Jun 08 2010
Put the Gun Away
There’s an old piece of writing advice that goes like this:
If your story is getting boring, bring in a man with a gun.
In other words, make something shocking happen. Mix things up. Send everything in a wild new direction. Shoot someone.
It’s not bad advice — sometimes. But (as per my recent post on making every scene count) you’d better make really sure that man with a gun ends up serving an important purpose in the overall plot. If someone gets shot, getting shot needs to affect that person for the rest of the story, and that person’s changed situation or perspective needs to influence the entire storyline and probably play into the way it ends.
Excitement that leads nowhere and has no lasting purpose other than to stir things up will ultimately frustrate and annoy readers. It feels like getting pumped full of adrenaline and never being allowed to release it properly.
Last year I wrote a series of lessons on writing. The first lesson on Plot says:
A good plot, like good dialogue, is tight. There are no throwaway moments in a tight plot. Renato Rizzoli wrote, “The plot must be ‘complete’ and ‘whole’ in that it must have a clearly recognizable beginning, middle, and end. That is why good plots should ‘neither begin nor end haphazardly,’ but be linked by causal necessity or probability; one criterion for the ‘completeness’ of a plot is ‘that the whole plot will be disjointed and disturbed if any one of its parts is displaced or removed’” (Wikipedia, “Mythos”).
So in some cases, you may want to put the gun away and give the plot some extra thought instead. Where is this story going? How will the gun help it get there? Will something else serve it better?
Have fun finding answers. And happy writing.
I like it. :D Thanks for the good tips, as always! :)
You’re welcome. As always :).
I completely agree! Which gets me into trouble sometimes when I don’t have the skill to actually succeed at that. ;-)
This was great advice! This used to be a problem for me – just adding something into my story to make it “more interesting”. Right now I’m trying to write a short story, and my trouble this time is trying to not give away the entire plot before it’s completed – to leave the reader guessing about the final outcome until the very end instead of telling him/her what’s going to happen too soon.
This made me laugh! :) (The bit about the man with the gun, I mean!) Thank you for the snippet of advice about “tigh” plots – that’s really helpful.
Morgan, short stories are a whole other ball game! I haven’t come anywhere close to mastering them, as I am tragically aware :). I hope yours goes well!
Elisabeth, it made me laugh too ;). I laugh at my own writing all the time. Is that kind of conceited?
I can’t write short stories either. I try from time to time. At best, I end up with a novella. Writing short stories is a real art – maybe more of an art that writing novels. I love having lots of words to play with anyway! :)
Rachel, I laugh at my writing too! I have a sneaky feeling that it’s shockingly vain, but … sometimes I do it anyway. And I enjoy it – laughing at my own writing has an edge of hilarity that I love. In fact, the best bit about editing, for me, is finding something funny – especially if it’s accidentally funny! :) I’m glad I’m not the only one who does this! :)