The same applies as I wrote in the Clarion South: Week 1 Learnings:

Ok, so these are some of the general learnings I took away from all of our sessions with this week. Though this doesn’t include the handouts, these are the observations I made during the crit sessions which resulted from some of the general discussions. I wrote these in my notebook as things I would try to reference in my own writing:

  • Dialogue: don’t make dialogue too ‘on the nose’. In other words, adults usually never say what they’re thinking. So don’t have your main characters be so transparent that they: i) say exactly what they mean, or ii) say things so obviously that are really the narrator wanting to move the plot forward.

  • Scene: if you start to write scenes that you feel are tedious to you as a writer, they’ll probably be tedious for the reader to. Sometimes the fact that they’re tedious to you as a good reason to take them out.
  • Editors: keep in mind that editors are very interested in: i) finding a great piece of work from an unknown author, ii) finding out very quickly if a piece is good enough to continue reading (editors have so much to read, they use the first few pages of a story to gauge if it’s worth reading on). Also, keep in mind that though editors might really enjoy your story, they may not choose it because of their specific taste or the style and audience of the magazine they’re editing. Be prepared to send your story out widely to get it into print.
  • Sentences & Conveying Info: every sentence has to work to move your story forward. Sentences which are transitional only can usually be cut and replaced with something that conveys information to the reader. For example, ‘Jane snapped out of her reverie when she got to the front door’ (transitional) could be replaced with ‘When Jane got home there was no car in the driveway’ (transitional/information). The latter sentence tells us that someone in her family is not home.
  • Endings: there are two types of story endings. In the first, endings are open and leave questions for the reader. In the second, endings are neatly tied up and self-contained. In the first, the actions of the story before the ending have to have been used effectively enough to convey to the reader several logical steps that the story may take following its conclusion.
  • World setting/building: in science fiction and fantasy story editors look for ‘world building’. One of the best methods of world building is to show the style of work that the characters do in their daily lives. Work can be a fantastic way to create believable characters and editors.
  • Power shifts: it’s great to show ‘power shifts’ between characters. It shows us that they live in complex worlds, are complex themselves and that the world of the story mirrors what we expect in life (as nothing is ever straight forward). Stories with power shifts are often the most enjoyable for people to read. For example: i) James meets cool boy Richard at bus stop when he has no friends (power is with Richard, as he’s the cool one); ii) James tells Richard that he has access to his dad’s car (power shifts to James because he has something of value); iii) Richard buys a car (no longer needs James, who is a little nerdy); and so on. Power shifts create narrative tension which enthrals the reader.
  • Reversals: like with ‘Power Shifts’, narrative tension comes from ‘reversals’ too. For example, if you have a car that has a mind of its own and wants to destroy things, it’s far more interesting if your main character loves the car and doesn’t want to sell it. Maybe the car was given to him by his father, for example, and has sentimental value.
  • Making scary: (I know, ‘making scary’ doesn’t make sense, but it sounds so cool) sometimes the most scary aspects of a horror story are the things which are subtly said. Rather than describing something gruesome in amazing detail (eg. his face looked like a skeleton and his face dripped with blood), say other things that imply that the character is odd/weird. This is much more scary. When things are specifically describe as gory, they become like pantomimes, and like Hollywood horror films pantomimes are not scary.
  • Frames: Frames are those paragraphs at the start of a story that provide readers with an additional beginning. They may be quotes from outside the story or refer to something that happens inside in the story (sometimes exact text from further on) . Frames can work but they have to be used extremely well. Most of the time, they indicate a weakness in the story, in that the writer has had to use a ‘frame’ because the story is not complete in itself. Definitely worth thinking about this if you’re planning to use a ‘frame’.