Telling a Good Story Takes Preparation

My father often said, “Preparation is everything.” He was a custom men’s tailor who each night prepared the next day’s work and each morning made sure all was in order. Preparation gave him a sense of what was needed before the need arose. Some writers are equally fastidious in planning their work; others are pantsers, flying by the seat of their pants. In reality, all of us are both, and that’s important in storytelling. But, first, a bit about preparation.

There’s more than one way to prepare to write. Some writers have rituals that help them diffuse the nervous energy that often attends a writing effort. Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway often ended his writing time before finishing a scene so that he would know where to start the next day. When he was stuck for a way to begin a day’s work, he often went back and edited the prior day’s effort.

One definition of preparation is the action or process of making something ready, or getting ready for an event or undertaking. And writing is certainly an undertaking. To help us begin, we can ask questions of the work and of ourselves as writers. The following queries are most helpful for developing scenes:

• Clarity: What aspects of the scene need clarity, whether due to imprecise prose or an incomplete rendering of the scene’s real purpose in the story? There’s nothing wrong with leaving something, or even a lot, to the reader’s imagination, as long as it’s intentional and not due to the writer’s oversight.
• Dialogue: What part of the dialogue should be overt or spoken aloud, and what should be part of the characters’ interiority? Rendering part of a dialogue as what’s going on within the character gives the character and scene layers and subtext, and shares something with the reader that the other characters may not yet know.
• Questions: What questions arise from the scene that need to be addressed, whether in the scene or later in the story? If the missing information should be filled in later, we can make a note to ourselves. Whether we fill in the gaps now or later on, we should decide how to present the information, for example, by a person or another medium, such as a news report.
• Repetition: What recurrences appear in the scene? This query relates to whether the redundancy is helpful, as in for emphasis, or is a case of the writer saying the same thing more than once with no rationale for the duplication.
• Revelations: How should a flash of insight, an epiphany or a revelation be disclosed? Sometimes straightforward is best—through a direct narrative statement. Other times the revelation of something new and important can be enhanced by putting it in the mouth of a character we wouldn’t expect to deliver the insight. Still other times the insight can come from within the character, for example, through a trigger, an aspect of setting, a memory or a lesson learned. One way to decide is to match the importance of the revelation to the extent of the surprise, and to consider whether the character needs to own the moment or whether it’s better coming from someone or something else.
• Tightening: Where does the scene need to be edited? More words don’t necessarily equal better writing. Sometimes they obscure rather than clarify a point.
• Viewpoint: Have I considered the scene from the viewpoint of each character in it, including the setting? Doing so gives a scene balance and texture.

We ask these and other questions to find out what’s needed before it becomes clear to the reader but missed by us. Think of telling a story as inviting friends to share a meal on a special occasion. No matter what form the gathering takes—informal, buffet or sit-down dinner—it’s best to prepare the food and venue in advance. This engenders trust from our guests and gives us a chance to spend time with them. That’s what readers look for in a story—a place to go where a satisfying experience awaits.

References

• If you haven’t seen the film Genius, on the friendship and writing relationship between editor par excellence Max Perkins and author Thomas Wolfe, it’s definitely worth seeing.
• If you haven’t read Look Homeward, Angel, Wolfe’s masterwork, it’s worth reading or rereading for the sheer experience of the prose.

Happy writing!

Adele Annesi’s SPD bestselling novel is What She Takes Away (Bordighera Press, 2023). She co-authored Now What? The Creative Writer's Guide to Success After the MFA and was managing editor of Southern Literary Review. Her MFA in creative writing is from Fairfield University, and her long-running blog for writers is Word for Words. Her podcast is Adele Annesi on Writing.