Accessibiilty, Don't Handicap Yourself

Accessibility, Don’t Handicap Yourself
By Billie A Williams © 2007

So how do you make the printed words of your story accessible or meaningful to the reader? Always get your story down to the levels of individuals. Individuals are people we can see and identify with. If you make reference to the Senior Citizen population you get a ho hum, yeah we’ve heard of them, from your audience. But if you say Marge Peterman who lives next door – we see her, to name someone is to personalize them.

It’s hard to see the individual trees when faced with a dense forest. Single out a stately Elm or a beautiful Weeping Willow and our minds will conger up our picture of them. It becomes a certain type of tree, which we recognize. A forest can be many things to many different people. A red wood forest, a pine forest, a forest of red maples, a mixed woodland forest will all bring a different picture to your reader— be specific, more specific than a forest. Specificity makes the reader see YOUR picture.

Another way to make your story meaningful to your reader is to print word pictures that set the tone very early on. Tone reflects the attitude of the protagonist toward his situation and puts the reader in a frame of mind to accept his response to that situation. It’s more than weather, it’s atmosphere, total environment.

Speaking of weather, there is much discussion about whether or not to open your story with weather. At best it’s a chancy situation. If your character is not invested someway in the weather situation , if he isn’t experiencing it in some way tied to his emotional, physical and or psychological well-being, you will be stopping your story to look at the stars or some thing similar and your reader will slip free from your story thread.

Nature, the environment, can evoke a feeling of foreboding. Remember tone is the way to make the weather matter, to elicit the feeling you want your reader to feel. The mood you want to create will benefit from the tone, when used properly. You don’t need a panoramic view of a sunny day, or a cloudless sky, but weather and environment for a reason like Patricia Cornwell does in Black Notice. “The late morning blazed with blue skies and colors of fall, but none of it was for me.”

You need to make sure weather isn’t just a side trip, an author intrusion, an engine idling before the story takes off. It must be connected to, or with, your main character, and with your plot. Otherwise, it becomes extra baggage and unnecessary background like back story. Unless it distinctly helps to set mood or tone, it is merely fluff—unnecessary and distracting. You can do better.

“…take a hint from the developers of real estate and don’t let your grand opening depend on the weather,” Chris Roerden in Don’t Murder Your Mystery.

Choose your opening carefully. It’s your only chance to snag your reader and reel him into your story world. Keep in mind…”Fiction does not exist on paper. It exists within the mind of the reader. Use just enough words to get the mind working,” J.A. Konrath.

Add just enough tensile strength to pull you reader along and into the story, not letting them tug free, but continue pulling them deep, deeper into your story without spitting out your hook, or breaking your story line and moving on to the next book on the shelf. Make your story accessible to your reader. That is, help them get into the story quickly and stay there.

Billie A Williams
www.billiewilliams.com
www.pensinmotion.com

10 Fundamental Components of Your Story's Opening Scene

The Goal of your Story’s opening is to successfully introduce the story worth-telling problem and to hook the readers. It is essential to establish the rules of they story as each genre has its own rules that govern reader expectations. You must also foreshadow or forecast the end of the story at the very beginning. These are the essential components of an opening scene that should help you off to a hook-worthy beginning.

[NOTE: Not all of these elements must be present in the opening scene, however the first four are the foundations you will build on and are therefore crucial. ]

1. Inciting Incident – When the fabric of society as the protagonist knows it, has a hole ripped in it creating
2. The story-worth-telling – the problem, conflict, or crisis, which must be solved or resolved by the end of the story.
3. Initial surface problem – The immediate spurn to action caused by the inciting incident. The protagonist will solve, but not the real underlying story goal. Think of it as a mini-goal aiming toward the Story Goal. It also can create other problems. It may arise from the initial problem, but must have a deep rooted connection to the story-worth-telling problem of number two.
4. The Setup – You should strive to only give the reader what is exactly, absolutely necessary to understand this opening scene. (Little or no backstory). Save details for later when you will work them into the story whole a little at a time. What you need is a hint of the trouble to come, directly or indirectly.

These lesser components may or may not be necessary to adequately introduce your story. Use them, or leave them out whatever best suits your story and its purpose.

5. Back Story – The kiss of death to your manuscript? If you include too much unnecessary links to the past – yes it will be. Trust, instead that the reader’s ability to ‘get it’ will help them know what they need to know. Remember to include only that which is absolutely and exactly necessary. Some will assuredly fit better into the latter part of the story.
6. The Opening Line: This should be the best, strongest, most charged sentence of your entire manuscript!
7. Language – Remember the rule of thumb…each additional adjective or adverb halves the power of the verb or noun you use. Rarely, if ever do they double the affect. Strong, original verbs and concrete nouns create powerful writing. That includes dialogue tags, use said if you need to use a dialogue tag. Generally, language and action will do the tagging for you. Follow the rule of FAD – Feeling, Action, dialogue and you will stay on target without using unnecessary dialogue tags.
8. Character Introductions – Usually, protagonist and antagonist reaction/action form inciting incident creates a vision of these characters and indicates their personality. Brevity—is key here— pick telling details, not necessarily physical description but something that lends itself in interpretation to knowing your character by his/her actions. A caveat here is—do not introduce too many characters at once. It confuses the reader and makes the characters harder to remember.
9. Setting – Glimpse of detail, depending on how important the setting is to your story. Again brevity, includes these points in your setting – Physical space, time period, culture, society, and uses your five senses. Give the reader a sense of what is heard, seen, smelled, tasted include only if they are significant to your story at this point however. It should not stop or even noticeably slow down the forward movement of your scene or story.

According to Les Edgerton author of Hooked, Write fiction that grabs readers at page one and never lets them go. “…active description, incorporated unobtrusively within the action of a scene,” describes your setting.

10. Foreshadowing- Hints of action or obstacles to come in your story-worth-telling.


What is a good rule of thumb about how long your opening scene should be? According to most books on writing you should be able to create this scenario in about four pages. Using concise language will cause your writing to pick language that will work in more than one way. Write a great hook, clean concise prose with only the exactly necessary details and you will be on your way to being well-published.

Write Like The Wind

Until next time!

http://www.pensinmotion.com

(Pens In Motion)

www.billiewilliams.com/BOOKCLUB.html

(Free reads of a works in progress - The Capricorn Goat-January Flannel

Mystery/suspense.)