Getting to the Point, part 2

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(No, the irony that a post about getting to the point is a multi-parter is not lost on me.)

Carrie, in her post about putting down books, talks at length about pacing in terms of getting to the point. If your book has a particular hook, she says, you shouldn’t wait to get us to that point in the story.

On Monday we discussed this in general terms. Getting to the story question, avoiding extraneous backstory, sprinkling characterization in, etc. Note: I’m a big believer that you have to care about a character before you can care what happens to her. How the reader goes about caring doesn’t much matter. He can feel sympathy for her, or like her, or identify with her — any number of things. And depending on how this is approached, it can be done very quickly. It can be done in a line, in the midst of an action sequence, you name it. But however you choose to do it, it should not be done at the expense of the story.

In her post, Carrie discusses getting to the point and avoiding teasing the reader about a surprise she knows is coming, in terms of my debut:

I think a perfect example of this is Diana Peterfreund’s Secret Society Girl. The whole book is about the main character getting tapped into the elite, previously all male secret society. We know this from the blurb. Of course Diana can’t just have that be the very first page (actually, I’m sure she could have, but she chose not to). Instead, the character thinks she’s being tapped for another society.

Aww, thanks. I’m glad it worked for you!

I was very conscious of this during writing, especially since I knew that a large portion of the book would concern itself with the juicy minutiae of secret society life — Amy getting interviewed, Amy getting tapped, Amy getting initiated, etc.* So I do make a point of saying that on the first page. The prologue, where Amy speaks directly to the reader, foreshadows the event on which my hook is based, dispels the suspense, and gives us a glimpse into the heroine’s “ordinary world.” I think the misdirection works better if you give them a little something to tide them over first first, as I did in the prologue.**

A great example of this is the first Men in Black movie. The opening scene shows the MIB killing an alien, so in the first scene with Will Smith, where he is chasing what he thinks is an ordinary criminal, we aren’t bored. We know he will eventually figure out it’s an alien, but we’re having a lot of fun while we wait and see how. I’m working a similar situation in SSG. We know, if not from the blurb, then from the prologue, that Amy is going to be tapped into Rose & Grave. She doesn’t, but it’s amusing to watch her figure it out.

At the same time, this can’t go on too long, or the character will begin to look stupid. The first chapters of the book also covered several details that I find most fascinating about society life: the fact that societies interview you without revealing who they are, and the campus culture at schools where there organizations are high profile. What is happening to her goes against everything she understands about her college. In this light, the confusion makes more sense and highlights one of the themes of the series: how Amy’s life in the society intersects and conflicts with her barbarian life.

If this was all the first few chapters were about I would have been chomping at the bit. I’d have wanted to hit Amy over the head and say “yo, figure it out!” Instead Diana made these scenes pull double and triple duty – introducing us to Amy: her world, her goals, her reality – really letting us get to know Amy so that we understand what it means when she finally figures out what’s up. So those first chapters aren’t just us wondering what society Amy’s been tapped into, it’s about Amy’s life as a whole. In the same way the book isn’t only about the society, but choices that Amy has to make about her life. As readers, we weren’t just sitting around waiting for Amy to figure out what we already knew.

I’m really glad Carrie noticed this. It goes back to the “ordinary world” scene I was talking about earlier. I knew that Amy’s life, once she met the dynamic society members, was going to be a whirlwind. I had to make sure that her barbarian friends, Lydia and Brandon, were emphasized as early as possible. Readers care about whoever they meet first. If they are already caring about George, they won’t believe me when I say that Amy cares about Brandon more. They don’t know Brandon more, and it will ring false that we’re supposed to care about him.

In Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld, the main character, Tally, talks to her best friend Peris right in the beginning. It was essential that she do this before she and her new best friend, the also-ugly Shay, really bonded. Otherwise, we may not believe later that Peris can talk Tally into betraying her new friend so she can be with him again.*****

But it’s tricky to get all this information across — characters, worldbuilding, etc. and not bore the reader to death before you get to the point. I was watching the DVD extras for The Notebook, and I have to say, it’s made me a bit of a fan of Nicholas Sparks. He talks in the commentary about having this whole chapter where Noah is in the war and explaining what happens to him and then, as he was revising, he thought to himself that, though interesting, it said nothing about the core focus of the story, which was the romance, so he cut it down from 9 pages to 6, and then from 6 to one, and so on, until he was left with one sentence about having a book of poetry that “once took a bullet for him in the war.” That was a great piece of advice, about really concentrating on the story, and trying to make anything that informs the character do as much work as possible in as little space. Noah: Whitman fan and WWII vet.

It’s hard to do what Sparks did — to cut out ten pages of your book at a go. Whenever I cut a scene out of a book, I miss it like a limb. I can feel its ghost every time I read the place where the scene went. I have trouble remembering that it’s not there anymore. But figuring out a way to get the information across in the shortest, easiest way and not belabor your points is essential to commercial fiction.

On Monday, I said: No, I’m not going to tell you when is too long. It’s entirely dependent on the story. But ASAP is my own personal rule. I’ve been known to rewrite books so things happen sooner, sooner sooner.

Still, it’s not cut and dry. That’s where the “AP” part of ASAP comes in. Sometimes, drawing it out a little bit makes the story stronger. Pacing isn’t only about going faster. Sometimes, it’s about going more slowly. How many times have you read a book and thought it felt rushed?

So, I have a character who, according to the hook of my book, which is stated clearly in both the cover copy and the first page, joins the most powerful society on campus. I name this society on the seventh page of text (which is page 11). I cast doubt on Amy’s assumptions about another society six pages later, and reveal it’s Rose & Grave who taps her about halfway through chapter two, on page 31. By the end of chapter two, she’s been tapped.

But what else has happened in those two chapters? As Carrie pointed out, we are learning about Amy’s character, her goals and internal conflicts (i.e., Brandon), and we’re also learning about the world in which she lives, and the society that she’s a part of… but we’re also setting the stage for her future intrigue. Though neither Amy nor the reader knows it at the time, they’re also being introduced to two other central characters in the story, and gaining insight into their relationship and very different personalities.

Being a storyteller is about making all of these choices, and balancing them so as to create the desired effects, and one size will not fit all. Pacing is a tool in the writer’s arsenal.

When I critique, or revise, or read, and find myself thinking about pacing problem, I most often think that the pace at the beginning should speed up, and at the end should slow down. I’m not sure why this is. I think because at the beginning I’m waiting for stuff to happen, I want to find a reason to get lost in the story, and at the end, I care so much, I want to savor every bit, I want the fun to never end. What do you think?
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*That’s part of the hook as well: it’s an insight into this secret world.

**Some people are militantly anti-prologue. This is because there are a whole lotta prologues out there that are excruciatingly unnecessary. Sometimes, new writers think that books have to have a prologue, and so call what should be chapter one a prologue. Other people use a prologue to dump all kinds of backstory. I’m not anti-prologue, but I think they should be used sparingly and wisely.

***But it was not essential for us to see how friendly she and Peris once were. That’s too far back in the story. Start at the moment of change. For Tally, it was being alone after her other friends had gone pretty, and meeting Shay, who never wanted to be pretty.

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