OFF THE PAGE

I’ve been doing some work on my latest WIP and it’s become an interesting little point that I’ve stumbled over. You can tell a great story without telling it all. Events can happen off the page yet still carry weight to have a massive effect on the story as a whole.

I’m not thinking about the fact that events finish at the end of a chapter and then the next one starts a week later with nothing to add to the overall narrative, it’s when that which happens between one line and the next is important but the suggestion of those events is more valuable.

I used a basic example of this in my novels where on one occasion, there was a sex scene and in another there was an hours long training session.

The events that took place were important to the overall story but if I’d have lingered on them for too long, exploring every single possible detail, it would have weighed the pace of the story down. We knew what was happening and the significance of what was going on was clear, but looking at all of it didn’t help things.

We’re all familiar with the phrase ‘read between the lines’ and it’s that element of understanding a story by what isn’t being said which expands the tale.

Leaving things to happen off the page isn’t the only way that this can be brought to bare.

I wanted to frame the start of The Circle of Stars against what had happened in The Circle of Fire and as such, the opening couple of pages recount an almost identical situation, with the same descriptions appearing word for word. I wanted to show how the mindset and potential wider view of things had changed for the main character due to the events of the previous books in the series. The same situation is presented but seeing the differences later on gives absolute clarity to the idea that the everything that has been going on is having an impact.

The message and meaning is there front and centre without the need to actually say anything.

Using subtext and repetition of information flavours the story in ways that just straight up describing everything just isn’t capable of. That subtlety can mean a way that characters become more accessible to the reader and then feel more real.

I’m going to always do my best to explore all the ways to make my writing as interesting and compelling as I can and if that continues to mean that I have to not only consider what I do write but also what I don’t, I’m all over it.

Maybe that can mean that if I don’t write anything on a given day, I’ve still written really?

Stay safe all.