The Path Less Traveled

Every writer I know dreams of writing a novel and getting it published. I freely admit the idea occurred to me back in seventh grade and has never left me. Many of you have started your version of the ‘Great American Novel’ but it loses steam somewhere along the road. This blog is my way of avoiding that steam loss.


You have this great idea and you just know it will be a super read. You carefully think it all the way through, assign your characters their lives and begin down the freeway of novel-dom. About the time you hit 75 pages or so, the story is running stale. What do you do?


Pretend you are driving instead of writing. You could drive from Michigan to Florida non-stop, exiting long enough to fuel up, use the rest rooms and move on. You eat on the run and you stop only to change drivers. By the time you get to Florida you are one whipped puppy. When you get home, you won’t remember much of the drive down and even less of the drive back because you will be too tired. Your first couple of days in Florida will be half hearted because you are ‘jet lagged’.


Now let’s get back to writing. You are writing the best novel ever written and you are traveling down the freeway on the writers express. About the time you hit halfway, the fatigue sets in and even though you know where you are going with the story, it has become heavy laden in its own weight. You just know the reader will become bored because YOU have become bored writing it. What to do, what to do?


Just as your trip to Florida would have been more memorable if you had taken a few exits and explored the area on your way down, what will it hurt if your writing takes an exit or two? How do you take an exit while writing? I am glad you asked! Stephen King is probably the best example of how an exit is taken.


King started with a town that was imaginary and made it real. He developed the town, the factories, the residences around it, and made it real. He started with one story set in Castle Rock and brought in various characters to make the first story work. He either consciously or unconsciously set the stage to go back to the same town and some of the same characters. He used the supporting cast of one story as main characters in another. He did this several times and by the time he got around to destroying Castle Rock, I felt I knew everyone in the community.


Now I just took a small exit excursion of a paragraph. Just as your story pace begins to slow down some, you let it rest and take an exit. Use a character or a circumstance to bridge off from and make a short story within a longer one. Make sure to bring it back full circle (just as you would eventually get back unto the freeway) and when you get back to the main story, it is ready to go again. By taking the occasional ‘path less traveled’ you can keep both the readers interest and your own interest in the story line. Until next time… be well.


Kind regards,
V