how to make your story 100% better by attacking it with a machete
This classic wisdom has been much on my mind the last week because I’ve been looking at something I wrote years ago, still searching for my voice and with very little professional craft. I’ve been hard-pressed to choose which has been more startling: how delightful the story was or how much dross one has to sift through to find it. Ah, if only I’d had a flamethrower back then.
In honor of the spookiest month on the calendar, I thought I’d do a series on how to whip your WIP into a work of wonder with a bit of hack ‘n slash.
For any non-writers or newly-budding authors reading this, the phrase goes: kill your darlings. There are times when the words flow and times when every ‘the’ and ‘but’ comes out like a pulled tooth. Objectivity can be difficult and our work is precious to us: it can be hard to hit ‘delete.’ It’s also the single most powerful editing tool available to you.
When it comes to space on the page, writing is zero sum game: anything not actively contributing to the reading experience is detracting from it.
You’re fighting to hold your reader’s attention. If you bore them, they may look away. Once they’ve looked away, they may put your book down. Once they’ve put your book down, will they pick it up again?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying your writing has to be Spartan. I’m not suggesting you reduce your story to a hopscotch of action sequences and dialogue. But there’s always space to prune, and sometimes we look right past the passages most in need of a hero with a sword.
Or a psycho with a chainsaw, if we want to stay on-message.
Episode 1: queue the sinister clown
Observational humor
I love a good laugh as much as the next guy, but this type of comedy is hard to do right and almost always feels forced in the context of a novel. It often gives me 4th-wall anxieties, because it feels as if the narrator is speaking directly to me, telling me a joke. If that’s how your story works, that’s awesome, kick that wall down like Deadpool in a love-fueled monologue! But you can’t do something that paradigm-altering only twice in a novel and expect people not to be knocked from the narrative.
Anyway — sorry standups — these jokes are frequently not as witty as you think; they come off smug and alienating.
Humor, done well, is a wonderful addition to any story; I’m not suggesting you shy away from it. My point is, look elsewhere. Like everything in your story, humor should fit into, rather than sit on top of, the narrative: look for laughs that progress the plot, acted out by your characters.
- banter: the cut and thrust of great dialogue never fails to bring a smile. Think most everything said by Tyrion Lannister.
- slapstick: it’s juvenile and almost irresistible. The madcap drunken battle scenes of Sergeant Helian are hilarious and hair-raising.
- potty humor: puerile and also universal. Everyone is grossed out by poop and terrified of wardrobe malfunctions. Making a character’s pants fall down isn’t a cheap way to get a laugh, it’s a clever way to make the reader root for them
If you feel like you could be doing more than farts and pratfalls, you know your voice best. I would submit, though, that wordplay be your go-to, not social commentary. In Miéville’s Kraken, there’s a line that makes me snicker every time it comes to mind: “It couldn’t possibly not be there, and yet there is was, not.” Honestly, that slays me.
If it isn’t brief and on-point, however, get out your pen and stab it to death.
Congratulations! You’ve killed that creep in face-paint and floppy shoes. Next week: are your characters hiding behind a wall of chainsaws?
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