Those famous opening words are associated with Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel Paul Clifford. They begin a much longer sentence describing rain, wind, London streets, rooftops, and flickering lamps. However, Bulwer-Lytton didn’t invent the phrase: Washington Irving had used those same words inA History of New York in 1809, and variations appeared even earlier. Bulwer-Lytton gave us the famous opening, rather than the first recorded use.
Then Snoopy took up the typewriter. The Charles M. Schulz Museum dates the beginning of his writing career, complete with that opening line, to July 1965. For many of us, the image of a beagle typing on top of his doghouse is more familiar than the novel that inspired him.
But is starting with the weather actually bad writing?
Elmore Leonard certainly discouraged it. The first of his ten rules for good writing was straightforward: “Never open a book with weather.”
Your opening words have a job to do: Hook the reader. A paragraph about weather doesn’t give them anything to care about.
Consider this opening:
Rain fell steadily over the town. Dark clouds covered the sky, and water streamed along the gutters.
There’s nothing especially confusing about it. It’s raining. We understand. But who cares?
Now try this:
Martin shoved the stolen wedding cake into the passenger seat, started the car and sped off.
That opening gives me a lot of questions. Why is he stealing a wedding cake? Whose cake is it? Is anyone chasing him?
If we need the weather, we can add the rain once Martin has hooked our attention. It might even be useful to escalate the situation.
This is why I really like stories that start with action. Something is happening, and I want to see what happens next. I feel like am in it and moving right away, not some observer standing around looking at the clouds.
Kurt Vonnegut offered a useful companion to Leonard’s advice: “Start as close to the end as possible.” In the same list, he urged writers to give readers information early so they could understand what was happening, where, and why. Together, those ideas suggest an opening that gets moving without leaving the reader behind.
And that’s the risk with starting in the middle of the action. You can get so busy making things happen that you forget to provide enough context to the reader to let them know what any of it means.
For me, the useful question when considering an opening is to ask is: What have I given the reader to care about?
It could be a person trying to get something or a decision with some uncomfortable consequence. It could be a conversation that has already gone wrong. Even ordinary tasks can become interesting when we understand why someone is struggling to complete them.
On your next draft, try removing the first paragraph. Does the story lose anything important?
If not, I think you know what to do with that paragraph.
As long as the opening gives the reader enough information to follow along, you can usually safely cut those sentences.
And if it really must be a dark and stormy night, please give me someone with a reason to be out in the rain.
“Story” is self-evident in fiction – I mean, that is what fiction is after all: a story. But I find it interesting to think about WHY story is so prominent and important to us. Story spans cultures and comes in different forms: short fiction, epic novels, poems, plays, film, art and music.
Story has existed for a long time. The Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2100 BCE, is a collection of poems about the adventures of Sumerian king of Uruk and is commonly recognized to be the earliest written story. We could also argue that cave paintings and relief carvings depicting animal hunts are a form of story and much older.
So why is story so important to us?
Story could have been a way to pass valuable information. Tales of close calls with lions helped others understand dangerous areas of the forest. Stories of successful animal kills helped others in the tribe understand methods of hunting. I can even imagine that fictional tales about monsters roaming outside at night helped parents ensure their kids stayed in bed and didn’t wander off.
But why does that information need to take the form of a story?
Give yourself 30 seconds to memorize these 10 words, and then look away and see how many you can recall:
Now read this story a couple of times and see if you can recall more words:
Ben grabbed his wallet and went out for coffee. Outside the café, a dog was chewing on his owner’s newspaper. While the owner was distracted, the dog’s leash caught a parked bicycle, knocking it into a display of flowers. As Ben helped the owner clean up, rain began to fall, so they ducked into a bakery. His phone buzzed, and he saw a text from his wife: “Did you remember your mother’s birthday?” Ben looked at the cakes and smiled. “Of course.”
When information is put into the form of a story, we tend to remember it more easily. Before the development of writing, oral stories were a way to pass down information about history and culture.
Exaggeration & Emotion
If the story becomes exaggerated to where the seriousness of the events is highlighted, it becomes emotional, resonating with us and making it more memorable. Have you ever had the experience of seeing someone you know you’ve met before and you can’t remember their name, but you know you don’t like them? That is emotion binding to memory.
Exaggeration helps to make the events more severe to the point that we feel them, this makes them stick with us. When that exaggeration passes beyond facts and reality, we have fiction.
Escapism
When a story is told well, we have the ability to relate to the events in a way that makes us feel like we are living them. This escapism becomes an experience and was likely one of the earliest forms of entertainment. The ancient Greek tragedies were thought to allow the audience to experience catharsis. Catharsis was thought to be a way of releasing pent-up emotions as a sort of cleansing relief.
So, the next time you sit down to work on your story, know that you are taking part in a practice that has a long history and spans every culture. Know that, if done well, the words you craft will resonate within every reader who sees them.
… but that all assumes you can find an editor who feels the same way.
They use the same words, but the ellipsis and em dash suggest different things happening.
In the first sentence, the speaker gets cut off. This is typically when they are being interrupted by another character, but could also be interrupted by some event, like an alarm, a door flying open or someone holding their hand up to cut them off.
In the second sentence, the ellipsis suggests the character’s words are fading because the speaker is hesitating for some reason. Oftentimes this indicates a character who is unsure of what to say next or may be changing their mind about what they want to say.
That is where punctuation gets interesting for fiction writers. It can suggest interruption, uncertainty, emphasis, and relationships between thoughts. Combine it with typography and white space, and you can influence how readers experience the action before you explain any of it.
We tend to learn punctuation as a collection of rules we all need to follow so we don’t look like amateurs in front of those gate-keeping editors. We need them to like our stories so they get published, after all. Punctuation, along with typography and white space, is great for conveying action and emotion without actual words. I like to think of these grammatical devices as a sort of subtext. I admit that is probably not the proper way to think of them.
Em dash vs. ellipsis
An em dash (—) commonly signals an abrupt break in dialogue. An ellipsis (…) commonly signals hesitation, faltering, or trailing off. The Chicago Manual of Style describes this distinction, but keep in mind that context still determines what the reader hears.
“Whatever you do, don’t touch the—”
The room went dark.
The dash helps the action interrupt the warning. We do not need to add a bunch of words to describe the character being interrupted, we understand it from that little bit of punctuation. In fact, I would even argue that the dash is better than a bunch of words as it feels immediate. It’s like we just watched it happen.
A dash can also mark a sudden correction:
“I never took your wallet—I mean, I never opened it.”
That little change of direction gives us more than a pause. It gives us a character attempting repairs while the confession is still coming out.
An ellipsis can suggest reluctance without necessarily cutting the character short:
“Yes… technically, the house is still standing.”
The hesitation makes technically considerably less reassuring.
Using hyphens, question marks, and exclamation points to shape delivery
A hyphen can suggest a repeated sound:
“D-don’t open it.”
That differs from a dash cutting off a word:
“Don’t op—”
In the first, the speaker has difficulty getting started. In the second, speech stops abruptly. Use repeated sounds selectively; a little can establish delivery without turning a character’s speech into an obstacle course or a caricature.
A simple change from a period to a question mark can turn an apparent statement into a request for confirmation:
“You sold the car.”
“You sold the car?”
The second sentence might convey disbelief, confusion, or a last desperate hope that someone is joking. The rest of the scene puts the character’s statement or question into context.
An exclamation point can indicate urgency or force:
“Look out!”
A word of caution with exclamation marks: use them sparingly. In Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing, he advises using not more than two or three per 100,000 words. And please never, ever use multiple exclamation marks!!!
Colons, semicolons, and parentheses direct attention
A colon can highlight a reveal:
He had forgotten one small detail: the dog could open doors.
The colon introduces an explanation; dramatically, it positions the payoff. I will often deviate from this and use an em dash, which, while not the most correct, feels the most correct to me.
A semicolon is used to hold two complete, closely related thoughts together:
He locked the front door; the footsteps continued upstairs.
I am uncomfortable with semicolons and tend to agree with Malcolm Gladwell’s point of view. In his MasterClass video, he mentioned preferring to use a period or comma instead of a semicolon.
Parentheses can be used to create an aside, which is good for highlighting or putting a spin of the information.
Martin had a plan (Martin always had a plan), and that made her worried.
The aside lets the narrator lean toward the reader without using a ton more words to convey that. Parentheses can be useful for humor, doubt, or a narrator who keeps revising what is stated.
Italics can change or emphasize what a character means
I like to use italics a lot in my fiction. Italics move the emphasis, which can create a significant change in meaning of the same words. For example:
“I didn’t say you stole it.”
“I didn’t say you stole it.”
“I didn’t say you stole it.”
The first sentence shows us the speaker trying to point out they weren’t the one to say it. The second sentence is leaving room for an accusation that was implied but not spoken and the third sentence suggests a different there was a different thief altogether.
Italics can also indicate thought. This is one of my favorite ways to use italics:
Please let that be the refrigerator, she thought.
Note that thoughts do not have to appear in italics. You can also accomplish this with close narration (also referred to as Deep 3rd POV) can carry the thought without a type change:
Please let that be the refrigerator. She couldn’t handle another ghost.
The Use of Bold, Underlining, and Different Fonts
These should be used sparingly, as they attract more attention. The aforementioned punctuation methods are quite a bit more nuanced and subtle. Bold, underlining and changing fonts hit the reader hard. This can be useful if that is what you are after.
BOLD can be used to do something like indicate a warning on a screen:
DO NOT RESTART THE SIMULATION.
Underlining might matter because a character physically marked a note. You can show it when the format supports it, or make the action part of the prose:
Someone had underlined “alone” three times.
Underlining shows us what is happening and feels more immediate.
Font manipulation is tricky and my advice would be to generally avoid messing with anything other that what the market is asking for. Comedian Don McMillan has a great bit on font choices. He does a better job of explaining it in the first part of his video than I can here.
Using white space to control reveals and comic timing
Paragraph breaks decide which pieces of information readers encounter together.
Compare this:
He checked the closet, the bathroom, and under the bed. Nothing. Then the bed sneezed.
To this:
He checked the closet, the bathroom, and under the bed.
Nothing.
Then the bed sneezed.
The second version has a different beat. The final line arrives independently, with room for the joke (or horror) to land.
The same kind of approach applies to sentence length. Short sentences can feel sharp:
The latch clicked. She froze. Too late.
But a longer sentence can carry momentum:
She caught the handle and pulled and pulled again while the footsteps crossed the landing and stopped outside her door.
Short does not automatically mean fast. Long does not automatically mean slow. Read the passage aloud and notice what the structure asks you to do.
I also want to again mention that you should always follow the market’s submission guidelines. A great story can do a lot to make editors reconsider how strictly they want to adhere to the submission guidelines, but most of the time you are better off doing what it takes to align with their requirements. If you do plan on violating what the publication is asking for by using a strange font or excessive underlining, at least make sure to do it later in the story, after the reader is hooked.
So let me know what you think about this topic and any punctuation or other methods you use to quickly convey action or emotion.
-James
Side note: this is the 100th blog post (which also includes stories I have purchased) for Breaking Into The Craft. Thanks for coming along for the ride!
I often give tips or advice on the rules of writing, or maybe “best practices” is a better term. The beauty of writing is that there are no hard-and-fast rules. Below are some cases where great storytellers effectively broke from commonly accepted practices.
Show, don’t Tell
One that immediately comes to mind is Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. When I read that fantastic book, I kept thinking that he was doing a lot of telling. Card, in fact, has commented on how he feels about the show-don’t-tell argument. In short, he argues that there is a place for both showing and telling and writer’s need to know when to use each, although he is later quoted in the forum as saying “Most storytelling should be just that, telling.”
Maintain a linear Storyline
Another one that comes to mind is the movie Pulp Fiction and its nonlinear story line. That movie changed the perception that an audience (or reader) needs to be fed events in a linear fashion to understand a story. It’s structure was not random. Breaking from the chronological structure gave Tarintino the freedom to:
Open and close with the same restaurant robbery, giving the film a circular shape.
End with Jules’s moral transformation instead of Vincent’s death. I feel this is the larger key aspect; he chose to have the character arc drive the sequence as opposed to showing the events chronologically.
Introduce characters before fully explaining how their stories connect.
Create suspense by withholding context rather than merely withholding outcomes.
Make each short story/video feel like parts of one larger story.
Have One Consistent Narrative Voice
William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, breaks the convention of a story being told from a central narrator. A total of fifteen narrators (with wildly different personalities and mannerisms) tell the story of the Bundren family and their journey, including one character who actually narrates after her own death. It is an interesting approach because the point seems to be that the Bundren family members cannot communicate honestly with one another, so no single member can narrate the entire story.
The Narrator Is Honest
J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye violates several common practices, but the one that stands out in this book is making the narrator an unreliable one. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist, repeats the same words and expressions, wanders into lengthy digressions, contradicts himself. The story has very little actual plot and seems to be mostly an exercise in getting to understand this narrative character. Holden is judgmental, dishonest, and downright not likable. When I read the book, it felt like Holden was either lying to himself or brutally unaware of reality. It was clear that he failed to look at his own hand in ending up where he was or his own ability to make changes in his life he desired (something I feel still burdens a lot of people today). He calls other people “phonies” and insists that he doesn’t care about things that are obviously causing him pain. These weaknesses created one of the most recognizable voices in American fiction, particularly for that time period. Salinger did a great job of turning an unreliable narrator into a form of indirect characterization. We gradually understand Holden because we learn not to trust him.
The Importance of Grammar and Punctuation
E. E. Cummings* is an interesting example when it comes to punctuation. Here is a summary of the conventions he challenged or outright broke:
The omission or repositioning of punctuation.
Selective rather than conventional capitalization.
Words broken apart or combined in unexpected ways.
Fractured sentence structures.
White space and line placement used as part of a poem’s meaning.
Visual arrangements that allowed readers to experience movement on the page.
Keep in mind the writers and storytellers discussed above are masters in their respective crafts. They know where the lines are, what they are risking, and how to tread carefully when they choose to cross them.
For a while, I thought it would be cool to be known for having the gimmick of never naming my main characters in a story. I envisioned how cool it would be for someone later to connect the dots on this in an aha moment and understand it was an intentional thing. Instead, one of the first stories that got rejected had an additional comment along the lines of “And what was the protagonist’s name? It is never mentioned in the story!”
Not that a good writer couldn’t have ever pulled that off, but I learned that people do take notice when you cross that particular line.
How about you? What line have you crossed in your storytelling? What are some boundaries you feel need to be pushed?
There seem to be two basic approaches to character description in fiction.
Method 1: Painting the entire picture
This is the method I grew up learning in high school creative writing classes: lots of adjectives and descriptive details intended to paint a complete picture of the character for the reader.
I think authors can sometimes fall into the trap of believing this is what “good writing” is supposed to look like. The more detailed the description, the better the writing. But it can easily be overdone.
Much like fractals, or measuring a coastline, you have a nearly unlimited ability to zoom in on a character at finer and finer resolution. You can go on and on describing infinitely finer detail as to the hair, the eyes, the clothes, the wrinkles, the way someone stands and on and on.
The problem this often creates is something I call letting the words get in the way of the story.
Too many adjectives or too much descriptive prose creates a longer journey for the reader to get to the underlying plot. That doesn’t mean detailed description is bad. Sometimes the details matter. They can establish mood, tell us something important about a character or even reveal something about the plot, but the question is whether the detail is actually doing something for the story.
Here is an example:
She held the white, dew-covered lilies at her side.
vs.
She held the delicate, white, fragrant, dew-covered, freshly cut lilies at her side.
We do “see” a lot more when it comes to the lilies, but is that really important to the story or is the main point that we understand she has the lilies and they are being held at her side for some reason? Note that “dew-covered” could also be cut if there isn’t an important reason for us to know that.
I try to use no more than two adjectives in series to describe something, sometimes three at the very most if I feel I really need to have it.
Method 2: Giving the reader just enough
The second approach is what I think of as the Stephen King method: provide enough detail for the reader to get a feel for the character, but allow the reader’s imagination to fill in the rest.
King will often give a character some kind of hook: a memorable physical trait, habit, or mannerism that helps us quickly orient ourselves to which character we are reading about.
This is particularly useful in the kind of fiction King often writes: long novels such as It and The Stand, with large casts of characters who may disappear for many pages before showing up again. Giving a character a memorable trait helps the reader recognize them when they return.
I also think part of King’s strategy is to avoid giving us the entire character all at once.
Instead, he organically reveals more details along the way. We learn about the character as they move through the story through actions and dialogue.
In some ways, this is closer to how we actually get to know people.
When you first meet someone, you don’t receive a paragraph describing everything about them. You notice a few things. Then, over time, you learn more. I am not sure if he has ever said this in an interview or a talk, but I feel like it is one of his strategies.
The answer is likely somewhere in the middle
As with many things in writing, taking either approach to an extreme can become problematic.
Describe too much and you let the words get in the way of the story.
Describe too little and we risk the reader not identifying with the characters.
For me, the key is to allow character description to serve the story rather than compete with it.
What do you think? Do you prefer detailed character descriptions, or would you rather have the author give you just enough and let your imagination fill in the rest?
Regular readers of this Blog have probably picked up on my fascination with AI and its impact on writing.
The term AI-Slop is thrown around a lot today. And certainly, there is a lot of it. But this is not AI’s doing. If you believe AI is a tool, like I do, then you can quickly see how it is the improper use of that tool by PEOPLE that creates the slop. The slop comes from people. AI is how they make it.
Imagine if everyone suddenly got a shop full of new power tools and a free supply of lumber and nails. Some wouldn’t have any interest in using the tools at all. But there would still be a lot of people attempting to build furniture and other creations with their new tool set. Unfortunately, only a few of those people would create something truly worthwhile. I suspect those people would likely be the ones who already knew how to build something beautiful. I think this is true with AI as well.
It is never the tool; it’s the craftsperson behind it.
When it comes to AI and writing, I also like to think about the emotional involvement we tend to have in our own stories. Do we care as much about something written in part, or whole, by AI? I suspect not.
My mother has written two books containing various stories about her life and the people she has known through the years. If all of those stories were fed into AI, I suspect AI could have come up with a book as well. I am sure it would read factually and be grammatically perfect.
But I am also certain it could not tell those stories in anywhere close to the same way my mother can tell a story. She is a natural storyteller. In conversation she often leads with a shocking opening:
“I suppose you heard so-and-so was killed by a runaway giraffe at the Zoo.”
OK, that giraffe bit was made up, but this is her exact “shocker” structure. I always found the “I suppose you heard” bit interesting. I think she chooses that opening phrase as it has such a casual, conversational, feel that it heightens how much you get sandbagged by the shocking part.
She also likes to build to a twist or surprise when she can. Here is an example of something she actually told me (Note the name has been changed):
“I suppose you heard your Terri is in Las Vegas getting married.”
“What? When did this happen?”
“We’ll there’s probably a reason she had to get married so quickly”
That there, my friends, is a pro in action.
I am analytical, so my default is to deliver information fast and factual. My tale would have been:
“Terri got pregnant so she and her boyfriend went to Las Vegas to get married.”
Still shocking news but not that sweet double-punch set-up of the natural story teller.
I don’t see AI doing that kind of set-up. Not just yet anyway. Will it be able to in the future? Maybe. Probably, in fact. But it still won’t have the connection. AI doesn’t care who Terri is. It doesn’t care about her current situation nor know how any of that that should impact the audience.
So, while there will undoubtedly be a lot of AI generated content that we will need to to swim through in our collective future, I have faith that the hand of the human author still has a place to write and express in a way AI will never be able to emulate completely.
AI helped me to confirm something I have long suspected: The audience for short story fiction is smaller than other markets. (And, yes, whether you can believe AI is certainly always in question).
When I asked it what markets and media have the most appetite for fiction it came up with this chart below (note that I also found it interesting how it put in “Money” and “Fame potential” as metrics along side “audience size”):
While I am not sure if this is exactly correct (graphic novels & webtoons ranked way higher than I would have thought), it does confirm my suspicions that people are watching a lot more than reading. The one exception being novels still ranking really high.
This doesn’t mean there is no market for the written word, just that it will be an uphill battle if your goal is to get your short story published in a written format.
Since I am interested in storytelling in general I am working on converting my fiction story Thin Red Linesto a short You Tube video. And, yeah, in order to do that in the most efficient and cost effective way, I am going to use AI.
Before you start searching for your pitchforks, know that I draw the line at AI editing or creating any of the story I have written – the words will still be mine – I am having it do the video and audio. And, sure, maybe this is me justifying it to myself.
I am going to include this disclaimer at the beginning of the video:
You should also know that I am not after a quicky, wham-bam AI slop production. Like many of us, this story is my offspring, one of my literary children, so I want the final product to represent the tale I envision.
I can tell you, after a few days of working with Chat GPT for images, Google Flow for visuals and Eleven labs for audio, getting AI to provide anything close to what I envision is proving an exercise in frustration.
I often liken using AI iteratively like this as the same as working with a petulant child – sometimes they do exactly what you want and other times they stubbornly refuse to do what you are after no matter how much you try to persuade, explain, and re-frame.
Let me know if you have ever tried creating AI videos for your stories – or if you ever would?
An onus we writers have is to be very deliberate with our wording.
I was reminded of this recently when I saw one of my favorite pet peeves: the improper use of the word “infinite.”
I am a technical person, so my pet peeve rears its ugly head when I see someone use “infinite” to describe a feature that allows for “continuous” control or adjustment. This is typically when someone is describing a speed control that has a range from zero to 1,000 RPM and can be finely tuned to any speed in between. This, as opposed to a control that only allows for speed control to the nearest hundred RPM – like 100, 200, 300 and so on.
The range of 0 to 1,000 is not the same as infinite– which means “without end.” You can’t set it to 1,001 RPM or -10 RPM for example. There is an upper and lower bound.
Now, it could be argued that there is an infinite number of speeds between zero and 1,000 RPM much in the same way there are infinite decimal numbers between 0 and 1,000. However, that is not true from a practical standpoint. 500 RPM and 500.0000001 RPM likely have no tangible difference in most applications. Or we could take the decimals out to a point where we would hit physical limitations of the motor before we exhaust infinity.
So, my term for this kind of controller situation is “continuous.” That makes a lot more sense to me
Should this bother me? No, probably not.
But should a writer pay attention to details like this? Yes, I think we need to be good stewards of the language and take responsibility for such details.
But there are a couple of ways to look at such a thing:
We should be diligent about using words in the manner in which the dictionary defines them.
We should be faithful to the way in which it is used in practice, by the audience at large and the culture in which our story finds itself.
The first is easy to understand, but what do I mean by the second point? This is basically another way of saying “Write to your audience.” If I find that the group I am writing toward uses the word infinite instead of continuous, I may actually confuse that audience when I use the technically correct term. Note that there is another choice: I could describe the speed control using both terms, such as “…the motor is infinitely adjustable over a continuum of between 0 and 1000 RPM.” A bit wordy, but you get the idea.
There is a 3rd (and probably the most fun) way in which specific words can be selected and that is the manner in which characters in your stories use language. If the word “dog” is redefined to mean something we would never use it for — say, a sunspot — then this builds a lot of interesting dynamics to the world in which your characters find themselves.
Note that word redefinition should not be random, but make sense within that world and have some sort of natural, organic beginning and evolution. For example, maybe in the world in which “dog” means “sunspot” there was a historical event where a scientist determined how to use labradoodles to detect solar activity. OK, I am being a bit silly, but I think you see where this line of thinking is going. There should always be a reason for the words used within a language.
What you think? Should we writers be dogmatic and stick to the dictionary approved usage for words or can we take liberties by using the words the audience may related to or redefine words to mean something else entirely within in our stories?
One of the most common problems I see in newer writers is the idea that mystery automatically creates interest.
It can, of course. Suspense matters. Curiosity matters. The reader absolutely wants a reason to keep turning pages.
But a lot of novice writers end up holding back so much information that it becomes difficult to care about the main character. This makes the whole story hard to care about. The reader becomes confused, and confusion is one of the main reasons readers quit reading.
There is a real difference between making the reader ask, “What happens next?” and making them ask, “What is going on here, and why should I care?”
Driving curiosity
Readers do not keep reading just because information is missing. They keep reading because they have just enough information that they want more.
They need to understand who they are following, what appears to be happening, and what kind of direction the scene is moving in. They do not need every answer right away but they do need enough clarity to form questions that feel meaningful.
If I open a story and a woman runs out of a church crying, clutching a torn envelope, I already have something to hold onto. I may not know what was in the envelope. I may not know why she is crying. But I understand enough about her plight to feel pulled forward. I have some open questions that keep me interested: Why is she crying? What is in the envelope that has her so upset? Why is she fleeing the church?
If, on the other hand, if the woman is crying and she doesn’t understand why or we are not given enough hints to suggest why, then that kind of mystery often creates distance instead of momentum. This is especially true if the reason for the crying remains open for a long time.
Withholding everything is rarely the answer
I think a lot of new writers believe that if they explain too much, they will ruin the suspense but usually the opposite happens.
When writers withhold too much, the story starts to feel evasive. Scenes hint at danger without defining any real stakes or conflict. The reader is expected to stay invested without being given enough reason to keep going.
You only need to hold back the key information
We do not need to hide a lot. We just need to hide the right thing(s).
Let the reader know the scene, the character’s emotional charge, and the general direction. Hold back the one crucial piece that changes how we interpret it.
Good mystery fiction is a great example of this. A detective can arrive at a crime scene, notice the broken watch, the open window, the missing photograph, and the mud on the carpet. This gives us a lot to work with. The writer is not starving us of information. The writer is guiding our attention while withholding the one or more facts that will reframe everything for us later on.
This set up feels satisfying to the reader because they are engaged in active discovery.
Suggest a direction
One of the best ways to keep readers hooked without becoming obscure is to suggest a direction.
Even if the final destination turns out to be different from what the reader expected, that sense of the story “going somewhere” is important. It gives the reader a line to follow.
If the story offers no direction at all, the reader has to do too much work just to understand why the scene exists. Sadly, sometimes a scene like that shouldn’t exist.
A few useful examples
I remember reading Shirley Jackson’s The LotteryIn high school. It’s a great example of controlled withholding. Jackson does not explain everything right away, but instead gives the reader a clear setting, a social ritual, and an ever-growing sense that something isn’t quite right. But she does it in a way where the story doesn’t feel vague. The withheld information is such that we don’t feel lost in the story or confused. She omitted just enough and that kind of precision is what gives the twist ending its force.
You can also see this in film. In Jaws, we do not need endless concealment to feel tension. We know there is a shark. We know the beach town is in danger. We know Brody is heading toward a confrontation. The intrigue comes from escalation and anticipation. There are specific details – in particular the sight of the shark – that is withheld in a way that builds wonderful tension. If you have a chance watch jaws again, it is interesting to see how little of the shark is actually shown. So much is revealed by showing us the effects of the shark but not the shark itself.
Readers want discovery
Readers love putting clues together. They love sensing that there is more beneath the surface. They love the moment when a scene shifts and something clicks into place.
If you want people asking, “What happens next?” then give them just enough to believe the answer will be worth it.
Hold back one or two key pieces but suggest a direction. Then let your story lead the reader into discovery.
A good question to ask while revising
When I am looking at a scene that is supposed to feel suspenseful or curious, I like to ask myself:
Am I causing the reader to leaning forward into the story, or am do I have them confused?
This is a lot trickier to answer than it seems. We know everything about the story so it is hard to fully picture where we might be leaving out too much. We often expect the reader to make bigger jumps and put more together than they often can because we know how it all fits. This is where clarity is once again king. Note that clarity is not the same as revelation. you can be clear and still withhold key information.
If the scene is clear about character, stakes, and objectives (telling us why we should care) , the reader will usually lean into the story. If the scene is built on a hazy reality with a lot of omission, the reader will usually drift away. I see this a lot in stories where the protagonist is unaware of where they are and what they are doing there. Starting with amnesia is a tricky bit. I loved the movie (and the book even more so) Project Hail Marybut I felt that aspect should have been done differently.
Let me know in the comments below what your thoughts are on how to omit key information and still keep the story engaging.
One of the most common weak spots I see in submissions is the lack of a real story arc or character arc.
Unfortunately, this is a frequent reason I reject stories.
Often, what I receive is not actually a full story but a scene. Something happens. It may be vividly written. It may even have an interesting premise. But the protagonist is not really challenged, doesn’t (or can’t) struggle against any significant conflict, and does not change in any meaningful way.
The protagonist should want something, face obstacles, and have to figure something out, fight against something, or make a meaningful choice. The plot should put pressure on the protagonist. Their actions should matter. By the end, something should be different: externally, internally, or, hopefully, both.
Many of the submissions I see feature a protagonist who is simply carried through events. Things happen to them, but they do not take part in shaping the outcome. As a result, the piece can feel static, even when the writing and premise are strong.
Story Arc:
To me, a story arc is the shape of the plot that happens around the character. There is a school of thought that there is really only one plot line: the Hero’s journey. I have mentioned the Hero’s journey before and that’s a topic deserving of a whole blog post of its own.
Character Arc:
A character arc is should be thought of in terms of personal growth. How did the events change the character by the end of the story? What did they learn and how are they different? In the Hero’s Journey the hero comes home at the end but is changed and often sees the familiar world they came back to in a different light.
Great stories have both a strong story arc and a strong character arc.
And if I have rejected a story you submitted for one or both of these reasons, don’t feel bad, This is understandable because many stories start getting written when the author has a general scene or idea in mind. But the next step should be to ask more of your creation. What does the protagonist want? What stands in the way? And, most importantly, what will this experience cost them or teach them?
Without that, a piece tends to feel like an interesting scene rather than becoming a fully realized story.
Three Key Questions to Ask yourself about what you just wrote
What does my protagonist want, and why can’t they have it? (Tip of the hat to David Mamet for this one) A story needs desire and opposition to create what I like to call “driving conflict.”
Does my protagonist make choices or take actions that affect the outcome? The protagonist should have an opportunity to shape the events of the story. They should not be merely a victim (Note that a lot of horror stories I see end up this way. If you are writing horror make sure your protagonist has at least a glimmer of hope to win.)
How is my protagonist changed by the end of the story? Character change does not have to be positive (maybe they become morally worse for the experience) but something about them should change by the end of the story.
Hopefully this helps you to look at your writing from a new perspective. If you take the time to really understand story arc and character arc, it will absolutely make your stories stronger and more engaging.
