{"id":4873,"date":"2017-06-09T22:48:28","date_gmt":"2017-06-10T02:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/?p=4873"},"modified":"2017-06-09T22:48:28","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T02:48:28","slug":"dont-turn-your-novel-into-a-turducken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/dont-turn-your-novel-into-a-turducken\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Turn Your Novel Into a Turducken"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-41\" src=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/r-avatar-e1443983880436.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"81\" height=\"81\" \/>The other night we had a conversation in the writing cave about ways to flesh out a story. We know there are things we neglected to spell out, or perhaps omitted altogether, because of being a little too close to them. However, not everything that you <em>could<\/em> add is something that you <em>should<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, you don&#8217;t include the stuff that&#8217;s irrelevant or uninteresting. But sometimes you need to hold off on making additions even if they&#8217;d be fantastic.\u00a0Because not every nugget of gold belongs in the tale\u00a0you&#8217;re telling right now.<\/p>\n<p>Consider a scenario\u00a0where your main character makes a decision after tons of soul searching, a decision that&#8217;s going to determine the direction of the narrative. You can feel the turmoil of your character\u00a0throughout his sleepless night. It&#8217;s tempting to try to bring\u00a0the reader into that space of conflict, share the doubt and trepidation of the protagonist. To show (not tell!) all the alternatives that were contemplated, all the attempts to bargain away the painful but inevitable outcome. And in many cases, it&#8217;d be the right call. But not always.\u00a0All that&#8217;s essential for the reader to know is what the decision is, and that reaching it was difficult.<\/p>\n<p>Forcing the issue will hurt the whole book. If this moment falls during escalating kinetic tension, then inserting a digression into someone&#8217;s interior world is likely to kill the mood. Dwelling on this particular moment for this character might detract from the image you intend to create. And in such cases,\u00a0no level of prose quality will change the basic fact: it doesn&#8217;t fit.<\/p>\n<p>Including a scene that&#8217;s a tonal or thematic mismatch is like stuffing a different story inside the one you&#8217;re trying to tell, like jamming a bird inside of another bird. Maybe turducken is delicious, in which case the metaphor falls down. Just be sure that all your ingredients really do work together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other night we had a conversation in the writing cave about ways to flesh out a story. We know there are things we neglected to spell out, or perhaps omitted altogether, because of being a little too close to them. However, not everything that you could add is something that you should. Obviously, you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[323,325],"tags":[482,342],"class_list":["post-4873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plotting-outlines","category-voice-2","tag-conversation","tag-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4873"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4880,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873\/revisions\/4880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}