Welcome to...
The Novel Carnival
Five days of lessons, prizes, and invention. By the time the funfair departs, your novel may never be the same.
(in a good way)
This is the final day of the Novel Carnival.
Today's dare: repeat yourself
Today's video: why fiction is not ONLY about forward motion
Today's bonus: anything that happens once in your story, doesn't happen at all
Day Five:
On the final day of the carnival, the great show begins.
The great tent is full. The acrobats spin.
Madame Fortinbras has a waiting list of weeping fans.
The magician's hat produces a succession of penguins and raccoons.
A small child steals a shell in the mirror maze, a tiny curio that no one noticed on a shelf, and this change causes 85 people to be trapped inside, until the maze keeper tracks down the child, recovers the shell, and restores it to the correct spot.
The air is warm and festive.
On the big stage, you sit with the crowd and watch a curious performance.
Two lovers declare their feelings for one another.
You have seen this performance before: they've done it every night of the fun fair.
They haven't changed any details either in the words or the performance.
It's literally the same performance each time
And yet you notice many repeat attendees in the audience, and even several of the carnival's employees. Many tears are shed. At the end, the whole room applauds, even the people who have seen this four times before.
The Dare... are you ready?
Backstage, among the clowns scrubbing off their make up, you are introduced to the two performers. You ask, awkwardly, if they ever vary up their act. You don't want to be critical but you do wonder when they will exhaust their audience.
Rather than being offended, they seem concerned about you, your art. They ask if you are writing and how it's going.
One explains, "The audience wants to come on a ride with you. They can't do that if you are constantly surprising them."
But, you ask, thinking of your own writing, if the audience won't get bored.
"Being bored happens when you can't connect. And if you aren't repeating yourself, the audience won't know where to look."
- Rembrandt, the magician
The dare for day five:
Pick something important in your story — perhaps a sentence, maybe a conversation — and put it in again. Repeat it in a new way, in a different place: likely the stakes witll have changed in the interim.
If two characters need to have a difficult conversation, have it twice.
If the woods are dark, say so again in a new sentence.
If your character is supposed to level-up by the end, give them one more chance to fail right before they do.
Excellent!
Now watch your craft lesson and download your bonus for the day:
"In fiction, if it only happens once, the reader won't absorb it," says A, one of The Lovers."
"In real life, too," says D, the other. "If you only ever kill one person, are you really a murderer?"
"Exactly," says A. "It's only the second alien abduction that counts."
- The Lovers
Craft lesson: the reader only notices the second time around
Now get your handout for this craft concept:
Handout: Repeat yourself, repeat yourself
Okay! That was day five of the Carnival!
Have you tried out the dare, watched the video, and downloaded the handout?
THIS IS THE FINAL DAY. Wow.
Ready to join the leaderboard, and share your dare?
All you need is a one-sentence description of how you might apply the dare to your story: