When creating fiction, developing a story that seems natural and believable, regardless of the topic or genre, is key to keeping the audience intrigued. A lack of continuity causes distraction for the reader, minimizing the chances that he/she will continue reading (or purchase new releases in the future). Beginning with the preliminary outline, authors must continuously revise their stories in order to strengthen them and interconnect all subplots with the mail goal. The following is a list of questions you may wish to ask yourself when checking your story for cohesion to ensure that each piece of the puzzle coincides with the next for the unbiased reader.
- Have you created a beginning, a middle, and an ending? While many writers feel that creating an ending before writing the bulk of the book limits the creative process, not having a goal in mind can greatly interfere with your attempts at developing reasonable cohesion. You may find greater success channeling your creativity into your outline first, and writing the story second.
- How do your main characters tie into the resolution throughout the story? All main characters must be slowly tying themselves into the resolution of your story throughout the beginning and middle chapters, as opposed to suddenly making convenient appearances in the end to finalize the book. Again, knowing your ending ahead of time will make it far easier to develop a plot that involves all characters from start to finish.
- How closely tied to the conflict are your characters? In other words, what makes your characters so important to your chosen outcome and plot? What makes them vital and inextricably attached?
- Are any character actions/reactions out of place? Checking scene by scene, ensure that all characters remain solid in their actions, according to the personalities you assign them at the beginning of the story. This does not mean, of course, that characters cannot change, grow, or exhibit another side of themselves. However, the reader must be made aware of why sudden and otherwise uncharacteristic behaviors make sense.
- Were any scenes forced into the story? In other words, did any scenes come unnaturally, forced into the story out of mere necessity? Readers can often spot a scene that was editing into a story only after the fact, and such editing rarely creates continuity. Instead, these scenes tend to serve as red flags that indicate an author’s less than thorough planning.
Of course, there are many more steps that can and should be taken to ensure strong cohesion within a fictional story. These questions do serve as an excellent place to start, however, and ideally will prod you on to further analysis and polishing.
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