Timeline for I feel like my book is too small and I’m kind of just throwing all my ideas out too quick. Does this mean filler might be necessary?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
9 events
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| Sep 12, 2018 at 2:33 | comment | added | Wildcard | This is a fantastic answer, but I'm glad your ludicrous statement (in comments) that "people don't change" isn't in the answer. Adult stories do indeed show character change (as @Amadeus says), unless you're just reading bad novels. | |
| Sep 11, 2018 at 15:02 | comment | added | Andrey | I think you are misquoting its "Delete anything that doesn't drive the story on, or develops characters" | |
| Sep 11, 2018 at 15:01 | comment | added | Amadeus | @Surtsey You are misinformed. Character building DOES drive story, the whole point is to have readers care about the characters and what happens to them, and it is the decisions of the characters that create and drive the plot. Character "revelation" and "development" are the same thing, for the reader each revelation is a development that changes their internal model of what the character is doing. As for "People don't change", people changing is actually the whole point of many stories, so again, you have been misinformed. | |
| Sep 11, 2018 at 12:15 | comment | added | Surtsey | AnoE, you shot your own argument when you said you remembered the scene. The scene was an empathy hook. 10 million woman read it and it provoked a thought - "Yeah, why is it men piss for ages?" | |
| Sep 11, 2018 at 12:01 | comment | added | AnoE | Funny. I didn't actually read Jaws fully, and found the style pretty uninteresting back them. But I clearly remember that scene (and some other rather corny ones which didn't make it into the movie either...). So much for avoidind fillers. :D | |
| Sep 11, 2018 at 11:15 | comment | added | Surtsey | Amadeus - I think I said that. But character building does not drive story - it expands story and increases volume. And, if we are to take the issue up a couple of grades . . . there is no such thing as "character development" in adult stories. There is only "character revelation". People don't change. The author is showing the reader who the characters really are. If I were an attorney I'd cite Scorpion vs Frog. | |
| Sep 11, 2018 at 10:54 | comment | added | Amadeus | The women thinking about another character taking a pee is called "character building", it shows the reader how she thinks, what she thinks about, and how she feels about it. It IS integral to the story, and does DRIVE the story, because choices and actions come out of personality and characters. Characters in a novel are usually far more important than the plot, and readers will remember the characters long after they have forgotten most of the plot. Character development is crucial to making their choices plausible, thus their predicament plausible, thus the plot plausible. | |
| Sep 11, 2018 at 9:29 | comment | added | user16555 | I think you might be misunderstanding what "drives the story on" potentially refers to in such contexts. The way I understand it (and I also give people the same advice) is that it refers to narrative, not plot. There are things that drive them both forward, such as an action and the way a character reflects on it; there are things that drive only plot forward, such as an action; and there are things that drive only the narrative forward, such as reflection. An author should discard what offers neither action nor reflection. | |
| Sep 11, 2018 at 8:59 | history | answered | Surtsey | CC BY-SA 4.0 |