In a perfect world, every good book would find a print home, and every stupid book would die a horrible death. Obviously this isn’t how the system works, and I’m often asked by young writers what they can do to break into print. I usually begin with the three most obvious things:

• 1. read extensively
• 2. write every day
• 3. build credibility by submitting articles and short stories to small publications.

But although these things are true, they usually miss the point. The real question young writers are asking is, “How do I get my manuscript read?”

It’s very difficult. The competition is fierce, not because there are so many great writers in our culture, but because there are so many mediocre submissions. Editors and agents don’t have time to wade through the tide of incoming paper.

Forty years ago if you submitted a decent manuscript to any major publisher you stood a reasonably good chance of having it thoughtfully considered. Even if it was rejected, someone would have taken the time to read your cover letter and opening pages. Today the publishing houses that accept unsolicited manuscripts are increasingly rare. In most cases a good novel will not even be read. Many publishers have neither the time nor the inclination to bother with a slush pile. Submissions are either discarded or returned unopened (and this only if you provide them with a stamped, self-addressed envelope, or SASE).

This is why I consider conferences essential to getting noticed. If you really want to break into print as a novelist, you will help yourself immensely by going to at least one conference per year, preferably one that focuses on your genre.

But even though I frequently tell young writers to start going to conferences, few take my advice. Perhaps they’re too poor to afford hotels, gas money, admission fees, etc. but maybe they just don’t understand the benefits. So here are three good reasons to attend a conference:
____________________________________

1. You will make contacts.
Although attending a conference isn’t a guarantee you’ll meet anyone famous or influential, you will almost certainly rub elbows with people who know more about writing than you do. If you are teachable, you will probably learn a lot outside of the scheduled sessions. Hanging out with writers, editors and agents can be an education. At the very least you will discover that industry professionals are real people, not rock stars.

2. Appointments are your best chance of getting a manuscript read
Some conferences offer agent / editor appointments. These are short, private conversations with an industry professional. The point is to give you a chance to pitch your novel in a one-on-one environment.

This is great because it bypasses the slush-pile, the months of waiting for a response, the cold and unhelpful reality of a form rejection letter. Because some publishers (and many agents) will not read unsolicited manuscripts, a conference slot may be your only chance to get your book read.

An editor is more likely to request your work while meeting with you in person. It’s just harder to say no to someone when they are sitting in front of you. Also, having met you in person, the editor can gauge whether or not you are likely to wind up being a huge pain in her neck. Are you respectful? Polite? Knowledgable? Fifteen minutes in a room may not be a reliable way to tell if someone will be easy to work with, but it is better than what they can learn in your one page cover letter.

3. You will learn something
Some of what you need to know as a writer will be covered in the scheduled sessions. Beginning writers tend to make the same mistakes, and conferences spend a lot of class time trying to correct these unfortunate tendencies. Some conferences even offer mentor appointments and critique sessions. Feedback from an experienced writer can save you months of frustration.
____________________________________

Nothing about writing conferences is guaranteed, except the fact that you decrease your chances of getting noticed if you don’t go.

I was surprised to see two young men in their late teens at the ACFW conference a few weeks ago. I stopped Christian Miles and J.R. Parker in the hallway after a session to ask them what they thought about the conference. Both were enthusiastic.

“I found an editor who wants my first 50 pages,” Christian told me.

J.R. nodded. “And I have a request for my complete manuscript.”

Such an outcome would be unlikely in the traditional submission process.

This year’s workshop reminded me why I love talking to teens. They are old enough to understand the world is broken, but young enough to believe someone can set its bones.

I tell young writers that the world can be changed through stories. Stories are the reason things are so broken, but they are also how things are healed.

The world is broken because a serpent told Eve a story about Laws, and she believed him. It is broken because Hitler told Germany a story about race, and she believed him. It is broken because people are willing to tell any story–or believe any story–in order to get what we want.

No wonder the battle is over stories! No wonder the public is deluged with movies, books, network and cable television, youtube, kindles, video blogs, radio, stage plays and podcasts. America is saturated with stories, and yet our thirst for more continues to grow.

I think there are at least three reasons for this.

What are we consuming?

First, we believe the lie that life is about getting. Because we swim through life like whales, mouths open, sucking everything in, we require a lot of story krill.

Second, many of our stories are stupid. They are endless repetitions of the same rehashed formulas repeated over and over, promising happiness but never producing it. We keep coming back to them because the hope for something more is so real, so tantalizing, that we assume our hunger indicates a reality. On some level we tell ourselves, “They know what I want. They have it plastered all over the plastic, shrink-wrapped cover. How can they know what I want and not give it to me?”

Third, we lack meaning. Because we lack meaning–and stories are first and foremost about meaning–we think that more and more stories will translate into more and more purpose in our real lives. On the contrary, more and more empty stories produces nothing but more and more emptiness.

All three reasons can be summed up by saying that we are trying to recapture the moment of the first story. By this I mean the story you heard when you were three or four and your mom or dad or uncle or Walt Disney gave you a glimpse into the world of once-upon-a-time.

I suspect much of life–much of entertainment–is spent trying to recapture those first feelings of awe. But we never do recapture them. Not fully. The world is too broken. It hangs upside down, all the blood draining from heart to head until even the head feels like it’s going to explode.

In truth, only a different sort of world will ever completely satisfy us, and every story that fails to point us to that world is a kind of lie.

To tell a great story you must understand man’s purpose. Life is not about what we can get from it, but what we can give to it. It is not about finding yourself; it is about losing yourself. Every story will fail to fulfill our hunger for purpose as long as we don’t understand this.

We need a generation of writers who are equipped to be honest with American culture. We need writers who are willing to tell us we are looking under the wrong rocks for our stories. The stories we are looking for will be found in a very different place. The best writers know that the best stories simply give us a glimpse of that place where every story is meaningful and perfect.

Ironically, many of our culture’s stories could be great, if only their producers understood that meaning always come from the outside in.

Our lives are written by our choices. If we would live with purpose, live to give rather than get, we would not need to look under every rock, follow every school of flashing silver. We would understand that stories are interesting in the same way flowers are interesting. It is only when I expect the flower to do something for me, to inject meaning rather than express it–that I find the flower dissatisfying.

Flowers and rocks point to something else. A design, a purpose, a significance beyond themselves, rooted in another world. Pointing to something else is the essence of meaning, and it is the essence of flowers, rocks and stories.

Modern stories fail because they promise to provide something they don’t own. They say, “look no further.”

They ought to say, “look much further.”

Wow, what a week that was! In some ways I am still recovering, though it has been nearly a month since we bid farewell to the last of the conference attendees and speakers. I could blame my feelings on lack of sleep, which extracts a steeper penalty now than it used to. But my real problem was that I wasn’t prepared for what happened.

This year was only the second annual summer workshop for students of the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum, but it was four days and five nights long this time. Last year it ended after a day and half. Still, I should have known something interesting was about to happen at this particular conference. As I looked at the proposed topics offered by various speakers, a common theme emerged: writers in community. An odd combination, it seemed to me. I’m something of a loner, and writing is usually a very solitary occupation. We don’t write in community. And we don’t really commune as writers. Most of us join communities that are based on other aspects of our lives. In fact, apart from writing conferences and the OYAN student forum, I  couldn’t think of any place that really fits those words.

Then the 2011 OYAN Summer Workshop slapped me on the back of the head. It dawned on me at some point during the workshop that what I was seeing was extraordinary. Creative, passionate kids with genuine talent bonding around a common desire to change the world with their words. More than this, they were giving themselves to each other. Challenging each other to write better and more deeply. Cheering for each other, laughing with each other, nurturing each other’s need to be not just a writer, but a writer in  community. Over and over I heard comments from students and parents such as, “I feel like I found my long lost family!” and “I thought I was alone until I came here, and now I know there are a lot of other weird people too!”

Writers in community

Mark Wilson, one of the workshop speakers, reminded everyone that some of the world’s finest literature has come from writers living in community. The inklings, for instance, shared each other’s worlds in ways that were sometimes harsh, sometimes loving, but always reminiscent of family. Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, Lord David Cecil, Roger Green, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others met regularly around a shared passion for literature; both Narnia and Middle Earth sprang up from the rich soil of these meetings.

I couldn’t help but contrast this with the community I experienced in college when I studied creative writing. Did I experience community at the university? Perhaps. I did make friends. I did meet some other passionate writers. But my years in college were, in retrospect, characterized by loose acquaintances with people going completely different directions. I don’t remember any sense of purpose in our critiques. Our writing had no
purpose outside itself. As a result, we were focused inward, on ourselves. Our books were mirrors of our individual pain. Our characters were reflections of our own egos. If I helped someone else become a better writer it was purely by accident. I don’t think any of us considered the possibility that the only way to make our writing–and our lives–worthwhile was through kindness and selflessness.

At the 2011 workshop I discovered how empty such inwardness is. The contrast–even stretched over a 20 year period–is as palpable as the affection OYANers have for each other.

This summer I learned that I have a very large family that stretches across the U.S. and the world. And I suspect the 87 students and 61 parents who attended this year represent an even larger community.

No wonder it was so hard for everyone to say goodbye. No wonder I’ve been carrying an unspoken but happy sadness for the last few weeks. I just said farewell to 148 brothers and sisters.

Today marks the end of the 2009 Banned Books Week. Call me jaded, but I can’t help seeing this as a massive publicity stunt cooked up by publishers and librarians in order to promote reading. Not that I blame them. In a society where every person is bombarded constantly by extreme messages from every conceivable perspective, it probably takes something like Banned Books Week to remind us of the importance of reading, to say nothing of the importance of free speech and the freedom of the press.

But I find it hard to take seriously the idea of books being banned in the United States. Sure, we have a few intolerant cranks here and there. What we don’t have is a trend, a movement of Fahrenheit 451 anti-book infidels.

Or do we?

Guess the title of this book.

First, it’s worth pointing out that “book banning” is, in reality, a fantastically inclusive term. A book can make it onto the Banned Books list if a couple of people per state mention concern about it to a librarian. An “Expression of Concern,” according to the American Library Association, is “an inquiry that has judgmental overtones.” And Inquiries with Judgmental Overtones, almost unbelievably, can be reported to the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. (Yep, in the interest of free speech, expressions of free speech are reported. Go figure.) These reports are then compiled into a confidential database and published in the Banned Books Week Resource Guide. (Yep, there is a Resource Guide for Banned Books Week.)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not coming to the defense of pitchfork wielding nut cases bent on burning down their local libraries–if indeed such people exist. I’m not even coming to the defense of people with Judgmental Overtones. I’m just wondering who cares enough to censor–of all things–books?

When kids are given condoms in school; when they’re afforded access to public computers, internet pornography, sexually graphic movies, reality television, cage fighting and, well, you name it; when they’re exposed to a veritable fountain of media stimulation 24/7, who cares about some random young adult novel that might happen to depict the violent rape of a young girl? (Yep, it’s out there.)

Okay, so maybe some books cross the invisible line of acceptability. According to the ALA, most objections about books are expressed by parents who have a natural and constitutionally protected right to protect their children from the constant stream of yuck that flows through our culture. Still, who are we to judge?

But we do judge. We apparently do think that some books should be banned.

Don’t believe me?

Consider the Bible, conspicuously absent from Wikipedia’s and the ALA’s lists of banned books. We don’t hear much about Bible banning in the U.S., mostly because it’s only banned in places like schools. But no book is more likely to draw the ire of communist dictators, who historically have used more than Judgmental Overtones to enforce censorship.

More importantly, you don’t have to live in China or North Korea to see the influence of what might be called the Okay to be Banned Books List.

Take the One Year Adventure Novel. In the interest of fairness, I must stress that banning and OYAN have only slightly more in common than do banning and Expressions of Concern. OYAN has not really been banned anywhere, but it has raised eyebrows and elicited Judgmental Overtones. Why? Because in it I mention a handful of stories from the Bible as excellent examples of storytelling. So far no one has Expressed Concern about my mentioning Buddha or Lord of the Rings. No one has mentioned my inclusion of Huck Finn, The Blood Ship, Zenda, Holes, The Book of Sorrows, A Christmas Carol, Tarzan, The Land that Time Forgot, Black Rock, or any of the other stories used in the curriculum. But teachers and administrators alike have told me that merely mentioning the Bible is a red flag. The context in which it is mentioned doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter if the content is informative and true. It doesn’t even matter if the curriculum works. It only matters that the Bible is mentioned.

Just as close to home is the case of Runt the Brave. The book sold well to school libraries when it was first released. No one seemed to have any problems with it until a school principal read a review with Judgmental Overtones that indicated RTB might be based loosely on the story of David & Goliath, which of course is from the Bible. The principal told the school librarian that she could not have students read Runt the Brave because someone might Express Concern.

No doubt these experiences color my thinking, for I have very mixed emotions regarding Banned Books Week. On one hand, the ALA is calling attention to the importance of reading, and quite possibly building a shield wall against any unlikely future tendency towards national censorship. On the other hand, our culture has already accepted national censorship, against which the ALA’s Banned Books Week is merely a Maginot Line.

As human beings we constantly make value judgments about what is acceptable and what isn’t. One person finds graphic depictions of child rape offensive; another finds a novel loosely based on a Bible story offensive.

Strange that the hammer of intolerance comes down on the latter and not the former. Strange that these concerns can’t, at worst, be treated equally.

I wonder why.

A student recently asked me how a writer decides what to describe and what to ignore when writing fiction. Do I mention the trees? The buildings? The people? Do I describe them in detail, or just give each a few words. How much is too much?

less is more...more or less.

The simple answer may be found in the cliche, “less is more.” But sometimes less isn’t more. We do need some description. If you applied the less-is-more rule to every novel, we wouldn’t have novels at all. We’d have loads of short stories.

As readers we experience the world of a writer’s story through the senses of the hero. This is particularly true in OYAN novels, which are told in first person. We see, hear, feel, taste and touch the story through the hero’s eyes, ears, fingers, tongue, nose. (And brain, of course). But too much information will bog a story down.

The best way to learn how much is too much is by writing. In other words, practice describing things and see what happens. But this isn’t all that helpful, which is why we spend two weeks studying description (chapters 41-45 in the Compass).

Remember that the goal of every story is to create emotion, and second-hand physical sensations–ones you experience through someone else–rarely evoke strong emotions. Yes, roller-coasters are fun. But how fun is hearing about someone who went on a roller-coaster? Exponentially less–except perhaps for those of us with weak stomachs.

A writer must therefore create emotion by giving his audience meaningful details. Details that point to something inside the reader that will trigger emotion. This is hard to do by merely describing rocks and buildings and variously purple bits of sky. It is true that we need to be able to see and hear and feel a story in order to be immersed in the reality of its world. But good storytelling description usually immerses us only in those details that are necessary to move the story and create the intended emotions.

Good writers often hint at things and rely on a reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks. A very strong technique for doing this is to think in terms of precise and unexpected details. Both, not either or. In other words, don’t be vague unless your story calls for vagueness. And don’t be predictable in your descriptions. Don’t describe things in a way that requires no insight. Don’t tell us something that we could have figured out for ourselves, like “the driver sat behind the steering wheel.” Instead, focus the lens of your description on details that are interesting enough to hold our attention and force us to visual the scene in a fresh way we would not have imagined ourselves.

Finally, action is almost always more interesting than description, which is why it can be effective to mix descriptions in with the action of your story.

Nation, by Terry Pratchett

Mau is a native of an island chain in the balmy southern seas, a boy about to go through the rites of manhood when a tidal waves wipes out his home island. The wave also wrecks a british merchant ship, leaving a young girl as the sole survivor. Together, Mau and Daphne will discover a secret that shocks the world.

Pratchett is a terrific storyteller, and Nation is a terrific novel. The plot, setting and characters are fully and beautifully developed, and structured around an idea grounded in the science-fiction genre.

The novel is a worth-while read and beautifully crafted. It’s also funny. And sombre. When I put it down, I wanted to pick it up again. Pratchett is brilliant at capturing small truths and making them real.

What a disappointment then when I realized the heart of the novel is an old lie - one that is common to sci-fi and almost as old as humanity.

Nation

The cover hints at a very compelling theme that I thought Pratchett was going to support: “When much is taken, something is returned.” It’s a great idea. A tidal wave kills everyone Mau knows and loves, erasing a culture and forcing him to re-examine his belief in the protection (and existence) of old gods. But the wave also brings the wreck of a british merchant ship and a single young girl. In effect, the wave brings science. The wave brings self examination. The wave brings truth. At last science replaces a belief in the old gods.

I like this sort of thing because I believe all belief systems ought to be examined and tested. The death of one’s family would be a catalyst for change, and if the old gods are really there, well, they ought to be able to stand under a little examination.

What bothers me about the theme of Nation is its humanistic hypocrisy. Faith is evidently the only thing that needs challenging. Science isn’t challenged at all, because science is Truth.

But is it? I don’t mean, is it in real life. We all know science isn’t Truth in real life. I mean, is it Truth within the framework of the novel? The answer is clearly No. What makes the story compelling is the tension between faith and science, and the best parts of the novel are those when faith actually seems to have something going for it. Mau talks to Death, and Death talks back. He walks in the spirit world. Daphne walks in the spirit world. Dead people speak to both of the characters.

None of which makes sense in the context of the novel’s theme. If it is explained at all, it is in the final chapters of the novel when we are told that “everything happens somewhere.” It turns out that Mau and Daphne live in a parallel dimension. Infinite other dimensions exist around them, so that at some point in one of those dimensions everything will eventually happen.

“Everything happens somewhere” is the rationalization atheists use to explain the vastly improbable design evident in the universe. It’s not a bad idea in terms of its usefulness in science fiction. My problem with it isn’t that I think it’s wrong, though I do. My problem with it is that it isn’t science. It’s faith.

Put simply, Pratchett uses faith to support the idea that science trumps faith. I suspect he is uncomfortable with this idea, because the end of the novel, which I will not spoil, has a mystical flavor to it that simply doesn’t work. It reminds me of the end of Inherit the Wind, when Drummond takes Origin of Species and the Bible, weighs them in both hands, and then places them together in his briefcase. This doesn’t work as an ending because Inherit the Wind isn’t about how Darwinism and Purpose can peacefully co-exist. It’s about how the Bible is stupid and people who believe it are stupid. Nation lacks ITW’s hostility, but its ending shows a faith-is-good-when-it-doesn’t-require-anything-of-us attitude common to western humanism.

I find it ironic. The best, most interesting parts of the story are those that require Something Beyond. The book wouldn’t work without them. It would be dull. It would be all answers and no questions. It would be facts and not mysteries, incidents and not adventures. Pratchett tells us (actually, Death tells us) that there is only what does happen and what doesn’t happen. Which renders the tidal wave and the death of Mau’s loved ones meaningless. Mau’s life is meaningless. Even the secret he and Daphne uncover is meaningless if this is true. Science is no better than faith; it’s just different.

But of course Pratchett doesn’t really mean this. He means that Science really is better than Faith… and everything really is meaningless. To prove it he will even resort to using both faith and meaning. No, it doesn’t make sense. But it does make a good read.

I do not need to agree with an author’s worldview to enjoy his work, and I thoroughly enjoyed Nation. Unfortunately, the story is inherently flawed because its theme isn’t proven by its events. What it calls Truth simply doesn’t work. It can’t work–even in a parallel dimension.

One of my old college professors once began a sentence this way: “If you were lucky enough as a child to have parents who read you the work of A.A. Milne…”

At that moment I knew he was going to be a great teacher. It would be easy, especially at the university, to remain a closet fan of Winnie the Pooh. But it was in college that I rediscovered the lovable bear and his genius for making profound truths very simple.

Milne isn’t the only pre-historic author of books for young people whose work is often overlooked. Rudyard Kipling wrote many admirable books that have been enjoyed for over 100 years by both adults and teens. Ironically, Walt Disney adapted a novel by each of these writers, and in both cases transformed something of incredible richness and depth for all ages into beautifully animated works targeted at young children. I’m not dis-ing Disney. But if your only experience with Mowgli and Baloo comes from an 80 minute video, you might need to reconsider your life.

The Jungle Books (there are two volumes) are, like all great children’s literature, easily deep enough to be read and re-read by adults. I sometimes dig out my ancient copies and thumb through the pages at random, looking for bits of literary genius and wit. Take the Road-Song of the Bandar-Log for example. Here’s part of the second stanza:

Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete in a minute or two-
Something noble and grand and good,
Won by merely wishing we could.

Remind you of anyone you know?

Kipling is more accessible than most of his contemporaries, both stylistically and thematically. So some day soon when you’re looking for a good read, crack open a copy of the Jungle Book(s) or Captains Courageous and plunge into India or the Atlantic.

Kipling’s prose songs are really the melodies of Wisdom’s laughing little cousin, Innocence. They will make you sigh, smile and think–at the same time.

Recommended Books

My Friend the Enemy by J.B. Cheaney

After meeting Ms. Cheaney at a local book signing in Kansas City, I was delighted to read My Friend the Enemy, a  young adult novel set during the turbulent years of WWII. The author is a native of Missouri (she lives in the Ozarks).

Hazel Anderson is a young girl who dreams about leading a squad of marines against enemy “jap” soldiers. When she isn’t in school, she’s scouring the skies above her Oregon home for signs of an expected Japanese invasion, or looking for signs of enemy spies.

Instead, she discovers a lonely Japanese boy hiding from the prospect of internment at a camp for Japanese-Americans. Hazel’s discovery will forever change the way she sees people. What does the enemy really look like? Can one tell friend from foe by the shape of a face, or the color of an accent?

Most of us who lived after WWII have ready access to facts and information about the events of the war. Countless books have been written; more than one cable channel delivers battles, dogfights, tanks, footage, and docudramas about the politics of the war.

In My Friend the Enemy we see instead a homeland America–a country that is at once beautiful and repulsive, quaint and disturbing, fearful and courageous. The book is not an attack on the U.S. during WWII, nor is it a dismissal of our past. It doesn’t rewrite history, and it isn’t one of those modern YA novels that sees all of history through the lens of one pet issue. Ms. Cheaney seems to have captured the flavor of the era without condemning it.

This comes up a lot in writing conferences when I suggest students avoid using the word “was” in their prose. I always get some blank stares.

Was? Are you serious?

I am. Even though it may be used to grammatical perfection in one’s novel, it usually weakens your narrative flow. The OYAN curriculum discussed this in more detail, perhaps because first person POV lends itself to a more casual style, and thus more frequent use of the conversational was.

The cat that was

Put briefly, was is a boring word. It denotes existence. The cat was. The car was. The knife was. Big deal. Lots of cats and cars and knives are. If you want to make me care, show the cat, car or knife doing something interesting: howling, crashing, stabbing.

I agree that in some cases this is impossible. In some places in your novel, you need to tell you audience that something merely exists. But was should be used sparingly, avoided whenever possible.

How do you do this? Two simple techniques may help. If one doesn’t work, the other probably will.

First, change the verb. Pick anything else, even if it doesn’t make sense, and plug it into the sentence. So instead of “The cat was black,” you’d have, “The cat sang black.” No, this doesn’t work, but at least it is less boring. Hopefully it will jump-start your brain into seeing the cat and what it is doing more clearly. What is the cat doing in the first sentence? It is being. What is it doing in the second sentence? Singing. Do cats sing? No, they yowl, or meow, or hiss, or run or fight or lick or nap. Now ask yourself which of these verbs might demonstrate the cats blackness, since that is clearly the intent of the sentence. Just to get the story moving, I might pick “lick.” So, “The cat licked black.” Does that make sense? Not quite, but it is closer. How about, “The cat licked its black fur.” Still not great, but infinitely more active, and therefore more visual, and therefore more interesting, than a cat that just was.

Second, change the subject. Instead of focusing on the subject of a was sentence, focus on something else. Ask yourself, what is it about the cat that my reader needs to know? What is this particular black cat doing in my story? Adding ambience? Spying for a wizard? Plotting to take over the world? When you know the answer, you may know what you need to focus on. Let’s say the cat is there for ambience. Now we can shift the camera off the cat and focus on something more ambient. Perhaps a shadow. “Shadows draped across a black cat that stared out at them from the corner with ghostly eyes.” This sentence delivers ambience AND the fact that the cat is black.

I should add that it is probably a mistake to think about was sentence constructions while writing a rough draft. If you let your internal editor jabber at you about was while you are writing, you will never get anything done. Save your was revisions for your second draft.

I am frequently asked what I mean in The Map when I talk about changing values. Here is a brief explanation that has nothing to do with politics or morality.

Every chapter you write ought to propel your plot forward. Something should change as a result of your chapter, or it isn’t necessary. Furthermore, whatever changes ought to be important to the story goal.

Positive or Negative?

Think in terms of values expressed as a single word: freedom, enlightenment, loneliness, forgiveness. Such values are what your chapter (or scene) is really about, because that value will change as a result of the action of the scene, either in a positive or a negative direction.

For instance, say your hero is imprisoned in the villain’s dungeon at the beginning of a chapter. By the end of the chapter he escapes and finds his freedom in the surrounding forest. The value of the chapter is freedom because the chapter is about the hero’s escape.

Now let’s say your hero tries to escape, but fails. The value of the chapter is no longer freedom. Why? Because his imprisoned state doesn’t change. He doesn’t get freedom. This doesn’t mean the chapter can’t work; it only means it can’t work if the focus is on whether or not he is physically imprisoned. One could write such a chapter and focus on a different value, perhaps enlightenment. In that case, the value would change from ignorant to enlightened as a result of his attempt to physically escape.

What would this look like? Well, say your hero discovers something of interest in his escape attempt. Maybe he finds out where the princess is being held in an old tower. Or perhaps he learns something about himself that causes him to renew his commitment to defeating the villain. Either way would push the story forward and demonstrate a change of values. However, it would NOT mean a change of values regarding his freedom. The change of values would center on enlightenment.

Let’s return for just a moment to the idea of freedom. You do have a second option with your escape from prison chapter idea, and that’s to focus on the hero’s internal state rather than his external state. Instead of making the chapter about how he escapes physically, you could make it abut how he escape mentally or spiritually.

Haralan Popov’s autobiographical account of his 13 year imprisonment and torture at the hands of  communist authorities in Bulgaria is an excellent example. At one point in the story he receives a letter from his wife telling him that they have made it out of Bulgaria. To Haralan this is the best news of his life; it means the authorities can no longer threaten to harm his wife and children. This is the change of values on which the whole chapter turns. The moment Haralan reads that letter, his whole outlook changes. Yes, he is still physically imprisoned. But now he feels free, and the difference is profound. His escape is emotional rather than physical, and the chapter works as part of the story. (Incidentally, the book, Tortured for His Faith, is well worth reading.)

One way to dramatically improve your manuscript is to go through it chapter by chapter and make sure the action of each brings about a corresponding change of values. Make sure the change of values you present to your reader is the one you intend.

Ask yourself three questions:

1. What’s different at the end of this chapter?

2. Is the difference because of the chapter?

3. Does the difference bring the hero closer to the story goal?

If the answer to any of the three questions is No, consider rewriting or deleting the chapter.