This is our final blog post for the Go Teen Writers Book Club. Chapters 24 and 25 of Story Trumps Structure by Steven James were both so short, I decided to combine them into one post. If you didn’t yet read Chapter 25, go read it right now, then come back to the post.
Chapter 24 Recap:
This chapter talks about identifying and tackling problem spots in your writing. Overall, this boils down to looking for things in your story that interfere with the relationship your story has built with the reader. When characters act in ways that don’t make sense… When scenes don’t flow naturally from one to the next… Anything that pulls your reader out of the story. You don’t want to interrupt the powerful emotional experience you’ve worked so hard to build. And you don’t want your readers paging back, confused, looking to check if they misunderstood something. So when you go back through your story to make a list of things to rewrite—or when you recruit beta readers—write down or have your beta readers write down the things that caused disconnections.
When a scene isn’t working, Mr. James suggests you check the following factors:
1. Is the scene honest about life?
2. Are your characters acting in believable ways?
3. Is the problem escalating gradually?
4. Does one scene cause the next scene to happen? Are they connected?
5. Are there scenes that are too predictable or too ridiculous?
He ends this chapter with a five-page chart that lists types of problems like “too much repetition” or “coincidences,” then he gives the corresponding fix for the problem with a chapter number of his book for you to go back and look at for help. This is a handy chart, if you own the book.
Chapter 25 Recap:
The final chapter talks about what not to do—those cliché things that most of us did in our first book and have hopefully learned not to do but still probably do every once in a while. Again he stresses the ultimate goal of providing a powerful emotional experience for your readers, then lists four things to STOP doing.
1. Stop trying to be clever. Things like fancy “said” tags (i.e. she chortled… he opined), vocabulary that is so obscure no one knows it, and avoiding punctuation to be fancy.
2. Stop using contrived literary devices. This is basically using metaphors or alliteration that is so outlandish that the reader pauses to re-read it, either because it’s too good of writing, it’s confusing, or it’s simply over-the-top. Keep your figurative language woven into the story.
3. Stop using obvious names that spoil the story. Now, this is a genre thing, so if you’re purposely writing something akin to Pilgrim’s Progress, do what you’ve got to do. But for mainstream fiction, avoid names that give away the plot, like calling the villain the Dark Lord or calling the hero Hiro.
4. Stop putting an agenda into the story. Whenever you impose your views or expertise on readers, you’re not putting the story first. If you need help with the idea of theme, read this post on what makes a book a classic.
Mr. James ends by saying that he gave you a book filled with “rules,” then reminds you to always break the “rules” for the sake of the story—for the sake of your readers. Story trumps structure—it trumps everything that doesn’t serve your reader.
Tip of the Week:
“You want your writing to be an invisible curtain between your readers and your story. Any time you draw attention to the narrative tools at your disposal, you insert yourself into the story and cause readers to notice the curtain.” ~Steven James
Go Teen Writers Archived Articles to Help You Go Deeper:
What Makes a Book a Classic?
Clichés in Your Plot
Making Clichés Your Own
GTW Mailbag: How Do I Avoid Preachy?
What To Do When You’re Afraid Your Book Is Preachy
Questions/Overall Thoughts:
• What is your biggest problem area that you struggle with when writing?
• What one of the four things Mr. James said to STOP doing is the one that you struggle with most?
• Did you like this book? If so, what did you like most about it? If not, what was it lacking?
• Do you think we should do a Go Teen Writers Book Club again sometime?
• Any questions or final comments?
This makes much more sense! I saw you mark this book as read on Goodreads the other day and now I totally get why…….On the other hand, now I have 4 chapters to catch up on.
Oh no! Ha ha. Yeah… I was like, I want to finish this one. Now! 🙂
It’d be awesome if you did a book club again. I can think of a bunch of books I’d love to hear your thoughts on!
My biggest struggle right now I think, is overthinking and being in my head too much. I know writing isn’t linear or easy but I still struggle with wanting things to come out perfectly the first time & being over critical of all my work.
Oh, Tonya, I so get that. It’s hard to train yourself to just throw careless words on the page. And it could be that you will never write that way. Not everyone is the same. My friend Bill Myers writes one chapter. The next day, he rewrites chapter one, then writes chapter two. The next day, he edits chapter one, rewrites chapter two, and writes chapter three. Each day he works on three chapters. This works for him. I don’t know what he does if he realizes he needs to cut chapters or rework huge sections. I’ve just heard him talk about that part of his process. So, perhaps your process will be different from mine and Bills too. And we all are overly critical of our work. I wrote By Darkness Hid thirteen years ago. It was published eleven years ago, and it won a bunch of awards! I just finished re-reading it while listening to Gillian Bronte Adams’ audio book chapters, and I found mistakes in there still! And sentences I would love to rewrite. We grow and change as writers, and we will never be perfectly satisfied with anything–at least I won’t. But that’s why we keep writing new things, because most the time we can’t go back to the old things. And we don’t really want to. We have to learn to trust that our stories will reach the readers they need to reach and be content to trust that to the book and the readers. It’s super hard, though. Some days more than others. And especially when you’re about to put forth an audio book of a story of which you suddenly wish you could give a major overhaul! LOL
I’m glad I’m not the only one. It is a real battle. I have to remember I don’t have to listen to every thought I have.
I also seem to forget that we grow as writers. A quote that has stuck with me is “the worst thing you write is better than what you do not write.”
Oh, I like that quote. We do grow as writers, and hopefully never stop growing!
I don’t have this book, but I’ve loved reading these posts about it. They’ve helped me with my writing a lot, especially as I’ve been going over my rough draft and started editing.
I think of all the things he said not to do, I gave people names that spoiled their role. The villains name was originally just The Overlord, which kind of ruined his purpose because I wanted my main characters to trust him and be friends with him. I changed his name to Malum, which is Latin for evil, but I may change that later.
You know, the reason we do those types of things is because some of our favorite books and movies have done it. So it makes sense that we would emulate that. But I love how you examined your plot and motives and recognized that you needed your M/C to trust him. So you changed it. Nice critical thinking! 🙂
My biggest strughle is believing in ny writing. Then, getting to where i can others i want to be a writer. I hust feel like my writing is so bad & if others read it theud make fun of it. I long to write like other writers that are good
Felicity, it just takes time, practice, and patience. The more you write, the better you get. The more you read–and study what you are reading to learn from how those authors write–the better you will get. No one becomes a concert pianist in a day or an Olympic figure skater. It takes years of practice and lots of mistakes. The same is true of writing. Know that any time you sit down to write, you are putting in time to improve yourself as a writer and as a person. It’s all part of the investment that will some day pay off if you stick with it. You can do it! 😀
I really enjoyed this book. It offered so many great tips that I can’t wait to apply to my writing. It will definitely make my book stronger!
I’d say my biggest weakness when it comes to writing (right now anyway) is that I try to hard to push and pull my story in a specific direction. Rather than letting my characters take over and act natural so that the story flows on its own, I’m more likely to make them do or say or think whatever I need them to in order to get from Point A to Point B. I’m also not the best with dialog. Any advice there?
GTW has a few posts on dialog. Hopefully those can help. Something that I learned recently to keep dialog interesting is to make sure the characters don’t always agree. I don’t know if that would solve any issues you’re having though.
But I hope your writing goes well and you find something that works!
I struggle with that too, especially when I’ve outlined the book. I’ll get writing to the outline and start to realize… this isn’t working. But I have learned to follow the characters, because they (usually) know where the story is. It’s hard, though, and I still struggle with it. For dialogue, there are lots of posts on dialogue in the GTW archives. Type “dialogue” into the search box and see what comes up. What Xoe said about characters not always agreeing is good advice. I’d also add, characters don’t even always have to answer. Characters are not always polite. And there is the internal piece as well, where the POV character can think things that add to the dialogue, like:
“Are you coming or not?” Mark said.
Man! What was with the snarky tone? I tried to sound as polite as possible in hopes I wouldn’t annoy him further. “Right behind you.”
Thanks, Jill! I love this post.
I’m editing a book right now, and I’m struggling with editing my characters. It just is not appealing to me and I don’t enjoy it. Do you have any tips for seeing the bright side of editing parts of your book that you don’t want to edit? What do you do when you don’t want to edit part of your book? Is there a specific part that you don’t enjoy editing?
I do think that it would be fun to do another Go Teen Writers book club! I didn’t join Go Teen Writers until the end of the series, but I’m going to see if I can buy the book right away, it sounds very interesting. I love how you write lists (of, say, questions) in your posts that I can sort of check off in a way ;). Lists are my favorite, so thanks!
I’m glad you enjoyed the book club, Adi! Yeah, sometimes edits are hard work. I would ask myself why I’m feeling that way to try and pinpoint if I’m just done with this book and ready to move on or if there is a problem with the book. Most the time for me, though, I’m just ready to be done. It’s when the book is a mess and I have lots of rearranging to do that I’m particularly miserable. Just going through the finished story and making it better is my favorite part of the writing process. First drafts are the worst for me. There are days I have to force myself to stay in the chair and get through it, one page at a time. I’m big on bribing myself with snacks, which I realize isn’t for everyone. I have also bribed myself with a good book. Edit one chapter, then read one chapter, etc.
Thanks for your tips Jill! Your idea about pinpointing exactly what I’m struggling with is a great idea. Thanks for the ideas about bribery 😉 but really, I should definitely do that. No sarcasm lives in that sentence, I think that would help me a lot, so thanks so much! I think I’m ready to get back to work now and wage war against me inner procrastination.
Not me inner procrastination, my inner procrastination. Sorry about that!