Writing a Novel? Why You’re Not “Just Making Stuff Up”
Photo by Lacie Slezak on Unsplash
I’ve seen a meme going around where someone says they saw a review on Amazon that says,
“It felt like the writer was just making stuff up as they went along.”
And then the inevitable “Uh, who’s going to tell them?” Ha, ha.
And it is funny, because, well, we are making stuff up. That’s what fiction writers, anyway, do.
But if a reader feels that way after reading your book, you have a problem.
That tells me that there was no real story there. No narrative arc. No cause-and-affect-trajectory. The writer really was just throwing things in as they wrote, with no plan for how it all fit together to make a satisfying conclusion.
That’s fine for a first draft. That can be a “discovery draft” where you’re literally figuring out the story as you go. You may have a few major ideas mapped out, but the rest is just laying track, trying to get to the next thing. I’d say “the next scene,” but sometimes you’re not even writing full scenes at that point. And of course, some writers don’t understand the need to write scenes at all.
The problem is, a novel is not just a bunch of scenes string together. It’s not just a “stuff that happens.” That’s life, but it’s terrible fiction.
For a novel to be satisfying, it needs seven things:
A question posed at the beginning that is answered by the end.
A protagonist with a strong desire or goal
An antagonist or antagonistic forces acting in their own interests, that thwarts the protagonist
External and internal stakes – what the protagonist’s goal means to the external world, and what it means to them personally (in literary novels, the main goal may be internal. In genre novels, the external goal may be more pronounced – but the strongest stories have both).
These lead to internal and external obstacles the protagonist must overcome in order to succeed. The internal obstacle is a trait or belief the character needs to change. The external obstacles are the forces standing in the way of achieving the goal.
A climax that brings it all together: will the story question be answered? WIll the protaginist get what they want? Will they overcime thier character flaw or misbelief in order to succeed?
A resolution that allows us to bask in the character’s success (if it’s a happy ending) and/or realizde some truth about human nature and life itself.
What ties this all together? A cause-and-effect trajectory.
This means that things happen as a result of the previous thing. Characters don’t take action randomly. They react to what has happened. They may make things worse. They may make mistakes – and they should, it's part of their development – but they have to act.
Reacting doesn’t mean they get bounced around like a pinball, at the mercy of external forces. No reader likes a protagonist who is an eternal victim. They have to always be trying to master their circumstances. Characters who get pulled along by the plot are boring. The reader doesn’t care about them, because they don’t care enough themselves to actually do anything. In real life, people sit around and whine about their circumstances all the time. In fiction, that’s a sure way to make a reader throw the book across the room.
How do you create a cause-and-effect trajectory? It’s through what Jennie Nash calls the Inside Outline. Lisa Cron calls it the Story Genius Method. There are various ways to put it together, but I find these two the most useful for writers.
To create an Inside Outline, you simply write out for each scene:
Scene: what happens in the scene
Point: what it means to the protagonist
Then: because of that...
Scene: what happens in the scene
Point: what it means to the protagonist
Jennie Nash explains it in detail in Blueprint for a Book. It’s a simple way to make sure your scenes are building toward something and things aren’t just happening randomly. One thing to beware of though is your tendency as a writer to want to jam stuff in. You want it to happen, so you fudge it in the Inside Outline. One powerful question to ask of each scene is: So What? So what if this happens? Why does the reader care? How does it affect the protagonist and their journey? The more you fudge it, the harder it will be to render a satisfying conclusion to your novel.
In Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel, Lisa Cron also espouses a cause-and-effect trajectory, but with a slightly different mechanism.
She has writers map out each scene by splitting a page into 4 quadrants:
Upper Left – Cause – What Happens
Upper Right – Effect – The Consequences
Lower Left – Why It Matters
Lower Right – The Realization (that propels the character into the next scene)
As you can see, this is a little more in-depth, but it really allows you to see how any particular scene fits into the whole. It makes sure there are external and internal stakes in every scene.
I’ve written more about both of these methods in a blog post last year.
It doesn’t matter what method you use, though, as long as you find a way to get those main seven things in there. Without them, your characters will be flat. Your story will go nowhere. People will read it and say, “It felt like the writer was just making stuff up as they went along.”
Make stuff up, sure. But make a satisfying, kick-ass story that has readers clamoring to read more of your books!
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