The Importance of the Plausibility Factor

On the weekend I watched a spy thriller movie. The cinematography was good, the casting was good, the acting was good, the story… had potential. The major problem with this movie was that it lacked plausibility.

When I enjoy a movie I have a high tolerance for the flaws. The more flaws I see, however, the faster I lose my willingness to suspend my disbelief. For example, I had trouble believing that a mere scientist could win a hand-to-hand combat fight with a military trained man. Could I forgive that? Sure, why not. I enjoyed the excitement, but I’d become a little wary. What else was the movie going to ask me to believe?

Then the implausible moments started piling up. I didn’t even need to look for them to find them. The movie included massive whoppers like the bad guy needing to carry around a code for a simple four word password when he’d already proven he had an amazing memory. Or the grand finale which could have been taken care of with a simple anonymous phone call, but our hero had to throw himself into the action instead. Yeah, right.

When we write our stories we must be careful not to fall into the trap of using plot contrivances. Otherwise we may lose our readers. We need to do the research required to get it right. We also need to make sure our characters have no choice but to take the difficult route to get out of a situation.

How do you keep your stories plausible? What are some bad plot contrivances you’ve seen in a movie or read in a book?

Consistency

When we write it’s important to maintain consistency though our project. For example, if a writer has a writing style that is simplistic then she shouldn’t use a flowery description of a character or place. It might sound good, it might shine like a pearl in the writer’s eyes, but it has to go because it is inconsistent to the way the rest of the story is written.

Anything different to the majority of the prose will stand out and jolt the reader from the story—no matter how well written.

Do you have difficulty deleting fantastic gems of prose that don’t fit in with the rest of your writing style for a piece?

Note: This post is part of the A-Z Challenge. I will be posting Monday-Saturday during April corresponding to the letters of the alphabet.

How to Make Compelling Characters

This post is part of Jen, Alex and Elana’s Great Blogging Experiment.

What makes a character compelling? What is that secret ingredient that makes us care about what happens to them? Below I’ve listed a few elements that add to a character’s charm.

Believability: characters should come across as real. Not cardboard cut outs. Compelling characters should be like onions. They should have more than one layer. They need to have depth, history, motivations, goals.

Relatability: characters should have traits we can all relate to. We like the people we connect with the most.

Flawed: characters who have flaws are more interesting and believable and in turn become more relatable. No one likes a perfect person. No one likes a perfectly bad person either.

Conflict: even the most interesting character becomes boring if they are placed in a story with no conflict. Our characters need challenges to overcome.

Envy: This might sound strange, but even a boring person becomes interesting when they have something we want. I’ll travel through a book with a bland character and hardly notice their blandness if they are living the life I want to live, overcoming the odds I want to overcome.

Uniqueness: the same ole clichéd characters we’ve all seen before won’t pique our interested. We should try to give them something new, something unexpected.

Consistency: characters need to react in a consistent way. We put our guard up when they do something totally unexpected without motivation.

Likeability: No one likes a whinger. Even a whinging villain can become a groan.

Can you think of other elements that make up a compelling character?

Hook, Line, and Sinker

The hook in fiction (or non-fiction) writing is a rhetorical device that hooks the readers into wanting more. It’s most often found in the first sentence or first paragraph and it’s something catchy that grabs the attention. It can be subtle or it can knock the reader on the head with a 4x4. But it must be there.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. The problem with a hook is that it builds an immediate expectation in the reader. This expectation must be handled with care or else the hook will backfire. In other words, make sure your hooks are more than just an obvious marketing ploy.

If your story starts with something full of action, such as a helicopter crash in your main character’s yard, don’t then embark in a ponderous backstory.

If your hook mentions fish raining from the sky, don’t then follow up with descriptions of your characters.

Keep it related and keep it consistent because follow through is the ‘line and sinker’ that will essentially make the reader allow themselves to be hooked.

Grab a reader’s attention with a clever opening line, and then follow it up. This is the best way to reel in your readers.

What are some of your favourite opening lines in books? (and do they follow through?)