Some writing rules are crap
Not everything must "advance the plot"
You won’t often find me dwelling on the craft of writing. Big Fat Words is more about the mental component of a writing life. Besides, I’m an outlier when it comes to the question of “can you teach someone to write?”
My short answer: No.
Longer answer: Depends on the specific field of creativity.
I even devoted a BFW essay on the subject (March 18, 2024: Can You Teach Creativity?)
But I wanted to spend a moment addressing a comment I heard on a podcast directed at fiction writers. The guest harped on the fact that everything in your story should advance that story. Essentially, the speaker said if it’s not pertinent to the plot—if it doesn’t drive the reader forward to the next scene—delete it.
I think most people would reject such a hard-and-fast rule. If your writing has boiled down to following some fixed prescription or a textbook’s outline for perfect prose, I’d be willing to bet your writing is boring as shit.
Yes, we want to keep the reader turning the page. Yes, the last thing you want to do is wander off into the weeds with a scene to where anyone—or everyone—would put the book down and go find something else to do. I might get raked for saying this, but I only made it through “Moby Dick” by skimming the lessons on whaling.
To me, what’s equally important as you build your novel is that you invest a paragraph here or there that absolutely does NOT advance the story, but advances our understanding of the character.
Example:
I love the Fletch books penned by Gregory Mcdonald. Yeah, the first movie with Chevy Chase in the lead role was hilarious, but the books have a different feel. I recommend them.
In “Fletch and the Widow Bradley,” there’s a throwaway scene where Fletch climbs into a taxi and has some witty dialogue with the driver. The entire exchange takes up maybe one paragraph.
It has nothing to do with the story at all. It adds nothing. It doesn’t advance the plot, as a writing teacher would say. (Or a podcast guest.) Some might complain that it even detracts from the flow and the pace of the book.
And I would say that’s utter bullshit.
It’s been easily 15 years since I read the book, and yet I still recall that one paragraph. Why? Because it helped to cement the personality of Irwin Fletcher, the investigative reporter unlike any other reporter you’ve seen or heard.
Mcdonald broke the so-called rule about cutting out parts of your story that don’t move the plot along. Thank God he did. As a result, his character became three dimensional. We felt like we were in that cab with him. One little paragraph made us like Fletch a bit more. And that is just as important as propelling your plot.
That doesn’t mean we should all start randomly throwing in scenes that will come across as forced and phony. Readers will know when it’s nothing more than an awkward attempt to force-feed us some cheap character development.
In this case, however, Fletch needed to get from one location to another. Mcdonald could’ve just cut to the point where he arrives and nobody would’ve been the wiser. Instead, he used this opportunity to give some depth to his hero in a short, memorable moment.
Bottom line:
Don’t be so married to writing rules that you sacrifice the humanity of your characters. Your writing professor might cringe, but your readers will appreciate it.
Dom Testa writes fiction and nonfiction, and believes Fletch is the best character Chevy Chase ever brought to life. Yes, even more than Clark Griswold.
Find most of his work—Dom’s, not Chevy’s—at DomTestaBooks.com.