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Rarely Used Power Words

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There is a list of 30 English words which are rarely used, powerful, and should be available to any writer appearing in the June 22, 2023 issue of Literature News and contributed by Alka. I think this is quite a good list, because all of them have a clear, crisp meaning, and while they may be rarely used, they aren’t obscure. Interestingly, none is an adverb. How many are familiar?

1. Abstruse (adj.): Difficult to understand; obscure.
Sentence 1: The professor’s abstruse lecture on quantum physics left the students bewildered.
Sentence 2: The book contained an abstruse passage that required multiple readings to grasp its meaning.

2. Acrimonious (adj.): Harsh in nature, speech, or behaviour.
Sentence 1: The divorce proceedings became acrimonious as the couple fought over their assets.
Sentence 2: The debate turned acrimonious as the politicians exchanged personal insults.

3. Alacrity (n.): Willingness to do something quickly and enthusiastically.
Sentence 1: Sarah accepted the job offer with alacrity, excited to start her new role.
Sentence 2: The team responded to the coach’s halftime pep talk with renewed alacrity on the field.

4. Ameliorate (v.): To make something better or improve a situation.
Sentence 1: The doctor’s treatment plan ameliorated the patient’s symptoms and enhanced their well-being.
Sentence 2: The charity’s efforts to provide clean water to the village ameliorated the living conditions of the residents.

5. Assiduous (adj.): Showing great care, attention to detail, and perseverance in one’s work.
Sentence 1: The assiduous researcher spent countless hours in the lab conducting experiments.
Sentence 2: The author’s assiduous editing process ensured that the final manuscript was flawless.

6. Clandestine (adj.): Done secretly or in a concealed manner, often implying something illicit or forbidden.
Sentence 1: The spies met in a clandestine location to exchange classified information.
Sentence 2: The couple planned a clandestine rendezvous under the moonlit sky.

7. Conundrum (n.): A difficult or confusing problem or question.
Sentence 1: Solving the puzzle proved to be a conundrum even for the most experienced players.
Sentence 2: The ethical conundrum presented in the novel forced the protagonist to make a challenging decision.

8. Deleterious (adj.): Harmful or damaging to health, well-being, or success.
Sentence 1: Smoking has been proven to have deleterious effects on both physical and mental health.
Sentence 2: The company’s deleterious financial decisions led to its eventual bankruptcy.

9. Ephemeral (adj.): Lasting for a short period; transitory or fleeting.
Sentence 1: The beauty of cherry blossoms is ephemeral, as the flowers bloom for only a few weeks each year.
Sentence 2: The actor’s fame was ephemeral, as he quickly faded into obscurity after his initial success.

10. Equanimity (n.): Calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in difficult situations.
Sentence 1: Despite the chaos around her, she maintained her equanimity and approached the problem with a clear mind.
Sentence 2: The leader’s equanimity during the crisis reassured the team and helped them stay focused.

11. Esoteric (adj.): Intended for or understood by only a small group with specialised knowledge or interest.
Sentence 1: The professor’s lecture on advanced mathematics was esoteric, and only a few students could follow along.
Sentence 2: The book delved into esoteric philosophies that were beyond the comprehension of most readers.

12. Exacerbate (v.): To make a problem, situation, or condition worse or more severe.
Sentence 1: The hot weather exacerbated the drought, leading to further water shortages.
Sentence 2: His careless comments only served to exacerbate the tensions between the two families.

13. Fervent (adj.): Intensely passionate or enthusiastic.
Sentence 1: The artist had a fervent desire to create meaningful and thought-provoking artwork.
Sentence 2: The politician delivered a fervent speech that inspired the crowd and ignited their patriotic spirit.

14. Gregarious (adj.): Fond of the company of others; sociable.
Sentence 1: Mark was known for his gregarious nature and always enjoyed hosting parties.
Sentence 2: The gregarious puppy wagged its tail and eagerly greeted every person it encountered.

15. Idiosyncrasy (n.): A distinctive or peculiar feature, behaviour, or characteristic that is unique to an individual or group.
Sentence 1: John had the idiosyncrasy of wearing mismatched socks every day.
Sentence 2: The small coastal town had its idiosyncrasies, including a yearly festival dedicated to seashells.

16. Impervious (adj.): Not allowing something to pass through or penetrate; incapable of being affected or influenced.
Sentence 1: The fortress was built with thick walls that were impervious to enemy attacks.
Sentence 2: Despite the criticism, her confidence remained impervious, and she continued pursuing her dreams.

17. Languid (adj.): Lacking energy or enthusiasm; slow and relaxed in manner.
Sentence 1: After a long day at work, she enjoyed taking a languid stroll by the beach to unwind.
Sentence 2: The hot summer afternoon made everyone feel languid and drowsy.

18. Melancholy (n.): A feeling of deep sadness or pensive sorrow, often with no obvious cause.
Sentence 1: As she watched the sunset, a sense of melancholy washed over her, and she reflected on the passing of time.
Sentence 2: The hauntingly beautiful melody carried a tinge of melancholy that touched the hearts of all who listened.

19. Myriad (adj.): Countless or innumerable; a large, indefinite number.
Sentence 1: The garden was adorned with myriad flowers, each displaying its vibrant colours and delicate petals.
Sentence 2: The old bookstore housed a myriad of books, spanning various genres and eras.

20. Nebulous (adj.): Vague, hazy, or indistinct in form or outline; lacking clarity.
Sentence 1: The concept of time is nebulous, as it is difficult to define precisely.
Sentence 2: The artist’s abstract painting featured nebulous shapes and colours, allowing viewers to interpret it in their own way.

21. Obfuscate (v.): To make something unclear, confusing, or difficult to understand.
Sentence 1: The lawyer attempted to obfuscate the facts to create doubt in the minds of the jurors.
Sentence 2: The politician’s speech was filled with jargon and obfuscating language to avoid addressing the issue directly.

22. Panacea (n.): A solution or remedy that is believed to solve all problems or cure all ills.
Sentence 1: Some people view education as a panacea for societal issues and inequality.
Sentence 2: The new product was marketed as a panacea for ageing, promising to reverse all signs of wrinkles and fine lines.

23. Querulous (adj.): Complaining or whining in a petulant or irritable manner.
Sentence 1: The querulous customer was dissatisfied with every aspect of the service and demanded a refund.
Sentence 2: The child’s querulous tone annoyed the teacher, who asked him to speak with respect.

24. Reticent (adj.): Inclined to keep silent or reserved; not revealing one’s thoughts or feelings readily.
Sentence 1: Despite the intense questioning, the witness remained reticent and refused to disclose any further information.
Sentence 2: The usually reticent boy opened up to his best friend, sharing his deepest fears and insecurities.

25. Sagacious (adj.): Having or showing keen mental discernment and good judgment; wise and shrewd.
Sentence 1: The sagacious old man offered valuable advice based on his years of experience.
Sentence 2: The CEO’s sagacious decision to invest in new technology propelled the company to unprecedented success.

26. Taciturn (adj.): Reserved or inclined to silence; habitually silent or uncommunicative.
Sentence 1: The taciturn loner preferred solitude and rarely engaged in conversations with others.
Sentence 2: Despite his taciturn nature, his eyes spoke volumes, revealing the emotions he kept hidden.

27. Ubiquitous (adj.): Present, appearing, or found everywhere.
Sentence 1: In today’s digital age, smartphones have become ubiquitous, accompanying people in every aspect of their lives.
Sentence 2: The fragrance of freshly brewed coffee was ubiquitous in the café, enveloping the space with its comforting aroma.

28. Vacillate (v.): To waver or hesitate in making a decision or choice; to be indecisive.
Sentence 1: She vacillated between accepting the job offer and pursuing further education.
Sentence 2: The committee’s members vacillated for hours, unable to agree on a course of action.

29. Wanton (adj.): Deliberate and without motive or provocation; reckless or careless.
Sentence 1: The wanton destruction of the historic monument outraged the community.
Sentence 2: The driver’s wanton disregard for traffic rules led to a dangerous accident.

30. Zealot (n.): A person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other beliefs.
Sentence 1: The religious zealot preached his beliefs on street corners, attempting to convert passersby.
Sentence 2: The political zealot refused to consider alternative viewpoints and dismissed any opposing opinions as invalid.

Ending a Short Story

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Peter Mountford has some excellent advice on how to end a short story in his article of February 12, 2023 on the Writers Digest website.

Peter Mountford is a popular writing coach and developmental editor. Author of two award-winning novels, A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism and The Dismal Science, his essays and short fiction have appeared in The Paris Review, NYT (Modern Love), The Atlantic, The Sun, Granta, and elsewhere.

Peter Mountford

Peter says, “Many of my students and clients spend years working on a debut novel, only to discover that to get a literary agent’s attention they need to publish something—maybe a few short stories in literary magazines. But writing a great (or even publishable) short story isn’t easy.

Faulkner famously said every novelist is a failed short story writer, and short stories are the most difficult form after poetry. There’s some truth to the idea that short stories have more in common with poems than novels. Novels are more labor intensive, for sure, but there’s something fluke-ish and rare about a perfect short story.

Short story writing hones your craft in miniature, without having to throw away multiple “practice” novels, which can be—speaking from experience—uncomfortable and time-consuming.

The best short stories are remembered for their ends, which “leave the reader in a kind of charged place of contemplation,” according to Kelly Link—a Pulitzer finalist whose fifth collection of stories, White Cat, Black Dog, will be out soon.

David Means, author most recently of a new collection of stories, Two Nurses, Smoking, said, “A good ending doesn’t answer a question. It opens up the deeper mystery of the story itself. There isn’t room in a short story to do anything but leave the reader alone with the story.”

“I want an ending that feels like a punch in the gut that I wasn’t expecting but totally deserved,” says Rebecca Makkai, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Great Believers, and whose stories have had four appearances in the Best American Short Stories series.

What Is an Ending?

Before we get to techniques, there’s the question of what we mean by the “end” of a story? Is it the last scene, or the climactic turn, or the actual final sentences?

In the days of O. Henry’s short stories, the climax, last scene, and final sentences were all largely the same, and featured an unlikely plot twist accompanied by direct moral instruction. “The Gift of the Magi” concludes with the husband and wife realizing that in an effort to give their spouse the perfect small gift they’ve each spoiled receipt of their own small gift. In the final paragraph, O. Henry awkwardly steps in to explain the moral of the story, how they “most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house.” It feels hoary and antique to a modern reader.

Now, the big climactic moment often happens two-thirds of the way through the story, not on the last page, and the story’s moral or lack thereof must be deduced by the reader.

Consider ZZ Packer’s amazing “Brownies,” where the story’s confrontation builds from the first sentence, when one Black Brownie troop hatches a plan to “kick the asses of each and every girl” in another white Brownie troop, after possibly overhearing a racial slur.

About two-thirds through the story, right as they’re about to fight, it’s discovered that the white troop is mentally disabled. But the story doesn’t end there with a moral quip, as it would have 100 years ago. In the few pages that follow, on the bus home after the confrontation and its fallout, the narrator describes her father, who once asked some Mennonites to paint his porch. “It was the only time he’d have a white man on his knees doing something for a Black man for free.”

Another girl asks her if her father thanked them. “‘No,’ I said, and suddenly knew there was something mean in the world that I could not stop.” The reader sees now that this story is about how terrible treatment can lead to anger and further cruelty.

This part of the story, the bus ride after the action, is what you might call a coda, and the coda often contains the real “magic” in a contemporary story. The word coda comes from music, where it means an ending that, according to the dictionary, stands “outside the formal structure of the piece.”

In the coda—and not all contemporary stories have a coda, but most do—the writer helps the reader identify meaning without stating it as bluntly as O. Henry did. By leaving the work of interpretation to the reader, the writer allows for variety in how we might interpret the story. With ambiguity, the reader can continue to think about the story.

The Process: To Plan or Not to Plan

John Irving famously (supposedly?) writes the last line of every novel first, and then finds his way there.

Similarly, Kelly Link wants to know the end before she starts—it’s the least shiftable piece for her. She mulls a story over while swimming and walking. Having an ending in mind makes her more “surefooted about where to begin,” and what choices to make early in the story.

When editing or teaching, she suggests that a writer’s first idea for an ending often might be too obvious, and the second merely less obvious. The third will be more innovative, or singular.

When friends are working on stories, she enjoys kicking around ideas for their ends, going straight for some wild “‘bad idea’ that’s large and fun, and often goes somewhere strange or personal or interesting.”

On the other hand, Danielle Evans, whose second collection of stories, The Office of Historical Corrections, came out in 2020, said she can’t get excited about writing something unless she’s the first reader surprised.

Rebecca Makkai says she often has an ending in mind from the start, but “I very much hope I’m wrong. If I land right where I always thought I would, I’ve probably written a terribly obvious story.”

My own experience is that often when the story concludes in a way that is somewhat obvious or inevitable from the outset, there is even more of a burden on the writer to summon a brilliant coda and some stunning insights to wow the reader.

Tricks of the Short Story Trade

What do you do when you’re stuck, don’t like your current ending, or didn’t plan your ending? Several simple techniques might open things up for you.

Trick #1: Jump in Time

“I try to remember that the ending doesn’t have to stay in the same room or world or mode or timeframe as the rest of the story,” Makkai says. “These seismic shifts shake us loose from the world of the story and are very likely where we’ll find the story’s echoes and meanings.”

In Danielle Evans’ story “Snakes,” two 8-year-old cousins (one biracial and one white) are with their belittling, racist grandmother for a summer stay. The cousins get along, but at the climax the white cousin pushes narrator Tara out of a tree, almost killing her. The story could end there. Instead, “Snakes” jumps forward.

In her 20s, Tara has finished law school and likes to retell the story almost as entertainment. Her cousin is in a radically different place and has attempted suicide. When Tara visits her in a mental hospital, they’re kind to each other, yet their personalities and differing home lives sent them on radically different paths. The final paragraphs reveal that the narrator wasn’t pushed—she jumped from that tree, as a successful effort to get away from her grandmother. Her white cousin was left behind and endured a damaging, toxic relationship. The ending provides cues as to why their paths diverged, and the risks Tara took to escape.

You can also leap back in time. In Charles D’Ambrosio’s “The Point,” the story wraps up after the teenage narrator successfully and safely transports a drunk woman to her house. Then the coda: a flashback, the narrator coming upon his father after he’d shot himself in the head. It’s still a jump in time far away from the frame of the story but echoes an earlier time he couldn’t save someone.

To apply this approach, don’t be shy with time. Look for a big moment well in the future. Or, if the story has had few flashbacks, but the reader senses that the main character has a complex backstory, maybe you can go there to add another layer.

Trick #2: Change Lenses

Makkai points to Percival Everett’s hilarious and subversive “The Appropriation of Cultures,” as an example. Daniel, a Black man in South Carolina, decides to change how he sees the Confederate flag. He decides to treat it as a “Black Power flag,” then reinvents “Dixie” as a celebration of his own racial and cultural identity. Baffled racists are left floundering as Daniel appropriates the icons of their hate.

In the story’s final movement, the scope changes completely, pulling back to reveal the landscape from a more distant perspective. We leave Daniel’s story behind as the narrator shows other Black folks in Columbia, S.C. adopting the trend. We’re told the state’s white leaders decided to take down that flag—its meaning now inverted—from the state house.

To apply this to your own work, play with perspective—try stepping out of the confines of the story and looking at what might happen as a result if you pull back, or change the POV to an omniscient narrator. However, you can’t usually switch perspectives from one character to another. This tends to feel forced and jarring for the reader.

Trick #3: Make a Flat Character Three-Dimensional

This is a favorite of mine. Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain” combines this technique with a swing to a new POV—many great stories use several techniques at once.

The unpleasant POV character is shot dead about two-thirds of the way through the story, and the story pivots to an omniscient narrator. The narrator now catalogues Anders’ memories that didn’t flash in the final milliseconds of his life—memorizing hundreds of poems so that he could give himself the chills, seeing his daughter berating her stuffed animals, and so on.

Crucially, these unrecalled memories transform Anders from unlikable flat character to someone complicated. By the time the bullet leaves his “troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce …” readers are moved to tears.

Interestingly, the character in Wolff’s story has no epiphany, he doesn’t evolve. Only the reader’s understanding of the character changes. As novelist and short story writer Jim Shepard once wrote: “a short story, by definition, does have a responsibility in its closing gestures, to enlarge our [the reader’s] understanding.”

To do this, look for a character in the story who might be fairly important—possibly an oppositional character to the protagonist—but remains flat or slightly cliché. The mean jock. The shy nerd. Find a situation at the end where they’re acting in a way that complicates the reader’s sense of them. You can also see this in the final scene of “Brownies,” when the shy narrator and her shy friend become the center of attention.

Trick #4: Shift From Summary to Scene

Donald Barthelme’s surreal, darkly funny “The School” is told primarily in summary, narrated by a teacher describing a school year marked by death. His students try to grow orange trees but the trees wither; then the snakes die, along with herb gardens, tropical fish … the class’s puppy. The deaths are increasingly surreal and funny.

No scenes occur until the final page, when Barthelme “lands,” finally, in a scene, where the students grill the teacher with amusing and improbable over-eloquence over the meaning of death and life. The students press him for a demonstration regarding the value of life and love; he kisses his teaching assistant on the brow, and she embraces him (yes, the story is very strange). A new gerbil walks into the room to enthusiastic applause.

After reading “The School,” I borrowed this technique—summarizing a broad period of time, and then landing in a pivotal scene—for my story “Two Sisters,” which is unreliably narrated by a young man who hangs around with a wealthy jet-setting group. After summarizing the preceding year, the story shifts to scene where one of the rich kids says he’s no longer welcome—they find him too weird. Overwhelmed, he tries to attack her, but she gets away. He’s literally and metaphorically stranded in the wilderness.

The story couldn’t be more different in style and tone from “The School,” but the technique is the same.

To make this technique work, just look for a story that has a conversational style and covers a lot of ground, in terms of time. A narrator who seems to be chatting away about a period of time, and then drop them into a moment which animates and changes the situation they’ve been describing.

Trick #5: Return to an Object or Situation Mentioned Earlier

If a student or author who Kelly Link is editing is struggling with the end to their story, she suggests looking to “the beginning of the story, to see what was being promised there.”

Often, a story closes by returning to an object, situation, or idea mentioned early in the story. Kirstin Valdez Quade’s remarkable story “Nemecia” describes the narrator’s cousin’s shattered doll on the first page. By the story’s end, the narrator has been safeguarding this doll for half a century. She calls her now-elderly cousin to ask if she wants the doll, which the reader can now see symbolizes the cousin’s harrowing childhood. The cousin says she doesn’t even remember the doll.

Asked how she came up with this ending, Quade explained the initial draft was about 50 percent longer. An editor pointed out a sentence that would become the story’s last line, which echoes the doll’s shards. She took the advice, and “remembered the doll from the beginning and saw the opportunity.” Once she saw the proper end, she cut away everything unnecessary throughout, leaving this unforgettable conclusion.

To do this, add things to a story that you don’t know how or if you’ll use later. If they don’t end up being useful, cut them, but it’s easier to find these opportunities if you’ve scattered potential reference points in the first half of the story.

Trick #6: If All Else Fails, Keep Going

Danielle Evans points out that she often writes a paragraph that could end the story, but then she keeps going, “and those extra beats are what open it back up and make everything more interesting.”

Means offers a similar recommendation—and clearly Quade did this with “Nemecia.” “When you’re starting out as a writer,” Means said, “you sometimes write past the ending and then have to go back and cut, finding the right place to let it stop,” he says. “It’s a horrible feeling, cutting your own work, a sort of self-amputation, like the hiker who has to cut off his own foot—stuck between rocks—to keep living. But the end result can be stunning. The reader wonders how you did it. You’ve covered your tracks.”

Wrapping It Up

The best short stories can seem miraculous, intimidatingly perfect. Ends so inspired that no mere mortal could ever come up with something like that. But people do it all the time.

Sometimes it’s just trial and error. Sometimes you have to overwrite, pile up the writing and then see what should be kept. Then again, as Evans said, if you can make it to the final third of a story, and the first two-thirds are right, then you can “find the ending on momentum.””

Gender Specific Dialogue

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Here is an article from the Writers Digest website by Rachel Scheller dated 11 February 2023 in which she discusses gender differences in dialogue. She begins by saying, “Writing dialogue to suit the gender of your characters is important in any genre, but it becomes even more essential in romance writing. In a romance novel, characters of opposite sexes are often paired up or pitted against each other in relationships with varying degrees of complication. Achieving differentiation in the tones and spoken words of your male and female characters requires a careful touch, especially if you’re a woman writing a male’s dialogue, and vice versa. 

“GENDER-SPECIFIC DIALOGUE
It’s difficult for a writer to create completely convincing dialogue for a character of the opposite gender. But you can make your dialogue more realistic by checking your dialogue against a list of the ways in which most writers go wrong.

“If You’re a Woman
Here’s how to make your hero’s dialogue more true to gender if you’re a female writer:

  • Check for questions. Men tend to request specific information, rather than ask rhetorical questions. If your hero’s questions can’t be answered with a brief response, can you rephrase them? Instead of asking questions at all, can he make statements?
  • Check for explanations. Men tend to resist explaining; they generally don’t volunteer justification for what they do. If you need him to explain, can you give a reason why he must?
  • Check for feelings. Men tend to share feelings only if stressed or forced; they’re more likely to show anger than any other emotion. They generally don’t volunteer feelings. If you need your hero to spill how he’s feeling, can you make it more painful for him to not talk than to share his emotions?
  • Check for details. Men tend not to pay close attention to details; they don’t usually notice expressions or body language; they stick to basics when describing colors and styles. Can you scale back the level of detail?
  • Check for abstractions. Men tend to avoid euphemisms, understatements, comparisons, and metaphors. Can you rephrase your hero’s dialogue in concrete terms?
  • Check for approval-seeking behavior. Men tend to be direct rather than ask for validation or approval. Can you make your hero’s comments less dependent on what the other person’s reaction might be?

“If You’re a Man
Here’s how to make your heroine’s dialogue more realistic if you’re a male writer:

  • Check for advice. Women tend to sympathize and share experiences rather than give advice. Can you add empathy to your character’s reactions and have her talk about similar things that happened to her, rather than tell someone what he should do?
  • Check for bragging. Women tend to talk about their accomplishments and themselves in a self-deprecating fashion rather than a boastful one. Can you rephrase her comments in order to make her laugh at herself?
  • Check for aggressiveness. Women tend to be indirect and manipulative; even an assertive woman usually considers the effect her statement is likely to have before she makes it. Can you add questions to her dialogue, or add approval-seeking comments and suggestions that masquerade as questions?
  • Check for details. Women notice styles; they know what colors go together (and which don’t); and they know the right words to describe fashions, colors, and designs. Can you ramp up the level of specific detail?
  • Check for emotions. Women tend to bubble over with emotion, with the exception that they’re generally hesitant to express anger and tend to do so in a passive or euphemistic manner. If you need your heroine to be angry, can you give her a really good reason for yelling?
  • Check for obliviousness. Women notice and interpret facial expressions and body language, and they maintain eye contact. If you need your female character to not notice how others are acting, can you give her a good reason for being detached?

“Writing Realistic Dialogue: Exercises

  1. Eavesdrop (politely) as real people talk. How do two women speak to each other? How do two men speak to each other? How do a man and a woman speak to each other?
  2. Can you guess the nature of each relationship? For instance, do you think the couple you’ve listened to is newly dating or long-married? On what evidence did you base your opinion?
  3. Read your dialogue aloud. Unnatural lines may hide on the page, but they tend to leap out when spoken.
  4. Listen to someone else read your dialogue aloud. Better yet, get a man and a woman to read the appropriate parts. How do the lines sound? How do they feel to the speakers?”

Rachel Scheller

I haven’t been able to find a bio of Rachel. Where the bio is usually inserted at the end of the article, it is always a member of Writers Digest staff with a different name. All I can say is that Rachel has written about a dozen articles for Writers Digest and some books.

Character Development

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Mahsuda Snaith has an interesting article dated 14 August 2022 on The Novelry website. She offers three character development exercises to help us develop interesting, believable, complex characters.

Mahsuda Snaith was an Observer New Face of Fiction in 2017. She has published two celebrated novels, The Things We Thought We Knew and How to Find Home, the second of which was a BBC Radio 4 ‘Book at Bedtime’. Mahsuda is especially interested in folklore and fairy tales, and representing voices from all backgrounds. She is a writing coach at The Novelry.

Mahsuda Snaith

Mahsuda says, “Years ago, when I was learning the craft of writing, I would sit in public spaces and people-watch. I needed to create characters who were distinct and different from each other, so I gave myself the task of seeing what was distinct and different about those around me.

I sat on park benches and in town hall squares, watching people walk past then noting down the most interesting details about them. I may have only seen a person for a few seconds, but I could always note down something distinctive – how quickly they were walking, how they dressed, their body language.

A person strolling by in a tailored suit and a briefcase with perfect posture told me something very different about their character than a person in the same tailored suit dashing by with a dozen papers in their hands, head down and shoulders hunched forward as they bumped clumsily into people along the way.

To help you see your characters with the same fresh eyes, as though they’d just walked by, try the following exercise.

Broken Glass

Not only is this a good exercise in understanding your character better but, as a bonus, it’s also a great exercise in ‘show don’t tell’. You’ll end up with great characters and a more engaging writing style!

The Bedroom Exercise

This one is fun, speedy and simple! Just put 10 minutes on a timer and write about the items in your protagonist’s bedroom, particularly focusing on the unusual.

A desk in itself is not particularly telling, but a desk with a broken leg propped up by CDs gives away your character’s interests, personality and, in this case, perhaps even their age. There may be moth holes in the curtains, cat posters on the wall or an immaculate display of dolls kept in their original boxes. And if there’s little to nothing in your character’s room, this can tell us something too. An open suitcase with only a few items, a mattress on the floor with no bed frame, bare walls and windowsills, are all signs of what your character’s life is really like.

So you can see how this character exercise is so powerful: it gives an insight into the intimate life of your protagonist that they wouldn’t necessarily show to the rest of the world.

Once you’ve done this with your protagonist, try it out with other characters. Seeing the differences between the main players’ bedrooms could be incredibly revealing and also highlight the conflicts and dynamics between characters in your novel.

Interview Your Characters

You’ve observed your character from a distance and you’ve snooped in their bedrooms; now it’s time to get up close and personal.

There have been times when I’ve not been able to connect with one character in my story. In those moments, I always find it helpful to ask them questions. Not about their hair colour or what their door number is, but the deep questions you would probably not even ask your closest friends. Questions you would probably not even ask yourself.

Put a timer on for 10 minutes and answer these questions for one of your characters.

The timer is important because I don’t want you to ponder over the answers for too long but to write them intuitively.

You may not think you know your characters very well, but it’s amazing what the subconscious reveals when you have the pressure of a timer.

Got your writing equipment ready? Let’s go.

  • Who is this? (Keep it brief; name, age or whatever immediately comes to mind.)
  • What do they carry?
  • Where do they go?
  • What are they afraid of?
  • What do they believe?
  • Who has hurt them?
  • What do they hope will happen?
  • What happens?

When you’ve finished answering these questions, let those answers sink in and think about how they might affect your novel. You might have new information about your characters that will shape their motivations and how they behave.

Out of all these questions, what your character fears can be the most revealing.

  • How does their fear stop them from getting what they want?
  • How can your character overcome their fear?
  • And if they can’t overcome it, how can their fear ruin everything they could possibly want?

There’s often a misconception that you need likeable characters in a novel for your readers to invest in them. I’ve read many novels where the characters, including the main characters, are distinctly unlikeable and – in most cases – this is deliberate.

What is more important than likability is believably. If you create a character that has nuance and layers, who is driven by their fears and obsessions just like real people, then readers will be far more invested in them than if they are picture-perfect cut-outs of what we think a hero looks like.”

Endings

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There was an interesting email the other day from Harry Bingham of Jericho Writers.

Harry said, “Beginnings are important. If you don’t get your reader onto the story-train in that opening chapter, you’ve basically lost the game before it’s really started.

And also: if you don’t set expectations just so in those opening pages, you’re likely to confuse your reader or upset them later in the book – another way to lose the game.

But endings matter too. To a huge extent, they set an architecture for the whole book. They determine the way you understand it.

Endings matter at least as much as beginnings and the reason I don’t talk about them much is simply that endings mostly write themselves.

I don’t know about your experience, but my endings generally pass in a rush. It’s as though the entirety of the preceding novel is there to allow me to write the final chunk in a blaze of understanding and joy.

The understanding is: I know my characters. I know how all my little plot intricacies need to play out. I know what the grand finale needs to deliver. The prior 90,000 words involved me figuring those things out. The last 20,000 are my reward.

The joy is partly the ease of writing. But it’s also the joy of completing the arc. It’s like writing one long punchline, where you already know that the joke is going to land. I’ve certainly had some spectacularly happy writing sessions that haven’t involved endings. But mostly – the writing sessions I remember with most pleasure involve endings. Words flowing and the text satisfying.

So maybe you don’t need help with the endings. I think there’s an argument that if the preceding story has worked properly, the ending should just fall into place. But here, for what it’s worth, is a checklist to keep at hand …

Exterior drama

Have you properly completed your exterior drama? In the kind of books I write, that’ll typically involve some good splash of violence – a sinking boat, a fight, a burning building. But that’s not necessary. In Pride and Prejudice, the exterior ‘drama’ involves a naïve girl eloping with Mr Wrong and the Romantic Hero doing (off-screen) what Romantic Heroes are there to do. The off-screen quality of that drama is probably a little underweight for a modern audience, but so long as you have some dramatic action that’s well suited to your genre and readership, you’re fine.

Interior drama

The flipside of the exterior action needs to be some serious internal pressure. In a standalone novel, that pressure needs to have the sense of being pivotal – life-altering, life-defining. In a series novel, you can’t quite get away with a new life-defining moment with every installment, but the stakes still need to be high. Series characters take a bit of a battering as a result.

Most books, not all, will involve a romantic relationship. And – of course – the pressures of your grand finale are also pressures that test and define that relationship. You definitely don’t have to kiss and get married at the end of every book. I’ve ended a book with my protagonist ending what had seemed like a strong and constructive relationship. But when your character enters the furnaces of your ending, everything is tested, everything will either prove itself durable or fallible. The relationship can’t simply be as it was before. (Again, series characters need to play those things differently, but ‘differently’ doesn’t mean you can just ignore the issue.)

Other key friendships / relationships

Of course, there are a ton of other relationships that build up over the course of a book. Those might be best-friend type relationships, or children, or parents. They can (importantly) be office colleagues, which sounds dull but they can matter too. My detective’s relationship with her boss and other colleagues is just quite central to the architecture of her life and the books. These relationships too don’t need profound alteration necessarily, but they need some token of ending. A boss hugging your character (when he/she never normally would), or talking about a promotion, or offering a holiday – those things sound trivial, but they can define something important about everyone’s relationship to what has just happened. You don’t necessarily need much here. Half a page? A page? That might be ample. But if you book misses that page, it’ll never quite satisfy as it ought to.

Mystery resolution

Most books – not just crime novels – will often have some kind of mystery at the heart. That mystery will probably be unfolded in your grand action-climax, but that won’t always be true. Modern fiction has (rightly) moved away from that moustache-twirling final chapter where the Great Detective reveals the mystery to a completely static audience. But it’ll often be the case that little questions and niggles remain. Those things need to be addressed. It’s even OK if they’re addressed by saying, “We’ll never know exactly how / why / who X.” But you need to resolve your mysteries or acknowledge that you haven’t.

Movement

And, since we’ve just dissed static and moustache-twirling final chapters, I’d add that maintaining some kind of motion still matters at the end. Just as you’ll want to move settings fairly frequently in your middle chapters, I think you’ll want to do the same at the end. Physical motion is still a good way to convey story motion.

The closing shot

And –

There’s a theory in film-structure that the opening shot should show the ‘Before’ state of a character and the closing shot should show the ‘After’ – where the before/after vignettes somehow encapsulate the alteration brought about by the story. So to take the (vastly excellent) Miss Congeniality movie, the opening shot shows Sandra Bullock as goofy, unkempt, and without close female friends. The closing shot shows her kempt, still her, but now with close female friends. That’s the key transition in the movie.

I don’t quite like the mechanical nature of these movie plotting guides, but I do think it’s worth reflecting on the closing shot. What are you wanting to show? What’s the image of your character that you want to leave with your reader? In one of my books, a girl had been long separated from her father. Fiona’s last act in the book is to rejoin the two. She’s not physically present when the two meet – she’s set up the meeting, but remains in a car outside, watching. And that maybe is just the right tone for the book. Fiona plays this almost Christ-like role – suffering for others, undoing wrongs – but nevertheless remains on the outside of ordinary human society. That point isn’t made in any direct way, but it doesn’t have to be. An indirect point lingers longer than one made more crudely.”

Review: Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom

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Eskom used to be a customer of mine when I worked for Westinghouse in the 1970’s. I took several trips to South Africa, but never got any business. Retrospectively, possibly because Westinghouse didn’t pay bribes. Eskom’s current severe load shedding attracted me to this book by André de Ruyter, the CEO of Eskom during the three year period 2020 -2022.

André de Ruyter must have written this book in a hurry. He resigned as CEO of Eskom in late February this year, and the book was distributed in late August. That’s six months to strike a deal with the publisher, Penguin, write the book, have it edited, publicised and published. At just over 300 pages it is filled with facts that he would have had to look up. As most novels have a ‘gestation time’ of at least a year, it is a remarkable feat to publish this book in six months.

de Ruyter got the top job at Eskom in January 2020. He says that 28 presumably qualified black candidates turned down the job. This gives an indication of how tough the job was. Eskom was shedding load regularly, deeply in debt, owned by the South African state, subject to political manipulations, and racked by corruption. de Ruyter says he took the job because it represented a challenge, and out of patriotism to South Africa and not for the low compensation.

In the book, de Ruyter describes the difficulties he faced as CEO:

  • Eskom had no reserve generating capacity, owing to years of indecision by the government. Government regulation made it impossible for privately owned generation to enter the market. The government wanted 100% control of the electric power market.
  • Eskom’s tariffs were below cost, and the government resisted efforts to raise tariffs, on the basis that cheap energy was desirable, but this only led to a huge debt mountain.
  • Municipalities did not pay the bills for power delivered to them. They had to be taken to court.
  • The government was biased in favor of coal fuel. This made it difficult to plan for renewables for power generation. Moreover, the quality of available coal was deteriorating, contributing to maintenance and output problems.
  • Corruption was rife in the purchasing of coal fuel oil and goods. A major, privately funded investigation found that senior ANC members were involved in corruption.
  • Local police did not co-operate in the prosecution of criminal employees
  • Violent threats were made against whistle blowers, including the CEO who had to have body guards.
  • The CEO was served a cup of coffee that had been laced with cyanide
  • The skills base was badly eroded. Regulations made it difficult to re-hire skilled white workers and difficult also to dismiss under performing black workers.
  • The average age of the power stations was more than forty years, and they had not been subject to routine maintenance
  • Regulations made it difficult to obtain OEM spare parts directly. This opened the possibilities of corruption
  • Sabotage of operating plant for political ends was not uncommon.

In spite of these challenges, de Ruyter did accomplish quite a lot:

  • a plan to transition to a low carbon future with privately- and Eskom-owned renewable generation
  • a culture change in Eskom: loyalty, accountability, and values based
  • the division of Eskom into three entities: generation, transmission and distribution

de Ruyter resigned when a new chairman was appointed with a brief to run a ‘hands on’ board. This led to management being undermined and second-guessed by amateurs at every turn. Unfortunately, that chairman is still in place.

This book will have caused consternation within the ANC. There are many specific accounts of named government leaders taking decisions and actions which are contrary to the interests of the country.

I have two criticisms of this book. First, it is not well organised. Topics and the timeline are frequently switched around. The whole story still gets told, but in a somewhat disjointed way. Second, de Ruyter lectures the reader frequently about why his management style and techniques are right. They are right, but the average reader will not need the lecture.

This book is a very valuable piece of work. It exposes the inherent weaknesses of a naive, Marxist-oriented government, shows the risks in government ownership of business, and makes the undoubtable case for competent, modern management.

“Write Evert Day” – Bad Advice

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On Cal Newport’s blog, he has a post about writing every day. He says,”If you’ve ever considered professional writing, you’ve heard this advice. Stephen King recommends it in his instructional memoir, On Writing (he follows a strict diet of 1,000 words a day, six days a week). Anne Lamott proposes something similar in her guide, Bird by Bird (she recommends sitting down to write at roughly the same time every day).

Having published four books myself here’s my opinion: If you’re not a full time writer (like King and Lamott), this is terrible advice. This strategy will, in fact, reduce the probability that you finish your writing project.”

Cal Newport

Cal launched the “Study Hacks” blog at calnewport.com in 2007, and has been regularly publishing essays here ever since. Over 2,000,000 people a year visit this site to read Cal’s weekly posts about technology, productivity, and the quest to live and work deeply in an increasingly distracted world.

“Here’s what happens when you resolve to write every day: you soon slip up.

If you’re not a full-time writer, this is essentially unavoidable. An early meeting at work, a back-up on the subway, an afternoon meeting that runs long — any number of common events will render writing impractical on some days.

This slip-up, however, has big consequences.

It provides evidence to your brain that your plan to write every day will not succeed. As I’ve argued before, the human brain is driven, in large part, by its need to assess plans: providing motivation to act on good plans, and reducing motivation (which we experience as procrastination) to act on flawed plans.

The problem for the would-be writer is that the brain does not necessarily distinguish between your vague and abstract goal, to write a novel, and the accompanying specific plan, to write every day, which you’re using to accomplish this goal.

When the specific plan fails, the resulting lack of motivation infects the general goal as well, and your writing project flounders.

In my experience as a writer with a day job, I’ve found it’s crucial to avoid rigid writing schedules. I don’t want to provide my brain any examples of a strategy related to my writing that’s failing.

When I’m working on a book, I instead approach each week as its own scheduling challenge. I work with the reality of my life that week to squeeze in as much writing as I can get away with, in the most practical manner. Sometimes, this might lead to stretches where I write every morning. But there are other periods where I might balance a busy start to the work week with half days of writing at the end, and so on.

The point is that I commit to plans that I know can succeed, and by doing so, I keep my brain’s motivation centers on board with the project.

This approach, of course, brings up the question of motivation. Most people who embrace the daily writing strategy do so because they worry their will to do the work will diminish without a fixed system to force progress.

This understanding is flawed.

You can’t force your brain to generate motivation. It will do so only when it believes in both your goal and your plan for accomplishing the goal.

If you find that you’re still failing to get work done, even when you’re more flexible with your scheduling, the problem is not your productivity, it’s instead that your mind is not yet sold that you know how to succeed with your general goal of becoming a writer.

In this case, abandon National Novel Writing Month (which I think trivializes the long process of developing writing craft) and go research how people in your desired genre actually develop successful careers. Your mind requires a reality-based understanding of your goal in addition to achievable short-term plans.

I recalled this lesson recently in an unrelated part of my life. One of my interests over the past few months has been trying to increase the amount of time I spend engaged in deep work related to my academic research.

In December, I tested a rigid strategy that was, in hindsight, just as doomed to failure as attempting to write every day. I had a particular paper that I wanted to complete in time for a winter deadline. I told myself that the key is to start every weekday with deep work. If I commuted on the subway, I would work in a notebook while traveling. If I drove, I would knock off a batch at home while waiting for rush hour to end.

I believed this rigid schedule would help make deep work an ingrained habit, and the paper would get done with time to spare.

It reality, I crashed and burned.

The first week, I successfully followed my plan two days out of five — failing the other days for the types of unavoidable scheduling reasons I mentioned above, as well as the fact that writing in my notebook on the subway turns out to make me nauseous!

After that week, my brain revoked any vestige of motivation for this effort and my total amount of deep work plummeted.

My solution to this freefall was to take a page from my writing life. I went from rigid to flexible planning. I now approach each week with the flexible goal of squeezing in as much deep work toward my goal as is practically possible.

Some weeks I squeeze in more than others. Every week looks different. But what’s consistent is that I’m racking up deep hours and watching my paper starting to come together.

Because I am confident that I know how to accomplish my goal, and my efforts to do so are succeeding each week, my brain remains a supporter.”

To me, Cal’s comments make a lot of sense. As a retiree, I could pretty much expect to write every day, but as Cal says, interruptions invariably occur. So I don’t have a set schedule. Some days I don’t write at all; other days I may write for six or seven hours. And I find that this flexibility keeps me motivated.

Page One

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In yesterday’s email, Harry Bingham , whose company, Jericho Writers, is running a First 500 Novel Competition, provided some feedback from his reading of the submissions. His comments all have to do with Page One, of course, which includes the first 500 words.

“This last week, I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at your opening chunks. A few things struck me, including how amazingly common it is for people to have multiple time threads on their very first page. Normally, we think a book starts at time T0, then proceeds in a logical sequence to time T100. Contemporary readers are, of course, well used to more complex schemes – multiple time strands, some flashbacks, perhaps a flashforward in a prologue and so on. But the only real purpose of your first page is to get your reader into your story-train. Unless your reader has chosen to embark with you, nothing else can happen. And it’s just astonishing how many impediments we writers put in the way of readers climbing on board. One of the most common issues is that people insert multiple timelines into their first page. So one (otherwise perfectly capable) opening chunk ran like something this: Para 1: Very short para saying what happened at the end of the conference, let’s say Sunday evening. Para 2: Step back to summarise the weekend that had just elapsed. Para 3: Step back to the Friday drinks reception. Para 4: Step back again to what arrival had been like on Friday morning. Written out like that, it’s nuts – but as I say, multiple timelines on the first page are genuinely common. And each time you shift the time, the reader has to mentally relocate. (“Where are we now? We were on Sunday night, I think, but we’re surely now talking about the weekend generally. OK, so yes, we’re in a new place. Righty-ho. Let’s see if I can make sense of what’s happening now.”) Each of those relocations is a small mental challenge to the reader and each of those challenges makes it more likely that the reader’s going to think, “You know, there are other books out there which are going to make me work less for the same rewards.” Perplexing chronology is a common problem. A lot of same-sounding names and relationships all laid out on page 1 is also challenging. Ditto anything without a clear physical setting (such as for example, the reflections of a character about something you don’t properly understand.) Or prologues than run to literally no more than 2-3 paragraphs, before the book starts all over again. The key question to ask yourself is simply this: am I making it easy or hard for a reader to enter my book and get to grips with it? If you are writing high-end literary work (and I mean the sort of stuff that could win the Booker Prize), you have my permission to make things complicated. In all other cases, you have to seduce your reader. Make their life easy and rewarding. And talking of which … If it sounds like writing Elmore Leonard famously said, that ‘if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.’ I got a deeper appreciation of what he meant when I read your opening chunks last week. Part of the problem, I think, is that we have a “First 500” Novel Competition and those competitions encourage a somewhat flashy response.
For what it’s worth, I doubt if any of my books ever would have been seriously considered for a prize in a “first 500” type competition. My books just don’t choose to reveal much in the first page and a bit. Why would they? But the problem goes deeper. Writers are tempted to write flashily, to show off, to draw praise. And, OK, none of us mind a bit of praise – but, please, not at the expense of clarity. So lots of you wrote something that had this kind of tenor: They were only kids, yes, but kids who could run the universe. Jake could ride the lip of the slide and fly. Crash landings happened sometimes, but even the bruises were proof of something. Jonno had his bruises too, from similar antics. Blood brothers. The universe twins.
Yes, there’s some flashy writing going on there. But what the hell does it mean? How does the reader get on board with a story, when it’s simply unclear what’s happening? Here’s the same kind of thing, delivered in a way that makes sense: It was the hardest trick in the playground, but Jake had mastered it. Ride the skateboard down the raised metal lip that formed the edge of the slide, then fly three or four feet through the air before hitting the scuffed-up dirt at its foot. Jake was confident now, though he’d collected enough bruises over those summer months … [and so on]
You’re more likely to elicit applause with the first of those two chunks, but you’re a damn sight more likely to get readers with the second. So when you’re writing your opening chunk – whether for Feedback Friday, or the First 500 Novel Competition, or just because you want to write a saleable book – please don’t ask, “Does this sound like great writing?”. Ask: Is this clear? Am I obstructing the reader? Can the reader get easily onto my story-train? If it sounds like writing, you really might want to rewrite it.

How NOT to Begin a Novel

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We’ve all seen plenty of advice about how to begin a novel, but Chuck Chambuchino has an article on the Writer Un-Boxed website, dated April 22, 2023, in which he lists agents’ advice on how NOT to begin a novel. Most of the advice is quite sensible: some is amusing.
 Chuck Sambuchino is a freelance editor of query letters, synopses, book proposals, and manuscripts. As an editor for Writer’s Digest Books, he edits the Guide to Literary Agents and the Children’s Writer’s & Ilustrator’s Market. His Guide to Literary Agents Blog is one of the largest blogs in publishing. His own books include the bestselling humor book, How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack, which was optioned by Sony Pictures.

Chuck Sambuchino

“No one reads more prospective novel beginnings than literary agents. They’re the ones on the front lines — sifting through inboxes and slush piles. And they’re the ones who can tell us which Chapter 1 approaches are overused and cliche, as well as which techniques just plain don’t work. Below find a smattering of feedback from experienced literary agents on what they hate to see the (in) first pages of a writer’s submission. Avoid these problems and tighten your submission!

FALSE BEGINNINGS

“I don’t like it when the main character dies at the end of Chapter 1. Why did I just spend all this time with this character? I feel cheated.”

– Cricket Freeman, The August Agency

“I dislike opening scenes that you think are real, then the protagonist wakes up. It makes me feel cheated.”
– Laurie McLean, Foreword Literary

IN SCIENCE FICTION

“A sci-fi novel that spends the first two pages describing the strange landscape.”

– Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary

PROLOGUES

“I’m not a fan of prologues, preferring to find myself in the midst of a moving plot on page 1 rather than being kept outside of it, or eased into it.”

– Michelle Andelman, Regal Literary

“Most agents hate prologues. Just make the first chapter relevant and well written.”
– Andrea Brown, Andrea Brown Literary Agency

“Prologues are usually a lazy way to give back-story chunks to the reader and can be handled with more finesse throughout the story. Damn the prologue, full speed ahead!”
– Laurie McLean, Foreword Literary

EXPOSITION/DESCRIPTION

“Perhaps my biggest pet peeve with an opening chapter is when an author features too much exposition – when they go beyond what is necessary for simply ‘setting the scene.’ I want to feel as if I’m in the hands of a master storyteller, and starting a story with long, flowery, overly-descriptive sentences (kind of like this one) makes the writer seem amateurish and the story contrived. Of course, an equally jarring beginning can be nearly as off-putting, and I hesitate to read on if I’m feeling disoriented by the fifth page. I enjoy when writers can find a good balance between exposition and mystery. Too much accounting always ruins the mystery of a novel, and the unknown is what propels us to read further.”
– Peter Miller, PMA Literary and Film Management

“I dislike endless ‘laundry list’ character descriptions. For example: ‘She had eyes the color of a summer sky and long blonde hair that fell in ringlets past her shoulders. Her petite nose was the perfect size for her heart-shaped face. Her azure dress—with the empire waist and long, tight sleeves—sported tiny pearl buttons down the bodice. Ivory lace peeked out of the hem in front, blah, blah.’ Who cares! Work it into the story.”
– Laurie McLean, Foreword Literary

STARTING TOO SLOW

“Characters that are moving around doing little things, but essentially nothing. Washing dishes & thinking, staring out the window & thinking, tying shoes, thinking.”

– Dan Lazar, Writers House

“I don’t really like ‘first day of school’ beginnings, ‘from the beginning of time,’ or ‘once upon a time.’ Specifically, I dislike a Chapter 1 in which nothing happens.”

– Jessica Regel, Jean V Naggar Literary Agency

IN CRIME FICTION

“Someone squinting into the sunlight with a hangover in a crime novel. Good grief — been done a million times.”

– Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary

IN FANTASY

“Cliché openings in fantasy can include an opening scene set in a battle (and my peeve is that I don’t know any of the characters yet so why should I care about this battle) or with a pastoral scene where the protagonist is gathering herbs (I didn’t realize how common this is).”

– Kristin Nelson, Nelson Literary

VOICE

“I know this may sound obvious, but too much ‘telling’ vs. ‘showing’ in the first chapter is a definite warning sign for me. The first chapter should present a compelling scene, not a road map for the rest of the book. The goal is to make the reader curious about your characters, fill their heads with questions that must be answered, not fill them in on exactly where, when, who and how.”
– Emily Sylvan Kim, Prospect Agency

“I hate reading purple prose – describing something so beautifully that has nothing to do with the actual story.”
– Cherry Weiner, Cherry Weiner Literary

“A cheesy hook drives me nuts. They say ‘Open with a hook!’ to grab the reader. That’s true, but there’s a fine line between an intriguing hook and one that’s just silly. An example of a silly hook would be opening with a line of overtly sexual dialogue.”

– Daniel Lazar, Writers House

“I don’t like an opening line that’s ‘My name is…,’ introducing the narrator to the reader so blatantly. There are far better ways in Chapter 1 to establish an instant connection between narrator and reader.”

– Michelle Andelman, Regal Literary

“Sometimes a reasonably good writer will create an interesting character and describe him in a compelling way, but then he’ll turn out to be some unimportant bit player.”

– Ellen Pepus, Signature Literary Agency

IN ROMANCE

“In romance, I can’t stand this scenario: A woman is awakened to find a strange man in her bedroom—and then automatically finds him attractive. I’m sorry, but if I awoke to a strange man in my bedroom, I’d be reaching for a weapon—not admiring the view.”

– Kristin Nelson, Nelson Literary Agency

CHARACTERS AND BACKSTORY

“I don’t like descriptions of the characters where writers make them too perfect. Heroines (and heroes) who are described physically as being virtually unflawed come across as unrelatable and boring. No ‘flowing, wind-swept golden locks’; no ‘eyes as blue as the sky’; no ‘willowy, perfect figures.’ ”

– Laura Bradford, Bradford Literary Agency

“Many writers express the character’s backstory before they get to the plot. Good writers will go back and cut that stuff out and get right to the plot. The character’s backstory stays with them—it’s in their DNA.”
– Adam Chromy, Movable Type Management

“I’m turned off when a writer feels the need to fill in all the backstory before starting the story; a story that opens on the protagonist’s mental reflection of their situation is a red flag.”

– Stephany Evans, FinePrint Literary Management

“One of the biggest problems is the ‘information dump’ in the first few pages, where the author is trying to tell us everything we supposedly need to know to understand the story. Getting to know characters in a story is like getting to know people in real life. You find out their personality and details of their life over time.”

– Rachelle Gardner, Books & Such Literary

Use of Misdirection

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Robert McCaw has an article dated June 7, 2023 on the Readers Digest site which explores the use of misdirection on plot twists and surprise endings. He has some good advice.

Robert McCaw is the author of Fire and Vengeance, Off the Grid, and Death of a Messenger. McCaw grew up in a military family, traveling the world. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, served as a U.S. Army lieutenant, and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia. He was a partner in a major international law firm in Washington, D.C. and New York City, representing major Wall Street clients in complex civil and criminal cases. Having lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, McCaw imbues his writing of the Islands with his more than 20-year love affair with this Pacific paradise. He now lives in New York City with his wife, Calli.

Robert McCaw

“Misdirection in fiction has a long and hallowed history, from Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex to Shakespeare’s Othello to the revelation of Darth Vader’s identity in Star Wars. J. K. Rowling opined that “misdirection is the key to a good story.” Margaret Atwood refers to misdirection as a “powerful tool.”

As the author of the Koa Kāne Hawaiian Mystery series, I love to incorporate misdirection in my novels. It works like magic to lead the reader to anticipate one scenario only to be surprised when something dramatically different unfolds. But misdirection needs careful crafting and reinforcement to be effective.

Think of two stories involving the same characters and settings—one that progresses step by step to a logical conclusion and a second version that arrives at a diametrically different ending—then subtly mix them together. Let the first version lead the reader down the wrong path while characters expose thoughts and take actions, dropping hints that serve as the fulcrum for the transition to what will be the surprise ending taken from the second story.

Misdirection also requires subtlety. The reader will feel crassly manipulated if the surprise ending arrives without sufficient hints or foreshadowing. Ideally, good misdirection makes the reader look back at various telltale clues peppered throughout the story, hopefully leading them to admire the author’s skill in setting up and obscuring the ultimate surprise.

Primary plot misdirection leads to surprise endings, but the technique can also facilitate twists in the main plot or subplots. Such twists hopefully keep the reader engaged, but like too many intertwined stories or too many characters, too much misdirection can obscure the principal themes and may confuse the reader. So, too much secret sauce can spoil the dish!

Merging the conflicting narratives requires deftly manipulating the tools of misdirection. These include creating characters who pursue false assumptions, are driven by hidden motives and mislead or lie to cover up their faults. These players may also have faulty memories, speak ambiguously, take unexpected actions, and show different faces in different settings. Their common human foibles—such as insecurity, arrogance, greed, selfishness, fear, jealousy, family-relationship secrets, or misplaced loyalty—help hide the ball until the final reveals. Red herrings—clues heading nowhere—can likewise often lead readers astray but must be used wisely.

For example, false assumptions and lies abound in Treachery Times Two, the fourth in the Koa Kāne series. One of the characters has a made-up background, and secret jealousy poisons another’s friendship. All these deceptions are critical to the surprise ending, but all present clues about what is to come.

While character traits are critical in setting up persuasive misdirection, setting, action, ambiguous evidence, conflict, and circumstances create opportunities both to reinforce the impression you want the reader to take away and to provide hints of your future reveal.

For example, in Retribution, the fifth and newest book in the Koa Kāne series, the knife used in an alleyway murder and the rifle used in an attempted assassination carry implications designed to mislead the reader.

In detective stories and police procedurals, bureaucracy often serves as an errand boy for misdirection. Messages get lost, forensic technicians miss clues, competing assignments, and departmental politics—what Michael Connelly labels as “high jingo” in the Harry Bosch novels—add countless opportunities for unexpected twists.

Another of my favorite techniques is the false or penultimate ending. In this case, the narrative comes to a neat close. The protagonist solves the mysteries and identifies the culprit. There are no loose strings. The story is over, except it’s not. Instead, another chapter surprises the reader with a new and different take on the ending, often creating the opportunity to begin a new story, perhaps in another book. And who knows, perhaps now the final ending of Retribution may even surprise you.”