by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I read a lot of blog posts about revision and most of them are focusing on the big things: arc, character development, conflict, etc.
This is a post to remind writers about the little things.
As time has gone on and I’ve written more books, I’ve been much better about catching the small-but-important stuff as I’m writing the first draft.
But it used to be something that my editors had to point out to me.
What are the little things? For me, they’re like tiny little plot holes. And frequently, they’re involved with a subplot instead of the main plot (for me, solving the murder mystery).
For example. Say you have a subplot involving a minor aggravation for your protagonist–something to make her feel tense and add to the general stresses she’s experiencing. Her lawnmower is broken and her yard is a disaster and she’s supposed to host a dinner party (where someone ends up dead).
The dinner party happens (with guests hiking through the underbrush to the front door). There’s a mysterious death. The sleuth investigates.
But at some point, her yard man comes by and heroically mows the yard.
The sleuth needs to interview her next door neighbor to get details on the deadly dinner party from a guest’s perspective.
If the next door neighbor makes no comment about the yard or if the sleuth doesn’t apologize about the terrible state the yard had previously been in…it just doesn’t add up.
These kinds of tiny plot holes are easy to create. If you’re like me, you can get very single-minded in terms of the main plot and want to focus exclusively on it.
Sometimes, to help juggle the bits and pieces, I keep a list of things that are happening in the background or off-stage in my story. And yes, these are random bits of story, but not mentioning them again can leave a reader with that ‘something isn’t tied up feeling.’ My list can include everything from ‘Puddin said she’d take up PT exercises’ to ‘Elaine’s new hobby is restoration’ to ‘the yard was a horrible mess and now looks a ton better.’ It can be helpful to make note of these things as you write them.
Do you ever have trouble remembering tiny bits of subplots? How do you manage them?
Tying up minor details in our stories: Click To TweetPhoto credit: phatcontroller via VisualHunt / CC BY-NC
I didn’t have problems with subplot items in any of the romantic mysteries in my main series or in my first cozy but, whoo boy, the second cozy was a doozy! I wrote that one as a serial in ten episodes of about 7,000 words each. In each episode, I had to advance the overall mystery, tie up one loose end of a subplot from the previous episode and create one dangling subplot cliffhanger for the next one. In the writing process, I was most focused on the primary mystery and sometimes I forgot that I needed to go back and tie something up so each episode both satisfied and left the reader hanging.
I liked writing in the form a lot. I’d like to do it again and even release them one at a time again and then a compilation later. I won’t do it the next time around until all of the episodes are finished. I had the first 7 of 10 done the last time and the 8th one in edits so it wasn’t too bad but, doing 9 and 10 after 1-3 were already out there closed some tiny options for other things I could have woven in that didn’t come to me until much later.
That sounds like a huge project to organize! You’re like me–you get focused on the mystery and everything else sort of goes in the background.
I haven’t tried ‘real’ serials. I’m serializing my books on Wattpad (and I really like the platform), but these are already-published books. Sounds like youv’e had a great experience!
Oh, the devil really is in those details, isn’t it, Elizabeth? I find that if I’m not really careful about such things, I do tend to miss them. But then, of course, the story makes less sense. And even readers who don’t exactly spot those little mistakes will still feel that something is ‘off.’ And they’re less drawn in.
It’s important to tie everything up, isn’t it? And tricky to do it!
In life I’m a detail person, so much so that I drive other’s a little nuts. But it’s so easy to skip over the details in writing because I get focused on one thing.
Me too. And my forgetfulness doesn’t help!
I recently read a freshly published book by a veteran author. They had the main character give a minor character the same piece of news twice, with the minor character reacting wildly differently each time, and then there were also multiple instances where one character name was written but they were clearly referring to a different character. And this author specifically has a continuity editor that they thanked in their acknowledgements. It’s crazy how many mistakes can slip through!
That’s disappointing because it takes you right out of the story as a reader. And lots of these mistakes do make it through…even with the trad-published books.