Seven techniques that have helped me and a lot of the people I’ve edited for.
These 7 writing techniques are so good I shouldn’t even be telling you them, but they’ve helped me and they’ve helped a lot of people that I’ve edited for.
1. The Double Up Technique
A huge mistake that a lot of writers make is that they only give each scene one purpose:
- Progress the plot
- Comedic relief
- Information
- Romance
But you really should aim for having every scene do at least 2 things at one time.
For example, in Spectre, James Bond needs to get some information, but does he have a normal sit-down conversation with an informer? No. He gets it while romancing an extremely attractive woman. A little bit later, he needs to have a conversation with Moneypenny, but does it happen over a shaken, not stirred martini? No. It happens during a car chase scene. We get both action and information that develops the plot at the same time. Got another name, will you?
A beginning writer would make each one of those scenes 2 scenes, one with the conversations and then one with the romance and one with the car chase. Instead, you need to combine both scenes into a single scene that’s doing double the work.
2. Tell the Reader About the Farmers
You want to create suspense in your work, don’t you? You do. A great way to create suspense is to tell the readers information that makes them nervous.
For example, in The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl takes an entire page to tell the reader about how Mr. Fox crawls out of his hole one night. This would be very, very boring, except the reader knows one thing. 3 farmers named Bogus, Bunce, and Bean are waiting to ambush him, rifles at the ready.
It’s super boring if we don’t know about the farmers. It’s just a really, really slow scene. But since we’re anticipating the gun fight at any moment, it turns it into a really suspenseful scene.
Make sure readers can anticipate the conflict that’s about to happen in your book. Tell them about the farmers.
3. No Half Measures
This is a really great writing lesson from Breaking Bad. When you need to have a character tell another character something, you could just have them say it, but sometimes that’s not the best way to do it.
In Breaking Bad, there’s a scene where Mike needs to tell Walter, “No half measures.” But instead of saying that, he tells this whole story. When he was a beat cop, he kept on getting calls to a guy beating his wife. The 10th time it happened, Mike took him out of town, stuck a gun in his mouth and said, “Listen, you do this again and you’re gonna get it.”
He thought that warning would’ve been enough, but in hindsight, he wishes he would’ve gone the whole way and killed him. A week later, that husband killed his wife. But 2 weeks later, he killed her.
And then Mike says the point of the whole story: “I chose a half measure when I should have gone all the way.”
The point is so much more powerful if there’s a story behind it.
4. Delayed Emotions
This is a great technique to help your character feel real. Whenever you have some sort of gigantic tragedy in your character’s life, like they get rejected from all the universities, or they experience the death of a loved one, your first instinct is to show them reacting really strongly. They cry on their knees, or they go out drinking, or they engage in unsafe sex.
But here’s my recommendation: delay that reaction. Later on, have that character break down because of something super small that triggers them. Someone cuts in line at the grocery store, they can’t open an envelope.
Check out this example from Manchester by the Sea. When Patrick’s told about his father’s death, he doesn’t react in any way. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t outwardly appear to be fazed, and as the story progresses, he just continues to bottle up his emotions. Then finally, when struggling to put frozen chicken back into the freezer, he breaks down and has a panic attack. As the audience, we realize he’s not having a panic attack over chicken. This is really about his father.
Delayed emotions are really true to life. You’ve probably done it. I’ve done it, and it will make your character seem like an authentic human being.
Get a writing mentor, join a community of writers, and finish your book!
You’re going to come out of the Lab holding the book that you’ve been dreaming about for years.
Want to learn the craft at your own pace? Join Bookfox Academy.
11 writing courses, 230+ videos, and 80+ writing exercises to guide you through every step of writing your novel.
5. Funky Emotions
To make your character seem real, give them funky reactions to events. Let me tell you a story to illustrate this.
I was in New York City on 9/11. I was on the 21st story of an apartment building in the West Village, and I had a better view of downtown than the news helicopters. After the towers had fallen, I went down and headed toward the collapse against all the hordes streaming uptown. They were all covered in white like mimes. I was hoping I could help, but when I got there, the dust was so thick I couldn’t even breathe, and so I ended up fleeing like everyone else.
But there’s another part of that story that I never tell anyone. Right after the towers fell, I went to New York University, where I was studying at the time, and I went to the weight room, and I did a ton of sets of bench press. Why? Why would I do that? After one of the greatest tragedies on American soil, why did I do that? I don’t know.
- Maybe I wanted to feel strong in the face of a tragedy that made me feel weak.
- Maybe weight rooms had always been a place of comfort for me.
- Maybe it was just a place to hide from the craziness that was happening outside.
But look, I hope that makes my point that you want your character to have very strange reactions to events. For example:
- Someone who is nonchalant when Pearl Harbor happens
- Someone who is upbeat when a tsunami happens
- Someone who is stoic when a huge earthquake happens
This type of unorthodox reaction will separate your character from all the other characters out there who would react in very predictable and expected ways. Tragic events help you expose your character for who they truly are.
6. The Gold Coin Writing Technique
There was this author called Don Fry, and he kept on being frustrated because his readers would abandon his books right in the middle, so he came up with the gold coin writing technique. His strategy was to periodically place gold coins throughout his book to keep the reader hooked. Think about it. As long as you’re rewarding the reader periodically, they’re going to keep reading your book.
So what is a gold coin in a story? Well, there are plot coins:
- A surprise or a twist
- An introduction of a powerful object
- Or maybe a cliffhanger
And there are also character coins:
- A cameo by a character from earlier in the book or series
- An introduction of a new character who’s funny or weird
- The discovery of new information about one of your characters
As a writer, your goal is to deliver these dopamine hits of pleasure periodically throughout the novel and never let a big gap happen between those hits. If you deliver enough and space out those gold coins, your readers will keep reading till the end.
7. Lean Away
Figure out the ending to the scene that you’re writing or the chapter you’re writing or the whole book that you’re writing, and then lean away from it. By lean away, I mean convince the reader that that isn’t going to be the outcome.
If you’re writing a basketball movie and they are in the final game, your goal is to convince them they have no chance of winning this final game.
- Their star player gets hurt.
- Or they’re ranked way lower.
- Or their coach has a baby and can’t be there.
If your character is entering a singing competition, make us feel like they won’t win it.
- There’s really tough competition.
- They have a cold and their throat hurts.
- Or there’s a psychological hurdle, like the father loses his job.
The more insurmountable those odds, the more satisfying it is for the reader when the character finally vaults them. If you don’t lean away from the ending, the reader’s going to be like, “Oh, I mean, I kind of expected that.”
Next, make sure to check out my article on 9 authors who break the storytelling rules and subscribe.
John Matthew Fox is the founder of Bookfox. After working with him, authors have been published by Random House, sold more than 100,000 copies, and received Kirkus Starred Reviews. Join Bookfox Lab, his mentorship and coaching program, or explore Bookfox Academy — 230+ videos on craft, dialogue, sentences, and more.
