Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

We’ve been talking about those pesky Motivation-Reaction Units (MRUs) lately. If you’re just joining us, you can read my summary article Writing The Perfect Scene, which will bring you up to speed very quickly.

Today I’ll analyze a short passage of dialogue that was submitted by Loyal Blog Reader Diane:

“Don’t take it to heart, girl.” The old midwife followed Gwyn out into the warm night air. “You did nothing wrong to cause the babe to die. He was already dead ere you arrived, it was just a matter of the getting him out.”

“I know that in my head, Mistress Bethan.” Gwyn swallowed a sob, “but it will take some convincing to make my heart understand.”

The old midwife laid a grizzled hand on her shoulder. “It often happens so, child. You must harden your heart to it or you can ne’er do this job.”

Tears welled in Gwyn’s eyes, but she hastily wiped them away with the back of her hand. “I don’t know if I can.”

They walked in silence on a road made visible by a half moon overhead, its silvery light illuminating the village’s empty sheep folds. It was eerily still with all the sheep up on the high meadows where the grass was lusher and the air cooler. Behind them, the first heavy strokes of a hammer broke the stillness of the night. Deryn’s husband would work off his grief on the coffin for his wee son.

Gwyn’s eyes teared again despite her attempts to keep them dry.

Randy sez: Dialogue is a classic case of MRUs. One or more characters speaks. Then your POV character speaks. Repeat. Normally, every time you change speaker, you do a new paragraph, so you automatically obey Randy’s Rule Of Putting A Paragraph Break Between Every MRU. (In most books on the subject, this is usually abbreviated as RROPAPBBEM.)

Let’s look at each paragraph in turn and see how it works:

“Don’t take it to heart, girl.” The old midwife followed Gwyn out into the warm night air. “You did nothing wrong to cause the babe to die. He was already dead ere you arrived, it was just a matter of the getting him out.”

Randy sez: Well done on this one, which is a Motivation, since Gwyn is the POV character. The dialogue is nicely broken into two parts, with an action tag between them, showing us the speaker (the old midwife) without telling us.

“I know that in my head, Mistress Bethan.” Gwyn swallowed a sob, “but it will take some convincing to make my heart understand.”

Randy sez: This Reaction is almost perfect, but the punctuation police are going to quibble with you here. You have an action tag, so the period after the first snippet of dialogue is correct. However, the second piece of dialogue is its own sentence, so you should capitalize that “But.”

The old midwife laid a grizzled hand on her shoulder. “It often happens so, child. You must harden your heart to it or you can ne’er do this job.”

Randy sez: This is a new Motivation, and it’s done just right. This why I like dialogue–it’s very natural to write it perfectly in MRUs.

Tears welled in Gwyn’s eyes, but she hastily wiped them away with the back of her hand. “I don’t know if I can.”

Randy sez: Excellent Reaction! We have the feeling first, and it is SHOWN, not TOLD. Diane does not tell us that Gwyn feels heartbroken. She shows the tears welling up. This is a physical emotive reaction, and it speaks volumes.

They walked in silence on a road made visible by a half moon overhead, its silvery light illuminating the village’s empty sheep folds. It was eerily still with all the sheep up on the high meadows where the grass was lusher and the air cooler. Behind them, the first heavy strokes of a hammer broke the stillness of the night. Deryn’s husband would work off his grief on the coffin for his wee son.

Randy sez: This is a new Motivation, in which we get a bit of description. Notice that Diane does not tell us “Gwyn saw” the moon, or “Gwyn heard” the hammer. She just shows them to us. This is perfectly done, from a structural point of view.

Let me elaborate on that a bit. The purpose of “structure” is not to make the reader say, “Wow, great structure!” The purpose of structure is to be so natural that it is completely invisible, so that the reader is experiencing the STORY perfectly. In exactly the same way, when you get truly great service at a restaurant, you don’t walk out saying, “Wow, that waiter was really something, wasn’t he?” When you get great service, you don’t notice the waiter at all, because he is anticipating everything you need and providing it invisibly. When you walk out, you say, “Wow, that was a great meal!”

Gwyn’s eyes teared again despite her attempts to keep them dry.

Randy sez: This is a perfectly acceptable Reaction–again it’s a physical emotive reaction that shows the reader Gwyn’s grief. My one quibble is that it is very similar to the earlier one, so it might be better to give us a different physical reaction. There are any number of these, and I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend Margie Lawson’s course Empowering Character Emotions where you will learn more than you ever imagined about physical emotive reactions. You can visit Margie’s site at www.MargieLawson.com.

OK, I think it’s time to get some more hands-on practice. If you’ve got a sample of some MRUs that you’d like me to critique, go ahead and post it here as a comment. Let’s put a limit on these, OK? No more than 3 Motivations and 3 Reactions per submission. That is more than enough.

As always, I can’t possibly critique every single example that gets posted here, but I’ll work through them starting with the first and continuing on until we all collapse of exhaustion.

Last week we began studying anew the subject of “Motivation-Reaction Units”. While MRUs are not the solution to all the world’s problems, they are in fact the main solution to the problem of those annoying editors who tell you to “Show, Don’t Tell” without showing you how to do it. If you write strictly following the MRU design pattern, then it is practically impossible to “tell.” You will be automatically “showing.”

As noted, “showing” is not always your best option. However, when you want to “show,” then just write the darn MRUs and you won’t have to worry about it.

It was interesting to see Robert’s example of trying to write MRUs within the point of view of a blind character. My advice to him was to not make a special deal out of the fact that a blind character’s “motivations” will be primarily heard (some will be felt, smelled, or tasted, of course).

One of my loyal blog readers is blind, and I was hoping she might comment on Robert’s passage. I’m glad to say she did, and I thought it would be worth quoting here in full, since not all my loyal blog readers read the comments of this blog.

Barbara wrote:

This response is to Robert. I’m totally blind. I use terms like “I see what you mean” and “You don’t look so good today”, (even though I get my input from my hearing). But, I went blind later in life (I was about 30). So, if your hero went blind later in life, then he will continue to use the same idioms he used earlier in life. If he was born blind, then this is more of a problem. It’s still prevalent in society to “not talk” about sighted subjects to blind children (as if they don’t know they’re blind). And those blind from birth have different ways of “analyzing” events than those who went blind later in life.

Randy sez: The point I want to highlight here is that in writing about any character, get inside that character’s head and experience the world the way they do. A blind character will experience the world primarily through hearing, but because that is their normal way of acquiring information, they probably won’t be constantly thinking “I’m hearing this rather than seeing it”. They will simply experience it. The exception would be if there is no auditory information, and if the blind character can hear other characters reacting to something they can see.

As an analogy, suppose that you have all five of your senses and you travel to a new planet where the inhabitants can see infrared light (which is invisible to us humans). You would continue to experience things perfectly normally in that world and it would rarely occur to you that you “can’t see” infrared light. You would in fact feel as if you are experiencing all there is to experience–EXCEPT when the folks on the planet are all “seeing” something in the infrared spectrum that you can’t see. Only then would you notice or care that you are “infrared blind”.

Karen posted an example from her current novel and asked for an analysis of the MRUs in it. Sean gave an analysis that was as good as any I could have given, so take a look at the comments posted on Friday and you’ll see what he had to say.

Also, author Rick Acker posted a comment thanking us for our analysis of the passage from his novel DEAD MAN’S RULE.

Tomorrow, I’ll analyze another passage for its MRU content.

Yesterday I posted an analysis of several paragraphs in the book DEAD MAN’S RULE, by lawyer Rick Acker. A number of my loyal blog readers posted comments or questions, and I think it’s time to answer some of those:

Robert wrote:

My main character is mostly blind. He can see a little, but not much. The best input he gets is auditory. I have a lot of people describe what’s happening to him, but he still goes a lot by what he hears.

The problem is that this means his “Motivations” will also be mostly auditory. But I can’t seem to get away from saying “[he] heard” or “the sound of”.

For instance, here’s one motivation written different ways (he and other people are in a wagon, which is being chased):

1) He heard running feet beside the wagon.
2) Running feet were heard beside the wagon.
3) The sounds of running was heard beside the wagon.
4) People were now running beside the wagon.

Randy sez: I think the best solution is to write as if the character were not blind.

I would avoid #1 because it injects the POV character into the Motivation, and I can’t see any reason to do so.

#2 contains a passive verb construction “were heard” which should be avoided or plagues will be called down on the head of the author, or even worse, your book will not be read, or even worse, you may become the object of self-referential humor which will be read on my blog.

Ditto for #3.

#4 works fine. This is most likely the way the POV character actually experiences it. He hears them and deduces that people are running based on the sounds that impinge on his ears, much as a sighted character will see them and deduce that they are actually there, based on the light that impinges on his eyes.

Parker suggested as a solution:

Seems the auditory input must trigger an emotional or visceral experience for your character. You might play on that. Another variation for your ideas file:

“Fear pulsed hard in his veins (or head, or ears) at the pounding of feet beside the wagon.

Randy sez: It’s an excellent idea to put in emotive Reactions to the Motivation, but they must come AFTER the Motivation, not before. So you would need to show the sound of the pounding feet and THEN show us that fear pulsing through those veins. Remember that the reader has a very linear experience, because she must read the words in order. If you write the effect before the cause, then it feels “unrealistic” to the reader, who will likely not realize what’s wrong. It is not enough to use a connective such as “as” or “while” or similar to make the cause and the effect seem simultaneous. In writing, it’s a rare place where it works to say that things happen simultaneously, because they can’t be read simultaneously. So always put the explosion first and then the shock wave.

Mary asked:

In your example above when I read Alexie’s hand shot into his pocket and got the gun, I thought it meant his own pocket, not the other guy’s. Would adding a couple words to make it clear slow down the action too much?

Randy sez: This is a good point. Here is the original:

“Hurry!” a voice urged in Russian from the front seat of the car. A tall, dark-haired man jumped out of the right rear door, still holding a Makarov pistol. He shoved the weapon into his jacket and quickly searched Alexei’s coat pockets. As he knelt to frisk through Alexei’s pants pockets, Alexei’s hand suddenly grabbed his arm and held it in an iron grip. Alexei’s other hand shot into his jacket and pulled out the Makarov.

If I were writing this, I’d probably simplify this and put a paragraph break at the point where the Motivation transitions to a Reaction. This would eliminate those pesky pronoun problems:

“Hurry!” a voice urged in Russian from the front seat of the car. A tall, dark-haired man jumped out of the right rear door, still holding a Makarov pistol. He shoved the weapon into his jacket, knelt down on the frozen sidewalk, searched Alexei’s coat pockets, and then reached inside his right pants pocket.

Alexei’s right hand grabbed the assassin’s arm in an iron grip. His left shot into the man’s jacket and yanked out the Makarov.

This tightens things up a bit, and eliminates the confusion, I think.

Parker asked:

I see the MRU’s in fast paced fiction, but what about in what you termed recently “pesky literary” fiction?

It seems to me that there you might have several pages of building the motivation, and perhaps that again in showing the reaction. And this raises another question in my addled brain.

Is it reasonable to have multiple minor MRU’s within a larger one?

Randy sez: Remember that MRUs are the magic secret to “showing” rather than “telling.” A lot of literary fiction consists in “telling.” This is not a requirement of literary fiction, but literary novelists are better than normal writers and can “tell” some things a lot more grippingly than most of us can “show”. If you are a literary novelist, then “show” or “tell” as the spirit moves you. If you choose to “tell,” then of course you can’t use MRUs. If you choose to “show,” then you can.

As for having MRUs inside MRUs, I don’t see any reason to do this. An MRU is the smallest unit of conflict in a story. If you can break it down smaller, then it wasn’t an MRU to begin with.

We’ll continue next time with another analysis of the MRUs in a story.

Yesterday I launched a new topic–Motivation-Reaction Units, which I learned from Dwight Swain. For those of you new to “MRUs”, you can get a summary of them in my article Writing the Perfect Scene.

A number of my loyal blog readers commented today on MRUs, and I’d love to respond to those, but my instinct tells me to just get on with an example. We can talk theory later. So I stood up just now, turned around, and grabbed a book off my shelf. This one is a legal thriller by my friend Rick Acker, who’s a lawyer in the Bay Area. The title is DEAD MAN’S RULE, and I really enjoyed this book a couple of months ago.

The POV character in the opening scene is Alexei, a Russian criminal in Chicago who’s waiting for his CIA contacts to show up on a deserted bridge late at night. When the car arrives, the rear window is down and Alexei realizes he’s in deep trouble. Let’s pick up from there:

Alexei jumped back from the rail between the sidewalk and the street just as the car reached him.

Randy sez: This is a reaction to seeing the window down. Alexei is a crook who’s spent all his life in the Russian underworld, so this is part reflex, part rational response.

Three shots–probably intended for his head–caught him in the chest and side. There was no sound of gunfire to attract attention, just three shrouded flashes and the soft zip zip zip of bullets leaving a silencer.

Randy sez: This is a motivation. How do we know? Because this is objective and external to Alexei. That’s what “motivation” is in MRU terminology. This should not be confused with what people usually mean by the word “motivation”. In MRU-speak, “motivation” means precisely that part of a scene which is objective and external to the POV character.

Alexei stumbled and fell.

Randy sez: This is a reaction. Alexei doesn’t do this intentionally, of course. It would be foolish to fall in his situation. But he doesn’t have much choice. He’s just been shot three times in the chest. He happens to be wearing a Kevlar vest, which is why he’s not dead. But even so, three bullets carry a lot of momentum, and he’s hurting. Notice that Rick doesn’t TELL us Alexei’s hurting. At this point, the action is fast and furious and telling us about Alexei’s pain would slow things down. There’ll be time for that in a minute.

“Hurry!” a voice urged in Russian from the front seat of the car. A tall, dark-haired man jumped out of the right rear door, still holding a Makarov pistol. He shoved the weapon into his jacket and quickly searched Alexei’s coat pockets.

Randy sez: This is a new motivation. It’s external to our POV character, Alexei. Notice that Rick doesn’t TELL us “Alexei saw…” He just SHOWS us what Alexei saw. This is important. You don’t want to waste words in a novel, and telling the reader that the POV character is seeing something or hearing something 500 times in a novel is a waste of 1000 words. The reader KNOWS the POV character is doing the seeing and hearing. Don’t treat your reader like a dummy.

As he knelt to frisk through Alexei’s pants pockets, Alexei’s hand suddenly grabbed his arm and held it in an iron grip. Alexei’s other hand shot into his jacket and pulled out the Makarov.

Randy sez: The first sentence here is mixed–partly motivation, partly Alexei’s reaction. The second sentence is all reaction. The pace here is quite fast. I would recommend in a situation like this putting a paragraph break between the motivation and the reaction. It makes a cleaner distinction between Alexei and his assailant and adds a little white space to the page, which makes the pace feel that much faster.

Zip! Zip! Two rapid pulls on the trigger.

Randy sez: Nice! This is the rest of the reaction, and it wastes not a single letter.

The would-be assassin, his eyes now vacant, fell heavily to the ground beside Alexei.

Randy sez: Very good! The action is zipping right along. Alexei isn’t out of the woods yet, of course, but he’s just pulled a nice turn-around on his assassins. He still needs to deal with the driver of the car, but he’s now got a gun. He doesn’t know that it’s jammed yet, but he’ll find that out shortly.

You have many options in your writing. When the pace is slow, you can get away with a lot of telling. But in a gunbattle like this, or any kind of action scene, you NEED to write in MRUs. Nothing else will show the action with any kind of realism.

More tomorrow…

I’ve been thinking about what to blog on next over the weekend and I think it’s time to revisit MRUs. A few of you specifically requested a discussion on this in the latest round of comments. Plus, I’ll be teaching a one-hour workshop on this at the ACFW conference in September, and now is a good time to put together some brand new material on this.

If you don’t know what MRUs are (maybe a weird sort of military meal?) then hie thee to my page on Writing the Perfect Scene and learn the basics. By the way, the page on Writing the Perfect Scene is rapidly growing in popularity (about 900 page views per week) and is now second only to the Snowflake page on this site.

Tomorrow, I’ll pick an example from literature and analyze it in terms of MRUs. Tonight, however, I’ll answer a question Lynda wrote:

The use of MRUs seems logical to me. However, I have been told they are formulaic and not to use them. What’s a newbie to think?

Randy sez: This is a good question, and I hear it quite often. It betrays a confusion between a “formula” and a “pattern.” Let me define those now:

A “formula” defines the way something MUST be done, but gives you little or no freedom to deviate from a certain standard. There is not any particular reason for a formula except that “it’s always been done this way.”

A “pattern” defines the way something CAN be done, but gives you enormous freedom to work within that pattern. There is a good rational reason for a pattern and those who understand that reason know when to ignore the pattern.

Some examples of “formulae” are as follows:
1) Fairy tales often begin with “Once upon a time…” and end “…and they lived happily ever after.” If you use these, you can’t change them by a single letter.

2) Certain “formula romance” novels are defined by exactly when the hero and heroine must meet (often by a certain page of the novel), what sort of difficulties they must have, how the story must end, and even the word-count of the novel. If you deviate from this formula, you may violate your contract.

Some examples of “patterns” are as follows:

1) The Three Act Structure known to all screenwriters. While a movie has three acts, the screenwriter has enormous freedom in what goes into those acts.

2) A limerick has a well-defined structure, with five lines in an A-A-B-B-A rhyme scheme, a certain required rhythm, and the requirement that the limerick should be funny. But within those strong constraints, there is almost infinite variety.

3) A car has four wheels located approximately at its four corners. In this case, there are clear reasons for having four wheels–stability and maneuverability. A vehicle with five wheels just doesn’t work. One with three can work, but only if you take special precautions on the stability.

In the world of software engineering (which is where I steal many of my ideas), the idea of “Design Patterns” has been popular for about fifteen years. “Design Patterns” are commonly recurring patterns that an engineer can use to create new structures of information or behavior. Yet there is tremendous freedom within each pattern, and there is a lot of freedom in mixing Design Patterns together.

My opinion is that the MRU (Motivation-Reaction Unit) is a Design Pattern that has fundamental importance to the novelist. It gives you a clear structure that can be understood rationally. It also gives you enormous freedom to innovate within the pattern. I’m sure there are nay-sayers who will tell you that MRUs are a mere “formula” but I say nay to the nay-sayers.

My advice is to master the art of MRUs and then (when you understand why they work) use them or don’t use them as you see fit. It’s your novel. Don’t let anyone else tell you how to write it. But you are cheating yourself if you don’t have every tool in your toolkit.

We’ve been critiquing first paragraphs for a few weeks now and I think it’s time to move on. So this will be the last one. I haven’t decided exactly what we’ll talk about next, but I’ll think about it over the weekend.

Here is Parker’s first paragraph of his novel:

The San Isidro church loomed a dark hulk against the gray sky. The moon and Venus hung just over the bell tower. Paul came at dawn. He watched the old men and women shuffle to early Mass, coats and scarves pulled tight against the sharp morning air. Six times the bell shattered the clear air. Six times the echo resounded off the mountains. And six times quivers pulsed up his spine.

Randy sez: A very fine first paragraph! You have captured a very strong sense of place, and that’s always a plus. Let’s look at this sentence by sentence:

The San Isidro church loomed a dark hulk against the gray sky.

Randy sez: This creates an immediate mood that I like. There are several emotive words here that all tell the same story: “loomed” and “dark” and “hulk” and “gray”. The one issue I have is the phrase “loomed a dark hulk”. It seems to me there should be a comma after “loomed.”

The moon and Venus hung just over the bell tower.

Randy sez: Good, this adds nicely to the mood.

Paul came at dawn.

Randy sez: This is good, but I think a stronger verb might strengthen this sentence. Did Paul stagger, shuffle, creep, sidle, amble, or glide? I think you can find a verb that captures the gray mood you’ve established.

He watched the old men and women shuffle to early Mass, coats and scarves pulled tight against the sharp morning air.

Randy sez: Good, I can see this in pretty sharp detail.

Six times the bell shattered the clear air.

Randy sez: A nice strong verb there–shattered. And this is the beginning of a repetition of the phrase “Six times”, which pulls in the power of the Rule of Three that we talked about last week.

Six times the echo resounded off the mountains.

Randy sez: Good, but could it be better? Could that verb “resounded” be chosen to fit the mood better?

And six times quivers pulsed up his spine.

Randy sez: Nice nouns and verbs there: “quivers” is a good noun; “pulsed” is a visceral verb; “spine” is just the right body part for quivers to be pulsing up. My one question is this: Do we need the “And” at the beginning? Would it work better to start “Six time…” for this sentence?

Notice that Parker has resisted the urge to tell us extraneous details. We don’t know what year it is. We don’t know Paul’s last name, nor his mission here, nor why he hates his mother. We know just enough to be intrigued. Dang! I want to read the rest of this chapter and see if it lives up to the first paragraph.

Go ahead, loyal blog readers, and see if you can tweak Parker’s paragraph a bit to sharpen it up. Also, I am still taking suggestions for our next topic of discussion, so feel free to leave a comment if you’ve got something burning.

All good things must come to an end, and I think it’s time to wrap up our critiques of first paragraphs submitted by my loyal blog readers. We’ve been critiquing these for a few weeks now, and it’ll soon be time to move on to a new topic.

Today, I’ll critique one by Stephaniemeg:

One hour and fifty-nine minutes.

Kevin Ramsey sank his hands deep into the fleece lined pocket of his hoodie. His fingers, stiff with cold, clasped onto the folded bus ticket. In less than two hours, he would be free – and for the first time in control of his life.

Randy sez: This is very good. It sets the stage, introduces our main character, and hints at the story. I think it’s strong the way it’s written. I have a few minor points that might sharpen it up:

* Is it a single pocket or does his hoodie have two pockets?

* It should be “clasped the folded bus ticket” rather than “clasped onto the folded bus ticket.” Omit needless words, as they say.

* I wonder if it might be better to say he “sank his hands into the fleece lined pocket of his hoodie.” When you sink your hands in, it’s implicit that they’ll go “deep.”

Loyal blog readers, what do you think? Anything else you see in this paragraph?

In my last blog entry, I critiqued Hope’s first paragraph. Today, I’ll look at her revisions and then move on to critique Katie’s first paragraph.

Hope revised her paragraph as follows:

Hannah wanted Poppy’s new calf. She’d show Pa she could take care of it all by herself. Even if she was only nine years old. She wished Ma weren’t feeling poorly. But that gave her just the chance she needed. She tiptoed past her mother’s bed. Ma was asleep. Good. She slipped out to the barn and pulled a halter over Poppy’s head. Once outside, Poppy grazed eagerly on the fresh green grass. It had been a long Vermont winter. Hannah scooted back to the barn to get the calf. When Pa returned from helping his neighbor, he would be pleased that the animals had been outdoors–though Ma couldn’t take them out. Hannah raised the latch and opened the barn door. Before she could close it behind her, the calf darted out. It charged toward the woods. Disappeared from sight.

Randy sez: As a number of my loyal blog readers noted, this is an improvement over the original version. However, the problem I see is that narrative summary still is dominating in this paragraph. The events of roughly 15 to 30 minutes are compressed into this one paragraph. You really need to be showing here (using “immediate scene” techniques) rather than telling (using “narrative summary.”) A second problem I see is that the sentences mostly extremely short. Let’s look at these sentence by sentence and see which parts are showing and which are telling:

1) Hannah wanted Poppy’s new calf.

Randy sez: This is straight narrative summary, telling us what Hannah wants. That’s not a bad thing if it then is followed by some action, but . . .

2) She’d show Pa she could take care of it all by herself.

Randy sez: More narrative summary, telling us Hannah’s intention.

3) Even if she was only nine years old.

Randy sez: More narrative summary.

4) She wished Ma weren’t feeling poorly.

Randy sez: This is almost interior monologue, but it feels more like narrative summary, informing us of Hannah’s state of mind.

5) But that gave her just the chance she needed.

Randy sez: This is again narrative summary.

6) She tiptoed past her mother’s bed.

Randy sez: This is immediate scene. I can see this.

7) Ma was asleep.

Randy sez: This is also immediate scene, but it’s fairly fuzzy. What does Ma look like?

8 ) Good.

Randy sez: This is interior monologue, but it doesn’t carry much of Hannah’s personality, which is the real intent of interior monologue. Notice that all nine of the above sentences are very short.

9) She slipped out to the barn and pulled a halter over Poppy’s head.

Randy sez: This is again narrative summary in the first half (slipping out to the barn takes a couple of minutes) followed by immediate scene in the second half.

10) Once outside, Poppy grazed eagerly on the fresh green grass.

Randy sez: Again, there is a gap which is filled in with the narrative phrase “once outside”. The second half of the sentence is immediate scene.

11) It had been a long Vermont winter.

Randy sez: This is more narrative summary.

12) Hannah scooted back to the barn to get the calf.

Randy sez: This is immediate scene.

13) When Pa returned from helping his neighbor, he would be pleased that the animals had been outdoors — though Ma couldn’t take them out.

Randy sez: This is narrative summary.

14) Hannah raised the latch and opened the barn door.

Randy sez: This is immediate scene.

15) Before she could close it behind her, the calf darted out.

Randy sez: This is also immediate scene.

16) It charged toward the woods.

Randy sez: This is immediate scene.

17) Disappeared from sight.

Randy sez: Again it’s immediate scene.

As you can see, the great majority of the sentences above are narrative summary. The action takes a long time to get rolling. I would like to see more sentences that are immediate scene. Those sentences that must be narrative summary should show more of Hannah’s personality.

Let’s move on to Katie’s first paragraph:

Mysteer Castle loomed in Karel’s view, its dark walls melting into the nighttime forest. A sliver of moon revealed a sentry rounding the east corner of the castle wall. Karel allowed a smile as she touched the scar above her collarbone. Time to right a wrong too long held in abeyance. Time to recover the Stone.

Randy sez: This is a pretty strong paragraph. I can see the castle fairly well — especially those dark walls melting into the forest. In the first couple of sentences, you’ve set the stage. But I think I’d like to see more. This is a spooky scene. Make me feel it more.

I’m not suggesting that you do ONLY more description. I’d like to see some motion. What’s that sentry up to? What’s Karel FEELING as she looks at him? What sort of night noises does she hear, and how do those make her feel?

I think there is one sentence here that is clearly too early–the one about “Time to right a wrong too long held in abeyance.” This is verging on backstory, but the real problem is that it feels rather bloodless and analytical. We don’t know Karel well enough to understand that long-ago wrong, and so any mention of it is inevitably going to be intellectual, rather than emotive.

Compare that to the sentence before, in which Karel touches the scar above her collarbone. That’s much more visceral. I can feel that scar too. What is Karel feeling here? Can you tap into that, rather than what she’s thinking? Fiction is about Powerful Emotional Experiences. I think this paragraph would be sharper if you highlight the emotive aspects here (which you’re already doing) and downplay the intellectual elements.

OK, loyal blog readers, what do you think? Can you improve on Katie’s paragraph? There are some fine elements here. Can you sharpen them?

It’s been a few days since I had time to blog. As I mentioned last week, I’ve been on a very tight deadline for the last few weeks, and the deadline was last Thursday. I made it, but I’ve been in recovery over the weekend.

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been critiquing first paragraphs submitted by my loyal blog readers. I’ll continue with that for maybe a week longer, and then we’ll move on to a new topic. Tomorrow, by the way, I’ll be sending out my e-zine.

Today, let’s look at Hope’s first paragraph:

Ma was sleeping when Hannah slipped out to the barn and pulled a halter over Poppy’s head. She led the cow out behind the cabin and tied her to a large oak tree. After a long Vermont winter she needed fresh grass to nurse her new calf. Hannah opened the barn door again and the calf darted out in search of her mother. Once she found her, she nursed and then lay down.

Randy sez: The first thing I see here is a lot of females and female pronouns. There are in fact 4 females (Ma, Hannah, Poppy, and the calf), 4 instances of “she” (referring to Hannah, Poppy, and the calf), and 4 instances of “her” (referring to Poppy and the calf). It seems to me that this creates a certain amount of confusion in the reader’s mind. Not a lot, of course, but more than I like to see in a first paragraph.

The second thing I see is that this paragraph is mostly narrative summary. The events of this paragraph take quite a bit of time–at least several minutes, and probably a lot more, depending on how long it take the calf to guzzle from its mama.

I’m trying to see the reason for this paragraph. Mainly, it sets the stage, showing us a bit of the story world. We learn that our main character is a kid who lives in Vermont. We learn that the winter is finally over. And . . . that’s about it. We don’t see any conflict yet, nor any hints of conflict. We don’t really get to know the character better. We don’t see any glimmerings of a developing theme (it would be way too early to do that anyway).

I think that a first paragraph should be doing more work. I would like to see one of two things:
1) Give us a hint of some conflict
2) Show us a bit of the main character

Note that you don’t want to overdo it here. “A hint of conflict” does not necessarily have to be the main conflict on which the story will turn. It can be something that leads toward the main story conflict.

Likewise, “a bit of the main character” does not have to be a detailed biography. (In other words, a big undigestible wad of backstory.) It just needs to tell us a wee little bit about how Hannah is different from every other kid her age.

That’s what I’d like to see. Hope, can you sharpen up the hook on this paragraph?

We have been critiquing first paragraphs of novels that my loyal blog readers have submitted over the last couple of weeks. Are you getting tired of this, or shall we continue a bit longer? If you want to switch, what topic is burning in you right now? What shall we talk about next?

I am coming up on a major deadline and have had to skip blogging the last couple of days, but hope to get time to blog tonight.