We started a brief series on Intentionality in Fine Art in the last post, and applied it particularly to Creative Writing. You can read this if you click here. The first article addressed Intentionality in describing scenes. In this study, we will look at Intentionality in the details of the story.

Plot

If you have much experience in writing, I’m sure you are familiar with the elements of the plot. They are setting, conflict, rising action, climax, and falling action. Whatever does not fall under one of these categories does not belong in the story. That may seem obvious, but writers show their amateur status by including details that have nothing to do with the story. They are scenes that do not demonstrate the conflict or the climax, not do they contribute to the rising action.

Most of these examples fall under the category of failed rising action elements. To be honest, this is really the hardest part of the novel to write. Most of us have a clear idea how things start and how they end. If we write murder mysteries, he know the conflict is when someone dies and the climax is when the detective identifies the murderer. The rising action is how the detective finds clues, investigates suspects, and ties together all of the spreading threads. All things stem from the conflict and lead to the climax. Everything gets the detective closer to the truth or is a dead end he needs to back away from. A scene where the detective has a tea service with his mother would be out of place, unless it contributes to the detective’s character development (or mother is the killer).

Backstory

The grossest offender in the unnecessary detail category is the inclusion of backstory. Writers love it and readers hate it. Authors deeply feel that everyone has to know a person’s past to appreciate how and why they do what they do. Sometimes that data is good to know, but mostly it’s a waste of paper. The best way to include backstory is to either include it in dialogue or set it apart in the novel.

The movie Drive is a well written story. Twice backstory is included in a way that it adds the information and still contributes to the main story. Both times, one character tells another character about someone else’s past. It is done in less than a minute,  so it doesn’t bog down the rising action. The other form of proper backstory inclusion can be seen in the Fitzgerald novel Tender is the Night. It is a method I have used in some of my own novels. The story is told in three parts with several chapters within each part. The main story is told in the First and Third parts. In fact, you can skip the second part and the main story reads uninterrupted. Book Two includes the history of the main character. It is written as a novelette stuck in the middle of a big novel, complete with the full development  of the plot points.

Elmore Leonard once said that he leaves out of his book the parts readers skip over. Good advice! The developed and seasoned author knows to include only those scenes that contribute to the story. Those scenes are written with only pertinent details. Everything in a novel is intentionally placed there by the writer for a reason, and the reason is that it is necessary to the plot. Another way of describing Intentionalism is to call it good writing.

Part One