Inklings of Advice, Part I: Jumpstarting

Jumpstarting

So, you have a brilliant idea for a story. The thought of it hasn’t left you alone for days, and you feel that you’ll absolutely burst if you don’t write it, transplant those vivid images and characters from your head onto the reality of written words on a page or computer sscreen. Or maybe you’re already working on something, and you’ve just thought of the next scene. You know how you want it to feel and the essentials of what’s going to happen in your story or scene, and that’s enough, right? You sit down to write, but the words don’t come, and you can’t just wait for them to magically appear. Okay…so…maybe that wasn’t enough after all. Darn it! How do you get this started, get your fingers tapping or your pen gliding over the page, transmitting those brilliant ideas into something you can articulately share with others? Hmmm…maybe… “It was a dark and stormy night…”
I’m not even going to groan “Noooo!” here, because chances are you’re already doing it. If not, that’s okay; that’s what this article is for.
It’s a natural tendency, especially (but not by any means specificly) of beginning writers, to want to set the stage at the beginning of a story or scene; to describe how the setting and/or the characters look before actually telling us, the readers, what they’re trying to say. Of course it is; we want to be familiar with our setting and have a picture of our people in our minds before we start writing about them and letting them talk. Sometimes, if this is done well, it works, “if it’s done well” being the key. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to do it poorly than otherwise. There’s a better reason even than that to be careful, though, and to decide how your setting and characters look beforehand: if you spend your first page or two writing about only the dark, spooky woods or the sunny pasture or the busy city or the quiet office building or the mysterious old house, chances are very high that you and your readers are going to get bored before you’re done, and you’ll get stuck. You’ll get to the end of this long, eloquent description and realize that none of it was really what you wanted to write about, that you’ve accomplished next to nothing. You’re faced with the same problem you had to begin with: How do you start working on what you really want to write?
The answer is dialog and action. We’ll start with dialog. Letting one of your characters have the first line is a great way to free you from a brain-freeze right at the beginning of a story or jumpstart that slow-moving scene. It captures the readers’ interest at once and makes them want to find out more about the speaker, as well as the character being addressed. However, there are still a few important things to remember.
First, make it dialog, not monolog. It’s not a good idea to start by having a person talk to himself. This is standard practice in plays, and often happens in older literature; even Shakespeare and Louisa May Alcott used this technique; but unless your speaker has a habbit of talking to himself, be careful about this. If he does happen to have that peculiarity, make it realistic. Think about people you know who talk to themselves, or, if you do it, your own spoken thoughts; consider the things that are said to oneself. We who talk to ourselves, or just talk out loud without anyone else being present or to no one in particular, might remark about something that has bothered or surprised us, the weather, something that is going to happen later or that has just happened, or what we’re doing or are going to do in the next five minutes, etc. A healthy person is not very likely to describe what he sees around him in vivid detail or hold forth eloquently upon his troubles and misfortunes to an empty room; these things are best kept for inner dialog or part of the narration. However, if your character has a specific reason for talking to himself, such as an overactive imagination or a mental illness, these suggestions may or may not apply; neither might the typical saying addressed to those who talk to themselves: “Just don’t start answering yourself!” Your character might have another part of himself, a “voice” or a figment of his imagination who replies to his remarks. This is, of course, okay to do.
Second, beware the “as you know, Bob” unless it’s appropriate to the situation. In other words, avoid having a character tell another something that the other already knows simply for the sake of explaining it to the reader. We don’t do this in calm, everyday conversation. Imagine this:
“Mom, we really have to leave now,” said Ron. “As you know, I have to be at school by nine o’clock.”
“Yes, dear, and you know I have to be at work by nine thirty. Come on, then; let’s go.”
Boring and unrealistic. Ron might still say this if he were impatient or angry with his mother, to remind her of something she already knows; in reality the conversation might go something like this:
“Mom, we really have to leave, now!” said Ron, shifting from foot to foot. “I do have to be at school by nine, you know.”
“Yes, honey, I drive you every day, remember? I’m ready; grab your books and let’s go.”
In this second example, the impatience and slight sarcasm is evident in Ron’s actions and words and implied tone, and he’s stating a well-known fact to his mother in order to make a point; in her turn, his mother is stating another fact that he knows well to make her point that everything is going to be fine. We also naturally do this when we’re angry or “up on our soap box” about something that makes us passionate. Think of students complaining to one another about a particularly difficult teacher, or two like-minded people having an animated discussion about some political issue that they both feel strongly about. “As you know, Bob” is frequently used in such situations by real people, so, with care, you can use it effectively under similar circumstances in your dialog.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, don’t make your dialog at the beginning of a story or a scene idle conversation. The beginning of a story is crucial; if you don’t grab the attention of your readers then, there aren’t many who will wait around and wade through a lot of words until their attention is grabbed later. Make sure everything said has a purpose. If you want to use idle conversation to demonstrate something, or divert attention away from something dark and dangerous that is being hinted at in the background, that’s fine; but don’t use it as a space-filler in hopes that it will get your story moving, because it won’t. This doesn’t mean that every single word has to be vital to the plot, but dialog should contribute to the story in some way.
Action is also a great way to get your story off to a good start. This doesn’t necessarily mean starting off with a fight scene, but showing your character(s) doing something right from the outset, whether it be dueling with swords or running late to work or washing dishes. These action scenes are good times for dialog if your character is not alone or internal dialog (thoughts) if he is. It breaks internal thoughts and bits of history or facts up so that readers absorb them and become interested in what the character is doing at the same time, without feeling that he is wasting his time and theirs by sitting or standing there and thinking or talking about things he already must know about.
“But what about my descriptions?” you ask. Easy: break up the lumps and sprinkle them through your dialog and action, using them to augment it. Your readers will remember what your characters and setting look like more clearly if they have a reason to be interested in them, and you won’t get bogged down in an excess of detail. Sometimes you can put a lump right at the beginning and get away with it, but if you find yourself toiling along, hating what you do but knowing this and that have to be described, try employing some dialog and action to spice things up for you and your reader.
Happy writing, and may your sailing be smooth!

© Copyright September 30, 2008 Elizabeth More