Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Sweating the Small Stuff

This is topic Sweating the Small Stuff in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/writers/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001219

Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :

How do you keep the minutea of your story interesting? I'm having trouble keeping the mundane from sounding...well, mundane. Boring. Like, close the book and turn on the TV boring. Things like waking up, walking from one place to another, changing clothes, etc...

I know that some of you will tell me to just not write it. If it's not interesting, or important, chuck it all together, and I wholeheartedly agree. But sometimes, this stuff is important. Whether because of a conversation during the mundane, or because of some kind of epipheny that springs from some minor routine, sometimes, the small stuff counts. And yet no matter how much I know this to be true, and no matter how important the epiphany is or how plot- or character-revealing the conversation is, the small stuff is always boring for me. When I write it, I mean, because I know of writers who do it well.

Pity I can't think of any examples just now, or I'd pull out my highlighter and turn the page soggy with ink.

CVG

PS--I have a nagging suspicion that this topic has been discussed at length before, but a search of every topic since the beginning (by subject title, mostly, otherwise, I would have been here for days on end), hasn't revealed any obvious posts.

Posted by AeroB1033 (Member # 1956) on :

You don't have to go into it in detail, in almost any case. For example,

"Jeff had been cleaning the house for a couple of hours--he couldn't believe he'd let it get this bad, and his mother would freak--when he had an epiphany."

If it's important that a certain activity trigger the epiphany, skip everything else and go straight to that.

All of that said, even the mundane isn't going to be boring as long as you remember to give the character's impressions on what he's doing. If the character has interesting attitudes, it'll go a long way towards holding the reader's interest. If he has an attitude at all, it will really help.

But yes, it will get very boring if you coldly take them through washing the dishes, driving to work, etc, simply listing the actions without the character's thoughts about them (and other things).

Posted by wetwilly (Member # 1818) on :

Here's the way I see it: If an event is important to the story and the story is interesting, then the event will be interesting. Washing dishes=boring fiction by itself, but when that's how your main character works out her anger towards her abusive husband, then it's interesting. If walking out to the mailbox causes an epiphany, then it's interesting because of the epiphany.

Something I find, and I think it might have been implanted into my sub-conscious mind by various writing books, those by OSC in particular: When I find myself getting bored with writing a scene, I assume there's something wrong with it. I take a step back and look at it and try to figure out why it's so problematic. More often than not, I realize it's boring me because it's not important to the story. It's not the scene I should be writing, so my mind refuses to engage. I either toss it and write another scene (hopefully the right scene) or change something in it (POV, mood, key events, characters present, etc. etc. etc.)

When I'm bored with a scene I take it as an unconscious hint that the scene is wrong.

Posted by rickfisher (Member # 1214) on :

When you're writing a scene that's only important because it gets you from where you were to where you're going, follow a simple rule:

Tell, don't show.

(Whatever that means.)

Posted by AeroB1033 (Member # 1956) on :

Yep. You don't have to actually go through the mundane details, you can just tell the reader what happens. And there's nothing wrong with that, don't listen to those idiotic creative writing teachers--there's a time for showing, and a time for telling.

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

Tell don't show@!

They beat me to it....grrrrr.

But before you take this advice (The exact opposite of show, don't tell.) make sure that there really is only one tiny bit of information that gets communicated. ie...he walked across town. She woke, prepared for the day, and went down to breakfast. Things like that don't need to get spelled out in detail...just say it.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

The point has already been made that CV isn't talking about glossing over scenes where nothing important occurs.

I would tend to agree with AB&WW's advice on this one. Look at your text and see whether you're concentrating on the details that have no meaning to the plot and characters rather than the significant elements.

I find that I run into a problem sometimes when the events are actually quite interesting to me, but I know they are not interesting to the readers. This can be solved by cutting or glossing the scene. But on some occasions I have found that I couldn't do this because the scene is supposed to serve an important narrative function (typically some kind of interior action) that I find mundane but is important to the story and will be interesting to my audiance. In these cases, the difficulty is that even when I know which part is going to bore and confuse the readers rather than enlighten them, I still would rather concentrate on those details.

Happily, you probably have a closer connection to your audiance than I have. So my particular problem should be rare for you. Just concentrate on the part that is not boring to you.

Posted by Jules (Member # 1658) on :

If your character is discovering some information (or similar) while involved in some normal everyday activity, you may want to consider that your scene possibly doesn't have enough conflict.

Try to find a way of adding some to it. Is there someone who doesn't want him to find this information? Could they do something to try to stop him. Perhaps even something as simple as the character being late for an appointment and being in a hurry to do whatever it is he's doing could add enough conflict to the scene to make it interesting.

Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :

quote:
I know of writers who do it well.

Study how they do it. Maybe take what you consider a well done segment and rewrite it. (This suggestion is based on the fact that there are just as many ways to do things right as there are to do them wrong.)

Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :

Sometimes we can get caught up in recording every small detail in a story, thinking well he did get up and he did get dressed and he did--

One simple rule, if it doesn't advance the plot then you don't need it.

If you find the story boring then imagine how your readers will find it!

Shawn