Elements in a page-turner

Enole Ditsheko
Correspondent | Friday January 28, 2011 00:00

Writers attending the annual 'Pitch Slam' were told by Hallie Ephron, author of Never Tell a Lie, a mystery novel turned into a movie titled And Baby Will Fall.  The film premiered on Life Time Network last Sunday coinciding with the ongoing Writer's Digest conference. 

Writers by nature are people who have a way with words and they can exploit those strengths into engaging their readers to care about what they find on the pages.  Creating scenes is the most critical of all elements of good writing.  So much important is the scene that writers must stop worrying about the number of chapters or words they need to have by the end of their stories.'Every scene must have a reason to be in your novel or memoir - it is the scenes that once you are done writing, you can go back to and break them down and they'll give you chapters.  Write dry sentences and let the scene explain itself to the reader.  Manipulate the reader.  Every action is in the language - pull the narrative out of the character's head by using verbs.  Verbs drive the forces in a compelling narrative,' said the expert.

Ephron tipped writers that the pace and conflict the narrative contains are also important because it is dependent upon them that the reader might decide to put down the book or keep turning the pages to the last.

'Speed and tension answer how you are able to suspend the reader as well as release the tension by providing solutions to those moments in the story, where through your characters they see themselves.  The whole narrative does exactly what a movie does in your mind - you visualise it.  Play with the mind of the reader, release tension and when his guard is down, get the screws back on him and the anxiety is what makes the whole reading experience entertaining and forces the reader to go to the last page to find a resolution,' Ephron said. 

Characterisation, which beginning writers struggle quite a bit with, is not just about having players in the narrative with distinct names, and supposedly thinking, behaving and doing things differently.  Characters, Ephron emphasised, are real people in the narrative who react to situations in the same way we do - hence through their speech, action and thoughts a story must be shown and told.

'Show, don't tell!  How many times have you heard that old adage?  It's so common in writing courses and critiques that it's become clich.  But the truth is that the old adage is wrong.  Characters in a gripping novel or memoir, like you and me, need to reflect on things happening around them or that they are causing to happen.  But an example of bad writing is to have characters doing reflection while the happening is under way.  You must establish the setting much earlier in the story.  A writer must answer who he/she wants for the story to be told - the narrator is who readers view and understand happenings,' writers were told.

Ephron did not mince words that a piece of good writing is one that starts with a very exciting scene and the rest builds on the story, but not necessarily as powerfully told as the opening line and early parts of the narrative. 

Throughout, it is important to build excitement and raise the momentum via speed and tension toward the final act, where unanswered issues get resolved.

'When you tip your hat to the reader, choose what is both compelling and surprising and harness them to work well in your story. I bet dollars to donuts, you must get it right from the beginning or you are doomed,' she explained to a laughing crowd of aspiring novelists.