One of the major problems in my own writing probably stems from my academic background. I was forced to do a bachelor in Applied Mathematics. And even if you hate it, even if you really don’t want to do it, you’ll think more and more in terms of “irrefutable logic” and “proofs” by the time you finish that degree.
As such, whenever I form an opinion about something or need to make a decision, I have this long chain of arguments and reasoning leading up to it. This is clearly good … in real life. Most of the time. It means you don’t say or do something stupid. It means it’s easy to make the right choice, because you know it has way more evidence or sound logic behind it than all the other choices.
In terms of storytelling, though, this is dreadful.
Because there is little surprise. Because any action, even if it’s somewhat interesting, is preceded by a long chain of arguments and research. By the time you’re done with that chain, the action you will take is “obvious” and not interesting anymore.
What does this mean for a story? Well, it means you just wrote a novel that started with 10 chapters of introspection, then finished with a final chapter in which someone made the right and boring choice. Not a thrilling read, is it?
I see this with beginning writers all the time too. When writing essays (at school), you’re taught to start each paragraph with your statement sentence, then expand on it in the rest of the paragraph. And sometimes even end the paragraph with a summary or repetition of the main point, perhaps in varying ways.
The city of Amsterdam has long suffered from the large numbers of doves. (THE POINT!) They crowd around tourists, scare children, and most annoyingly, leave a white stain on many a car, bench or hairdo. A few years ago, the situation became so bad that tourists had to be warned not to feed doves or bring any food into specific public plazas. (MY REASONS FOR SAID POINT!)
I’m making this up, but hopefully you see my point. You start with your summary or thesis statement, then expand on it with arguments and logic. Then, in case you’re trying to reach a decision, you make that decision at the end, when you have all your arguments and reasoning.
Reverse Dialogue
A few years ago, I already learned to “reverse” this for dialogue. This is my first tip.
When speaking, we are literally coming up with our point as we go. We’re also more hardwired to tell things in a more interesting way to keep people engaged and listening. As such, we start by providing interesting evidence, facts or thoughts. They might even be a bit mysterious—our listener might be wondering “where are they going with this?” And then we end with our main and most exciting point.
Did you hear? They’ve instated bread-free zones now in the center of Amsterdam. (WHY?) Tourists are warned to stay away, especially after one girl had her hair painted white by one of them. (OKAY INTERESTING) Those doves are really becoming a problem now. (THE ACTUAL POINT)
This is far more interesting to read. It keeps the attention by raising questions, mysteries, weird statements, and then gives a satisfying answer when you actually state your main point.
I recommend applying this to your own writing, of course! It makes a world of difference. It allows you to convey precisely the same information your reader might need, but now it’s natural and fun instead of like a boring textbook.
Going bigger
Recently, however, I realized you should probably also apply this to the entire plot. (Or the entire “structure” of your story.)
With my latest stories, I noticed I was writing interesting prose on a line level (such as by reversing dialogue), but I was still making this mistake when crafting the overall plot.
The story started with a scene or two that gave a lot of background information. Once those were out of the way, actual stuff started happening. Even worse, because I’d given so much good reasons already for the action, it wasn’t that surprising or exciting anymore.
You can probably guess the advice I’m going to give here.
Act now, ask questions later.
You should let something interesting happen without explaining it. But it should be so interesting that the reader stays with you and wants to find out what that was all about. That they start to theorize themselves, creating a more interactive relationship with your story.
Then, later in the story, you actually have a quiet moment where questions are asked or explanations are given. Even better, this allows people to only realize their actions were silly at that moment. This creates a slight tension and progressive arc even in the quieter moments. Even when somebody is just explaining why they jumped off the roof then, they might suddenly hesitate and be like “oh no, I had forgotten that!” or someone else might slowly get angry and give good counterpoints.
This is definitely a better way to do it. It doesn’t hide or remove the quieter moments of story, the ones where information must be given or reasoning established. It simply switches the order: act now, ask questions later.
It means you open a story with the interesting action, instead of with slow introspection and backstory needed to understand said action. Trust your readers that, if your first chapter is written well enough, that they want to find out the why instead of saying “this makes no sense” and putting the book away.
Instead of …
- Chapter 1 explains why Sarah is desperate for money.
- Chapter 2 shows her planning to rob a bank.
- Chapter 3 shows her robbing said bank.
You do …
- Chapter 1 shows Sarah robbing said bank.
- Chapter 2 shows Sarah running away for her life, as she cycles through backup plans. => which gives some information about the planning that went into it
- Chapter 3 shows Sarah using the stolen money to resolve the situation that made her desperate in the first place. => which gives that information too
It feels a bit unnatural to me, probably because I was taught to write and think the other way around. And because I wrote a lot of non-fiction, such as articles like this one.
More and more, however, I’m turning this into a habit and it’s made stories flow so much more easily.
In a way, it’s about giving in to your “monkey brain” :p Your monkey brain wants cool stuff to happen now. But your writer brain, consciously or subconsciously, is like “no no we need to set it up, prepare it, and our heroes first need to visit the blacksmith to get their sword, and—”
No! It’s actually good to make cool stuff happen now. It is absolutely fine to just throw in a sentence like “On our way to the castle, we snuck into the blacksmith’s workshop and grabbed our swords.” It is absolutely fine to just assume your heroes have a good reason to do something, then figure out a way to explain that later.
It mirrors real life (in practice). Most people act on emotion (or their “monkey brain”), then justify it later with all sorts of bullshit reasons. It’s just what most people do in practice, even if they try not to.
It’s also, most importantly, just more interesting. And being interesting is the only rule in writing, if you ask me.
Going even bigger
As usual, I notice how much writing tips apply to real life in general. That’s why articles like these end surprisingly often in a life lesson.
In this case, I have to be careful about how I phrase it.
As stated at the beginning, in real life you really want to act based on arguments and logical reasoning. Absolutely. It feels like only a handful of people in this world can actually think logically, and everyone else causes trouble by acting on impulse, assumptions and malformed memories.
There is, however, a large danger attached to having “a mathematician’s brain”. To forming a large list of arguments and evidence before making any decision or forming any opinion. This is especially useless in high-pressure or urgent situations, where doing something “good enough” on instinct is far more valuable than freezing up and doing nothing.
For hyperactive and perfectionist people like me, being “inside your head” too much just means you never make a decision at all. It freezes you, it overwhelms you with all the options, and you just start doubting instead of doing.
As such, I would recommend people like me adopt a mind-set of “act now, ask questions later” in real life too. At least some of the time.
Ever since I changed my mind-set to think less and rely on intuition more, I became for more productive and far less stressed. Sure, you make a few stupid decisions every now and then. But guess what happens? It leads to funny stories you can tell at a party later. It leads to interesting life lessons or odd situations worthy of a story.
I obviously don’t want anyone to make life-threateningly dumb decisions, either for themselves or others. But most decisions are not that important or dangerous. And you can either make the right decision very slowly or make an interesting one very quickly.
I am not going to live forever, nor am I a robot that only cares about efficiency. I prefer to make the very quick decision most of the time, and then deal with the fallout later. Most of the time, that decision was “good enough” and doesn’t really need revision. At other times, at the cost of redoing some work or apologizing to someone, I get a funny story out of my mistakes.
That’s my writing tip and life tip for today,
Tiamo