Shooting down Giant Space Fleas and Big-lipped Alligators with the Rifle on the Wall

I've been making suggestions about how to make any piece of writing more literary.  In this case, I will talk about story unity. Have you ever read a piece wherein events, characters, and even climaxes seem sort of tacked on, to come out of nowhere?  A good story is well-integrated, all events planned with foreshadowing and build-up.  As Anton Chekhov tells us, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter, it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."  In other words, if you're going to include some prominently displayed item, character, or symbol, it should be used somewhere in your story. It should be there for a reason, or you're wasting words and the reader's time.  Conversely, if you're going to have a major event like a rifle going off at the end, you should hint at the possibility somewhere earlier.    

There are several pitfalls to avoid, mainly with characters or events in the story that feel tacked on and poorly integrated.  The first two are often associated with video games or television. The Big Lipped Alligator Moment, or pointless and unrelated and often ridiculous side event or character, seems to exist to fill space or distract.  The name traces to a scene from "All Dogs Go to Heaven," wherein an alligator shows up for no reason in a scene unrelated to the plot.   Giant Space Fleas from Nowhere are simply major antagonists (major bosses in video game terms) that don't tie into the story.  There is no foreshadowing and no deeper meaning.  A big baddie shows up, makes things harder for one scene, then is never seen or remembered again.  Why are they there?  Often, not even the author can explain them.  If you can't justify major or minor events and characters in terms of your overarching plot, meaning, or character development, cut those scenes.

It is particularly important to build toward the climax of your story and to make meaning of it.  When an author does neither, he likely has either a Deus ex Machina or Diabolus ex Machina, which are more literary terms.  Deus ex Machina--God out of the machine--is when a literal or figurative hand of God shows up and fixes what's wrong.  Some crazy powerful new ability or character shows up and saves the day.  In The Stand miniseries, a literal big hand shows up and makes things better.  Meanwhile, Diabolus ex Machina, or devil from the machine, is where an overly powerful bad guy who has not been foreshadowed, hinted at, etc. appears and makes things much worse for the heroes.  The solution here is not necessarily to cut the character or event but to integrate it.  Hint at it in a way the reader won't necessarily catch.  If possible, make either good or bad relate to the main characters and/or come from the characters. Make it all seem possible within the world of the story.  Basically, set up for it and then make sure it enhances meaning, character, and plot in a way that makes sense.

Literary greats usually build up toward minor and major events and characters then use them to build on their deeper meaning, plot, and/or characters.  Yes, anything is possible in writing.  However, if your reader finds scenes and characters far-fetched, unrelated, ridiculous, or distracting, you've lost them.  They are thrown out of the world of the story and won't likely come back in a hurry.  Everything you do in your story should be carefully planned, integrated, and meaningful.

Yin and Yang

I've been writing about what makes a piece of writing literary.  This week, I'll address specifically part of what makes a piece meaningful.  I've watched some dark movies of late, ones that were just dark or angry or violent or whatever without a glimmer of humor, personality, joy, light, warmth, or anything that would redeem them from their merciless darkness.  They fell flat for me because they lacked what makes movies entertaining, meaningful, or fun.  I've also seen quite a few shows that are simply light fluff without any darkness, any abuse or trauma or loss or sadness, to make the characters in them feel human.  Dark without light or light without darkness lose their meaning.  They don't reflect the human experience.

A good writer needs to include both light and darkness since they define each other.  Finding the balance can be the hard part.  Part of this can be based on the genre the writer chooses.  A dark fantasy or horror writer would obviously spend more time in the dark with flashes of light to keep the reader going.  A humor, romance, or children's writer may spend longer in the light, using bits of darkness from past losses or trauma to give the characters meaning and human qualities.  This is likely a big part of why Disney writers always tend to tell stories of children who lose or have lost parents: to introduce a bit of tragedy that makes light moments in the present more meaningful and characters more sympathetic.

Shakespeare understood the need for this balance.  Hamlet is a dark piece.  It's a revenger's tragedy in which most of the characters die.  Shakespeare understood the need for the porter scene, the scene that introduced the knock knock joke in the middle of two much darker scenes.  The reader needs that kind of emotional release.  Meanwhile, in his comedy Twelfth Night, the main characters, a set of twins, start their stories in earnest mourning each other's supposed death after an accident.  Shakespeare understood even the lightest comedy needs the gravitas of loss and sadness, and even the heaviest tragedy needs moments of light.  One without the other is meaningless.

As a side note, remember to research and fully understand the kind of darkness or light you want to use.  If your story features a woman who has lost a child, but she doesn't act like a woman who has lost a child, your reader who has suffered that kind of loss can feel betrayed.  Also, if you're including a bit of light into the darkness, make sure the light doesn't fall flat with readers.  Light and dark both need to work together to create a seamless whole in order to shape your meaning.

Now, it is your turn.  Look over the pieces on which you're working.  Do you have enough light or darkness to balance out the other?  If not, look to the classics to figure out how to strike the yin yang balance.

Pushing past Clichés

I've been writing about elevating the level of your writing, making any piece of writing more literary. One thing that can kill a piece of writing for the reader faster than most other things is to fill it full of clichés.  It doesn't matter if those clichés are characters everyone has seen hundreds of times before, subplots that seem lifted from a movie, or even turns of phrase people have read in every other tired piece of writing.  People want fresh writing, fresh characters, and fresh plotlines.  If your writing feels like every other fantasy novel, every other poem, every other anything they've read, your piece is dead in the water.  In other words, avoid clichés like the plague [pardon the clichés].  

When most people go to write, what they have to draw on is the standard list of phrases, characters, plotlines.  Good writers don't stop there.  You don't have to do this with draft one.  As the quotation from the writers' movie "Finding Forrester" goes, "You write your first draft with your heart, and you rewrite with your head."  When you write the first draft, you can fill your piece with whatever clichés come to mind first.   But when you go to rewrite, pinpoint the clichés.  Find them one by one and push past your initial impulses.

How can you do that?  One method is by brainstorming.  Say you've written a draft [or simply have first thoughts and some basic notes] in which your language is riddled with clichés.  Find synonyms.  Make nouns into verbs and vice versa.  Search for the perfect metaphors and similes.  Find a way to make the language fresh.  

Say you've done some preliminary work and found your main characters to be so familiar as to be dull.  Say he's a weak nerd who is bullied by a big kid.  You say to yourself, "I've lost count of the times I've read this story before."  So how can you make your particular nerd special?  How can your bully become something fresh and new?  You say to yourself, "Okay, how about I make the bully a super genius and the main kid an impish girl."  That starts to be a little different.  But you don't have to stop there, either.  Push it further until you've found something not just fresh but with more potential for drama.  You could change genres if you're at an early enough point to do so.  Would the bully and nerd be more interesting in space?  In a magical land?  Would it work in the future?  Or in a gothic horror story?

Whether or not you change your genre, it will be critical to spend more time developing the individual characters.  You could write the character's journal.  You could simply write more, draw more, plan more.  You could do a character interview in which you ask your character a series of questions that shed more light on him/her.

Do whatever it takes to turn your character, your story, your words into something new.  Don't settle for the first thing that comes to mind.