No Cliffs Offstage ... No Chairs Onstage

I'll start this note with a confession and a caveat. Confession first: I'm an addict. I am deeply addicted to ...

...acronyms! (And here you thought something else! Shame on you!)

The caveat is that these writing notes are the same as ANY WRITING ADVICE in that no sooner do you say "DO or DON'T DO this" in your story, than some creative writer DOES it and does it SUCCESSFULLY.

What this means for you is to take away from these notes what works for you and for your Story, and ignore the rest. Just don't ignore it out of hand. Deal?

NCO serves two different functions, and yet serves the same purpose: the movement of your story.

The first definition for NCO is NO CLIFFS OFFSTAGE! Think of it this way: if a character is worth killing off in the story, that character is worth killing off ON THE PAGE! Shove them off the cliff right in front of the reader's face! Let the reader experience it! Mourn it! Feel it! If a character's death can take place off stage, then most likely, that character doesn't belong in the story. A character's death should COUNT! It's when we bring the characters' lives onto the page in their full beauty and anguish that the reader feels them, roots for them, hates them.

So the next time you have someone dying offstage, ask yourself "Why didn't I put it on the page for the reader to experience?" Is it possible I'm avoiding writing this, because I don't want to? Now in some stories, it is a death that changes the status quo and kicks off your story, but what happens if the first chapter is that death scene? What is that person's last word, and how will that change your protagonist's life? Great way to foreshadow the central theme/conflict of your protagonist.

The second way I define NCO is NO CHAIRS ONSTAGE. Now it's absurd to think your story cannot have chairs, of course. And it's absurd to think that no one ever sits down. But as soon as someone sits down (or crawls into a bathtub or bed), the movement stops, and at that point, our greatest temptation as writers is to go for the interior monologue. Or two people sitting: talking heads. I recently changed a character from sitting down to refusing to sit down, and the next five pages of talk was effectively tossed out the window. The movement of the Story kept going, and now was at a high pitch. Yes, some of the dialogue was delicious stuff; and yes, it hurt to delete it. But the Story leapt off the page. The problem now is to keep that movement going in the next chapter.

Sigh ... terrible business, writing. Simply terrible.

Writing Notes: Question Our Assumptions (QOA)

From time to time, I shall post errant thoughts about writing. These come at me from odd places, at odd times, and using the words of the immortal Ruth Stone, I reach out and snatch them by the tail. I hope you find these useful.

Question Our Assumptions (QOA):

As we write, we often reach for "fresh, new language" as a way to keep our stories from being stale, and yet there are other ways to enliven our stories without torturing language to wrest meaning onto the page.

One of these is what I call "question our assumptions." In any story, chapter, scene, paragraph, writers make story choices, but those choices are based upon assumptions, i.e., assumptions of gender, age, setting, social status, etc.

When a scene is not working, use QOA to test for fresh ideas.

For example: is the boy stuck in the tree really a boy? or is it a tomboy dressed in her brother's overalls? And go further! Maybe the girl has a brother who is her twin! And go even further! Maybe they're the surviving two of triplets, the third stillborn. Now we have a richness and depth and a range of possibilities we didn't have before. Just from questioning our assumption.

Another example: does the woman really sit down in the chair? or does that woman REFUSE to sit down? When your character confounds the expectations of the OTHER characters, your readers are also startled. What words come out of that woman's mouth now?

So when you find yourself annoyed or bored by what's falling on the page under your fingertips, QOA! Don't do it in your head. Make a physical list---on a scrap piece of paper, if you have nothing else---and see what you are assuming.

Maybe that really delicious line of dialogue didn't really come out of his mouth! it came out of hers!

Try it.