Hello, writers. I procrastinate spend time sometimes looking through online writing blogs, where one of the most common criticisms that writers make of each other's writing is "this isn't believable".
If you've ever been in a writing workshop, you've probably seen the same thing happen. Some poor writer sits there while his companions go 'round in a circle telling him, over and over again, that this character/event/action/story isn't believable.
And sometimes this writer will have the smirk on his face of a person who's no longer listening, and when he finally gets a chance to speak, he'll say, "Well, I find it funny that so many people say this event is unbelievable, because it actually really happened. To my aunt. Last summer."
Which is what makes it so unbelievable, of course. Fiction has to be believable precisely because it isn't true. Reality doesn't have this burden. So it seldom comes equipped with all the supporting evidence and associated character development that fiction has to have. If a woman goes to the beach and finds the engagement ring that she lost on the same beach 27 years before --which happens to be the last time she was even at that beach-- well, in real life, it's amazing. In fiction, it's inexcusable.
Although basically you can make anything at all happen in your story as long as you diligently and flawlessly provide the environment in which it can believably happen.
If you don't do this, you get an unbelievable story.
In Jack M. Bickham's book The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (And How to Avoid Making Them), Chapter 23 is entitled "Don't Drop Alligators Through the Transom". According to Mr. Bickham, a certain author, wanting to raise the stakes at the end of her scene, dropped an alligator through the transom. See, there was this hard-boiled detective meeting with this dame client, and she (the author, not the client) wanted the scene to end with things-just-getting-worse (which is in itself a good idea), and so she (the author) dropped an alligator through the transom.
You can see where this is going, right?
Tonight's challenge: Make the alligator believable.
Jim "Dem" Bones, private eye, is in his office talking to a dame with legs that just won't quit and a husband who just did-- she thinks. Has he taken the family diamonds and run off to Brazil with his secretary, or does he, OTOH, sleep with the snail darters? Dem says he'll look into it. But the lady has scarcely risen to leave when-- plop! An alligator falls through the transom.
You can set this scene anywhere you want, and change the situation however you want-- switch the gender or species of detective and client, whatever.
But the alligator has gotta come through the transom and it's got to be believable.
I haven't mentioned it lately, but Write On! will be a regular Thursday (8 pm ET) feature until it isn't. However...
Next week Write On! will once again be hosted by the talented and devastatingly charming GussieFN. A good time will be had by all, but if you subscribe to the series please make sure to look for it next week.