I know that part of my problem is a teenie tiny attention span, however, I am at the stage in my writing where all of the parts that have really caught my fancy have been fleshed out and are written, and now I'm going from beginning to end, trying to write the rest of the stuff.

Where I'm having difficulty is in writing the "Connective Tissue" stuff. The part of the story that ties everything in together, and makes what is going to happen in the second book possible. I have the basics worked out, but my problem is that even though I know what is going to happen, I'm not terribly interested in that part of the story, and it feels feeble and overly-convenient to me.

I dislike politics, and part of this is politics. I also dislike books that ramble on and on and don't get anywhere (a certain Robert Jordan book will remain unnamed...hee hee hee). I know that it's nice to know what's happening as it happens, but sometimes I feel as if it's better to just skip over this, that and the other, and summarize in the next chapter.

How much of that is me being ADD, and how much do you, as a reader want to know about? If I know that the reader wants all that detail, it might make writing it all out a little easier for me. If it's not necessary (and i realize that that sort of advice is hard to give without having seen the story I'm writing) then it frees me to go on and continue working the rest of the book.
 

My 2 cents -- if it's boring to you, it's going to be boring to your reader. Figure out a way to make it interesting, or figure out a way around it.
 

The result was that the characters I didn't like quite as much had chapters that were uninteresting, and the readers I could find to comment discovered as much immediately. "It's like I can tell you don't care about this character" someone said, which made me recognize consciously what I was doing subconsciously.

If you are "drudging" through material in your novel that you think is necesarry, but that you also think is boring or uninteresting, the reader will pick up on that and become bored as well. In my case I had to go back and rediscover those other POV characters so I loved them all, which I now do, so I gave the same passion and flare to every chapter. The same thing will apply to you. If you don't find a way to find the politics, or the connective tissue, (or however you want to phrase it) INTERESTING TO YOU, your lack of motivation will transfer into the text itself, and you'll lose your reader.

All this is a long way to agree with Alethea. IF it's so crucial to your story, discover why it's interesting. If it's still not interesting, reconsider why it's crucial to your story.

 

Then again, it's pretty much been proven fact than I do things different from just about everybody else.
 

Anyway, just my two cents.

Chaldea
 

Length is an issue. My last story finished-enough-to-submit was about twenty-five hundred words long---in something that long, it's harder for "bad stuff" to hide and I can get to the end relatively easy. In a novel, I might start with a good bit, and know there's a good bit coming up somewhere in the middle---but I've got to plow through a lot of bad bits before I get there.

In my current-stab-at-a-novel, I'm trying to write without knowing too much about what's coming up. I'm ten chapters in...I know what will happen for sure in the next one-and-a-half chapters, with only a few ideas past that. (Even that changes---originally I was going to put a bunch of characters in the middle of a fight and then take them somewhere, but I thought of something else and am now separating two characters---the lead and another---and putting the two of them through the fight and place taking.)

I could easily wind up writing myself into a corner I can't get out of---but so far this has produced more words and pages than at any time since the early eighties, so I plan to stick with it for a while longer.
 

I don't work that way, though. I plow through (almost wrote "plough" - been writing too much Brit English! Ack!) from beginning to end, although if a scene from somewhere far down the road pops into my head fully blown, I will write that scene and set it aside. When I get to that scene's spot in the novel, I plug it in and adjust it to make it fit. On rare occasions, these scenes just don't work, if the characters have taken over the novel and gone a different way. In that case, I save the scene for some future project (such scenes are usually a battle or some other big conflict).

When I start a novel, I have the characters well-developed in my head (no bibles, but a physical and psychological description, and by that I mean, "intense, but hides it well" or "easy-going, but serious about what matters" or whatever). I also know at least some of the conflicts that will arise and usually have a good idea of the ending. If you can come up with that much detail before you start writing, maybe you can do the "connective tissue" more easily.

Unless the politics are important to the story, just leave them out. Putting them in might force you to spend a lot of time on explaining the particular political setup in your world/era/whatever, which may not benefit your story enough to be worth spending that many words on it.

Some readers will scream for more and more detail, others prefer you to gloss over a lot of the detail. YOU are the only reader you really have to please. If your story doesn't please you, it won't please anyone else.

Hope some of my ramblings are helpful!

Lynda
 

If what you have planned feels "feeble and overly- convenient" than it probably is.

What works for me when it comes to filling in the holes(which might not work for you) is asking how the characters would naturally move from here (last action bit) to there (the next one) and how much showing do I need. Sometimes all you need is to seque while other times you need a full scene. Your instinct might be right i.e. you might need to summarize rather than devolve into the details.

What I want to know about as a reader is everything that matters to the plot in the detail that makes sense. So, what you as the writer needs to tell me depends on the story. For George R.R. Martin's series, the detailed politics needs to be there or there is no reason for the characters to do what they do. For Harry Potter? Who cares about the politics? They aren't central to the plot. Does that make sense?

Want to shoot me a section - Scene, missing "connective tissue", next scene and any thoughts you have on what should happen between? It might be useful or not.
 

I mean, I've certainly had the opposite problem, where I write several pages of scintillating prose and then realize that it's completely lacking in plot/character development, or at least doesn't do what I intended it to do.

And I often leave a story unfinished for one reason or another, usually because I want to leave it unfinished But that has nothing to do with finding any of it boring to write. So I'm wondering, how many other people really have this problem? I mean, I can't give much useful advice other than to say it seems like an odd problem to me.

Anyway, the thing about politics is that most people have a mistaken notion about how to write believable political scenes. The shaping of policy doesn't occur in a "political" setting, such a setting is incompatable with developing new ideas. In a "political" meeting, it's a simple matter of winning or losing. Think of a televised debate (the most extreme case of a "political" meeting). You're simply not there to work out a cooperative plan of action. It's a straightforward winner/loser equation, to the extent that the other guy looks like an idiot, you benefit.

In other words, politics itself is a cat-fight with an audience. You're not there to be reasonable, you're there to look reasonable...or at least more reasonable than the other guy. The real shaping of policy, the part of politics that is actually important to your story (unless your story is about the political process itself) is carried out with very trusted comrades (sometimes friends, sometimes not) in private. You can put either into your story without paying any attention to the other.
 

I'm currently working on a rewrite of an age-old project that had many of those parts the last time I wrote it. I'm not having the same problem with the "have to's" this time around. In fact, the "boring" parts have become more energetic and interesting to tell. I'm showing them instead of telling them, which brings them to life for me and (I hope) the reader.

What happened? To be frank, I think I got better at writing. I think I learned more about what energizes and inspired me as an author. I think I learned more about politics, for that matter, which is a fascinating topic. Politics is about the human soul and the depths to which it can sink.

So far short of getting someone else to write those parts for you, I would stick with it .... practice, practice, practice and possibly research, research, research. Read books that inspire you in both fiction and nonfiction and grow in skill in wisdom.

I've still go boring parts in my stories, so I guess this is a process.
 

Um...
 

As for the topic at hand, I find that rewriting a scene in a different person's POV sometimes energizes the scene. Writing the scene in an active voice or adding more conflict to it (even if only an argument or disagreement) can also help break up a dull scene. But the best thing is when "a miracle occurs. . ." heehee.

Lynda
 

I wrote most of the good stuff first and have edited the first chapter at least 7 times.

I am procrastinating filling in the connecting tissue between.

Any new ideas or thoughts?

Gina

[This message has been edited by annepin (edited June 18, 2008).]
 

I try not to skim novels I'm reading...though if I bull my way through the reading, I find I've forgotten what's been said and know little of it. One time I read a novel (which one and by who, I've forgotten), where I pushed on through the beginning, but by chapter six or so I was engrossed and interested---only to realize about two-thirds in that I didn't know what happened in the beginning, and it had some bearing on the story in front of me. I wound up rereading the beginning and going from there. (I probably remember it all well enough now to forget which book it was---but I remember doing it pretty well.)

I suppose it's up to us, the writers, to make it as interesting as possible throughout, even in the connecting tissue we find dull.

(I'm reminded of the Beatles theory of constructing their albums. Before fame and fortune struck, they would buy the occasional album with their scarse and hard-gotten money, and found only one or two good album cuts among a lot of crap. They felt disappointed and ripped off. They (or at least Paul, who told the story) resolved to see that any album they put out was "all good stuff," no padding or garbage---which they pretty much did.)
 

C.S. Lewis was a master at cutting through the stuff he didn't want to write and getting on with his story. I can't find my book right now (my bookshelf is a perpetual disaster area) but in Prince Caspian he has a paragraph that is pure genius. It was much better written than this, but in essence, he said

So Prince Caspian fought and trained and got to know his army for weeks, and so they were ready when it was time to fight the battle.

If it had been me writing, I would have felt obligated to spend at least a chapter on that. So one suggestion is: if it bores you, summarize and move on.

Now I can't be sure, but I suspect J.K. Rowling had a different technique. I imagine her with all these great ideas about Hogwarts, and she must have just wanted to get started. Harry's time with his aunt and uncle could have been extremely dull. So she slowed down, and took time to build a whole world with rich characters that she only used for a short part of each book. So another suggestion is: build in a subplot that will make that part of the story interesting too.

I'm sure other authors have ways of getting from point A to point B without boring themselves, but those two jump out at me.

[This message has been edited by Unwritten (edited June 18, 2008).]