Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

by Lisa Cron

  Six Places Where the “Specific” Often Goes Missing

  1. The specific reason a character does something. Like most things, it can start off so promisingly: “Holly ducked into the alley, glad to have avoided Sam for the millionth time.” Sounds great, right? Trouble is, unless we know at that moment in the story why Holly has been avoiding Sam, it will fall flat. It could be because he’s been stalking her since 1967 or she’s secretly in love with him and doesn’t want him to see her on yet another bad hair day or she owes him money. Who knows? Each of these specific possibilities suggests a very different scenario, any one of which would help us make sense of what’s happening in the moment and allow us to anticipate what might happen next. Without a specific, we have no clue.

  2. The specific thing a metaphor is meant to illuminate. Here’s an interesting fact to add to what we already know: not only do we think in story and in images, but as cognitive linguist George Lakoff points out, although we may not always know it, we also think in metaphor.8 Metaphor is how the mind “couches the abstract concepts in concrete terms.”9 Believe it or not, we utter about six metaphors a minute. Prices soared. My heart sank. Time ran out. Metaphor is so ubiquitous we rarely notice it’s there.10 Ah, but literary metaphor is something else again—it’s intended to convey new insight. Literary metaphor isn’t hidden; its point is to be recognized as such. To quote Aristotle’s perfect definition: a “metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else.”11 The trouble is, sometimes the writer gets so carried away with crafting a beautifully written, evocative metaphor, he forgets to tell us what, exactly, the “thing” it’s being compared to actually is. Here’s an example:

  Something deep inside Sam was about to tear; he felt it pulling apart at the seams. He pictured it like a clumsy teen’s well-used softball, the stitching now a grimy gray. Once that stitching pops, though, it will become something else, as the cover peels off revealing something ugly and strange, something you would never suspect had always been at the heart of that once gleaming, achingly hopeful softball.

  It’s evocatively written, but because we have no idea what the “something ugly and strange” actually corresponds to in the story, or what point the author is trying to make other than that something vague and unspecified inside Sam is going to rip like a softball, it is also uninvolving. Metaphors have resonance only when we know, specifically, what they’re supposed to illuminate. Otherwise, although it definitely sounds like it’s meant to tell us something really important, we’re left thinking, I know this has great significance, but I have no idea of what. Nor should we have to spend even a nanosecond decoding a metaphor. It should be “gettable” when reading at a clip, and its meaning instantly grasped. What’s more, metaphors need to give us new information and fresh insight rather than simply restating something we already know, no matter how poetically.

  3. The specific memory that a situation invokes in the protagonist. Here’s another great start:

  The minute Sam threw the stinky old softball at Holly, he knew it was a mistake. If only he’d learned his lesson during that unforgettable eleventh inning at Lake Winnatonka Camp for the Clumsy during the summer of 1967—but sadly, no, he hadn’t.

  We’re left thinking, Wait, what lesson? Why was it unforgettable? Because without the specifics—what actually happened back in 1967—we have no idea what Sam should have learned from it, how it applies to what’s happening now, or what it’s meant to tell us about the dynamic between Sam and Holly. Because the reader has no point of reference, the best she can do is make up something. This is even more maddening than it sounds, because she’d then have no way whatsoever of knowing whether she was right. And worse, since the chance of her actually envisioning the specifics the writer left blank are about as likely as either of us winning the lottery, she’s now imagining a decidedly different story than the one the writer actually wrote.

  4. The specific reaction a character has to a significant event.

  Let’s follow Holly and Sam a bit longer:

  Sam was terrified that if Holly spotted him following her again with the softball in his pocket, she’d not only nix their spaghetti dinner rendezvous that night but would finally take out that restraining order. He was so worried about it that he didn’t notice she’d stopped to tie her shoe, and he tripped over her. Now she knew he’d been tailing her, there was no getting around it.

  The next day Sam went to work, hoping his boss was in a good mood, because he wanted to ask him about that promotion.…

  And we’re left thinking, Hey, wait a minute, wasn’t Sam worried about what would happen when Holly found out he was following her? What conclusion does he draw? What’s the result? The consequence? How does he feel? Say something, anything! What’s worse, because we knew Sam was extremely concerned about it, the fact that he’s not reacting an iota makes us wonder if he’s made of flesh and blood after all. Hey, maybe aliens really are among us.

  I know this example seems extreme, but it’s astoundingly common. Why? My guess is that since the writer clearly told us how much Holly meant to Sam, she figured we’d know exactly how Sam felt, so why should she have to waste time spelling it out? But although we can indeed imagine how Sam feels in general—say it with me—the story is in the specifics.

  The point is, characters need to react to everything that happens for a specific reason we can grasp in the moment. Of course, there may be a deeper reason as well that we won’t fully understand until later. In fact, the “real reason” for a reaction may be the opposite of what it looks like now. But what there can’t be, if you want your readers to stay with you, is no reaction. This is especially true when we’ve been led to believe that a character will be hugely affected by something that then doesn’t cause him to bat an eyelash. It’s one more reason to always keep in mind that the story isn’t in what happens; it’s in how your characters react to it.

  5. The specific possibilities that run through the protagonist’s mind as she struggles to make sense of what’s happening. This is ripped straight from the pages of our generic story:

  Holly realized Sam had been stalking her all these years. Why on earth would he do that, and what’s up with that softball? she wondered, racking her brain for an answer, but not coming up with anything that would explain it.

  This time we’re left thinking, Wait; can you at least tell us what the options were? What went through Holly’s brain as she racked it?

  For a look at just how much information you can convey in a mental passage before your protagonist delivers an actual response, here’s a revealing snippet from Eleanor Brown’s The Weird Sisters:

  She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. “A few hundred,” she said.

  “How do you find the time?” he asked, gobsmacked.

  She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don’t spend hours flipping through cable complaining there’s nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pregame, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in available reflective surfaces? I am reading!

  “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging.12

  Need I say more?

  6. The specific rationale behind a character’s change of heart.

  Meanwhile, back at our generic story:

  Once she realized Sam was following her, Holly vowed that if there was one thing she’d never do, it was have spaghetti with him. But when he texted her that the water was boiling and she had eight minutes to get to his house before the pasta got mushy, after a raging internal debate, Holly texted back, “Yes, I love it al dente, I’ll be there in five.”

  By now you know the million-dollar question: why did Holly cha
nge her mind? And the answer can’t be “just because.” We want to be privy to her raging internal debate, and what it is that finally tips the scales.

  Specifics Are Good, but Less Is Often More

  Before we get carried away and load up our stories with specifics as if they’re plates at an all-you-can-eat buffet, it pays to keep Mary Poppins’ sage advice in mind: enough is as good as a feast. Too many specifics can overwhelm the reader. Our brain can hold only about seven facts at a time. If we’re given too many details too quickly, we begin to shut down. For instance, can you make it to the bottom of the following paragraph?

  Jane glanced into the yellow room, her gaze quickly taking in the massive four-poster bed with the fluffy blue-and-green paisley quilt, the craftsman rocker, the matching oak end table, laden with books, dust, and a huge brass lamp with flickering flame-shaped bulbs, ominously teetering next to sixteen unpacked fraying brown boxes, the one nearest to the door full of old clothes from the sixties—leather mini-skirts, muslin halter tops, skin-tight knee-high crinkly white patent leather boots, yellow Mary Janes, bellbottom jeans, and a floppy purple suede cowboy hat—the other fifteen boxes containing everything that Matilda had collected during her very long life, and if Matilda was anything, she was a packrat, so there was.…

  Quick, what color was the room? If you’re thinking, What room? I don’t blame you. I’m guessing your eyes glazed over about three lines down. Because although the writer may have known why each detail was important, the reader doesn’t have a clue. And we can’t even pause to try to figure it out, because the details keep on coming. So by the end of the paragraph, we have lost track of not only the details, but the story itself.

  Think of each detail as an egg. The writer keeps tossing them at us, one after another, seemingly unaware of the growing number of precariously balanced eggs we’re being asked to hold. So somewhere around the middle of the description—say, the huge brass lamp—it’s one egg too many. The trouble is, we don’t just drop that particular egg; all the eggs go crashing to the ground. The more details the writer gives us, the fewer we’ll remember, proving, once again, that as with most things in life, less is more. Take it from iconic singer Tony Bennett who, when asked what he can put into a song in his eighties that he couldn’t when he was younger, answered without missing a beat, “The business of knowing what to leave out.”13 Why wait until you’re eighty to master that one?

  But, popular wisdom goes, there’s one type of detail you can never have too many of: sensory details. Writers are advised to infuse their stories with abundant, sun-drenched, crunchy, tactile, savory sensory details, the better to draw readers into the story.

  Really?

  MYTH: Sensory Details Bring a Story to Life

  REALITY: Unless They Convey Necessary Information, Sensory Details Clog a Story’s Arteries

  Like everything else in a story, details and specifics need a story reason to be there. This is especially true of sensory details. I remember reading the first page of a manuscript that waxed eloquent about how the warmth of the sun felt on the back of the protagonist’s hands as she drove down a quiet early morning lane, the way the taste of the sumptuous strawberry she’d eaten for breakfast lingered on her tongue, how the coolness of the steering wheel beneath her palms made her shiver with delight … and that’s about all I remember because by then all I could think about was how refreshing a nice little catnap would be.

  Just because the sun beat down on the protagonist’s skin, we don’t need to know it. Just because she could still taste the strawberry despite the fact she’d brushed her teeth, flossed, and gargled six times, we don’t need to know it. Just because the steering wheel felt cool to the touch, well, you know the drill. We need to know these things only if they supply a necessary piece of information. For instance, let’s say the protagonist—we’ll call her Lucy—thrills to the cool, pure sweetness of a rich vanilla malted. Who cares, right? Unless, with one last sip, Lucy passes out because she’s hypoglycemic—bingo, a consequence. It would be even better if it also gave us insight into Lucy, so perhaps by having her suck down the malted, the writer is telling us Lucy’s a hedonist who puts momentary pleasure over her long-term health. Or, just as effective, maybe Lucy’s love of vanilla is making the metaphorical point that while all the women in the steno pool simply adore chocolate, Lucy’s allegiance to vanilla implies that she’s not one of the pack and shudders at the marginalizing assumption that all women love chocolate. Hell, the reader might then think, I bet Lucy doesn’t have a closet full of impulse-buy shoes either or spend all her spare time getting facials and catching up on key celebrity gossip.

  As Chip and Dan Heath point out in Made to Stick, while vivid details can boost a story’s credibility, they must be meaningful—that is, they need to symbolize and support the story’s core idea.14 Remember those 11,000,000 bits of information our five senses are lobbing at us every second? They are sensory details. Yet our brain knows that we need to be shielded from at least 10,999,960 of them. The only details it lets through are the ones with the potential to affect us. The same is true of your story. Your job is to filter out the details that don’t matter a whit so you can have plenty of space left for the ones that do.

  There are three main reasons for any sensory detail to be in a story:

  1. It’s part of a cause-and-effect trajectory that relates to the plot—Lucy drinks the shake, she passes out.

  2. It gives us insight into the character—Lucy’s an unapologetic hedonist headed for trouble.

  3. It’s a metaphor—Lucy’s flavor choice represents how she sees the world.

  In addition, the reader must be aware of the story reason for each detail’s presence. Plot-wise, that’s a no-brainer: while in the midst of savoring the malt, Lucy slips from consciousness and flops to the floor. The connection would be hard to miss. As for its telling us she’s a hedonist, first we’d need to know she’s hypoglycemic and is fully aware of the danger lurking in that innocent-looking malted. This is the sort of setup writers often overlook in a first draft, but which can easily be inserted in the second.

  The third option—that it tells us something metaphorically—is the trickiest to convey. That’s because it doesn’t rely on something concrete—either physical action or our awareness of a specific fact—to make sense. Rather, it depends on the reader’s ability to grasp its subtext. That, in turn, depends on the writer’s ability to have laid the groundwork so we can intuit that Lucy’s chosen flavor of malt reveals the fact that she dances to the beat of her own drummer. Thus the reader would already need to know that the rest of the steno pool sees loving chocolate as something that defines their identity, which corresponds to a cultural conformity that Lucy finds stifling. Lucy looked around the diner at all the women slowly sipping chocolate malts as if it was some kind of secret handshake, entrée into a club that she had no desire to join. And so drinking the vanilla malted turns out to be a very courageous act indeed because of what it reveals about her character—it says Lucy is a woman with the courage of her convictions. A piece of information that, from then on, will color the reader’s take on everything Lucy does and every situation she finds herself in.

  Location, Location, Location

  Writers hoping for an exception to the needs-a-story-reason-to-exist rule often point to scenery. I mean, we have to know where the story takes place, right? The layout of the bedroom, the sagging porch floorboards, the weeping willow in the yard, the soaring mountain ranges—and who doesn’t love a beautiful sunset? As Elmore Leonard so shrewdly advised, “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”15 And a large part of what readers skim, if not skip entirely, is scenery. Setting. Weather. Why? Because stories are about people, the things that happen to them, and how they react to it. And while setting is where those things take place, so of course it’s vitally important, merely describing the scenery, the town, the weather—regardless of how well written or how interesting it might be in and of itself—stops
a story dead in its tracks.

  This isn’t to say that you can’t mention the gothic architecture, that it was a dark and stormy night, or that the town dates back to 1793. But when you do, it helps to keep George S. Kaufman’s old Broadway saw in mind: “You can’t hum the scenery.” We need a story reason to care how ominous the clouds are, how vibrant the city, how quaint the white picket fence. Often, description of the scenery sets the tone. As Steven Pinker says, “Mood depends on surroundings: think of being in a bus terminal waiting room or a lakeside cottage.”16 So if you go to great pains to describe the scenery—be it a room, a setting, an elaborate meal, or what your protagonist is wearing—you’d better actually be communicating something else. The description of a room should reveal something about the person who lives in it or hint at the whereabouts of the missing diamond or tell us something crucial about the zeitgeist of the community in which the story unfolds—or better yet, all three.

  For example, let’s turn to a master, the unparalleled Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and crib something from Love in the Time of Cholera. The following paragraph is a quintessential example of how the mere description of a room can be harnessed to provide insight into a character. In this passage, Dr. Juvenal Urbino surveys the parlor of his good friend and chess partner, photographer Jeremiah de Saint-Armour, who has just committed suicide.