Setting your Gemstones

I've just finished working with an author on her first short story. It's in one of my favorite genres, allegorizing spiritual truths in a similar vein to Pilgrim's Progress. It was extra exciting because this was my second round of helping her bring her vision into a readable form, which meant I knew how much had changed and where new sections had been added in.

Many of my original issues with the story had been fixed, but something started to show more and more clearly as I read to the end. This lady is a professional proofreader—a role that I find about as exciting as the average man finds the outlet mall. Which means she's a genius at seeing the small details, but hired me to help with the big picture.

Falling in Love with our Gemstones

We've all been there. A particular scene, whether pivotal to the plot or revealing something vital about a character, will grab our heart. We can't help giving it more thought and time than other sections of our story.

But a jeweler knows the setting for the gem matters as much as the stone.

Build the Jewelry to Highlight your Gems

A story—whether a picture book with 300 words or a novel with 150k words—is a single entity. Even a complex series of novels with a dozen 'main characters' trading places still has to be of one piece for it to be successful. This cohesiveness is something we instinctively feel as we enjoy a seasoned author's published work.

What few of us realize is that this doesn't just happen.

While it isn't exactly a walk in the park, there's something exhilarating about building a first draft of a story. Like an extended brainstorm, whatever pops into your head can go in and figuring out how to make it work can wait for later. Creative brains are messy brains, there's no getting around this reality.

But raw creativity is much like a raw diamond: somewhat attractive with its milky sheen, but odd and lumpy and nowhere close to reaching its potential beauty.

Polish your Gem

I recently heard about Pixar's struggle to develop their story Onward. The raw idea had come to them years before with the final climax grabbing their story team's heart. And that emotional payoff just wouldn't let them go. Several times they tried different strategies to get to that scene, but it just didn't work. But they loved the thought of presenting that single experience to the world so much they never gave up.

A single scene was the sole focus of the whole movie.

While you may find you love your characters best, like Jane Austen with Elizabeth Bennet, if the scenes that shape the character's story are vague, flat, or confusing, the whole story loses its luster.

Shape the Perfect Setting

But like Pixar found out, without a whole series of events and settings to give the pivotal scene meaning, the story won't matter to anyone. Every word in your story needs to serve the needs of that gem of a scene.

How can I check if a bit of my writing is helping or distracting when it's thousands of words removed from the key scene? Here are a few ideas:

• Am I keeping the same feel? If the goal is a grand scene, the tone throughout the story needs to have a sense of grand scale. If it's intimate and quiet, the whole story needs to stay delicately told and hold the reader close to the characters.
• Does a distant detail help me care about the consequences of the pivotal scene? Especially in a first draft it's easy to add in all kinds of things that end up not forwarding the plot. As I go back through with my gem in mind, it's time to cut these darlings.
• Have I remembered to include elements that will make the key scene inevitable? Good authors in all genres use a technique called foreshadowing to help prepare the reader for the pivotal events of the story to make sense. God did this with Abraham's almost-sacrifice of Isaac; Gandalf hinted at the role Golem would play long before they reached Mount Doom.

Like a master goldsmith, you have the ability to shape and mold your story, but only if you consciously grab hold of this power.