An aeroplane, with one engine on back-to-front

Novels, I think, have two main engines: two primary reasons to drive the reader on through the book. Those engines are:

Propulsion. Anything that makes the reader think, ‘What’s going to happen next? This is exciting. I can’t tear myself away from this moment.’

Adhesion. Anything that makes the reader think, ‘Wow, this feels so real. It’s like I’m really there. Yes, I know I exist in the real world, but while I have this book open in front of me, its world seems more real (and more fun.)’ The adhesion stuff is what makes the book stick. It’s what makes readers think about your world when they’re on the journey to work … and months after they’ve finished the book.

So: if you want your reader to plough excitedly through the book, you need both engines burning away nicely.

All propulsion, no adhesion? Your book is full of wham, bam, action, but it doesn’t feel real, so the characters and the situations don’t really stick. Readers skate through the book and forget it (if you’re lucky) or don’t even skate through it.

All adhesion, no propulsion? Congratulations. You’ve written a work of literary fiction that people praise but very few people actually read.

So that seems like a nice tidy plan. Write your book, make sure both motors are firing up nicely – job done.

The trouble is these engines fire in more or less opposite directions. One (propulsion) is urging you to stick in more people-with-guns / love-mishaps / zombies-with-interesting-superpowers and the like. The other engine (adhesion) is asking you to slow down and describe all that stuff in enough detail that you can give it a weight and credibility that makes all the stuff feel real and present when it’s happening.

So, what to do?

Well, one of the magic solutions is one we spoke about last week. What matters to the reader isn’t really ‘how much plot-style propulsion does this book possess?’ It’s more, ‘how much propulsion exists per thousand words?’ Same sort of thing when it comes to adhesion.

So deleting surplus word count is THE technique for improving both things at the same time. It’s just about the only method that does that.

And remember: you’re not aiming to reduce the amount you express. You’re aiming to express the exact same substance, but with greater density.

One of the things to watch for here is list-making. So you may want 5 sentences to describe (say) a romantic beach-side cottage. But if you whittle that down to just 2-3, you may get the same effect … or actually greater, because readers read what you’re telling them instead of just skimming.

Another key technique is frequent switching. So instead of:

1. Gunmen (or gunwomen; I’m not fussed) burst into a room, spray bullets around, and protagonist hides behind an old oak sideboard.

Or:

2. Gunpeople burst into a room. Then a two page consideration of what they look like, the room’s furnishings, the protagonist’s past experience with gunpeople, a discussion of the weather, and then spraying bullets.

We do roughly this:

• Gunpeople burst into the room
• Protagonist’s view of what they look like, what atmosphere there is. MC’s observation is probably a sentence or two at most. They’re kinda occupied.
• First bullet is fired
• MC observation of the moment. Quick thought about what action to take.
• Another bullet or two.
• More observation.
• Attempt at evasive action behind sideboard, tuned in with earlier thought process.
• Success / failure of evasion. More reflection / thought / MC-centric text. Back to more action

In effect, you’re constantly offering action and making sense of it via your protagonist.

Are there genres where this doesn’t matter? Yep, maybe. I’ve just read a chunk of my daughter’s Rick Riordan book (Heroes of Olympus / House of Hades), and it seemed all propulsion and so little attempt at adhesion, it wasn’t even clear to me who the MC was supposed to be.

But most books, most of the time? You need both engines firing. Or, to be more accurate, that’s true of all books, all of the time – just you need to strike a different balance depending on genre and audience.

That is it from me. I have no moustache and I do not smoke a pipe.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Action and reflection

Let’s see a 250-300 word chunk of text with nice flip-flop between action and reflection. If your passage has lots of dialogue in it, then check that the dialogue flip-flops in the same way. (‘Get out of here! That thing’s about to explode!’ vs ‘This reminds me of when …’)

As ever, let’s have title, genre and any context we need to make sense of things. When you’re ready, upload your work here.

Til soon. 

Harry