Narrative Gaps: Vehicles and Movement

Remember narrative gaps? These are points in the story where something is left out—perhaps a character does something a second time that they never did a first time or a character remembers learning information that the author forgot to have them learn before. Narrative gaps are one of the primary reasons most authors have alpha and beta readers—because after you’ve gone through your own book a dozen times, it can be difficult to spot errors on your own.

There is one type of common narrative gap that you can look for on your own, however: gaps regarding vehicles.

For some reason, vehicles in stories attract narrative gaps like a shiny clean car attracts bird droppings. They usually go something like this:

     “I think this is the place,” Afonso said, pointing out the window to a ramshackle nightclub.

     Graciana slowed the car enough to make out the small sign over the door. “Gaspar’s Place? Are you sure?”

     Afonso shrugged. “It’s the only club we’ve seen in the area. We might as well check it out.”

     “I guess,” Graciana said. “Just don’t wander off and leave me alone in there, okay?”

     “Deal,” Afonso said as they headed inside.

See the problem? Graciana and Afonso are in a car; he points out the window, she slows the car down, and then suddenly they’re headed into the club. Unless they’re driving the car through the door, that means they had to have stopped the car and gotten out at some point—but that point was never shown.

This might not seem like a problem; your readers are certainly intelligent enough to figure out that the characters are no longer in the car if they’re going into the club, after all. But most people picture the scene they’re reading in their mind, and there are few things as jarring for readers as having their image of the scene they’re reading suddenly violated. It will knock most readers solidly out of the story.

This rule applies even to someone who can literally teleport to place to place; you still need to inform your readers when your scene changes.

Another vehicle-related error occurs when characters move in ways that they should not be able to, usually because the author added something in at some point and forgot the scene was taking place in a vehicle:

     Graciana slowed the car as they passed the store. “Can we stop and buy those shoes I wanted?”

     “We’re kind of in a hurry, dear,” Afonso said.

     “I’ll be quick, I promise. Please?”

     Afonso sighed. “Fine. Hurry.”

     “Thank you!” Graciana said with a laugh. She clapped, jumping up and down like a little girl.

Most people are much too large to jump up and down in a car, wouldn’t you say? Particularly when they’re driving.

The good thing about these errors is that they can be easier than most narrative gaps to track down. Simply look for any section of your story where your characters are in or on any sort of vehicle—from cars to bicycles to horses—and double-check for these errors. 

Note: These errors can occur with any sort of movement from one place to another or any sort of enclosed space. Don’t have your characters walking down the street and then suddenly have them talking to a shopkeeper in a store without having them first enter the store, and don't have your characters crouched in a three-foot high tunnel and then have someone start jumping.

The Inactive Beginning

If you’ve read my post on the purpose of the Story Polisher, then you know that I like to divide writing into three categories: Prose, Plotting, and Creativity. My posts here generally focus on Prose; this is in part because your prose will be the first thing an editor notices about your work (poor prose is the number one reason most stories get rejected, in my experience) and in part because it is difficult to teach people to write clear prose in any setting other than a classroom or one-on-one instruction. There are an abundance of resources out there to help new writers improve their Plotting and Creativity, but not many focused on Prose.

However, today I’m going to set Prose aside for a moment to focus on an element of Plotting. I do this in the interest of highlighting a common error that gets stories rejected by editors on a frequent basis. And that error is the inactive story beginning.

This error is easy to describe: a story begins, and nothing happens. More specifically, the protagonist and other characters aren’t doing anything, or the amount of activity on their part is miniscule compared to the number of pages it takes to describe it all.

This is almost always the consequence of heavy worldbuilding, backstory-telling, and other forms of info-dumping. Most stories have a fair amount of background information that the audience will need to know in order for the story to make sense, and it is tempting to try to get all of that pesky background information out of the way right at the start.

But here’s the thing: background information tends to be boring if your audience isn’t already emotionally or intellectually invested in your world and your characters. The most effective way to engage readers at the beginning of the story is to have something interesting happening at an efficient pace.

Here’s an example of how I’ve seen this done poorly (or rather, a summation of an example, since an actual example lifted from an actual manuscript would be far too long):

     The book begins with the protagonist in the back seat of an SUV, sandwiched between a pair of burly guards. He is being escorted into the dangerous jungles of Juduun, home of the dangerous and violent ape-snakes that guard the ancient ruins of a lost civilization. The various horrors that the ape-snakes have perpetrated upon humans are described. The ruins are described, along with the few little facts that are known about the ancient civilization and what happened to cause its downfall.

     Our protagonist is nervous and tries not to tremble, not wanting to show weakness in front of his captors. He reflects upon the unfortunate series of events that brought him here, how he was orphaned at a young age and stole to help feed his sister. He managed to find her good work and a place to live, but then everything went wrong when she caught the eye of a lecherous nobleman. Various things happened, our protagonist was charged with a crime that he either didn’t commit or was forced to commit even though he’s really a good guy.

     The jungles come into sight up ahead, covered in early-morning mist. The protagonist is being sent into the jungles to retrieve an artifact of the lost civilization as punishment for his crime. He will have no supplies or help; even worse, no one is even sure whether or not the artifact that he’s supposed to find is even real. He believes it’s just a myth and that he’s simply being sent to his death.

     They arrive at the jungles, and the guards throw him to the ground beside the trees. He pleads with them to give him some equipment, anything that might help him. The dangers of the jungle are described. He’s afraid of them.

Now, my summation of this example was four paragraphs long. The actual examples that the summation is based on, however, tend to be anywhere from ten to fifteen or even twenty pages long. That’s ten to twenty pages where our protagonist:

     1. Sits in a car

     2. Sits in a car and tries not to tremble

     3. Sits in a car and sees the jungle up ahead

     4. Is tossed from the car and pleads for help

See the problem? That’s nothing. Nothing happened in over a dozen pages of story. It was all just backstory and worldbuilding—one long infodump. It doesn’t matter how you frame all the backstory; if your protagonist is reminiscing about it, describing it to someone, or having it described to him or her, it’s all the same. Which is to say, it’s boring. It doesn’t matter how action-packed or interesting the backstory is—it will still be boring if it’s a flashback given while your protagonist does nothing. If all of that backstory is so interesting and eventful, then just go back and start the story there!

The pure-backstory prologue gets criticized often (with good reason), but even that would be better than watering down the action of the beginning of your story with infodumps.

Picture what the introduction to a movie would be like if it were done in this manner. Try the original Star Wars movie: after the opening crawl (which is itself a backstory infodump, but it’s traditional and deliberately evoking old pulp action films and comics—not to mention short—and is therefore somewhat justified), we see a star destroyer capturing Leia’s ship. C-3PO and R2 discuss how serious this is and the things the empire is likely to do to all of them. The imperials board the ship, and C-3PO reflects on how brutal the empire has gotten over the years and how hopeless the situation of the rebels seems. Vader comes on board, all menacing, and we’re shown a long introductory flashback depicting some of his history of brutality and his position relative to the Emperor. Jump back to the present, where Princess Leia records a long message explaining her position in the rebellion, what her goals were for her present mission, how she obtained the stolen plans for the Death Star, and then paused to reflect upon what type of droid R2 was and what his normal functions were.

"Ah, we've captured you, senator. Now I will explain the lengthy process by which we uncovered the fact that you are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor!"

Slow, ponderous, and boring, right? And that’s with actual action going on in the background—the imperials capturing and boarding Leia’s ship, fighting in the corridors, ominous villains arriving, and our heroine hurrying to get the plans off the ship. If that’s not enough to counter the effect of excessive infodumping, then nothing will be.

Don’t let this problem happen to your story! The inactive story beginning is the most common reason—after poor prose—that I’ve seen stories rejected. So remember: reflecting, reminiscing, explaining, and flashbacking are not action. There’s nothing wrong with introspection in reasonable doses, but introspection does not an interesting story introduction make. Get your characters out there and get them doing things right from the start.

Phrases to Avoid: "Alarmed By"

If you’ve been writing stories for more than twenty-four hours, odds are good that you’ve come across the phrase “show, don’t tell.” What this advice essentially means is that action is more interesting than description.

For example, we could write that “Jane was angry.” This is simple and direct, but it is also the sort of thing that is more engaging to see than to be told. Instead of just telling our audience that Jane is angry, we could write this: “Jane punched the wall, red-faced and growling through her teeth.” This conveys Jane’s emotions more powerfully than a simple statement of anger.

Another advantage to showing is that it is more subtle than telling. You have to trust your audience to pick up on the things that you are not directly stating. This makes it more difficult to write, but also makes it more engaging to read.

“Show, don’t tell,” is the reason that alarmed by is a phrase that should usually be avoided. Here’s an example of how I generally see this phrase used:

     Gizem felt her way along the corridor. She kept one hand on her dagger while the other traced the rough stone of the wall. There was a dim light coming from up ahead.

     When she came around the corner, she found a narrow window. Moonlight poured through the opening, illuminating the still form of Hunsu. Blood covered his face and clothing and pooled on the gray wooden floorboards beneath him.

     Alarmed by the sight, Gizem scrambled to Hunsu’s side.

Do you see the problem? You don’t need to be told that Gizem was “alarmed by the sight” of Hunsu lying in a pool of blood, do you? It’s obvious. You don’t even need to know who the characters are for this to be clear.  In fact, when you think about it, it’s almost insulting that the writer thought you wouldn’t already know that was clear.

The entire phrase “alarmed by the sight” could easily be removed without harming the passage. If you feel it is necessary, you can leave the word alarmed:

     Alarmed, Gizem scrambled to Hunsu’s side.

But even that could probably be shown instead of told:

     With a nearly silent gasp, Gizen scrambled to Hunsu’s side, almost tripping on a loose floorboard in her haste.

Now, you don’t have to show all of that. Simply stating that Gizen is alarmed is much more economical, and sometimes that will be more important than the emotional effect of showing instead of telling. The problem with the phrase alarmed by, however, is that it forces you to re-state something that you’ve already shown. In our example above, we’d just barely seen Hunsu lying in a pool of blood. We can infer why Gizen is alarmed without being directly told. 

Imagine writing this iconic scene: "Alarmed by the sight of the pursuing T-Rex in the mirror, Muldoon floored it." Do you really think your audience wouldn't figure out why Muldoon was alarmed on their own?

There is almost no scenario where you would use alarmed by without already having shown the alarming scene or event. So trust your audience to put two and two together, and leave the phrase out.

Constructing Proper Paragraphs with Dialog

In this post, I answered the question, “How do I know when to end one paragraph and start a new one?” I also mentioned in that article that we would discuss a few of the rules of paragraphing later. Welcome to later, friends!

There is one simple rule of writing paragraphs that I often see broken by new writers, and it relates to dialog: don’t have the dialog of more than one character in a single paragraph. If a new character begins to speak, make a new paragraph. It’s that simple.

     “Wait, so that story of you protecting the girl was made up?” Dinah asked.

     “Not all of it,” Rachelle replied, hunching her shoulders. “Those men were leering at her, and they could have been about to mistreat her. So I just made sure to walk between her and them. As protection.”

     “So . . . all you did was walk to work?”

Usually, you can connect a character’s actions to their dialog, as with Rachelle hunching her shoulders above. So if you have a character performing actions in the middle of dialog but they’re not speaking, it is often a good idea to give them their own paragraph as well.

     “I didn’t just walk to work! I put myself out there.”

     Dinah shook her head, rubbing her temples.

     “I was protecting the girl,” Rachelle continued. “I was stopping the problem before it could begin.”

     “It’s not a problem until it begins,” Dinah replied. “You protected her from a problem you made up. And now the police are out there looking to arrest a couple of men that didn’t actually commit a crime.”

     Rachelle somehow hunched her shoulders even further and folded her arms in a pose that Dinah could only describe as “petulant.”

The only easy exception to this rule that I can think of is if you are listing a few related bits of dialog in a row:

     Dinah sighed. This was partially her fault. She should have known better than to simply trust Rachelle on this issue. She thought back on the day before. “The way Rachelle sees things and the way things are ain’t usually very similar,” Bank had warned her. “Rachelle always wants to see herself as some sort of paragon instead of just regular folk like the rest of us,” Ginny had said. Why hadn’t she listened?

But that is something to be used sparingly. Most of the time, keep to the simple rule that when a new character begins speaking, a new paragraph should begin.

Perspective Errors: Over-Writing Action

Several types of perspective place you inside the head of the protagonist: third-person limited perspective and first-person present-tense perspective both embrace the concept that you are being shown the story in the moment that it happens through the lens of the perspective character. Third-person omniscient and first-person past-tense perspective also sometimes relay the narrative in this manner—through the eyes of a character as it is happening.

We’ve discussed before the importance of describing scenes, action, and other characters in a way that is appropriate for the perspective from which you’re writing. For example, an illiterate thug who grew up on the streets probably wouldn’t describe his perceptive friend as “perspicacious,” even in his own head. He might not even use the word “perceptive,” for that matter. So if you’re in the thug’s head, you shouldn’t describe his friend that way. It doesn’t matter if you, the author, would describe someone as perspicacious; you’re trying to place your audience in the mind of the perspective character, and using out-of-place language breaks the illusion.

Now, the way you describe action and the world of your story should also be influenced by any temporary conditions that your perspective character is under. A blindfolded character could not describe her surroundings visually, and so she would have to focus more on sounds, smells, and other senses that she normally would. A character who has taken a blow to the head might be dizzy or have trouble thinking clearly, and the language you use while they are in that state should reflect that.

One such state that frequently arises but often does not affect the prose of new writers is action. A character in a high-adrenaline situation, where they are perhaps fighting for their life, should not usually perceive their surroundings and their actions in the same way that they would in a calmer situation. Here’s a few things to look out for when writing actions scenes from the perspective of your character:

Match your description to your time

     Jenna moved forward slowly, careful to place her feet gently to avoid making any sound. Between each step, she peered through the trees, checking the darkness between the trees for the source of the noises she had heard. She held her rifle ready—the noises couldn’t have been made by anything smaller than a person.

     A black shadow suddenly loomed above the foliage ahead of her. The moment she noticed it, the creature—an enormous, scarred black Jinduan bear—charged with a deafening roar. Behind it, three small cubs growled, watching Jenna curiously.

White oak branches cracked and shattered out of the bear’s path, and Jenna only caught a glimpse of gleaming yellow irises and massive white canines before she was knocked to the ground by a heavy paw with muddy, five-inch claws. She attempted to raise her rifle, but there wasn’t enough room.

Most action happens quickly. In this example, the bear charged so quickly that Jenna was unable to shoot it, even though she explicitly had her rifle ready. And yet, in that time, she was able to discern what type of bear this was, that it was scarred, how many cubs the creature had, what they were doing, and what type of branches the bear was charging through. Doesn’t that seem a little unrealistic? Even if Jenna might have been vaguely, peripherally aware of these details, they probably wouldn’t have been occupying her attention in the moment that the angry bear was charging her!  Limit your description to fit the focus and observational capabilities of your character in the moment that events are happening.

In action, simple words can trump more complicated or specific words

I’ve posted several times about the need to use more specific, evocative words in description. In action, however, this rule doesn’t always apply. When adrenaline is pumping and action is happening quicker than rational thought, your prose can reflect your character’s inability to think quickly enough to keep up with the action.

For example, in our example above—if an enormous bear was charging you and you caught a brief glimpse of its face just before it attempted to ruthlessly, messily kill you, do you think your mind would be going, “Hmm, look at those gleaming yellow irises and massive white canines. Oh, and what heavy paws with muddy claws. Why, I do believe that those claws are approximately five inches long. My, my.” Of course you wouldn’t be thinking that! Unless you are the most hardened, constantly-in-peril protagonist in all of history, you would probably be thinking, “TEETH!! SCARY EYES!! HOLY @#!% THOSE @!&#ING CLAWS ARE HUGE!! I’M GOING TO DIE!!!

Now, you don’t need to reduce your narrative to nigh-incoherent screaming, and I certainly hope that you would avoid such horrible over-use of capital letters. But you should probably try to find a good middle ground. If your normally-well-spoken protagonist suddenly drops all of her eloquence in the middle of an action scene, it could be a useful and effective way to convey unthinking fear or urgency. Even if your character keeps their head, they should probably be too busy fighting for survival to consider the specifics of every detail.

Mordu, did you know that one of your incisors is broken? Oh, sorry, we're busy, aren't we? This probably isn't the best time.

Shorter sentences are preferable to longer sentences

This is an oft-repeated bit of advice for action scenes, but it is oft-repeated because it is good advice. Short sentences serve the same purpose as simple words—they convey that events are happening quickly, that the character doesn’t have time to think, that her mental state has been reduced to a more basic, primal, survival instinct.

Now, your action scenes shouldn’t consist of nothing but sentence fragments—in fact, many of your sentences may still turn out pretty long. But you should avoid more complicated sentences. If you’re busting out semicolons, colons, or too many em dashes, you’re probably decreasing the tension of your action scene. Your character is having to react too quickly for them to think much, and you want your readers to feel that. But if they have to slow down to decipher or consider complicated sentence construction, that won’t happen.

Writing Spicy Description

Last time, we discussed the need to keep your descriptions to the minimum needed amount. Here are a few tips for doing so.

Determine how much description you need: Here’s some useful questions for figuring out how much description to give the reader.

What genre are you writing? If you’re writing a long epic like War and Peace or The Lord of the Rings, then you’ll be able to take a bit more time on description than you would be able to for, say, a fast-paced thriller like The Sum of All Fears or Carrie. Short stories should generally give less time to description than novels. If you’re writing romance, you’ll probably describe character appearance more than you will in, say, a murder mystery; if you’re writing fantasy or science fiction, you’ll probably spend more time describing the fantastic settings than you would in a comedy.

How familiar will the setting or character be to the reader? Some things don’t need description (if a character is buttering toast while they talk to someone, you don’t need to describe the butter knife); some things don’t have to be described but could definitely benefit from some brief description; while other things absolutely have to be described. You can’t just say “the policeman dragged a plangle into the room” without telling me what a plangle looks like.

If your scene features a police officer on the streets of New York City, then the odds are good that your reader will be able to picture the scene clearly with very little description. If the scene focuses on an alien flying a spaceship into a tear in spacetime, then you might need to give a larger amount of description.

How important is the description to the story? If this is a brief scene in a setting that the story won’t return to with a character that won’t be important later, then it’s not that important that the reader picture everything absolutely perfectly. If the setting or character are central to the story, then you’ll want to spend more time on the description.  Again, what is important will depend on the story: if your protagonist is going to recognize a disguised character later because of a scar on their neck, then you’ll probably want to describe the scar when we first meet the character. And for all that people have complained about the nigh-excruciating detail with which Stephanie Meyer described Edward Cullen, let’s face it: those descriptions were important to her audience.

If your reason for describing something in detail is that you really like the amazing and vivid metaphor you’ve concocted, well, too bad. That is not sufficient reason for spending a whole paragraph describing a woman’s hairstyle (or whatever). Now, that doesn’t mean you have to cut the description; give it to some friends, and let them tell you if it’s too much. Try at least ten readers with different tastes; if four or more of them tell you that it’s too much, then cut it down, no matter how much it hurts. Listen to Spock:

Focus on a few strong details: Generally, I recommend focusing on two or three details that give a clear picture of whatever you’re describing. For a very expansive scene or a completely alien and unfamiliar creature, a little more could be allowed. So for an old woman, I might focus on her long white braid, the deep creases in her dark skin, and the slight hunch in her back. Bam: three details, and you’re now picturing something close to what I am. Strong, vivid details often enable the reader to fill in the rest on their own.

Use multiple senses: When writing description, most writers tend to focus on the visual elements of a scene or a character. However, describing the sounds, smells, feel, or even taste of something can often convey a setting more quickly or more vividly than visuals. Let’s say your character wakes up in a white room that smells strongly of blood and antiseptics—your mind probably immediately jumped to a hospital or operating room, right? And the smells are probably giving you a more vivid image than if I’d simply said “your character wakes up in a hospital room.”

This can be especially effective when combined with the two-or-three-strong-details rule: the protagonist is tied to a chair in a dark and windowless room. It is cold and drafty and smells of mouse droppings. That’s three things: the lighting, the feel, and the smell of the room. I could spend more time on each of them, to make things more vivid, but the bulk of the description has been accomplished.

Don’t use two words where one will suffice: I once edited a story where a character approached a sea where “along the shore was a row of several straight wooden walkways that jutted out into the ocean, held up by thick pylons sticking up out of the water.” I edited this to say, “Along the shore was a row of wooden docks.” So that you don’t have to count for yourself, that’s nineteen fewer words. Everyone does this, at some point—I’ve done it myself. Always look for the shortest, most descriptive word possible. A white dog with extremely curly hair should be shortened to a white poodle. He didn’t swing the long black bar with a curved end, he swung the crowbar.

Work in details through action: We’ve already discussed blending action and description a bit in these posts. Paragraphs of pure description can grow tedious very quickly, but purposeful action almost never does. So if your character walks into a kitchen, you might give a brief overview of what the kitchen looks like and who is in it. Then, when your character begins conversing with one of the people in the room, you can use the conversation to give more details about the person—maybe she scrunches her nose when she’s thinking, or perhaps the scar along her arm seems to pain her as she kneads dough. Maybe she tucks a strand of brown hair out of her eye, leaving a smudge of flour on her tan forehead. The protagonist can help her cut vegetables, and you can use this action as an opportunity to describe more details—the appearance of the countertop, the vegetables, or the cutlery; the lighting, the smells. Since the details are smoothly blended into action and dialog, they don’t grow tiring.

Think of description as a spice—it adds delicious flavor and depth when added to more substantial dishes, but can be overwhelming when eaten in large doses on its own.

The Figure Problem: Part Two

Last time, we discussed the Figure Problem—what it is, and why it is a problem. We specifically examined situations in which a writer introduces their first character as a nameless “figure” in the distance. But the Figure Problem doesn’t only crop up at the beginning of a story or chapter. Take a look at this example:

     Jaimee moved through the subway station, careful not to jostle anyone or attract attention to herself in any way. Fortunately, most of the busy commuters were too distracted to notice some drably-dressed teenager. She moved into the crowd waiting for the train’s doors to open, and allowed the press of bodies to push her up against the people nearest the train. Those people pushed her back absentmindedly, not noticing when her hands slipped into their pockets and purses. When the doors opened, Jaimee let the crowd carry her onto the train and then slipped out the doors on the other side. She glanced over her shoulder with a smirk; no one had noticed a thing.

     When she looked back at the platform, she paused. A figure stood by the stairs that led up to the street—a tall, lanky woman with bleached-blonde hair and skin so tanned that it was beginning to look like a crumpled, damp brown paper bag. The woman wore huge, bug-eyed sunglasses and a black-and-white striped sundress that seemed a few sizes too small, even for her skinny figure. Her garish red lipstick matched her shiny red heels, which tapped loudly on the cement of the platform as she toddled up to Jaimee with a predatory snarl.

     “Hello, mother,” Jaimee said, sighing.

     “What do you think you’re doing?” her mother hissed.

The format of the Figure Problem is here—first, we see a “figure,” and then we’re given a progressively-increasing amount of detail about its appearance and behavior before we finally find out who the figure is. The major difference between this example and last time’s example is the perspective.

Last time, our example started in a vague, third-person omniscient perspective and then eventually jumped into the point of view of the “figure.” This time, we’re in the perspective of another character viewing the figure. Since we’re already in third-person limited from Jaimee’s point of view, we don’t jump to the mother’s point of view at the end.

This perspective change actually solves many of the problems from last time. We avoid the slow, drawn-out beginning and the awkwardness of not being inside the head of the “figure” when there was no reason not to be. However, the new problem that is introduced is a perspective error.

Perspective Errors with the Figure Problem

Remember how third-person limited perspective works? Everything the audience sees should come through Jaimee; we should essentially be riding in her head and seeing what she experiences and thinks. Jaimee wouldn’t look at her own mother, whom she obviously recognizes, and think, “Huh, there’s a woman with bleached-blonde hair, etc.” She would look at the woman and think, “There’s my mother.” Describing the appearance of some “figure” without identifying the person's relationship to the perspective character implies that the character doesn’t have a relationship with the person.

The only reasons to not give the name of a person your perspective character meets are these:

1. If they don’t know one another and your perspective character doesn’t have a name to assign to the person.

2. If the perspective character cannot see, hear, etc., well enough to identify the other person as someone they know.

These rules also apply to other perspectives. In first-person, we're also in the character's head, so we should see things as they see. In third-person omniscient, you can give even more information than the characters have, but you certainly shouldn't be giving less except in rare circumstances.

However, there’s another perspective error to watch out for here. Let’s take our example from before and adapt it to fit the second reason to not give a character’s name:

     When she looked back at the platform, she paused. A figure stood in the shadows by the stairs that led up to the street, watching her. Jaimee squinted through the darkness and could just make out a few details—the figure was a tall, lanky woman with bleached-blonde hair. She wore huge, bug-eyed sunglasses and a black-and-white striped sundress that seemed a few sizes too small, even for her skinny figure. Her garish red lipstick matched her shiny red heels, which tapped loudly on the cement of the platform as she toddled out of the shadows with a predatory snarl.

     “Hello, mother,” Jaimee said, sighing.

     “What do you think you’re doing?” her mother hissed.

With some shadows added to the scene, forcing Jaimee to squint in order to make out details, it now makes sense that she wouldn’t recognize her mother right away. This gives us justification to describe other details of the mother’s appearance before actually identifying her as Jaimee’s mother. So what’s the problem?

We were told that Jaimee couldn’t make out who the figure was, and then a moment later, she calls the woman “mother.” But when did she identify the mysterious woman as her mother? It wasn’t at the moment she spoke—she’d obviously already discerned the figure’s identity at that point. At some point, Jaimee realized that this woman was her mother, and we didn’t see it happen; but we should have, because we’re in her head.

This usually happens because the author doesn’t want to spoil the reveal; an author writing this section probably feels like the line “Hello, mother” has a certain oomph to it that would be lost if the reader already knew that the figure was Jaimee’s mother, even if they only found out a moment before. As in yesterday’s example, however, this is unnecessary. Not every bit of information has to be “revealed.” There’s no real reason to hide that this is Jaimee’s mother for the sake of that line.

Or the writer could be trying to cut out superfluous lines and didn’t feel it was necessary to tell us that Jaimee recognized her mother. In some situations, that might be permissible, but I wouldn’t recommend it in this instance (or most instances, for that matter). Jaimee was specifically trying to figure out who the woman in the shadows was—skipping over the moment of realization isn’t a good idea.

A perspective-error-free version of our original example might look like this:

     When she looked back at the platform, she paused. A figure stood in the shadows by the stairs that led up to the street, watching her. Jaimee squinted through the darkness and could just make out a few details—the figure was a tall, lanky woman with bleached-blonde hair. She wore huge, bug-eyed sunglasses and a black-and-white striped sundress that seemed a few sizes too small, even for her skinny figure. Jaimee winced. It was her mom.

     Her mom toddled out of the shadows with a predatory snarl. Her garish red lipstick matched her shiny red heels, which tapped loudly on the cement of the platform.

     “Hello, mother,” Jaimee said, sighing.

     “What do you think you’re doing?” her mom hissed.

A Final Note

Before you go, there is one more element of the Figure Problem that I should mention: 

The word “figure” is extremely vague and nondescript. It gives the reader almost no useful information. Think about it: how often can you see a “figure” without being able to identify more descriptive characteristics? You could probably tell a figure’s gender from a distance; at the very least, you could tell that it was a human, a person. You might be able to tell their relative age—whether they’re a child or an adult. If you can be more descriptive, then do it! Only resort to something as vague as “figure” if you absolutely must.

The Figure Problem: Part One

     The scene begins. Wind blows across a harsh desert, or maybe rain is falling on a dreary city alleyway, or perhaps sun is shining through gaps in the leaves of a peaceful green forest. Wherever the story is taking place, a figure appears in the distance. The figure is stumbling, or hurrying, or strolling; maybe we’re told that the figure is lost, or avoiding being seen, or is relaxing. They could be panting, or mumbling, or whistling. Slowly, the view dials in on the figure. It looks to be male, or female, or perhaps neither. We’re told the figure has a ragged beard, or a dark hat and trenchcoat, or metallic skin. Gradually, we get more and more details about the appearance and behavior of the figure. Perhaps we’re expressly told that the figure has survived a plane crash, or is a cat burglar on the way to a job, or is an oddly-built android; after this point, the “figure” might begin to be referred to as the survivor, the thief, or the android. Whoever they are, the figure keeps moving, and more details of their appearance and what they’re doing are gradually revealed.

     Finally, after anywhere from several paragraphs to several pages, we find out the name of the figure—maybe they meet someone else who calls them by name, or maybe the writer simply felt that this would be a good point to reveal it. From this point on, they cease to be the “figure,” the “survivor,” the “thief,” or the “android.” They are called by name for the rest of the story, whether they’re the protagonist, a side character, or a temporary, otherwise-unimportant vessel to carry us to the actual plot.

If you have been writing for any length of time, then you’ve probably written some variation of this scene. Everyone does, at some point or another, and I do mean everyone. It’s almost always a bad idea.

Why is this a problem?

Because it is slow, distant from the character, and usually distant from the plot; put those together, and you’ve got a whole basket of boring. And being boring is the worst sin a piece of purported entertainment can commit.

Slow: Usually, not much is happening while the “figure” walks across the screen for us to admire. Why? Because it is difficult to blend description and action, so the writer is getting all of that pesky description out of the way before they actually get to the action. That’s an adequate workaround, but it would be a better idea to start closer to the action and learn to work in shorter, quicker bits of description along the way. We’ll go over tips for doing that well at a later date.

Distant from the character: Why don’t we know the character’s name? There is almost never a good reason—new writers simply withhold information out of habit, trying to give every bit of info through some sort of “reveal.” This isn’t a movie; we don’t need to zoom in from an establishing shot, drawing closer and closer to the figure until we suddenly get their name and jump inside their head to start finding out what they’re thinking about what they’re doing and the things around them. That just doubles up on the slowness of the piece—first, we spend pages setting the scene, and then we have to sit through the character thinking about everything that we’ve just seen, forcing us to go over it all again? Just put us in their head and give us their name right from the start. Help us know them through their actions and how they perceive their surroundings, and it will be more interesting.

Distant from the plot: All of this scene-setting isn’t the plot, it’s a gradual meander toward the plot. But your readers already approached the story—they bought your book or borrowed it from a friend or looked up your story where it’s available online. Don’t languish in non-action because you’re so impressed with your breathtaking powers of description. Your readers picked up a story, so just get to it.

As I mentioned before, almost every writer has done this at some early point of their career, usually well before they got published. I did this on multiple occasions before someone pointed out to me why it was a problem. Ask an author sometime; they’ll probably know about the Figure Problem (though not necessarily by that name) and will be able to remember when they did it themselves. So don’t feel bad if your current masterpiece begins this way—you’re in good company.

In this post, we discuss how the Figure Problem can become even worse.