Cluey enough?

Last week some fellow book-lovers were complaining about how a book kept spoon-feeding them clues.  They felt a bit disappointed that the author didn't trust them enough to figure out what was going on on their own.

Several years ago a contemporary short story came through our workshop for critique. I quite enjoyed it, but several other readers didn't.  They didn't "get it", they said.

The poor author then had to explain what she was trying to do with the story.  99% of the time when this happens, "If the audience doesn't get it, you didn't write it right."

But this time, that wasn't true.  I loved her story. It was creepy and subtle and made me shiver in delight.  How could the others not get this?

They weren't the audience.   Alas, that author didn't listen to my solo opinion, but the opinion of the masses.  She rewrote her story and pretty much ruined it.  It needed to be subtle to be creepy to be delicious.

At what point is a story too blatant, at what point is it too obscure, and where is the sweet spot in between?

As an author, I struggle with this issue.  I want my readers to get the whole enchilada. I want them to marvel in the subtleties and the nuances of the story.  But if I'm too blatant in my explanations, I'm talking down to my readers.  But if I am too subtle, they miss the clues and miss out on a lovely undercurrent.

I wanted to shake my fellow workshoppers and shout, "Don't you get it?  It's the roommate!  She's doing all this! Don't blame the text!"  But they did blame the text. And that was a shame, because their blame led to the death of the text.  Alas.

Poorly written is poorly written, but if you don't get it, it doesn't necessarily mean a story is poorly-written. You might not be its audience.

Text is written for a certain audience.  Fr'ex, remember the MG series Encyclopedia Brown?  Drank those in whilst a wee lass.  It always amazed me how Leroy always managed to figure out the mystery (especially when so many adults around him could not).  I couldn't figure out the mystery.¹  I squirmed in amazement and loved those books. Many years later I gave them a read again.  This time, the clues were laid out so obvious, I wonder how on earth I could have missed them back then.

Eight-year-old me was Sobol's audience.  Forty-something me, not so much.

Ultimately, it all depends on the audience.  If something strikes you as too simplistic or too obscure, you're not its audience.
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¹ I don't know it was so much that I wasn't clever back then, but more that I was too painfully aware that being clever (like I wanted to be) wasn't The Done Thing.  Little girls like me weren't supposed to be smart and clever and able to solve Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, so I think I might have deliberately dumbed myself down to fit in.  Oh, how I desperately wanted to fit in to the homogenous culture of my childhood!  (I didn't, no matter how hard I tried.)  

Pretty much everyone who surrounded me was neither smart nor clever.  And that hurt.  I never realised just how much it hurt until I grew up and found the smart and clever people.  It was like coming home.

Personal Style Sheets

A novel’s a big thing. Naturally, you’ll forget the little details—the colour of the hero’s eyes, the spelling of a name, the location of a temple, that sort of stuff.

A personal style sheet comes in useful. This contains a roster of all your characters, their characteristics, goals, personal quirks, particular spellings and more. It can also contain any maps, important plot points, and continuity notes. Heroine left her parasol at Gunter’s? Then she shouldn’t have it with her at Almack’s. Style sheets can help avoid these sorts of errors.

Now, I don’t get stuck up on all the formal layout and spelling and stuff (except for proper nouns. Keep names and words unique to your universe consistent). But I do want to know important things.

I once wrote (most of) a novel organically. In the first few chapters, I had X happen, and a McGuffin went missing, thus creating an important plot point. Then about chapter eight, the missing object showed up without fanfare, and became part of a very important plot point. When Plot Point #3 came along, I had forgotten what had happened in the first part of the novel, so I went back for a read.

Oh, the continuity errors! If I went back and fixed one thing, it completely ruined the other thing. In the end I had to scrap that novel and redraft it.

Lesson learned: I work best when I draft out the outline first, including making notes about important things. Then I can sit down and crank out wordage.

When I work on a ms, I’m always taking notes. Thankfully, yWriter, my noveling software of choice, has a section for notes. (It’s also got places for listing character bios, locations, McGuffins and more.)

How do you keep track of the minutae of your ms?

Thoughts on Voice

When an agent or an editor reviews a submission, one of the first things they look for is voice. It is one of the elements that hooks a reader on page one.

Voice conveys mood. Is your voice light and breezy or dark and brooding? Is it formal or conversational? Does it absorb the reader, or distance them through tediousness?

It takes some practice to develop a workable writing style. A good place to start developing an addictive writing style is to read books whose writing style you admire. Take some time to analyse the writing style. What sentence structure does the author use? What kind of vocabulary? How’s the pace and rhythm? A strong writing style will provide a good platform for an author’s voice.

How does the writing make you feel? This is the important bit.

When you analyse someone else’s style and voice, make note of how it feels. Is it formal and dry? Brief? Witty? Poetic? What’s the sentence structure like?

If you wish, you could attempt to write something in someone else’s style. When you are done, put this piece away, and revisit it much later. Weeks, months, years, maybe. Go over it, and ask yourself, what if *you* were writing this piece (and not Hemmingway), what would you do different? What would you change?

Find something you wrote ten years ago. Have a look at how you used language. Does that earlier work make you cringe? Why? Figure out what it is you don’t like about it. Also recognise what you did right. You need to do more of that.

Another point to consider: voice isn’t just what you’ve put on the page. It can also be what you didn’t put on the page. Picking on Hemmingway again, his style was quite terse. But it was effective.

There really is not right or wrong when it comes to voice. But there is good and bad (and a muddled middle subject to personal taste). A good voice uses language in a very effective manner, evoking setting and mood without weighing down the text. Balancing this out is a matter of practice and relaxing. No matter how much you want to, you can’t force it. In fact, if you try to force it, it’ll lock up and you’ll sound stiff. Take it easy and write without worrying about how it’ll end up. Freewrite stuff without the goal of doing anything with it other than write it. Chances are your voice will come out more in this work.

I recently had some issues with my voice. I couldn’t figure out why stuff I wrote sounded so… blah. Eventually, I figured out my sentence structures were too formal, and too long. I was using a lot of “which” and “that” and “then”. I was trying to connect up causality, when I really needed to let facts speak for themselves. I needed to trust my readers.

No doubt there are a few other elements I haven’t discovered yet. Those’ll reveal themselves with time.