A Troubleshooting Guide

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Table 2.14: A TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE
A Well-Told Story

My readers tell me that the story starts too slowly.

  • Shorten the exposition, spread it out more within the story, or move it to a later part of the story.
  • Move a bit of dialogue or narrative action up front.
  • Start with something surprising but critical to the story.
  • Begin with a flashback or flashforward.

My readers find the chronology confusing.

  • Add or change time trasitions.
  • Look for inadvertent tense shifts and fix them.

My readers feel that the suspense slackens or that the story lacks drama.

  • Add remembered feelings and thoughts to heighten anticipation.
  • Add dialogue and narrative action to emphasize critical moments in the story.
  • Cut or shorten background exposition and unnecessary description.
  • Build rising action in stages, with multiple high points.

My readers find the conflict vague or unconnected to the autobiographical significance.

  • Think about the conflict’s multiple and possibly contradictory meanings.
  • Add remembered feelings or thoughts to suggest multiple meanings, and cut those that don’t clarify the significance.
  • Add your present perspective to make the significance clearer and bring out the implications.
  • Add dialogue or narrative to clarify the conflict.
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Vivid Description of People and Places

My readers feel that the people in the story don’t come alive.

  • Add details about distinctive physical features or mannerisms.
  • Add speaker tags that characterize people and show their feelings.
  • Read your dialogue aloud, and revise to make the language more natural and appropriate to the person.

My readers have trouble visualizing the places I describe.

  • Name objects in the scene.
  • Add sensory details (colors, sounds, smells, textures).
  • Use a comparison—metaphor or simile—to evoke a particular mood or attitude.
  • add a visual—a photograph or other memorabilia.

My readers feel that some descriptions weaken the dominant impression.

  • Omit unnecessary details.
  • Add adjectives, similes, or metaphors to strengthen the dominant impression.
  • Rethink the impression you want your writing to convey and the significance it suggests.
Autobiographical Significance

My readers do not identify or sympathize with me.

  • Add background details or explain the context.
  • Reveal the cultural influences acting on you or emphasize the historical period in which the event occurred.
  • Show readers how you hve changed or were affected by the experience.

My readers don’t understand the significance of the story.

  • Use irony or humor to contrast your present perspective with your past behavior, feelings, or attitudes.
  • Show that the event ended but that the conflict was not resolved.
  • Use dialogue to show how your relationship with people in your story changed.
  • Indicate how the event continues to influence your thoughts or actions.

My readers think the significance seems too pat or simplistic.

  • Develop contradictions or show ambivalence to enrich the implications.
  • Use humor to comment ironically on your past behavior or current contradictory feelings.
  • Stress the social or cultural dimensions of the event.
  • Revise Hollywood-move clichés, simple resolutions, or tagged-on morals.