How to Make a Story Flow


When writers talk of story flow, they are referring to the movement of the story and whether a novel moves smoothly from start to finish.
Every story needs to be dynamic in this way. It needs to be smooth, seamless and coherent. This is what we know as story flow, but it shouldn’t be confused with pace because pace is the speed at which a story moves.  Flow, on the other hand, refers to how the story moves along. It’s all about movement, and how it draws the reader in.
But why is flow important? It’s something that needs to occur in for the story to make sense to the reader. If a story doesn’t flow, then the story may be too confusing or disjointed for the reader to make any sense of it. This is why the movement of the story is critical – it must constantly move forward. This is why we refer to the importance of a story moving forward.
How does story flow work?
Both scenes and chapters need to be relatable – the action needs to progress in a logical manner and not go off at tangents. Actions must be logical and escalate accordingly – the time and the order of unfolding events need to be in a certain order, so a character does something that leads to another action, and that leads to other actions and so on. In other words, one scene needs to lead effortlessly and consistently to the other, all while revealing the plot.  And a story that sticks to the plot is a story that works.
Subplots also support story flow – but they need to be relatable, too, in the same way that the main plot is. The help to continue the story forward, they help with this constant movement because they provide extra threads of interest for the reader which helps to push things towards the conclusion.
Varied pace is also key to story flow. Reflective scenes coupled with action scenes give the reader the sense of things speeding along or slowing down, which helps with the movement of the story.
Dialogue is another important tool. Through dialogue, characters reveal information and hint at things to come and so on, and are therefore vital to story flow. Dialogue links narrative to description and vice versa, and helps to link different scenes, thus giving the sense that the story is moving.
The most obvious thing when all these factors are brought together is that the story makes sense, that it’s uncomplicated and it moves smoothly.
When a story doesn’t flow, the problems are compounded, because it has a negative effect on the writing. There are familiar problems with flow. The obvious one is that the story won’t make sense; therefore the order of action won’t work. This is down to poor writing and the reader will find it hard to follow the plot. The other problem is that the pace may be affected, too.
Confusion also causes problems. If the reader is confused about badly written characters, or there are too many characters, this will impede the story flow.  Not only that, but writers can also make the story so convoluted that it’s impossible for the reader to understand what’s going on. New writers in particular are guilty of making their story too complicated in the belief that it will make a better story. It doesn’t. Stories can be complex, if thought out properly, but it’s better to keep things simple. 
You can spot all these problems when you read through the story. If you have to read sentences twice, or you trip over certain words or sentence constructions, then it means the flow isn’t working. Chapter and scene breaks can interrupt flow if they are not done correctly. That’s because if you create a break where there shouldn’t be one, it can disturb the entire flow of the story.  The more you do this, however, the better you become at seeing how flow works.
So how are these problems corrected?
They are usually noticed at the read-through stage, when the writer realises that the story isn’t quite right; it seems to jump aimlessly, or it feels disjointed, or it might be obvious that the story goes off course and doesn’t seem to bear much relation to the main plot. Sometimes the structure of the story is haphazard and hasn’t been thought out. This is where rewriting is a writer’s best friend.
Writers need to recognise such problems. They will then be able to rectify them and ensure the story sticks to the plot - that chapters don’t waffle and the subplots are relevant to the main story, but more importantly, each scene moves from one to the next logically and effortlessly.
Create the right words and sentences – this is what writing is about. Writing should be smooth, easy to understand, have rhythm and pace, fluidity, a sense of movement.  Actions, scenes, chapters and plot should all interconnect. That may sound daunting, but it really isn’t. Think of painting by numbers. Connect the dots and you make a picture. If you don’t connect the dots properly, then you have a problem. It’s not that different with writing. Connect the dots – character actions, within structured scenes, logically happening in sequence within specific chapters which relay the plot – and you have a full picture.
And that is story flow.

Next week: How important is realism in fiction?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chapter & Novel Lengths

Just how long should a chapter be? What’s the best length? And does a novel have to fit into a set amount of words? These are just two of the most common questions asked by writers.   They assume they have to work to a strict template of X amount of words and X amount of chapters, usually because most novels have around 30 or 40 chapters and around 80,000 words.   Novel Lengths Firstly, let’s dispel a few myths - novel lengths are dictated by the story itself, not the writer or the editor or a specific written formula.   Secondly, writers don’t have to fit their word count into generic set amounts.   Again, the story will dictate how long the novel will be. It’s also worth knowing the different types of novels that work well with different word counts.   Uncomplicated stories containing minimal characters tend to be short – usually around 20,000 to 60,000 words.   These are called novellas. Longer, more complex stories, which contain a handful of main characters and periphe
Read more

What Makes a Story Dark?

If you’re a horror writer or you love to write dark, psychological stories and thrillers, or moralistic tales, this is the one question that needs an answer. Wanting a dark story and writing one are two different things, so how do you actually make a story dark? To answer that you first have to understand what is meant by ‘dark’. We usually define ‘dark’ as quantifiable elements that we know and are familiar with, but it’s more than that. Dark doesn’t necessarily mean scary or gory with a crazy psychopath going around chopping people into bits. Instead we have to think of ‘dark ‘as anything outside our accepted rose-tinted reality. Dark is the underbelly of our society; it’s the handling of ideas, themes, social issues and behaviours that would be seen as morally unacceptable. It’s less about fictional monsters but more about the real monsters that lurk in the shadows, something that is underscored by our fears and anxieties. It’s the unknown, because the things we don’t know
Read more

Cadence in Writing

Following on from last week’s article about purple prose, cadence – something many writers haven’t heard of – is something that writers aspire to but don’t always manage it, yet it’s the fundamental difference between poetic language and over-indulgent, flowery prose. Cadence in writing is a sense of rhythm and pace, it lifts the narrative from the page and makes it dynamic; brings a certain tempo to the words and sentences; it’s what makes prose poetic, layered and fluid without it being extravagant. Cadence makes the writing visual and evocative, and to an extent, beautiful . It’s an important element in fiction writing, because without it, narrative certainly won’t be as effective. Writers don’t actively think about cadence – they simply want to write and get the words down. It’s not until later, while editing, that they realise that a sense of rhythm might be missing from their narrative. When poetic description works, it’s called cadence. When it doesn’t work, people ref
Read more