Completing Your Novel Plot

Guest Post by Jack Smith

At some point in drafting a novel, you will probably see the need to add more actions or events to complete the plot.  You know the story isn’t complete.  You may need to rethink where your story is going.  Try this process:

• Write a brief summary of each chapter.  This is time-consuming, but once you have concise summaries, you will be able to see your novel’s overall direction more easily.  Sure, you can read and reread your novel itself, but sometimes you can forget what happened first, second, etc. 

Novel Revision: Twenty-page Sessions

Guest Post by Jack Smith

You can handle novel revision in many different ways—probably too numerous to mention.  One method: You can rework pages one at a time, trying to get everything right before going on.  A second: You can take the novel section by section, attempting to get everything right.

Or how about this third method?   Once you have a fairly complete draft, just commit yourself to twenty-page sessions of revision. 

Unless you hit real snags, you can do this in about two to three hours.

Here’s the kinds of things to look for/work for:

Help With Dialogue Tags

Guest Post by Jack Smith

Dialogue Tags

What about “he said”/”she said”—do you need them?  Or perhaps the character’s name instead of the pronoun?  How much of either is needed?  How much is too much?  Like everything else in creative writing, no rules here.  Only what works.  And you can think of this matter in at least two ways: clarity and style—or both.

Take a look at this passage from Raymond Carver’s “What’s in Alaska?”  Do we need the dialogue tags?

“I don’t know.  Something Mary said,” Helen said.

“What did I say?” Mary said.

“I can’t remember,” Helen said.

“We have to go,” Jack said.

“So long,” Carl said.  “Take it easy.”