New writers, usually due to a lack of writing experience or because they haven’t had their writing critiqued, often will make some journeyman mistakes when plotting their story. If you’re just writing for yourself, there’s nothing wrong with any of these errors; the pleasure of writing alone overrides the need to follow a writing “rule.” But if you hope to have a magazine or publisher purchase your story or don’t want readers to leave bad reviews of your self-published book, you’ll want to avoid these five plot pitfalls.
Backstory
Among the major mistakes some novice writers make with their plots is waiting to tell readers a story. Those writers begin their tale with a lot of background information, such as the main character’s personality, where that character lives, what she does for a job, who are the members of her family, and so on. They believe that readers need to know this information before the story can be told.
Rather than give readers backstory, though, writers ought to launch their plot with the story’s very first line and keep it soaring. The backstory can be weaved into the plot by mentioning and inferring it through dramatic action.
So, rather than write…
Kathy was the one who held everything and everyone down. Be it a few dollars on their rent, a ride to the grocery store, a kind or a harsh word (whichever the situation called for) – if you meant something to her, she always had your back. She shot straight from the hip at all times, and for that reason, she earned the one thing she cared about most, her respect.
…instead do something like this:
Kathy opened the refrigerator door, wondered where she’d place yet another casserole brought by those paying respect to David. Then she grinned; for the first time in her life, she didn’t have to think about how her family was going to eat. She did have half a mind to tell the fifth neighbor who brought some tuna and noodle concoction what to go do with it, but Latrice was just being kind, so she accepted the warm Corningware dish with a smile. If Latrice made another snide remark about David Jr.’s haircut, though, Kathy knew right where she was going to stick that casserole.
The second passage infers that Kathy is “the one that held everything and everyone down” and that she always has “a kind or a harsh word (whichever the situation called for).” This is all done in the context of Kathy handling the funeral for her husband, who apparently is young, which we learn through her decision to defend “David Jr.’s haircut.”
In short, the second passage shows rather than tells. A character’s backstory invariably is exposition (or “telling”), and that’s poisonous to a story.
Info Dumps
An info dump is a chunk of exposition insufficiently integrated into the story being told. It’s also known as an “expository lump.”
The info dump usually involves sharing your research notes with the reader, just to prove that you’ve done the research. While it’s sometimes necessary to give such information, make sure it sounds natural in your piece and not like a cut-and-paste from an encyclopedia.
Often an info dump is given by a Stapledon, a character who serves no purpose other than to relate exposition, usually at great length and without interruption. As in real life, such characters are dull.
Another kind of info dumping is maid-and-butler dialogue in which characters tell each other things that they already should know so that the reader can overhear them. Unfortunately, those characters sound simple-minded as the lines they deliver in real life would be inane.
Having said this, even the greatest writers are guilty of info dumping. Isaac Asimov is notorious for it in “The Foundation,” often regarded as one of the best novels in the science fiction genre. Frequently, however, these writers were allowed their transgression because the story the info dump delivered was itself so fantastic (As a child, I had the same reaction to many encyclopedia articles that opened my eyes to the wider world.). But as with so many genre conventions that have appeared time and time again, your info dump probably isn’t all that fantastic. Given this, it’s best to avoid the info dump.
Here-to-there Action
If your story feels like it’s dragging, you may want to look at what “action” is provided to readers. You might be giving too many here-to-there action steps.
Here-to-there actions occur when the writer overdescribes interim steps between actions that really matter to the plot. For example, if the story’s hero jumps into his car to chase a criminal, the writer tells readers that the character placed the key into the ignition.
There’s no need to do that, though. All the reader needs to know is that our hero got into the vehicle and sped off. Readers are savvy enough to infer that to speed off the hero placed a key into the ignition and turned it.
Describing the key turning typically wouldn’t advance the plot because it isn’t suspenseful. In addition, it probably isn’t relevant to the overall story because it doesn’t provide any context that would be useful to understanding the character, setting or theme.
The writer might make such here-to-there action suspenseful by creating an obstacle for the character. In the above example, perhaps the hero has had trouble with his car’s starter, and it picks this inopportune time to not work for him. The writer also could use here-to-there action to provide context. For example, in a science fiction story, perhaps the hero doesn’t need a key but instead must tell the vehicle’s AI to start moving; this context helps establish the story’s setting.
Literary Dream
The purpose of our nightly dreams remains unclear, for they appear to be void of any consistent meaning. In literature, however, dreams are quite the opposite. Chock full of symbolism, they can help define the character and advance the plot by foreshadowing events. This device in fiction is known as a literary dream.
For a literary dream to work, the often surreal images seen by a character must be meaningful and metaphorical. For example, in the novel Wuthering Heights, Catherine accepts a marriage proposal after linking their union to her dream about going to heaven.
Writers should be wary of using the literary dream. Usually it doesn’t advance the story in an action-oriented way. While the dream may be a roller coaster ride of activity, the character comes to his revelation of how to solve the problem driving the plot through an imagined state of being rather than by experiencing the world and making decisions. This solution feels like a cheat, as if the author is saying, “I don’t know how my character can fix this problem, so I’ll just have him dream the solution.” In addition, literary dreams are overused as a plot device. They’re an easy fallback position for when writers are uncertain how to resolve the story’s central problem or when they need to add something exotic or surreal to an otherwise vanilla plot.
Reader Cheating
Sometimes authors, in the mistaken belief that they are creating a more exciting story, commit the error of reader cheating.
This occurs when the reader has no reasonable opportunity to anticipate that some decision, realization or event will occur. The term was coined by science fiction author James Patrick Kelly as part of the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop.
Suppose in a fantasy novel that the main character uses magical abilities to resolve the story’s central problem. If the main character never used magic and the reader had no inkling that he even had that ability, then the author is cheating the reader. Readers dislike this unwarranted surprise because it breaks their suspension of disbelief. No amount of explaining away the surprise after it occurs will fix that.
Instead, the author should plant subtle clues suggesting that the main character might indeed have magic. Perhaps his parents are mages. Maybe his minor wishes all come true. Possibly he feels oddly different at times, such as being “at one with nature” or full of boundless energy. Natural explanations should be given for these clues – such as the frame was rotted so the door fell off the frame, though the main character coincidentally wished for it, or perhaps he was extremely excited when walking all night without ever tiring. This way the reader believes that the main character can’t use magic to resolve the story’s problem, but when he does, it is believable.
There are several ways authors can avoid reader cheating. First, always plant subtle clues. The trick is to give hints that allow for a later action to occur but don’t make that solution so obvious that readers know how the story will end. Secondly, never withhold information from the reader. A character should be able to make a deduction only with the same information that the reader has been given. Finally, don’t let a character lie in his internal narrative, as this deceives readers. In the fantasy novel described during the previous paragraph, the main character shouldn’t know he has magical abilities. Instead, he should be as surprised by the reveal as much as the reader is.
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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.
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