Write Lightning is a blog from writer Deb Thompson.
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Wed, Mar 17 2010
Have you ever seen a novel go this way and that way...?
The kind of novel that will make me give up reading is one in which there are too many stories going off in all directions. Some are so bad that I find myself wondering whatever happened to the one I considered the main character because he or she hasn't been mentioned for three chapters while we've been taken off to see the circus with a clown because the main character's sister was married to a detective and went with him to find the lost elephant. Because of my own dislike for meandering too many stories away, I tend to avoid writing anything with too many subplots. This is easy with short stories, but longer tales actually need more than one story going to carry the action and give dimension to the whole thing. It's tricky to do this without making your characters go off in too many side adventures and without having too many principal characters for readers to follow. Awareness is probably the key, just so that subplots don't drag readers too far afield from the main characters' journey. If worse comes to worst, killing off a few minor characters might be the smartest thing a writer could do.
posted at: 20:56 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
The kind of novel that will make me give up reading is one in which there are too many stories going off in all directions. Some are so bad that I find myself wondering whatever happened to the one I considered the main character because he or she hasn't been mentioned for three chapters while we've been taken off to see the circus with a clown because the main character's sister was married to a detective and went with him to find the lost elephant. Because of my own dislike for meandering too many stories away, I tend to avoid writing anything with too many subplots. This is easy with short stories, but longer tales actually need more than one story going to carry the action and give dimension to the whole thing. It's tricky to do this without making your characters go off in too many side adventures and without having too many principal characters for readers to follow. Awareness is probably the key, just so that subplots don't drag readers too far afield from the main characters' journey. If worse comes to worst, killing off a few minor characters might be the smartest thing a writer could do.
posted at: 20:56 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
