Coordinating Your Story's Wardrobe

As an awkward teenager, I remember devouring all the fashion advice I could find. One of the keys to looking put together and stylish I learned then that remains as timely as ever is to be highly color conscious.

An attractive outfit will limit its color palette and repeat the same color in at least two accessories. Having too many colors is confusing to the eye and easily ends up looking like a thrown-together hodge podge. A few tastefully complementary colors and repeated accessory themes demonstrate that the wearer has put thought into their outfit, allowing people to focus more clearly on the person.

What Does This Have to Do with Writing?

Like a clothing ensemble we wear, a book is experienced as an observer allows their mind to be impacted by what we have chosen to draw their attention to. All authors, like all fashion designers, bring who they are to the table and shape the same basic ingredients into something novel by virtue of their unique sensibilities.

And, like a would-be fashion aficionado, the temptation for an author is to try to cram too much into a small package or to lose track of the overall impression they are giving somewhere along the line.

~While this does apply somewhat to nonfiction writing, I'm going to primarily focus on the techniques a fiction author uses to build a coordinating story "outfit."

The "Colors" We Use to Tell Our Story

The palette a visual artist uses hugely impacts the effect their art will have on the audience. Rich, deep colors feel weightier than pale watercolors would. A charcoal figure gives an utterly different vibe than a multilayered oil portrait. Primary colors feel more youthful, while muddy browns feel antique. The same shape can be rendered to radically different effect by virtue of the materials and hues the artist chooses. So it is in the fashion world.

For authors, the media we have involves using various techniques such as third-person or first-person point of view, past or present tense, flashbacks, chapter length, shifting viewpoints, and so on. Each of these lends a different 'color' to the story since the same plot can be told to different effect by tweaking them.

And, like the fashion designer who consciously limits herself to a small color palette to heighten the intensity of the finished design, a skilled author limits himself to maintaining a particular set of styles for the duration of the story to keep from distracting or confusing the reader. This is why things like head hopping are problematic; they switch things up too much too fast, doing to our imaginations what a mass of haphazard colors does to our visual processing center.

Find out more about point of view and head hopping at Writer's Digest.com

Coordinating Our Outfits

This is probably one of the most important principles that can make or break a story.

In a story, as in a fashion outfit, nothing is there by accident. Every setting detail, every event, and every character are only there because the author chose to add them. A reader instinctively knows this and anticipates the delight of seeing how each element fits into the big picture by the time they've finished the book.

This also means a reader is going to intuitively know when something wasn't thoughtfully blended in with the whole.

• When something seems important at the beginning and vanishes, never to be picked up again, it rankles.
• When something is important to the end but was never mentioned earlier in the book it feels artificial and arbitrary.

A skilled storyteller recognizes this reality and relentlessly shapes their story to avoid either situation.

Much of the work to bring these important elements into the story happens in the editing process. The creative process is inevitably messy, but that doesn't mean it's okay to present that primordial chaos to the world. Once we've spilled our guts onto the page, it's time to sort through the mess and choose the gems to accentuate and what to throw out as extraneous.

If you get to the climax of your story and realize something is essential to the tipping point, find a way to weave that element in earlier — ideally as subtly and naturally as possible so the reader doesn't catch on until it's the right time.

If you start your readthrough and realize something that took up a lot of space near the beginning got lost toward the end of the story, it's time to decide whether to rework the beginning or find a way to include it later. This doesn't mean you have to stay in the same place and do the same things throughout, but anything important (even giving a character a name) needs to have a payoff somewhere later to fulfill its role completely. For something small, this completion can come quickly, but climactic elements need to be hinted at far earlier.

One of my favorite novels that takes this intertwining of various elements to the nth degree, providing us with an endlessly satisfying read, is the book Holes. There are so many random threads that Louis Sachar, the author, brings together at the climax it's breathtaking. Even the peddler's onions from the flashbacks play a vital role in how the story plays out. The very name of the main character is a palindrome, and the entire book feels like a vast chiasmus. Yet, it reads like a natural, believable story. No wonder it received so many honors and has reached so many readers and viewers.

Finding a Personal Stylist

This may not be the first way you picture your editor, but in many ways, this is the kind of role we can play. A good stylist isn't going to try to make you look like someone you aren't. They take your sensibilities and help you accentuate them to best advantage. They may warn you when your habit of wearing socks and funky sandals is going to interfere with your image, but they won't try to get you to throw either of them in the trash either, just find ways to make them work for your brand.

The kind of editor to bring in for this level of work will be one near the top of the editing spectrum, that is, a developmental or substantive editor. These are the levels where the entire flow of the story is in view. From there on, the focus moves to issues that show up on a single page.

Some people are designed to think in ways that accommodate such massive blocks, but many amazing people are more trees than forest-minded people. If you tend to be a tree person, it's wise to find someone who can come alongside you to help pull together a coordinated and attractive story outfit that sets your creativity off with just the right overall look.