  Here’s why it’s bad.  Now what are we going to do about it?

I’ve actually used the “we don’t know who the bad guy is” plot structure successfully before.  But then, the problem was clearly defined — the heroes just didn’t know who was behind it.  (A classic mystery plot structure.)  In the stories I’d been working on recently, I think the problems weren’t well enough defined in my own mind to be able to create that suspense.  I needed to define them.  And that meant not holding back information that I was originally holding back.

It seems so basic now, I want to kick myself.  I would have figured it out eventually.  But working on this problem three different ways on three different stories really solidified this concept for me.  I hope I can use what I learned on my next novel draft!

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