Writers in the Storm

by Janice Hardy

If things always work out in your protagonist’s favor, you might have a contrived plot.

Getting a plot to unfold just the way you want it to can be challenging. Sometimes we get so locked on how it should go, that we force it to follow a certain path—even if there’s no reason for it to unfold that way at all. This can lead to lucky breaks for the protagonist that feel convenient at best, contrived at worst.

Contrived plots not only stretch plausibility, they also hurt an author’s credibility with readers. Readers trust us to tell them a solid tale, and they lose that faith if we cheat by forcing events to unfold in a way that allows our protagonists to win with no effort.

The incredibly lucky protagonist is probably the most common plot contrivance.

You’ve met them before. The sleuth who always overhears exactly what they need to break the case wide open. The hero who just happens to save the one minion in the bad guy’s army who knows the secret way into his inner sanctum. The love interests who always bump into each other for no reason. No matter what the situation, something helps the protagonist get what they need, and all they have to do is show up.

We don’t always realize we’re contriving our plot, because the forward movement is what the scene needs to work—the problem is that the protagonist did nothing to earn it, so there’s no conflict. Quite often there’s no goal, either, since a key piece of information drops into the protagonist’s lap out of the blue without them even looking for it.

Wait, isn’t that just good plotting?

Some folks argue that every story is contrived, because as writers, we manipulate what happens to tell our tale. On one hand this is true, but it’s how we manipulate events that determines how contrived a story reads.

For example, if we show our protagonist coming home from her karate class in the first few pages, it’s no surprise to readers when she’s able to fight off an attacker later. But if we mention she’s a black belt after the attack has been thwarted—or worse, comment that, “It was a good thing she’d just earned that black belt” during the attack, then the scene will likely feel contrived. The vital skill wasn’t in the story until it was needed.

That’s a key difference between plots that feel contrived and ones that feel plausible.

Coincidences happen, and it’s not uncommon to have one or two occur in a story to make the whole thing work, but they typically work best when the coincidence is what brings people together or triggers the novel’s conflict, not the force behind getting the protagonist out of trouble.

General rule of thumb:

If the contrivance hurts the protagonist, it’s usually okay. Contrivances that help the protagonist usually feel forced or overly convenient.

Let’s look at some common ways writers heap good luck on their protagonists:

Always being in the right place to overhear vital information:

You can get away with one of these in a book, but more than that stretches credibility—especially if there’s no reason for the protagonist to be where she hears the information.

Possible fixes:

Just give your protagonist a logical reason to be where they need to be to hear that information. However, if you have a lot of these in your story, cut a few and make the protagonist uncover this information on her own through other means, like hard work or investigative skills.

Taking a wrong turn or getting lost puts the protagonist where she needs to be:

These are particularly tricky, because they commonly come after a harrowing escape or chase scene that feels exciting, so it does seem like the protagonist “did something” to get there. But all she really did was happen across the right place by sheer luck, not because she worked to get there.

Possible fixes:

Give the protagonist a reason to go where she does. She might see a turn off she recognizes, or remembers something she uncovered earlier. Maybe she’s trying to get to a nearby location that will put her close enough to logically find the right spot.

Random people give the protagonist what she needs with no effort on her part:

This is one of the more common contrivances in a novel, because the protagonist is technically working toward her goal—it’s just that everyone she speaks to gives her what she needs, even if they have no reason to.

For example, the protagonist is at a dead-end in her investigation and stops at a random diner for lunch, but while talking to the waiter, he just “happens to know” exactly the information she was trying to discover all day.

Possible fixes:

Make the protagonist earn the information. Show skill or guile in interviewing witnesses or talking to people. Let some people not want to help her or even give her bad information. Remember, no one has a reason to help the protagonist, and some might even have reason not to. Think about how those characters, small as they are, would feel and act in this situation.

A problem is solved out of the blue right when the protagonist needs it:

The most common example here is the person with money trouble who receives an inheritance right when she needs it, but any unexpected “rescue” can be a problem. The protagonist finds herself in a situation that will take a lot of effort to get out of, but someone or something appears and either solves it, or makes it trivial to obtain success.

Possible fixes:

Give the protagonist a goal to work toward to solve the problem. If she needs money, she has to come up with a way to get it. If she’s stuck somewhere, she has to use her own ingenuity to get unstuck. Don’t give her the easy way out, make her work for it.

Bad guys constantly make mistakes that aid the protagonist:

The poor, unlucky villain who never catches a break falls into this category. The reason the protagonist wins is because the antagonist messes up; it’s not due to any effort on the protagonist’s part. What’s worse is that often the only way the protagonist can win is if the bad guys fail, so it’s not really a win. Had the protagonist not been there, the same outcome would have occurred.

Possible fixes:

Make the bad guys smart. Give them good ideas and solid plans to thwart the protagonist. Even if they’re just henchmen, their boss knows what to do and does it well. Force the protagonist to be smarter and cleverer than the bad guys.

An easy win weakens your protagonist and your story, so make them work to earn their victories.

Lay the groundwork for skills to be used later. Make them actively look for clues. Don’t have them “realize” important things out of the blue. Show how they managed to solve the puzzles and figure out the plot and readers will love them for it.

Is your protagonist too lucky? What examples of too-lucky protagonists have you seen?

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About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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Image by Dee from Pixabay

by L.A. Mitchell

Book number one was a bit defiant and ugly. Professional book one, I should clarify. By this point, I had six finished manuscripts behind me. I had an agent. I was nominated for a national unpublished award. It was 2009, and I was on the cusp of a ten-year journey to busting past the gatekeepers of traditional publishing.

And then things fell apart. I caught my agent lying. The buy meetings in New York didn’t go as planned. And someone who claimed to support my dream gave me an ultimatum: make money at this or be done with it. Unacceptable, in retrospect, but the demand sent me to the creepy digital corridors of Craigslist. My first professional writing job was a romance novel for $1500.

This week, I began professional book number forty. In fifteen years, I’ve also written educational courses, white papers aimed at the Department of Defense, articles in glossy magazines, customer-facing content for an energy company, and cookbooks. These projects diversified my skills, but the forty books—eight genres, five three-book series, and a handful of category bestsellers—are the sweet spot of my strength.

I want their lessons to become the sweet spot of your strength.

A few may be difficult to process. This list of ten isn’t exhaustive and isn’t for the easily bruised. But if you’re confident that longevity in this industry is what you want, I have a few insights that might help you get there.

Define Your Freedom

And chase that. Happiness in this industry is found in freedom: freedom to pick the genre that ignites you, freedom to live as a digital nomad, freedom to quit your job, and freedom from the judgments of others and those who may give you ultimatums. Whatever your freedom, make that the cornerstone of your creative trajectory.

Fall in Love with Writing, Not Having Written

Most of my peers who fell away from writing were more in love with the fantasy of being a writer than with the grind of actually writing. They were product over process. It’s not necessary to love all aspects of the craft, but at least one element must become as natural and desirable to you as breathing. You cease to be the fullness of you without it. It becomes who you are, not what you do. That love won’t arrive during the first few projects, but it will come.

Writer’s Block is a Myth

It doesn’t exist. The romanticized notion of the tortured writer is nothing more than a fairy tale spun by our subconscious, with the help of pop culture, to justify being undisciplined. Stop with the nonsense. Rituals can be helpful in the first twenty-one days of establishing a new habit. After that, leave them behind, lest they become crutches on the path to writer’s block.

The Blinking Cursor Will Always Suck

All these books later, page one, indent, and go still gives me pause. That insecurity will likely still be there at book one hundred. Close your eyes, allow it to pass through you, then write. There is perfect, and there is perfect for now. Your book’s optimal opening is in the ending, anyway. You will circle back. You should circle back.

Develop a system for starting books to help you get past these feelings quickly, then don’t look back. My system is to write three possible half-page openings and then email them to my ideal reader. She picks her favorite, and I place the rest into a cut file to recycle elsewhere in the book. Your system may involve dictation, allowing yourself one hour—no more—to brainstorm twenty opening lines, or reviewing the slide show of your inspirational photos. Systems are rituals that work, so find yours.

Editing is the Magic

After all these years as an editor and writing coach, I’m still amazed at how many writers think the greatest burden of time is in drafting a book. They hear the legend of Dean Koontz, how he writes clean the first time and doesn’t look back, and believe his process to be the norm.

As a starting point, consider that editing should take four times longer and have the same intensity as drafting. My mentor told me the greats do a hundred self-editing passes. Technology makes this doable and efficient, so no whining. Be great.

You’re not looking for everything on every pass. Have one or two things in mind and pass through your pages, making only those things stellar. Give yourself a pat on the shoulder and start back at page one with a few more aspects of quality writing. It’s a grind, but it’s where the magic happens.

Keep a self-editing checklist.

This is a dynamic tool that changes as you evolve. When something that tripped you up before becomes intuitive, remove it from the list. When you learn something new, add it to the list so you can watch for it on one of those passes. If you expect your editor to do the heavy lifting of all those passes, you’ll go broke and never grow as a writer. Editors have amazing, advanced craft techniques to teach—those subtle elements that will elevate your writing, but we cannot always get to them through the dense forest of backstory dumps and split infinitives.

Relationships are Everything

You need emotional support from other writers. Non-writers simply don’t get it. It’s easy for us to remain in silos, content in our creative silence—especially those of us who are introverts—but it’s invaluable to get out of our heads at just the right moments: when we’re stuck on something, when we get a rejection and feel vulnerable, when we consider never writing again. Writing contests are, largely, a waste of resources that are better spent attending local or national conferences and expanding your network. There are writers out there who will appreciate your freak. Get out there and find them.

Start with the Ugly

This one is all about organization. Be a great project manager. Starting with the ugly is the premise that you first knock out the most undesirable items from your to-do list. I’m a quantity girl. Seeing three-fourths of my smaller gnat-ish tasks with a strikethrough permits me to dive deep into a book for six hours. Protect your creative hours with solid boundaries.

Know Your Secret Sauce

Find the common denominator in your writing, regardless of genre or task. Get to know your voice the way you know your shoe size or height. If you can’t articulate what distinguishes your writing from others, ask someone. If you don’t read your reviews (which is a bit delicate—after all, for longevity, the skin must be thick), ask a writing friend to troll through them and pull out the positive things reviewers mention more than once. Take that intel and write toward it. Make that secret sauce even more tasty.

Nurture Your Inspiration File

Revisit your inspiration notebook when you’re conceptualizing a new idea. I use these scattered nuggets in my clients’ books all the time. Of course, I hold a few of my best ones back, but as you write more, new and better ideas come. They are fireflies in your creative jar, but they don’t stay luminous forever. Give them away, and more will come.

Borrow From the World

Consistent writing space is helpful and solid, but don’t forget to venture out. Writing in other spaces is the perfect antidote to the rut of creation. If cafes aren’t in your budget, libraries and museums are amazing. When writing in public, I pluck details of my surroundings and plant them in my stories like found seeds. One day, those specifics will sprout in the reader’s mind, but at the moment of creation, such a practice feels indulgent and synergistic—a secret known only to you.

Writing longevity isn’t precious. Some days are still filled with bad writing and self-doubt. New clients bring seemingly impossible asks—write as if you’re a boy in 1940s North Korea, you’re barefoot inside a hut in Sierra Leone, you’re the mastermind behind a skyscraper’s structure, you’re inside an arranged marriage at thirteen. It would be easy to say no, I don’t think I can write that. But I did. And I can.

So, too, can you.

My experience extends in all directions. Imagine the power of longevity inside the same industry lane. Whatever your path, listen to those ahead and reach a helpful hand backward to emerging writers. Writing karma is real, and you’ll want to stay on the up side of things.

Writers in the Storm is a fantastic resource filled with talented individuals, so let’s have fun with the comments today. No matter where you are in your writing journey, offer up one lesson you have learned along the way that would be useful to the writer you were on day one.

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About L.A.

L.A. (Laura) Mitchell is a seasoned ghostwriter with 39 published works behind her. Her expertise spans genres, from heartwarming romances to thought-provoking non-fiction. Her YA fantasy, Farthermost, originally a ghostwritten novel for which she purchased the rights back, was an April 2023 feature of Amazon's Kindle Vella program. Beyond writing, Laura is a coach, editor, and publishing assistant, helping authors refine their craft and achieve a successful book launch. In her downtime, she’s also learning Korean to move away from subtitles while binging the latest Kdramas. She loves meeting writers at all stages, so reach out to her through her socials or website and subscribe to her biweekly newsletter for writers.

Farthermost: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLY3CQB7/

Website: https://www.la-mitchell.com

Top Image created by L.A, Mitchell with Google's ImageFX AI software.

by Dr. Diana Stout

I always considered myself a self-starter as a writer but found writing difficult to pursue regularly as a new writer. Inspiration always came after reading writing magazines, how-to books, attending conferences, and monthly meetings. But, back at my desk, that aspiration to write more didn’t occur. It was difficult writing day after day with no other writers to talk to frequently and regularly.

Along came the internet and chat rooms! The problem was I was spending more time in chat rooms than I was in writing.

Once I met two other nearby writers, we formed a critique group, where we met every three weeks, exchanging the new pages we’d written in between those meetings. In essence, we had self-imposed deadlines. Accountability.

Having been a weekly newspaper columnist and later a traditionally published author with deadlines, I realized the deadlines forced me to write, and that inspiration occurred after the writing started.

Then, I moved across the country. Finding accountability again in real time wasn’t easy. I joined writing groups and tried different accountability partners and critique groups, but they weren’t working well. I couldn’t find the fit I needed.

And then, because of Covid, Zoom moved into my life in a huge way. Meetings occurred online. We began having write-ins online.

Side Note: Zoom write-ins involve check-in designated times, and in between those times, our screens go dark, and we’re muted while we each write.

Today, I have an accountability partner and an accountability Zoom group, both of which assist me in being productive on a regular basis.

What Accountability Looks Like

Accountability is having support, where your successes are applauded, no matter how big or small, and even when you’re non-productive. We’re able to laugh at our common rabbit-hole excursions.

Accountability isn’t someone looking over your shoulder, or being critical or disapproving if don’t meet your goal(s).

Could Accountability Work for You?

Have you ever wished you could spend more time with other writers, or take part in more events that were writing focused?

If so, an accountability partner or an accountability group could work for you.

Testimonials from my writing group are that:

• we’re writing more.
• we are finishing more projects in less time.
• we’re cheering each other’s success, even if it’s only writing a couple hundred words, starting a blog, or creating some promo postings that day.
• we are supportive and sympathetic when the writing doesn’t go well.

If have a current accountability group or partner but are frustrated, it’s possible that your specific needs aren’t being met or that your expectations of that person or group doesn’t match yours.

Types of Accountability Groups

In creating an accountability group, you can make it anything you want. What kind of group do you need to help you write more?

• Simple accountability where you’re reporting your daily word count or hours spent writing to each other?
• Alpha reading critique group, where you’re getting help with developmental issues?
• Beta reading critique group, where errors are sought and caught?
• Brainstorming group, where you help each other plot out your stories?
• Shared writing time together either online or in person?

What Are the Qualities of a Good Accountability Partner?

Two qualities are necessary for an accountability partner—you included: honesty and the ability to receive criticism well.

Someone who receives criticism and makes it personal will not be a good fit for anyone they partner with. A major clue they don’t take criticism well is when they say someone provided harsh feedback. And yet, other writers will praise the feedback they receive from that same person. For that one writer, it’s harsh because they weren’t being told what they wanted to hear; they can’t believe they have more work to do. True harsh feedback is being told you’ll never be a writer.

Being told what’s wrong and why it doesn’t work is criticism you want to receive! Even better is when suggestions are provided on how to fix the problem. That kind of criticism is gold!

Talking honestly about what isn’t working in your writing (or theirs) is the only way either of you will improve. Feedback is about the writing, not you personally. More than anything else, you want partners who will tell you the truth and not sugar-coat (play down) any writing that still needs work.

Thus, honesty and not making it personal are strong foundational pillars of a good accountability relationship.

Other Qualities You Want to Have as an Accountability Partner

Be open to all feedback. Never defend or argue your position. Ask if you can explain what you were trying to do and listen to the suggestions offered. You don’t have to agree with everything said, but at least be open to hearing it. We can only go by what’s on the page, not by what was intended.

Be supportive. Saying You can do it! can go a long way to helping your partner.

Be able to laugh at your mistakes, your rabbit-holes, your failures.

What To Do If the Accountability Relationship Isn’t Working

When you suspect or discover a partner isn’t being 100% honest or dislikes your feedback and is making it personal, this partnership probably won’t be a good fit for you. It’s time to exit the relationship.

But, should the partner show an interest in wanting to improve and will be honest going forward, then it may be worth taking the time to grow the relationship to where you can improve together.

How to Find an Accountability Partner

Once you know what type of accountability partner you want, I liken that search to finding a marriage partner. You have to date. In other words, go through a test period to determine if a potential partner’s accountability is compatible. That you’ll be a good fit.

If you belong to a writing group, that is your ideal dating pool. Approach individuals within the group, rather than making a general announcement. Do the same in social media writing groups unless you’re not allowed to message privately. Be sure to state what type of partner you’re looking for: a brainstorming partner, a reporting partner, an alpha reader, a beta reader, and so forth.

Before you ask, you can vet writers by checking their profiles, websites, and read some samples of their published work. Another way to evaluate a good fit is to ask for a writing sample—about 10 pages. Give them 10 of yours and ask for their feedback.

Once You Find Your Accountability Partner

• Decide how often you’ll communicate.
• Determine how you’ll be accountable to each other.
• Ascertain whether you’ll share writing, how many pages, and how often.
• Determine where your communications will take place.
• Share your goals.

How to Start a Write-In Group

If you’re interested in wanting to commit to specific writing times with other writers, first determine how much time you’re willing to devote to the group each week or each month. Then, determine how and where, and on what platform you’ll host it, or if you’ll meet in person.

My goal in starting a Zoom write-in group was to include like-minded individuals who were actively writing regularly. The number of people who participate in my daily write-in varies from day-to-day, season-to-season.

Take Action!

Do you think having an accountability partner or being in an accountability group could help your situation?

About Dr. Diana

An award-winning writer in multiple genres as a screenwriter and author, Dr. Diana attributes her ability to publish 19 books, edit one anthology, and take part in another during an eight-year period to her write-in group and accountability partner.

At work on a psychological paranormal thriller and a grammar/punctuation resource guide as the third book in her Finding Your Fire series, she hopes to be publishing these two books by the end of the year.

Earlier this year she spent 3 weeks developing an extensive outline for the thriller, which allowed her in July to write a fast first draft of 45,000 in 4 weeks by following her own advice in her recent resource-guide publication of CPE: Character, Plot, & Emotionand its companion, the CPE Workbook. Michael Hauge, author of Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds and Storytelling Made Easy, states that “Diana brilliantly reveals and edifies the uniquely powerful principles of plot and character.”

To learn more about Diana, visit her Sharpened Pencils Productions website.

Top Image by Tung Lam from Pixabay