37. Lazy

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get lazy. That’s not always bad. We all need a lazy day (night or evening) to regenerate after hectic times. But when it comes to novels, nothing pops a reader out of YOUR Novel more quickly than a few pages of lazy prose.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, when we get lazy, we begin to “tell” the story instead of “show” the story, and I’m as guilty of this an any writer. Soooo…my third rewrite is all about showing NOT telling. Here are a few danger signals that tell me I’ve shortchanged my readers and compromised my novel by taking the lazy way out.

1. The Time Elapse Syndrome. The Time Elapse Syndrome starts something like this: “Three weeks later…”  If nothing exciting happens during these 3 weeks, the novelist has every right to take this shortcut directly to the action, but if this time eclipse cuts out a big portion of the story, go back and WRITE THE SCENES.

2.The One-Sentence Summary Syndrome. The O-S.S.Syndrome lazies its way out of the best scenes in the novel. If you’ve written: “James had killed Jane using her favorite kitchen knife, and then he had hidden the knife in his toolbox,” you’re employing the O-S.S. Syndrome. WRITE THE SCENE. A situation like this demands a chapter at least!

3. The Skipped Chapter Syndrome.In this situation, the author leads to up the potential scene and leaves the reader hanging at the end of the chapter. This is perfectly fine, actually potential great. What is NOT fine is to start the next chapter AFTER the promised (or sort of promised) scene. Life goes on with the reader screaming, “What happened!?!” WRITE THE SCENE!

4. The When Syndrome. “When Cindy hit her head and lost consciousness, she woke up in a whole new world.” Okay fine. We’re excited about the whole new world thing, but we also want to know the details of that head-hitting. The When Syndrome leaves the reader asking, “How, why, when, where…” WRITE THE SCENE!

5. The Author Intrusion Syndrome. The A.I. Syndrome is a hazard of first person POV narratives. It goes something like this.”I can’t tell you how difficult my life was until the day I met Sandra. I am the kind of person who sees mud where rainbows bloom, but Sandra is definitely a rainbow kind of girl.” The key area here is to notice that the novelist is telling the reader all about the POV character, but what the reader wants is a STORY that SHOWS the reader all about the POV character.  This isn’t a one-scene fix. Your readers hope to spend a whole novel learning all the stuff the A.I. Syndrome novelist tries to tell us in one huge gloppy mass (usually in the first page).

Again, notice that all these problems have their roots in TELLING not SHOWING. When I TELL instead of SHOW, I always find that laziness is my partner in crime.  

Assignment for the Week: Check YOUR Novel for these five danger signs. Rewrite and allow your reader to LIVE your story!

Blessings!

Sue