Three Reasons Your Story Feels Flat

When we generate story ideas, we see them in our minds as perfect gems of literature. When we translate that image into words in a manuscript, even the best fall short of our imagination. Here are three reasons stories can fall flat to readers.

Characters act and speak in a vacuum

Sometimes we’re so energized by a story we just start writing. This happens most often with short stories but a novel can start this way too. This often leads to characters speaking to each other in sections of dialogue where the reader has no sense of where the characters are, what their body-language is communicating, or even when the scene takes place. Be sure to infuse all the senses in a scene, even if that scene consists mostly of dialogue. Make sure the dialogue advances plot, character, or the world, or better, at least two if not all three. Remember: who, what, where, when, and why.

Simple actions can say a lot, and help reduce the number of he/she/they said tags. Something like: “Did you hone the edge of that blade for Rugar?” she asked, could be turned into: Salia tossed Edric her whetstone. “Did you hone the edge of that blade for Rugar?” That implies things about both characters. Does Salia not trust Edric to get things done? Does he fail to keep his promises? Is he always unprepared, and she the opposite? In the story’s context, these details reinforce character.

There’s an info-dump

To get the story on the page we feel the need to include all the information we, the authors, know. How else will the reader understand? Often less is more. Readers need to fill in blanks using their own imagination. It’s why they read. Use details to hint and reveal just enough to keep them reading. Provide the reader with just what they need to know right-at-that-moment in the story. Details are like spice. Sprinkle them in but don’t overdo it.

Characters Lack Unique Voices

When a character walks into a story, the reader wants to identify with them or at least see them as unique from all other characters. Any speaking character, even non-POV characters, need a unique voice or presence. This can be challenging, especially when there are many POV characters already and lots of extras as is common in epic fantasy and space opera. There’s often a temptation to provide introductory back-story, but that risks creating many small info-dumps and slows the story’s pacing.

Like details, small character tags can quickly establish a character. Something like: Avrex wore his long black hair in a flowing braid clasped at the end with his family’s signet. This can signal status, and a certain vanity just by tagging the braid and how he wears it. Other characters may have braids, but do they advertise their family with them?

There are many reasons stories feel flat. It could be the central idea just isn’t as compelling as we thought. But reviewing these three elements can help bring a story to life.

What techniques have you used to liven a story?

Creative Recharge

We’re at that time of year many of us find hectic and demanding. Then we flow right into the new year and feel pressure (external or internal) to make resolutions and changes. All of this can harm you, for real. It can also beat your creative energies into submission so deep you won’t see them until April. What’s a creative writer to do?

If you can follow advice such as slow down, take everything one minute at a time, breathe and make mindful choices, go ahead, maybe all you need is a reminder to do those things. But what about the rest of us? I’m no therapist, but I’ve found a few concrete things that work for me.

Health

First, I keep to my health routine. Sure I eat more than I should during the holidays, but I don’t eat everything that looks good. I pick the things I enjoy the most. If I overdo so much I feel guilty, then my creative energy suffers. I exercise according to my normal schedule. Those endorphins feed creativity.

That Mindfulness Thing

A lot goes into living a mindful life, but the element I try to stick to is being single-minded in purpose and task. We can’t do everything. Multi-tasking is a proven a fallacy. It’s time-slicing. Think about that. We only have so much time, and when we think we’re multitasking, we’re just dividing that limited time into smaller and smaller chunks. Concentration goes up the chimney. One task, one focus. I get more tasks done and they are better quality. I do this all the time, but the end of the year and start of a new one invite disruption and I have to guard actively against it.

Reading

As I’ve written before, reading fires creative synapses as well or better than anything else. Make time to read. Retreat to your favorite spot and enjoy a good book, story, or collection of poems. I can’t read more than a paragraph without ideas flowing.

Routine

Finally, if you have a creative work routine, keep it. I may not work as many hours, and I might skip a day or two, but generally, I keep writing. I do it not because I’m working toward a deadline (though I have deadlines) but because I love writing. Writing is my creative release AND my creative regeneration. Writing today makes me want to write tomorrow.

Enjoy the season. Allow it to rebuild and restore your creative self. Don’t let it dictate your actions and knock you down.

How do you keep your creative writing life active and energized through the holiday season?

Word-count Doesn’t Matter

Many of us have spent the month pouring out words to make our 1,667 word daily goal for our NaNoWriMo novels. How many days did you hit the goal? How often did you write more, or less?

It doesn’t matter.

It also doesn’t matter if you wrote 50,000 words of something resembling a novel or 25,000 words of rough notes. Why? Because writing takes time, thought, and effort. Often, especially when we are starting, we are writing to ourselves; writing to discover.

Writing is an odd activity. It is both a craft and an art. You can follow a pattern or you can simply wing it with no idea what will show up on the page. Often the intent to write a novel doesn’t lead to one. Sometimes a short story will develop into a novel. Telling ourselves we will write a novel in November may be the wrong way to start.

Creativity Matters. Art Matters

What matters is the creative intention, and the art that sometimes results. The words will come later. I argue they’ll flow and word-count will soar. Writing takes long concentration, even when writing a popular thriller. There’s a deep craft to writing such stories well. We need creative concentration to produce anything of worth.

Often, the words building new stories come slowly because we’re discovering. We deliberate and make choices over each sentence. Is this part of the story? What is this character telling me about themselves? How is this world shaping itself with each description?

We need time to let the story bake. It’s like forming a dough and shaping it into a crust, then baking it. Once we have the shell, and the story is firm in our minds, we can then pour in the word filling.

Get to Know Your Story

Some NaNo participants spend October, and even part of September going through that early writing stage. I’ve found I’m not really an outliner, but I’m not a pantser either. Apparently I’m what’s called a plantser. I wrote a long series of notes about what my novel was about and what happened in it. I thought I was prepared for NaNoWriMo. I wasn’t. The story didn’t really move during the first two weeks. I wrote words, but I knew few of them would ever make it into the story. I stopped writing for a few days and thought about what I had written. I thought more about what I hadn’t.

During those two days my story-world changed drastically. A key non-POV character emerged as a secondary POV, and a plot line I had dropped suddenly became workable. Once those pieces fell into place, I knew the story—really knew it. I couldn’t have reached that point without writing the first 12,000 words. I wrote over 3,000 words every day for the next ten. I’m still writing above the 1,667 target because the words come easy now.

Give yourself time to let the story sink in. Think about the choices you’ve made. Listen to your characters. Observe your world. Follow the logic of your plot. Then let the words flow.

You might only have those 900 words, but they may tell you something. The words you haven’t found may be there between the lines. Read what you’ve written; soak in the words and let your creative intention consider them. No words you write are ever wasted words. Story matters more than word-count.

How has your NaNoWriMo gone?

Recommended Fiction: A Memory Called Empire

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

ISBN13: 9781250186430

Recommended Fiction is a new feature on the Epos blog. The idea is to share great speculative and fantasy books that can teach a writer something and is a great read.

Arkady Martine’s space opera, A Memory Called Empire is an intimate look at empire seen from within by an outsider. That unique point of view is one of the driving forces in the book. There is plenty of technology and all the political intrigue a galactic empire can produce.

What makes this a great read is the focus on characters at a personal level rather than scenes focused on the plots and machinations. The reader cares about the characters caught up in all the infighting and intrigue rather than the intrigue itself.

It is the connections between characters and their setting that authors should note. We take for granted that characters will connect to other characters, but it is the connection to setting—their place in the world that deepens the story and builds the emotional resonance.

The worldbuilding is rich and complex and is worth studying as an author. Using language and ideas about how people communicate, and how an empire disseminates information is original and fitting a story dealing with colonization. Using poetry to record history and produce propaganda is also unique for Science Fiction.

A Memory Called Empire is rich in ideas and thought provoking challenges to tropes that should make fellow writers re-examine their own works in progress.