Efficiency. It means that every word that isn’t doing something good is doing something bad. Every sentence that doesn’t need to be there is a sentence that shouldn’t be there. Every paragraph that could be safely skipped is a paragraph the author should have deleted before publishing. This principle of fiction is easily stated, but like many bits of truth, it’s hard to put into application. Do you need to check every single page and paragraph and sentence for usefulness, produce an itemized list of purposes for every word? What are the purposes they could be fulfilling? However hard, these questions are essential to writing well, and so we must grapple with them- albeit we’re going to take the more concrete one first.

What Purposes Can ____ Serve?

This question can be asked at all levels and of every bit of the story that’s on the page or could be. What purpose does the scene, paragraph, plot twist, sentence, sentence fragment, word, or character serve? What, in other words, justifies them being on the page at all? Enumerating all the possible answers is a matter for a book and not an article, so we’ll content ourselves with the three central reasons- plot, character, and theme-, as well as three exemplary smaller reasons- pacing, setting, and tone. The first three are chosen for being the most separate from each other, for being the ‘over-categories’ that the rest are generally descended from, sometimes by interbreeding.

Plot is the most basic and integral of the three major purpose-categories. Plot is what makes a story a story and not just a character study or a theological treatise with examples. Every part of your story, therefore, should have some purpose in the plot- even if it’s through character or theme. Some parts of the story will focus almost entirely upon plot; some will only relate to it via circuitous routes. They should all, however, have some connection to it, however tangential. Plot is what makes what’s written on the page part of the story, not just a random aside, and thus in order to have the right to be included, a story element must connect to the plot.

If, for example, you were writing The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, having somehow time travelled and possessed C.S. Lewis for that express purpose, you might consider the merit of including, shortly before the climactic battle, a scene which shows the parents of the Pevensie children engaged in some semi-mundane duty in London. It has some relation to the story, obviously, but when we consider the possibility, we quickly realize the issue: it is related to the story, but it isn’t part of the plot of the story. In the reader’s eyes, it is a distraction and an annoyance, and the reader is right. The scene would be without purpose, here, unconnected to the plot and therefore unworthy of conclusion.

Technically speaking, plot is the all-encompassing purpose any element of the story must and will have; all the rest of the reasons are sub-categories of it, ways the element relates to plot. From the story’s perspective, after all, the plot is what’s important. Yet two reasons occur to make character and theme vital- if not quite equal- primary categories: the necessity of the two to any and all plots of any significance and the common role they play as central to the author’s perception of the story. Both character and theme are vital to plot. Character provides the actors which carry out the plot, provides the motive force (for some authors, provides even the guiding hand which directs the plot’s course), and induces much of the emotional investment of the audience. Theme- the theology of the story-, meanwhile, provides the story’s ability to endure time, its ability to cause emotions and thoughts deeper than fleeting moods, its ability to connect to and change the world. Of the two, theme is the more ephemeral and the less escapable- character can be reduced to cut-outs, but the author’s worldview will show, no matter what he tries.¹

That proviso out of the way, let’s consider character.

Scenes, complications in the plot, and every other element of the story are the building blocks within which the author displays his characters’ characters. By means of the story, we become familiar with the actors therein, fictional as they are, assigning them agency within the story. This purpose, then, is a worthy pretext for a story element’s existing- so long as something different wouldn’t work better.

Let’s consider an example; we’ll return to my ‘we possessed C.S. Lewis in the middle of writing Narnia’ scenario. We come to the moment when Edmund is given the choice of betraying his siblings to the White Witch, and we consider what justifications the scene has to exist. So far as plot goes, of course, it’s on solid ground. This scene sets up much of the upcoming plot, setting the stage for Aslan’s sacrifice, the defeat of the Witch, and the crowning of the four monarchs.² So far so good, we say, and we could move on, but we’ve already established that plot needs character. Does this scene play a role in character? The answer is ‘yes’, resoundingly: it establishes Edmund’s essential character arc, provides opportunity for the display of the character of his siblings and Aslan (in dealing with the plot complications it occasions), and it characterizes the White Witch, justifying her role as a cruel temptress.

Theme is a much trickier beast than either of the previous two, much more tempting to the ambitious writer by virtue of its prestige. Over-emphasizing character’s ability to justify a scene’s existence is quite possible- if, for example, the scene above only served to characterized Little Bunny Foo-foo,³ a newly invented character who appears only in this scene and in the background of the climax (playing no real role at all), the scene, despite accomplishing characterization, would be insufficiently justified. Theme, though, has prestige. Anybody who’s spent some time in the vicinity of English classes can tell you that the big name novels are praised regularly for their thematic excellence. Moby Dick or Pride and Prejudice comes to mind, as do classic works like The Illiad or The Aeneid. Writers, particularly young writers flushed with ambition to reach the top of their craft, think longingly of complex themes that future generations will ooh and ah at (or that they can boast of whenever somebody mentions their book).⁴ Be careful; this can all too easy lead to preachiness not worth the effort of reading.

Themes are an inherent and essential part of story, though- after all, what I’m really saying when I write, ‘Themes’ is ‘The worldview shown by the story, particularly that part it most thoroughly inspects’. Those big name stories really do deserve praise for their thematic intricacy and excellence. They achieve this excellence, however, not by neglecting plot or character for theme but by inculcating theme into both plot and character. Theme, rightly understood, will only one time in a thousand stand alone as a reason for a scene or major story element (though it can justify rearrangement or inclusion of smaller story elements); theme, rightly understood, binds plot and character into one coherent whole in the reader’s mind not by standing alone but by being part of the rest of the story. Be careful, therefore: when you justify a choice in your story as being conducive to the theme, you must remember how this choice affects everything else, must consider if by choosing theme you aren’t just weakening it, trying to build a house on stilts without the stilts.

So, the Big Three are out of the way. Let’s take quick looks at some secondary purposes for scenes, just to get a feel for them.

Pacing is a subsidiary of plot. Sometimes a scene or story element will be justified in part by the necessity of spacing out what lies on either side of it; sometimes, the case will be the reverse. Pacing, however, is never sufficient justification on its own once we’re talking about anything larger than a sentence (where pace and rhythm is an essential element of style). If you’re justifying the existence of a story element on grounds of pacing, be certain that pacing isn’t the only justification; if it is, you’re wasting valuable real estate that could be pulling double duty. When pacing is a reason for removal or for modifying a section (to change its perceived pace- see this article for more), be careful again to account for the other purposes that section is or could be serving. In the end, though, every scene should at least be able to go in the ‘accomplishes what is necessary for pacing’ bin, even if it wasn’t written to maintain pace.

Setting is an essential element of story, one I could probably have put with the Big Three if I’d wanted, at least in this context. Establishing the setting of the story- the circumstances historical, spatial, and social- is an essential part of explaining and carrying out the plot, character, and theme of the story, so be certain to devote some time to it. On the other hand, too much focus on setting can bog your story down (destroy its pacing) and bore the reader: for many readers, setting is a necessity for character and plot, not a virtue in and of itself, particularly when delivered by means of an ‘exposition dump’. Exposition dumps in general are an unwieldy and sub-optimal way of communicating the setting; integrating it into the story’s other elements is nearly always the superior option.

Tone is the emotional setting of the story, in a sense. Certain scenes and story-elements may be essential for tone or may need to be presented in a certain way to produce or maintain the necessary tone for the story. This is a valid purpose, but one that should always, if possible, be underwritten by other purposes, given its nature as a result of the amalgam of the entirety of the story rather than a separate element in and of itself.

What Do I Need to Do in Practice?

I’ve talked about a lot of stuff here, and maybe I sound like I think you need to make a checklist for every scene, plot idea, paragraph, and sentence you write, just to make sure it fits. I don’t. Applying this standard- that every part of the story needs to fulfil a worthwhile purpose- is a matter of experience, oftentimes. True, thinking it through explicitly can be an important part of the writing or editing process, particularly when we’re talking on a macro level- scenes, plot twists, etc. For the small things, though, it’s a matter of writing purposefully, not of checklisting to make sure you had a purpose. Be careful, when you’re writing, that you don’t write something merely because you can; be careful, when you’re editing, that you don’t retain something simply because it’s there or because it makes your wordcount more impressive.

Over time, writing purposefully will become a matter of habit and instinct. Through practice- and copious reading of other people’s works, preferably those better than yourself-, you’ll get to the point where things that lack sufficient purpose will, in most cases, start sticking out to you. You’ll start asking questions; you’ll try to answer the questions; you’ll recognize the problem. More than that, you’ll have the perspective to know what the problem is, the first step to fixing it. You’ll develop an understanding of how to weight the different purposes, where plot needs more attention or character or setting or theme. You’ll likely develop your own slightly idiosyncratic way of weighting them- a part of style. This all, though, comes with time.

For now, take care. Check the scenes of your stories; consider what purpose that element serves now, what purposes it could serve, and whether the purposes are worth the space it takes up. You’ll mess up, sometimes. I know I have- a draft I’m currently working on will need a c. 1500 word scene deleted or massively compressed when I get back around to that section. In the end, though, your work will be better for it.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – Check out this post for context.

2 – I think that there’s an ironic pun in these two words being juxtaposed.

3 – I hated that nursery rhyme as a kid, and thus I can only remember this name out of its entirety, having avoided it at every possible opportunity.

4 – Also a great excuse if what you’ve written turns out to be impossible to comprehend.