Three Torpedoes To Sink Your Story

...out from under readers

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Lusitania 

by Norman Wilkinson, 1907

In May 1915, the passengers on the ocean liner Lusitania were not expecting to get torpedoed and sunk. They were just cruising across the Atlantic Ocean, en route to Europe for work or pleasure. But they were torpedoed, and it only took 18 minutes to sink the ship right out from under them. Same for those on the Athena in 1939: just taking the cruise and down went the ship.

Reading a novel is, for many readers, like taking a cruise: they want to get on board, relax, and enjoy the trip all the way to their destination. After decades as a writer, literary juror and editor, I’ve seen a lot of openings. The following common torpedoes have me disembarking before the ship is fully clear of the wharf.

First, a framework: in naval warfare, the first torpedo is generally a range finder, to give the gunner an estimate of distance and angle of fire. Sometimes it hits square on the fuel tanks and sinks the ship. More often, a second torpedo, better-aimed, follows the first. If that one doesn’t crack the ship wide open, it cripples it, leaving a stationary target for that third torpedo. The third one sinks it for sure.

In reading, that third kaboom is the moment your opening sinks. The potential reader, or agent, or editor sets it down, clicks <delete>, looks for a different cruise…. er, story. 

 

What are these torpedoes that sink your opening, and thus your novel, for readers both pro and amateur?

 

1.  The characters we meet are as anonymous as uniformed cabin stewards in a foredeck full of them.

a.       There are no nametags.

                                                               There are very few stories where it’s appropriate or useful to make a mystery of a character’s name. If they’re not the secret stalker/killer/malevolent entity whose identity will be revealed at the horrifying climax, then skip the awkward, faux-suspense tags of ‘the man’ or ‘she’ or ‘the woman with the brown hair’ and give the character’s name.

b.       There’s no memorable feature to help me identify a character when I next see them.

                                                               If you really, truly can’t give the name without ruining the plot (and even if you do), offer readers a memorable description. June should not be described as ‘brown-haired, medium height, in white dress uniform’ unless she’s also ‘lean as a greyhound, with a sharp nose and long canines that imply she’ll bite any hand that tries to feed her.’ Davro might make a fetish out of being invisible in uniform unless (the narrator tells us) ‘one noticed the marginal inward trend of their left knee, that caused a slight hitch any time they ascended the stairs.’

c.       They’re neither one gender nor both nor neither.

                                                              Like it or not, at the moment of introduction most readers still tick off gender on their mental character chart to help differentiate the players going forward. Unless it’s vital to the plot to keep this secret, use character pronouns as well as their names. “Guy’s a macho (or butch) gym-rat escorting Gerry-Lyn, whose piled-high hair rivals Dolly Parton’s.” (Trick question: is GL’s hair naturally big or a wig for their upcoming drag show?) Their getaway driver is Sam, the delinquent daughter of a media mogul.”

If a character’s name, appearance, and gender are left in limbo, the reader questions why they’re hiding it, looks for clues about that, and loses focus on the author’s careful setup of the inciting incident.

Is this one torpedo, or two, or three? 

That depends how tired and cranky the reader is feeling. For some it's just a few waves. For others, when they learn on page 25 that the character they’ve painfully pinned together from random phrases barely resembles the one the author placed on the ship, they’re not just confused but annoyed. Annoyed readers are more likely to sink this story and seek out a different cruise. 

 

2.    I don’t know where this character is.

a.       They’re bantering like a high-stakes ping-pong match but their snappy dialogue might as well be bobbing speech-balloons against an all-white background for all the locating information I have.

                                                              Readers who don’t know whether the character is standing on earth or floating in space soon feel queasy on a visceral level. Then you have work to convince them to stay on board. “This cruise is going to be fun, I promise. See that swimming pool? See that waiter with the tray of umbrella drinks?”

                                                             Avoid reader seasickness from the start by orienting them in the space. Show these characters walking past the pool during their ping-pong fast banter. Better yet, let readers experience the surroundings via the characters: blinking against the glare on the rippling water, speaking over the squeak of floating toys, chilling their fingers on that sweating umbrella drink, feeling the deck shiver underfoot as the engines thrust this cruise ship away from its moorings. Give those readers goosebumps from that chill sea breeze while the characters are talking.

b.       Can I see them and their surroundings?

                                                              Is it morning or night, darkness or full daylight? Candlelight casting wavering, mysterious shadows on their face?  You, the author, might already know there’s a single small light burning in the distance, and what shapes your character can make out by it, but if you don’t show the reader that single small light, they have to try to fit what the character says they’re seeing with whatever other cues are in the text to tell them where the light is coming from and how much of it there is. And then they might find out they’re wrong two pages later.

In summary:                Don’t leave your cruising readers lost in the bowels of the ship, where the light is the same everywhere, the walls are all blank white, the air is all the same temperature blowing from the same style of vent, and nothing shows them whether they’re going in the right direction to find their cabin or not. They'll sink this ship out of sheer frustration.

 

     3.       I have no idea why they're here, doing whatever it is they’re doing.

a.        Why are we here? Did the protagonist win the cruise? Are they taking it reluctantly with the in-laws to avoid marital strife? Undercover and following a suspect? The trick here is to give just enough information to avoid that first torpedo strike while not stalling the ship’s forward momentum. A stalled ship is a sitting target for the next torpedo.

b.       Some authors stop the ship to give us every possibly relevant fact about that character since birth to bring them to this moment. This alone sends some readers signalling the torpedoes. And yes, I know you can name exceptions but ask yourself: would that author get away with that opening if they didn’t already have a huge following? You, as an ordinary aspiring or midlist author, need to treat your readers as if every single one of them is booked into the VIP suite, because they are. Once they’ve sailed on your cruise and enjoyed it, they become your word-of-mouth advertisers to their local bookstore, library, book club, garden store, dog walkers, or social media accounts. Don’t sink their pleasure cruise out from under them by overloading the opening with any backstory that isn’t essential info in the next five pages.

c.       And why are we joining them at this particular moment? Can you wiggle a reason onto this opening page without the cruise sinking under the weight of backstory? It need only be a phrase, a sentence, where the character says to the passenger in the next chaise, or mentally reflects, or is told by the thug who’s just pinned their arms with a life-preserver ring: If only Cousin Benny had kept their fingers out of the till last Saturday…. That's my ex-husband and their new husband propping up the juice bar; they paid for my trip to deflect HER... Well, my cover story is a holiday but my target's that woman with the purse-poodle dyed to match her own hair...Let the readers know there are intriguing possibilities ahead!

To recap:

 

                Torpedoes sink your story when readers can't orient on

1.       characters who have names, genders, and memorable descriptions,

2.       a firm location, including lighting, sounds, smells, or other orienting information,

3.       a reason, however small, to be in this place doing this thing at this opening moment.

 

There is much more to a truly compelling opening than simply giving the reader this bare-bones information. But if you don't incorporate that information as the reader is ascending the gangplank, they may never set foot on the main deck. Then they'll never appreciate the luxury surroundings and many in-cruise activities you have in store. Give them these basics and they’ll set foot on Page 2 already getting their sea legs under them, umbrella drink in hand, ready to enjoy every moment of this cruise all the way to your chosen destination.

 

 

Actions Amplify Emotions

Has an agent or publisher or editor (or your writing instructor) told you to 'go deeper into character'? What did you think they meant?

There are two ways to 'go deeper'. One is global: looking at what your character wants/needs most desperately, and what stops them going after it effectively. The other is minuscule: in what tiny ways do they most effectively convey and then amplify to the reader what you, the author, know are their thoughts & feelings about the story or scene they're in?

Writers learn about their characters by (mostly) writing what the character thinks.

Readers will tolerate reading what the character thinks if that's all they've got, but they get deeper into understanding characters, and thus into your story, by reading as well:

• What the character says
• What the character does
• What other characters say about/to them
• What other characters do about/toward them

Thus it's fine for a writer to write 'what this character thinks' in order to learn it for themselves. But then it's on the writer to turn those thoughts into actions and words that reveal the character's layers and complexity to the reader through these other steps. 

The activity of discovering the character (rather than having it handed to them in a long inner monologue) is a key reason why many readers get hooked on stories long before the central plot grabs them.

Think of your current manuscript. Have you got mostly 'thinking' or is it mixed up with words and actions? 

"But I've got actions!" you may cry, and point to your characters walking, drinking, eating, or flying a kite between lines of dialogue or paragraphs of inner monologue.

megaphone from Freepik

Here's a secret for you:  

Actions can amplify the emotional subtext of even the simplest line of dialogue, dragging the reader along with the character, or they can leech all the emotions out of it and leave the reader emotionally flat too. An emotional flat reader is apt to put the story down and pick up something that makes them FEEL.  

You want every action, however minuscule in itself, to AMPLIFY  

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So how do you amplify those emotions that the reader is seeing in dialogue and monologue?

 

Micro-actions.

 

Here's a good exercise for you, especially if you want something writing-related to practice while watching tv or movies: pause the screen on a person or people, and, knowing what you know about them from the parts of the story you've already seen, look at where their hands are, their eyes are, their bodies are, relative to each other. 

 

Now think about what they were saying when you paused. Does their micro-action, their body language, reflect that? Is the dialogue and tone of voice in tune with the body's tiny actions or not?

When you're ready to start up again, reverse about 30 seconds and watch the small actions they do leading up to that moment when you paused. Which ones match or amplify their tone of voice and their words, and which ones seem to be saying something else or negating what the words are saying? 

Everything in a movie is supposed to be deliberate, but some actors (like some writers) just aren't good at making their actions match their words match their emotional context. When we say two rom-com leads 'have no chemistry', it boils down to their body language, facial expression, and/or tone of voice that isn't reflecting true-seeming affection or attraction toward the other person. 

 

When readers read actions that don't amplify the emotions that the author has presented to them in dialogue, they can conclude a character is 

• a) boring, and therefore unworthy of getting to know better, or 
• b) a liar, and distrust them even if the author intended them to be trustworthy. 
  

If actions don't match inner monologue, the reader stops feeling like the characters are 'real'. Then they stop trusting the author to deliver a story that holds together, an alternate reality in which they can suspend disbelief in order to go on this fictional journey in safety and comfort. 

So it can be good exercise to pause on one of those movie or streaming shows that aren't fully satisfying you, and think what you would change to make the less emotionally believable actor seem more believable. Would you change where their hand is? What are their eyebrows are doing? Are they looking at or past the other person? Are they leaning inward or turning/pulling ever so slightly away?

It might still be a challenge to translate that into your written characters--to deliberately write a single amplifying micro-action in place of a generic action or a repetitive phrase of dialogue--but it's a powerful way to help readers engage with your story...to experience it through both actions and words, and ultimately through their visceral understanding of the characters' emotions. Working to make this a writing habit might be helpful for you, too, in getting around the parts of your writer brain that like to focus on inner monologue alone to show your characters to your readers.

 

 

Welcome to Incisive Editing Services

My greatest editing enjoyment comes from helping authors bring their short and long crime works up to award-winning standards. I'm especially good at shaving word count while saving story elements and enhancing the author's unique voice. My sensitivity reading expertise covers adult-onset disabilities, chronic illness, and wheelchair use.

USA Today bestselling author Shelley Adina says

 “Jayne Barnard has an eye for structure and an incisive ability to cut to the heart of a story. At the same time, she draws out of the author ways to improve world building and character. Both methods result in a better read.”

How did I gain those essential skills? 

• By reading and writing a lot of crime fiction over several decades.  
• By serving on literary juries for long and short crime fiction, plays, general fiction, and non-fiction awards
  
• By being edited, often very well but sometimes quite poorly.  
• By mentoring beginning crime writers in both organized mentorships and less formal writing groups.
  

Good editing is a supportive collaboration between the author and the editor, not a hierarchical power struggle, to bring out the highest potential for each story.

My short and long crime fiction has won Canadian crime fiction awards and been a finalist for the UK's CWA Debut Dagger as well as twice nominated for the Prix Aurora Award for Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy.  My decades serving on fiction and non-fiction juries across North America have further honed my understanding of story structure and the importance of style/voice in creating outstanding fiction.
 
I've mentored beginning crime writers for 15 years, edited for five years, and most recently had the immense pleasure of seeing a story I worked with the author on in 2021 win the 2022 Canadian Crime Writing Award of Excellence. 

Author Marcelle Dubé  had this to say about our work on her award-winning short story, 'Cold Wave,' published in CRIME WAVE 2: WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE:

"Jayne Barnard is a good writer but shines as an editor. She protects the writer’s voice while pointing out strengths and weaknesses and making suggestions. She is encouraging and friendly in her clear-eyed approach; her light touch improved my story and led to my award. I recommend her highly."

Check out the other tabs for information about my writing, education, editing philosophy, and my rates for structural edits and manuscript evaluations.

If you approach me about an edit, I'll ask for a writing sample and a project overview, and give you my honest opinion about whether we'll make a good team for that project.