#narrative flow

[virovac]

SPOP criticism: Jokes and overally tone and flow

Kyle honestly serves his narrative purpose pretty well most of the time (and he actually seems more disciplined than the Horde troopers we see slacking off a couple of times)

I however don’t like it when the buttmonkey jokes go against the “theme”  or “tone” of a season.

Upon reflection there are really only two jokes with Kyle I had a problem with:

The whole “all vote to blame Kyle?” feels weird when only two episodes ago we had Hordak giving the failure speech and introducing Catra to his oxygen blocking forcefield

And his scene of being chucked by Sea Hawk after a hear-to-heart with Bow felt more like it came out of a 90s parody of old 80s shows like Classic She-Ra, while prior to that the show had been pretty earnest. 

[81scorp]

What is Narrative flow?

“Narrative flow” is a word that I have heard a few times. I didn`t know quite what it was so I decided to search for it. I found a few answers. 

(Helpingwritersbecomeauthors) Narrative flow simply refers to how a story moves. A piece of writing with narrative flow is like a peaceful stream, while one without it might be more like a river blocked by a dam. When a story flows, readers will absorb the narrative like a sponge.

(Yahoo answers) From an editor's perspective, narrative flow is whatever works to keep the reader absorbing the story, main plot, subplots, description, without any feeling of annoyance born out of sensing discontinuity, something incongruous, protagonist, antagonist or other characters behaving in ways that are not natural to them. Different writers will achieve narrative flow in different ways; this is not a "paint by the numbers," or "do what Hemingway would do." Sometimes the hardest thing for a writer is simply to be himself or herself in telling a story. When we tell a neighbor a story "over the back fence" we typically do it quite naturally--and with good narrative flow. We get in trouble when we strain to achieve certain effects, dazzle the reader with description, make a character do something outlandish not in synch with who he has established himself to be in the story. Nonetheless narrative flow can also be crippled by not providing enough information within a scene. It's especially important to not raise questions in the reader's mind that you, the author, do not answer (at least eventually). That is a cardinal sin against narrative flow.

(Shifti) The flow of a narrative is one of the most important parts of telling a story. But it is one of the least understood parts of the art. Why is it so hard to understand? Because the concept is hard to define and the way it works is not well understood. So what is "Narrative Flow", how does it work and why is it so important? Let me answer those in the reverse order that they were asked. Narrative Flow is important because it keeps the reader engrossed in the story being told and assists in building and maintaining a "willing suspension of disbelief". How does it work? Quite simply it works by allowing the reader to lose track of the individual words as the scenes and situations play out in their minds. When a story has a great flow the reader will make it from the start of the story to the end and not notice how long it has taken.

Then what exactly is "Narrative Flow"? It is the congruence of the author's narrative voice and the proper use of the language in which the story is being written. And what does that mean? Well… When the language is used properly the sentences will "flow together" such that the punctuation marking the end of a sentence does not constitute more than a notional break, just as the separation between paragraphs will not constitute more than a notional separation between separate ideas. And I can hear it now: "But how can I know when I've got good flow going on?" That, sadly, is not easy to answer. For some people there is a hard to quantify "feeling" about the flow and for others it takes the form of different tricks. The single most effective trick is to read the story out loud and listen for where you want to phrase things differently than how it is written. Take a look at the following paragraph—it's borrowed from a story that some friends are working on and highlights a breaking of flow.   "Fearfully, she glanced around the seemingly deserted structure. But it was dark, and her night vision hadn't been the same since shi'd been nearly blinded by a mortar blast months ago. She didn't have much time, but she wasn't about to walk into a trap—not again. Sniffing the air revealed not much, but it wouldn't be the first time her nose had failed her."

The flow in that example is broken because of the un-natural structuring of the sentences. While they are all technically correct the structuring does not sound natural. Go ahead and read it out loud yourself—don't you find yourself wanting to change the wording? That, dear reader, is how you can tell for sure that the flow is broken. Fixing that paragraph is possible, but a possible fix with it would be something like the following (note that this is what I have suggested to one of the authors of the story this example is taken from and is not, exactly, how I'd expect them to fix it): "She glanced around the apparently deserted structure fearfully. The dark hampered her vision, which hadn't been the same since she'd nearly been blinded by a mortar blast several months ago. There wasn't much time, but she wasn't about to walk into a trap again. Sniffing the air didn't reveal much, but it would not be the first time her nose had failed her." See what I've done for the suggestion? It changes the word selection, re-orders the clauses of the sentences into a more natural order and gives an idea of how to fix the flow problem. A real fix would take the author of the original—who know a lot more about the character than I do—rewriting the paragraph themselves. Oh, and now you want to know why people have problems with flow? Why thanks for the easy question! The most common group of people that have problems with flow are new authors. They tend to feel that they have to fully express their narrative voice in every sentence. This leads to them trying to make every sentence unique and causes them to lose flow because of un-natural use of the language and this causes the narrative to become "stilted" and lose flow. Another common group are those that feel the advice to keep sentences short and structure simple as a hard-and-fast rule. That action leads to them forcing their sentences to be either un-naturally short or un-naturally simplistic. This makes the narrative feel stilted, out-of-place or both, breaking the natural flow and, if it comes after the first several paragraphs, will completely jolt the reader out of the story. And what of the type of flow breakage that I gave as an example above? That kind of breakage is not as common as the two I've detailed above in "finished" works you'll find on the websites of amatuer authors and in other places on the web. It is, however, extremely common in early drafts of stories and is mostly caused by the author needing to get the ideas of the narrative written. The reason it isn't common in works you'll find on the net is that the authors usually catch them and fix them before making the story public. But note that writing truly is an art. There are no "hard-and-fast" rules to writing outside of the basic rules of syntax and grammar that all languages have. Even narrative flow can be intentionally broken and not be an error. Wow… That is a lot of people scratching heads all at once. And yes, I see the raised hands. No, I'm not going to call on you because I already know the question. "Why, after all the time you've spent explaining what narrative flow is and how insanely important it is do you go and tell us that it can be intentionally broken? Doesn't that go against everything you've just said?" The answer to the latter question is 'No'. As to the former question… I am telling you because it is the truth. There is no reason to slavishly hold onto the flow of a narrative, but if you want to break it intentionally you had better have a very good reason. There are some places where it is imperative to break the flow of a narrative—almost always to drive home the importance of some event or statement by a character. And when you do break the flow there it should be in such a subtle manner that the reader doesn't notice—they just get the point of the statement or event and go "What the Frak?!?" You can also break the flow to highlight action. If it's confusing, disjointed or just something that a good director (no, not Uwe Boll!) would use a fast-cut for when filming or editing, you can break the flow using a few specific tricks—like purposefully short and staccato sentences—to mimic that effect. Similarly you can break the flow to to highlight sudden, violent movement or something occurring that comes as a complete and total surprise to the viewpoint character (if you have one). An example of the above—breaking flow to highlight confusing action and mimic "fast cuts"—follows. Again, I found it in a story written by a couple friends of mine. The confusion in it is in the viewpoint characters mind—caused by events that were ongoing at that point in the story. Being out of context it probably will sound more broken and make less sense than it otherwise would. Time slowed down. Time sped up. Everything happened at once. Everything remained frozen forever. Somewhere, someone screamed. Someone cried. Someone YOWLED. Strongtail's throat was raw. There were bits of something stuck between her teeth, and something wet and salty on her tongue, and something wet pooled around her pawhands. See how the breakage isn't jarringly obvious? This is a subtle example, but it serves to present a flash of wild action, where many things are happening at the same time. Yes, the flow is broken in it and yes, it is normally something you'd want to avoid doing. But here it works well and doesn't cause the reader to be jarred out of the story at all—nor will it cause them to lose the "willing suspension of disbelief". For those wondering what exactly caused this specific choice of structuring for the example, well… The structuring itself has been done to highlight the symmetry of the flashes of confusion by making the sentences themselves highly symmetric. And the reason for the change from short, very active sentences to the much longer sentence that ends the example is because the confusion of the viewpoint character is fading—being replaced by a solid certainty of action and thought. Furthermore dialog can break the narrative flow itself. Sometimes it is natural that it breaks the ongoing flow without breaking the overall flow. At other times it is used to break the current narrative flow to further the plot or another key aspect of the story. However, in general, letting dialog break the flow instead of having the dialog fit into the flow cleanly is not something that should happen. Even when a character is speaking the language in a badly fractured manner it should fit with the flow so well that it "feels like it belongs there".

Hope these were useful

[howtofightwrite]

Do you have any advice for condensing unwieldy sentences, without interrupting the flow?

For those unfamiliar with the concept of Narrative Flow, here’s a definition from Shifti.

In a basic sense, Narrative Flow is building your suspension of disbelief. It’s readability, crafting tension, and built through language choice and sentence structure. Ultimately, Narrative Flow is a tricky beast to talk about because there isn’t any right way to craft it in a story. Every author and every story are different.

Narrative Flow is what I’ll call “Big Picture”, it’s created by many pieces and techniques working within the writing itself. An alternate example is that it’s a lot like looking at a perfect roundhouse kick and just seeing the kick rather than the chamber, extension, rotation, turnover, posture, and recoil.

All the pieces which go into the kick and all that have to be done well in order to create a great one.

If you get too caught up looking at the Big Picture, you miss the detail work that makes it function.

This is why, for the most part, it’s best not to get too attached to any part of a piece until you have the whole concept of what your story is going to be. If you’ve gotten too attached to language flow for a page with sentences that don’t make sense, then you’ve got a nice flow is ultimately senseless. However, the senseless, unworkable sentences are part of what’s creating the flow you like.

By changing one, you change the other.

But if the sentences aren’t working, that means the story is also not working, and the flow (while nice) isn’t really working.

So, it’s time to kill your darlings.

First: Save all your drafts in separate files.

I don’t care if it’s your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 24th, or 150th. Save those drafts. We often have hits of inspiration and turns of phrase that we never get back again.

So, save your drafts.

Once you’ve saved your previous draft, you will no longer have any reason to fear experimenting. You always have the old one to go back to if what you changed doesn’t work.

See? Easy peasy.

You’ve got your first creation safely stashed away. So, if you muck it all up, you can save yourself and all those hours won’t be wasted.

If you just breathed a solid sigh of relief at the concept, don’t worry. It happens to everyone. It’s so very freeing, really. Creating new save files shoves all those fears like “what if I mess up” down the garbage disposal and into the trash compactor, then flips the switch to On.

You’re now free to rip up the concrete foundations and start over.

And you will, because a first draft is only the first step on the long journey toward a completed piece. You’re gonna have to change some of those sentences that make the bigger picture sound good but simply don’t work. They don’t make sense. They have to go.

You know that changing on the small scale affects the big picture, even just a word here exchanged with one over there can change the shape and sound and flow of a piece.

When “horrified” becomes “terrified”, or “screamed” changes to “shrieked”, or “heard” becomes “listened”.

Flow is created by the order of words, the sound of the words, the words themselves, and the punctuation. You will inevitably change the flow of the sentences by changing the sentences.

That’s how it works.

However, a new flow is not a bad flow. New flow can lead to better flow.

After all, once you have your concept down, once you know what your story is about in the big view then you can build the necessary nuts and bolts in at the bottom to make it sing.

Think of your first draft as you telling yourself your story, you’re getting all your concepts out onto the page. You’ll get a different flow here because you’re still trying to figure out what exactly it is you’re doing. It may be a nice flow and it may feel like it works, but the best language and narrative flows are created when every single goddamn word on the page is working as hard as it can to make it so.

It’s easier to lose this with fiction writing because there are so many words that it can be difficult to feel their importance versus flash fiction or poetry. Reading and writing poetry is one of those important skill sets because they teach the importance of word choice, imagery, and flow; plus the visual impact of format, presentation, and white space.

When you’re reformatting your sentences, cutting them down, changing the words around, the flow will end up janky.

When you’ve got the feel or sense for what you want the scene to be about/where you want it to go, then start from the top. This can be a single page, a whole chapter, half a book, or even a whole book, and go through the whole thing again.

It’s a lot easier to figure out your flow when you have the complete image.

So, complete your image, get your big picture view, get out your pen, and mark down every sentence that isn’t working.

Then (BEFORE YOU TOUCH ANYTHING) save your draft.

Open up a new file.

Go to town.

-Michi

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[quasi-normalcy]

I’m a very good math tutor precisely because I’m not a naturally gifted mathematician; I remember what it feels like not to understand how to do things and I am aware of practically every pitfall on the road to understanding mathematical concepts, having encountered all of them myself.

By the same token, I’m a really shitty writing tutor because writing is so intuitive to me; like, I honestly cannot remember a time in my life where I have not understood narrative flow, and I remember that as a child, I would be angry when I was watching something and the writer clearly just pulled something out of their ass or had a plot that fundamentally didn’t make sense. So it’s very difficult for me, for example, to tell people why the structure to their essays is wrong because as far as I’m concerned, it’s obvious.

[abeautifulfallwithme]

Y'know, when I've been reading since I was three, writing since I've been five, been collecting and reading books on writing since I was ten, been critically examining works of all forms of media to further my own writing since I was eleven, haven't stopped all of the above, and I'm well into my adulthood now, I think I might have a point when I say the writing of something is fucked up or the narrative flow is off. Or that something being utterly predictable is not a good thing.