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Tune in this week to learn with book coach Abigail Raeke about the difference between scene and summary and how to use each narrative technique in your writing to focus your reader on what is really important in your story.
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Podcast Episode Transcript (unedited)
94. Narrative Techniques to Show and Tell with Abigail Raeke
Suzy Vadori: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Show, don’t Tell Writing Podcast with me, Suzy Vadori where I peel back the layers of how to wow your readers with your fiction, your nonfiction. Anybody can bang out a first draft, but it takes a little more work to make your book as amazing as it can be. Join me as I share the step by step writing techniques you could apply to your writing right away.
As I host successful writers who share a behind the scenes look at their own [00:00:30] writing lives, and as I live coach writers on their pages giving practical writing examples that will make your own writing stronger. Nobody is born knowing how to write an engaging book. There are real and important skills that you need to learn on this show.
I cut through the noise and get you all the info you need. I can’t wait to see how this information is going to transform your writing. Welcome to the podcast today, Abigail Ra [00:01:00] and I just can’t even tell you how much fun it is for me to record these in-person sessions with people that are also coaching writers that could geek out about these things.
I have a special place in my heart. Abby and I have shared a hotel room. On occasion, we were together at this book coaching retreat. And it was just so much fun to hear her talk about writing craft. She is on a mission to demystify creative writing techniques and give aspiring authors tools to [00:01:30] successfully build their books.
And if you’re listening to this podcast, you need these tools. So we talk about those today. She specializes in upmarket fiction, literary fiction, near historical fiction, and narrative memoir. Oh my goodness, Abigail. So good to have you here today. Susie, I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for having, oh my goodness.
We are here at a book coaching conference in Denver, where, as you all know, when I am with other really smart writers and writing coaches. I record as [00:02:00] many things as possible. It’s actually the most amazing way to visit with people because even though I’ve known Abby for years, we have actually shared a room on occasion when I am less organized and don’t have one and need to share her room.
But I never get to geek out about the actual writing piece, so I can’t wait for this conversation.
Abigail Raeke: I know. I’m so happy to be able to sit down with you.
Suzy Vadori: Alright, so we’re talking loosely about, I mean, we’re on the show Don’t Tell podcast. And this is all related to show Don’t Tell. Today [00:02:30] we’re gonna talk about scenes, uh, and we’re gonna talk about how to use it and when to use telling, when to use good telling.
Abigail Raeke: Yes.
Suzy Vadori: Um, when to use good telling. And Abby is an absolute expert, super passionate about this, so I can’t wait to geek out. Abby, we’re gonna start at the very beginning because a lot of our writers, I mean, even if you’ve been writing for a long time, we all have different definitions. But what do you talk about this?
What do you mean by a scene? What is a quote unquote scene in this context?
Abigail Raeke: Yes, that is a great question. ’cause I wrote for a [00:03:00] long time before I really understood what a seed was. The way that I define it is a scene is when something different is happening for your character. It flows story time, and it happens beat by beat.
This is truly like this is the showing in your book.
Suzy Vadori: A lot of writers get tripped up. The difference between scenes and chapters.
Abigail Raeke: Yes, that is it. I’ve noticed that. Yes, sometimes. And some teachers use those [00:03:30] synonymously, which can get very confusing.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah.
Abigail Raeke: And in my definition and the way that I teach, themes are different from chapters.
You can have several scenes within a chapter. A chapter is its own little mini arc, and a chapter can have only one C, but not necessarily, and this is where I talk about different narrative techniques, because your chapter might begin with some, sorry. Then transition into seeing, and then there might be a little bit of reflection, there might be some narration, and [00:04:00] then you move back into, see that can be a chapter.
You’re using several different narrative techniques throughout a chapter. So it sort of depends on your style, what you’re comfortable with. But for me, I think it’s an important level up for writers once they understand even narrative technique, what it is, and that you can use different technique.
Within a chapter, you know, some things you can compress with. Summary. Some things you can slow down into real story time with scene. And you know, that’s for all the magic.
Suzy Vadori: Okay, [00:04:30] perfect. And you know, I like to say too, I mean, chapters are kind of relatively arbitrary where we break them. There are no hard and set rules in publishing around how long a chapter could be.
And certainly you can break these, but in my experience, when you work with a publisher. If a chapter is less than seven pages, they just combine it with the next one or the one prior. And if it’s more than 25 or 35 pages, depending on the genre, they’re gonna break it. Right. But scenes, as Abby just said, you can have multiple [00:05:00] scenes within a chapter, and we just denote that with the scene break and.
You can also have a scene that spans multiple chapters. So if you have a lot to say and you wanna zoom right in and, and let us hear everything, you can have, you know, if it’s a battle scene, for example, it may actually span multiple chapters.
Abigail Raeke: Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: Okay. But you are using seen slightly differently. Yeah. So when you talk about different narrative techniques, seen as one of those Yeah.
What, what are the different narratives, techniques that you wanna talk about?
Abigail Raeke: Yeah, so I teach from the Glass Castle. Which [00:05:30] is a terrific memoir by Jeanette Wall.
Suzy Vadori: I love it.
Abigail Raeke: Yeah, I know. It’s one of the best, and it’s, it has to me, which is like the highest compliment for a memoir, which is that it reads like a novel.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah.
Abigail Raeke: And it reads like a novel because of really beautifully crafted scene. And there’s a chapter sort of in the middle of the book where she. Begins it by saying, you know, birthdays were not a big deal in our house. Sometimes, you know, our parents would get us a birthday cake with some candles, sometimes a pack of [00:06:00] underwear, but most of the time our birthdays were forgotten.
So I was surprised when, on the day I turned 10, my father took me out into the backyard. Ask me what I wanted for my birthday. So all of that. What I did in the beginning was summary or what Jeanette Walls did in the beginning. She summarized so that readers understood what was normal for her in her, in her context, it was normal to have birthdays forgotten.
So she set up the context for the scene with [00:06:30] summary, and when she transitioned into scene and gave us moments play by play so that we feel like we’re in the moment of real time. So that’s sort of the difference between summary and scene. And so she didn’t have to tell us all the details about the forgotten birthdays, and that’s what I mean by scene being different.
In Jeanette Wall’s world, it was normal to have birthdays forgotten. So she doesn’t need to write a whole scene about a forgotten birthday. She can summarize those to give us context for the [00:07:00] scene, which is different the day that her dad came in and asked her what she wanted. That’s kind of what I mean by it’s a bit
Suzy Vadori: different.
Absolutely, and I think that’s something that as a writer, that’s your job, right? You need to know. Maybe you need to actually know what each of those forgotten birthdays look like. Maybe you need that.
Abigail Raeke: Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: But does the reader need that? And that’s your choice, right? When do you zoom in and when do you zoom out?
And kind of summarize. And it’s okay to summarize, by the way, but we are on the show and tell podcast. [00:07:30] And I like to tell writers that they worry about over showing or then they get to this point where they think they can never tell or they can never summarize and, and you can. It’s just a choice that you have to make.
Abigail Raeke: Yes. And it’s understanding where, you know, you’re saying like you’re focusing in and why you wanna focus there. And Yeah, exactly. To your point, I will bet that it’s actually okay to write everything out in scene and then when you’re going to revise, you’re figuring out, [00:08:00] ’cause I see revising is all about focus, where you’re bringing your readers focus and want.
So you don’t wanna go on for two chapters about the forgotten birthdays because that. In the way that Jeanette Walls wanted to write her, her book, she wanted to focus this in. Because that was important to the overall arc. You know, there was a day that her father approached her and asked what she wanted for her birthday.
So that’s what she put into scene. ’cause that’s where the
Suzy Vadori: reader’s
Abigail Raeke: attention is focused. Uh, but to your point, exactly, like if you wrote out those [00:08:30] scenes, and I always say, I guarantee one of those scenes was written out, but then she made a choice, you know, where she’s gonna sort of summarize to move us faster towards the sea.
And that’s only one chapter, you know, so it’s some summary. She does a bridge and then we go.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. I love, I wish you could see Abby here. We don’t, we don’t have, we don’t have a camera, but she does not have the book in front of her, so she should just quoted a whole paragraph from that book.
I just, I can’t, I’m like, bow down to your, uh, to your knowledge.
Abigail Raeke: [00:09:00] I love it. I, I’ve found it many times ’cause I just love it because it’s very concise. It, to me, it’s a perfect example of. Because to your point, it can span some chapters, but Walls a style. She was a journalist first, so she’s kind of concise, you know?
So that’s just a nice, within like a page or two very good example of some different narrative techniques she’s using to hack different, you know, effect.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, absolutely. And I love, love, love that we’re talking about this in the context of memoir, because. You know, that highest [00:09:30] compliment that you mentioned, that the memoir reads like a novel that is today’s market.
So unless you’re a celebrity, I hope, you know, if you’re a celebrity, give me a shout out in the comments, please. I’d love to know that you’re, I’m gonna get all these fake celebrities in the comments, so that’d be fun too. But yeah, unless you’re a celebrity and you can break all the rules and people are just really fascinated by your backstory.
If you’re a regular person like me, but you’ve had a fascinating life, you kind of have to use techniques. Today’s memoirs are not cradle to grave autobiographies, [00:10:00] where I was born in blah, blah, blah, and I died. Obviously not gonna write a memoir if you’re already dead, but, but maybe it’s not that. It is exactly what you were saying.
That choice, that focus. Which pieces are important, and we have to decide based on the journey that you plan to tell. If you choose a journey, journey and you bookend it, this is where that particular journey starts, and these are the stories in my life that actually will get me from point A to point B and that journey that the reader wants to see.
[00:10:30] Yeah. You can actually write 10 memoirs
Abigail Raeke: Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: About your life, and focus on different journeys and include different stories. Yeah.
Abigail Raeke: Yeah, there are different arcs, you know that, that you can take different slices parts of your life. Exactly. And the scenes are really what show the character arc. And so that’s really where you’re wanting to focus.
You’re gonna want to focus and spend your time on your scenes that are building your arc from the beginning of where the character was in the beginning of the book. To where they are in the [00:11:00] end of the book.
Suzy Vadori: Exactly.
Abigail Raeke: Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. And, and so what is their transition? And, and I could tell you it’s, it might be subtle, but if you don’t have a change from the beginning to the end of your book, you actually don’t have a book.
Yes. You might have an interesting life and lots of stuff happens to you, but if you have not changed as a human
Abigail Raeke: Yes.
Suzy Vadori: From the beginning to the end, you probably don’t have a book that people are going to want to read. You may want to document things
Abigail Raeke: Yeah. Um,
Suzy Vadori: for your family, but it’s not going to read Yeah.
In the way that people can see story.
Abigail Raeke: Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: Does that make sense?
Abigail Raeke: Absolutely. And actually, [00:11:30] and I don’t get, there’s no, um, plug I never missed, but a great, since we got onto them, plug
Suzy Vadori: it. Go for
Abigail Raeke: it. Well, I mean, yeah, I don’t get any, there’s no promo or anything, but drunk, naked, and writing by. I think Adair Lara, LARA,
Suzy Vadori: yeah.
Abigail Raeke: Is a great
Suzy Vadori: resource for, I haven’t one about
Abigail Raeke: that one. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a good one for exactly what you were saying to like understand the difference between what’s just sort of an anecdote and what’s gonna make a story.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah.
And.
Abigail Raeke: Her whole [00:12:00] thing, and this is true of scenes too, of where you’re wanting to focus your writing in fiction and memoir scenes have an impact on the character.
They impact the character. And that’s why I say it’s something that’s different. So it’s going to challenge the expectations of the character going in, and that’s where you get good conflict and then you get changed.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, so, so it’s not just about, and I mean, we are both. Other accelerator trained coaches, which is how we know one another.
But I don’t know if you use the [00:12:30] inside outline in your practice or if you use other things, but that there’s, it’s a really cool tool because it does exactly that. Right? It, it says what happens in the scene. Yeah. And then, and what’s the point of the c? And the inside outline is
Abigail Raeke: by CEO Jenny Nash Accelerator, and it’s an absolute magic tool.
Suzy Vadori: Okay. So I also love something that you said, Abby, which was that. You may have written the scene or maybe Jeanette broke the scene a different way and then edited it down. So, dear writer, take [00:13:00] note, because we focus so much on word count and not not letting go of things and we get get so attached to our words.
Do you wanna talk a little bit about that for a second, Abby?
Abigail Raeke: Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: And what that
Abigail Raeke: means? Yeah, absolutely. And this is where we talk a little bit, I think sometimes what fools writers, when you’re reading books you love. Understanding narrative technique and when a offer is sort of summarizing or when they’re may be narrating to move us faster through time till we get to the moments when we too slow down in time and be and [00:13:30] seen they’re doing it so well that sometimes the other narrative techniques can sort of fool us.
But the way that they do that, and in that particular example with walls is work, is that specific details. And to me, sometimes. When you’re generating, you have to write the scene to know exactly what salient details pull out for your summary
Suzy Vadori: and summary. I mean, we often think summary is telling, but like you’re saying, you’re still getting really specific and [00:14:00] I’m all about the specificity, right?
Like that is exactly because otherwise. You could let AI write it. Tbi, this set sentence. My big pet team with AI right now, there’s lots of them, but one of them is I don’t think that AI is going to replace us, by the way, because all it can really do is take everybody’s work and look for the common thread, which means that everything gets dumbed down, that there’s no specifics.
Yes, AI can not invent your world. All it can do is pull from somebody else’s, right? So those specifics are what are [00:14:30] going to set you apart. If you’re not using them
Abigail Raeke: Yes.
Suzy Vadori: Then you’re gonna lose your reader. ’cause it’s boring. It’s like my eyes glaze over and, and sometimes, you know, writers will send me a summary or ask me to work with them.
If they generate why 175,000 generated AI science fiction, would you edit it? Well, no I won’t because I know that I’m gonna be able to get through it because
Abigail Raeke: it’s
Suzy Vadori: gonna be so bland and
Abigail Raeke: so
Suzy Vadori: boring.
Abigail Raeke: Yeah. And you know, AI is still very conceptual and reader’s minds, we can’t. Visualize concepts we can [00:15:00] visualize, you know, our minds can wrap, we can remember concepts when there’s something that’s paired with it that we can remember.
And those are the specific details. So it has to be something that a reader can visualize.
Suzy Vadori: Absolutely. Yeah. All about the visualization and not that is your showing. And you know, like there’s some bleed over between summary and scene and show and tell. Mm-hmm. But they’re not exactly, they’re not exactly near.
Okay. So we’re talking about using summary in seeds and how to do it well. So when should we [00:15:30] use summary?
Abigail Raeke: The way I often define it is if it is normal, if it’s routine, if it’s not challengingly expectation or somehow different for the character, then that stuff can usually be, I call it, you know, zipped up.
You know, like meaning move us a little quicker through time. Another thing too, if everything’s going. Brilliantly for your character. If she has a plan and she starts doing it and everything’s going well. You can summarize [00:16:00] that like we wanna see characters in conflict. When is their worldview being challenged?
When do they have an expectation going into a wrong, into a scene, into, into a conversation with another character that is not going the way they expected? Those are good places where you wanna be focusing.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. Okay. That’s amazing. I mean, there’s so much to unpack there. Oh my goodness. I, I could talk all night about this, but a couple of things that you said there.
The first thing is, you know, if it’s something routine, if it’s [00:16:30] something that happens all the time, we don’t need to see it. We might need to know that it happens, but I see this all the time. There’s a few things right that writers don’t always know. Where cliche, like if you start every scene with them waking up and every scene ends with them going to bed, please cut those things, number one.
It’s the easiest way. There’s a reason why it’s become cliche because as newer writers, it’s actually the easiest way to start because we just think about the whole day and we drain the, I call it drain the well dryer. We say every [00:17:00] single action that happens through the whole day. That’s how, because you’re not managing the passage of time, you’re just kind of documenting.
Yes. But. Honestly, if you don’t know this already, please take note because in the industry it’s considered a markman amateur writer to do that in their scenes. And so just cut it out. And the answer is, you know, you even start the scene with the person still in bed. Just let them be awake and don’t start it with them.
Opening their eyes is not that hard, but please save yourself that, that mark, because now you know. But the [00:17:30] thing is, is we don’t need that. And the reason we don’t need it is because we assume that you open your eyes and that’s how you got to be in the sea today. We assume that you woke up today, we assume that you slept.
If you didn’t sleep that night, then maybe it’s worth zooming in and and knowing that’s,
Abigail Raeke: yeah, that’s unusual. Little
Suzy Vadori: unusual.
Abigail Raeke: Right. Exactly. It’s somehow that will be. Matter to your story ’cause it will impact your character in some way. And yeah, you, you made a really good point. The magic of narrative is time.
And that’s what, that’s what narrative technique is. It’s a [00:18:00] managing time, pacing, tension. All of those things matter a lot. And again, it gets down to that focus because if we’re reading, you know, if all things have the same important, you know, the waking up, the getting breakfast, the, and that’s all sort of routine and normal.
We don’t know that, oh, this is important. And this impacts the character once if it’s treated in the exact same manner, you know? And it’s all equal. So narrative technique, when you’re summarizing, when you’re, you’re [00:18:30] speeding up sometime and then slowing down into seeing, we know this all, even if we haven’t studied story.
Yeah, Meredith readers are primed when you’re in scene, when you’re beat by beat. Flowing story time. You know, using quote unquote real time in story time, we’re expecting a change. We’re expecting it to impact the character in some way. So if it doesn’t, you’re kind of breaking the contract with the reader.
Suzy Vadori: Absolutely, absolutely. And, and I mean, the passage of time is a really [00:19:00] interesting one because it’s something that it takes a beat to learn, and that’s your job. I mean, anybody can document exactly what happens in the day. And a, I work with a lot of writers who will bring me. Especially for memoir and not to just get stuck on memoir
Abigail Raeke: perfection.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. Sleep, perfection. But in this case it’s memoir because they bring me their journals from that period of time and they wanna just type them up. And there’s your book. Yes. The craft of this is dear writer, that you need to do the work and [00:19:30] decide what is important. Don’t make your reader do that work.
That is literally your job is to do it well and to make those.
Abigail Raeke: Decisions.
Suzy Vadori: Right. And so, and another thing I was thinking about Abby, as I, as Abby was talking about these routine things that we can assume happen, if it’s something unusual, like, I mean, everybody wakes up and goes to sleep. I don’t need to see, every time you use the restroom, your characters use the restroom.
And every time they eat, I don’t need to see those things. ’cause I assume that they’re doing those things or [00:20:00] they’d be dead. But if there is a pattern that you wanna set up, a habit that they have. A lot of times it’s hard to know how often to do it. I say use the rule of three, which is, you know, readers are really smart.
Abigail Raeke: Mm-hmm.
Suzy Vadori: So set up that pattern, show it to us a couple of times, twice, post together. Okay. They go to the coffee shop every morning. I don’t want every single chapter to have them going to the coffee shop because I know that they go there every morning. Only show me the times that they do it, and it’s unusual.
Right. [00:20:30] Or show me twice as they do it and it’s usual. Then the rule of three says the punchline like one more time later in the book. Set it up where something weird happens.
Abigail Raeke: Yes. Mm-hmm.
Suzy Vadori: Do it three times as enough, two times as enough to establish a pattern for us to remember it. Readers are smart.
Abigail Raeke: Mm-hmm.
Suzy Vadori: We don’t need to see them go to the coffee shop about 10 times. Yeah. Please cut that from your point.
Abigail Raeke: Yeah. And this is where, you know, narration can be really good and a line of literally like every day I go to the coffee shop. This day [00:21:00]
Suzy Vadori: something
Abigail Raeke: unusual happen. Yeah, no, that, that’s really where I always say it’s that the archetype people is every day we did X, Y, Z, and then one day we are all.
All our brains are wired to sit up at the one day because we know that every day we went down to the pond, but then one day floating in the water that we, that’s kind of the archetypal difference between summary. [00:21:30] Every day we did this, this, this. The one day is a scene. It’s we’re wired to say, oh, something interesting is happening.
Yeah. Now something’s different.
Suzy Vadori: Absolutely. And yeah, I love that. It’s such a good way to learn how to pass time. Yeah. What are we zooming in on? Okay. We are the show and tell podcast. We often talk about our reader ’cause we don’t wanna forget. This is a conversation. Your book is going to be a conversation with the world.
Yeah. And the one person that you’re communicating with one at a time is your reader. You talked about [00:22:00] the different narrative techniques within a chapter or a C mm-hmm. And so how do readers react to each of these things? What, what actually is different about reading summary versus reading C?
Abigail Raeke: Yeah, that’s a great question.
Teaching is. Truly the, the engine of, of, of narrative because it is what allows us as readers to feel like we’re experiencing something important and impactful to the [00:22:30] point of view character. Yeah. So that’s really what’s important about scene, and this is why I say we are your focusing your reader’s attention is so important.
So again, if there’s something that they need to know to understand for the context of the scene, like for example, that. My parents never forgot my birthday. So that’s, but for, you know, this writer Jeanette Walls, she had to set up the context that they were usually forgotten. So was actually different or interesting when her father remembered it.
[00:23:00] So she had to set up that context, but she summarized it, you know, and so that’s kind of. I hope I’m answering,
Suzy Vadori: but that’s literally,
Abigail Raeke: yeah. You’re,
Suzy Vadori: you’re literally telling the reader when to sit when the bridge slipped. Yes,
Abigail Raeke: exactly.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. No, absolutely. And so we can kind of sloth off if we’re watching people wake up and go to the coffee shop and, you know, have something happen.
That’s when your reader is paying less attention and starts to scan.
Abigail Raeke: So unless you, you are, you’re sort of world building with interesting [00:23:30] details Yeah. That they can envision and that’s where you wanna make
Suzy Vadori: Use it. Use it. Okay. I love that. I love that. Okay. I’m sure that all these writers out there are gonna be scrambling to go back to It doesn’t find the moments.
Uh, ’cause I think you explained it really well. So what if we find a scene that we’ve written, or like a chapter that we’ve written and we love it, but we’re like, woo, you know what, what should we do?
Abigail Raeke: Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: Are we just gonna like highlight it all in, Hey, delete. Like what, how, how do you suggest going about [00:24:00] trimming this step?
Abigail Raeke: Yes. So I talk about there’s sort of different layers of a book that really make a world feel vibrant and real. And I kind of think about it as like a play on stage. And there’s the action that’s happening on stage, and then there’s the setting all around it. But then there’s some stuff that’s off stage that we just doesn’t necessarily need to be on the page.
And so the writer has [00:24:30] to decide, is this front and center, or is this kind of in the background? So it’s basically what I’m saying is. Is this impactful enough? Is this different? Is this, are these moments challenging? The protagonist enough to be a seed to, you know, merit a seed, be seen worthy? Sometimes though, in order to to understand the scene, you need the information, and that’s where I would narrate or summarize, which moves you quicker through time.
Some things do [00:25:00] need to be cut, but if you’ve done the work and thought of some really interesting details, those details can remain in your narration. Take, yeah,
Suzy Vadori: take those three pages. Yeah, and, and take the most salacious things in there. Put.
Abigail Raeke: Maybe sometimes, and it is painful, believe me, you come up through this process, it’s hard if you’ve written, you’ve labored over, you know, a scene and it might be 10 pages, but truly this is, and you know this, like in professional writing, sometimes a beautiful 10 page scene [00:25:30] ends up two lines.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. You’re published. I actually have a story about that with one of my published books. Yeah. Because, and, and I think, you know, it is painful in the beginning, but you need to change your mindset. Yes. If you’re worried about cutting that 10 pages. You need to do what’s best for the bog. It kind of subs. I agreed.
Okay, so, so quick story here, because sometimes you need to write it. So don’t beat yourself up and say, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I missed this and it sucks and, and because I’m deleting it. And don’t delete it, by the way, put it in a deleted file [00:26:00] because I always go back through when I’ve finished my books, I always go back through that deleted file and see are there any cool details that I deleted that I could actually bring back in?
Not pages, but like details that I miss and usually there aren’t actually, but it makes me feel a lot better. So if it makes you feel better and it should then rather than just delete it, park it somewhere else in a different document. But this is what happened to me. ’cause you’re absolutely right. I had a book you in my, the Fountain series, the westwoods was under contract and I had to write [00:26:30] it fairly quickly.
And I also, you know, was still working in the corporate world and I was a mom of three and I was traveling a lot. I, at that time, I was traveling to Asia once a quarter ’cause I was on chief factories, my job before I got to do this way cooler job. So there were times when my brain wasn’t totally ready to write, even though that was the moment I had to write.
Abigail Raeke: And
Suzy Vadori: there was a time, and I actually remember exactly where it was. ’cause a lot of times I wrote on planes or I wrote in coffee shops. In this case I [00:27:00] was writing. I think it was a hallway, which means I was probably waiting for one of my children to finish gymnastics or something, like sitting on the floor trying to pound out a scene.
And it was a scene where Courtney, uh, the main character in book two of the Fountain series was entering a building that she’d never been to before. And it happened to be Ms. Cricks, who’s the teacher in the series. Uh, it happened to be her apartment building, but it was like a staff quarters. I had no [00:27:30] idea what was gonna happen when she got inside.
I mean, I, I did, I’m an outliner. I’m a quilter, which means I outline, but then I write the seeds out of order because I’m a little bit disorganized. And also I tend to write what I’m feeling in the moment. And that helps me get through it faster. Yeah. It’s a little bit harder in the end because I have to fix things.
If I’ve written out of order, make sure that it’s all complete. Mm-hmm. I don’t, I don’t think I could write another way, but most of my writers actually write chronologically. Mm-hmm. But anyways, so I was writing this scene, but I didn’t know what was gonna happen. So what happened was that entire, like [00:28:00] hour or however, however long it had, Courtney was walking toward the building.
It was like three and a half pages and she was stopping, and I don’t know, there was on the ground and there was this, and there’s that. And I mean, I knew it sucked, but I just kept writing through it. But I was aware of it and I, I had to write that because I was thinking as I was writing. And then the next time I came and had a writing session, I knew it was bad and I looked at it and I was like, okay, this is a [00:28:30] paragraph.
And so I cut it down. I went through and took the most, the best details. Yeah, which ones, which sentences were the strongest. And I made a paragraph and I took the rest and I put it into my deleted seeds file. And however many months later, the book was finished and I sent it off to my publisher and my editor calls me and says, I wanna talk to you about this paragraph.
Tell him this is the best paragraph that you have ever written. And I wanna know why. Now I maybe should have been insulted, but I don’t write you. But he is like, it [00:29:00] was like banging and she’s doing nothing but walking into a building. And I was like, seriously, dude? Like, here’s the story. Yeah. So, so you will like, so don’t beat yourself up if you’ve written that way.
Sometimes we all need to do it. And it actually made my writing aid stronger and now I actually wanna go back and fight. I wonder if I could fight, I mean. Obviously I know what happened, so I could go find a paragraph. Yeah. And but the fact that my editor, who I’d been working with, it was the second book I’d worked with him on, was like, what the hell is with this [00:29:30] paragraph?
Maybe I should have changed it and made it worse. And that’s the rest of the,
Abigail Raeke: but, but that’s exactly, I think that is such a powerful story of process that writers sometimes wanna save themselves from, from writing, but exactly what you described. Is absolutely where the magic comes, and that’s why I like to talk about narrative technique because understanding, you know, you as a writer understood, okay, this isn’t all gonna go in the book, but letting yourself go through that process [00:30:00] is, and then revising it.
Is where such strong writing comes from. And I also often advise my clients to write out of order.
Suzy Vadori: Mm-hmm.
Abigail Raeke: In that same way when you know the scenes, the important moments or events that are bringing your character through their arc, because sometimes. I’ve experienced this. I know writers who do this, we say, well, I wanna write midpoint, or you know, I, I know usually
Suzy Vadori: the climax comes to me first.
Yes. And I write that first. I love working
Abigail Raeke: back from the climax. [00:30:30] Exactly.
Suzy Vadori: It’s not how I coach, because I try to get people to do that and my brain works differently. Yes. So they’re like, I can, I don’t
Abigail Raeke: writing out of, or is great because we often writers try to write to a certain point and I say, don’t write to it.
Just write it. To your point, if you are, you know, in the hallway and your daughter’s gymnastic, you know, and you’re just need your brain, you need to walk through the scene with your, with your character. That’s brilliant. Because to your point exactly going back and revise [00:31:00] it, you’re gonna have really good stuff,
Suzy Vadori: GIA, it says.
Amazing. This has been so much fun. Abby, tell us a little bit about what you’ve got coming up and where can we find you?
Abigail Raeke: Yes. Okay. So I am an author accelerator coach just like you, and so I’ve been doing a lot of one-on-one clients, and I’m at abigail rate.com, but I am also then getting together with another coach, Libby Baker, and we are starting a program called Level five Lit, hoping to.
All writers [00:31:30] understand exactly this type of process because we all doubt ourselves with doing it wrong. But being able to talk more like this and and teaching some courses that are gonna help writers with exercise. So that’s called level five Lit. That is coming. I’m really excited to be Josh on that.
Yeah,
Suzy Vadori: we’ll drop the link there. Yeah. When we launch this podcast. So it will be available, and if not, you can join her rate list. So
Abigail Raeke: thank you so much, Abby,
Suzy Vadori: for coming on the podcast. Today. This has been amazing. Yeah. I just love, love, love talking, chop with you.
Abigail Raeke: Yeah. Thank you [00:32:00] so much for having
Suzy Vadori: me.
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