Why your training scenes are boring

Nathan Bransford reminds us that training scenes work great in movies—but they usually suck in novels.

Oct 05, 2024

We fantasy and sci-fi editors have read our share of training montages, and let’s be honest: Most of them are about as stimulating as alphabetizing the spice rack. While movies dazzle with quick cuts, eye-popping effects, drool-worthy physiques, and astounding stunts, books tend to plod through the character’s every fumble and stumble.

Don’t get me wrong—the power of a good origin story can illuminate a character from within. But there’s a fine line between character development and testing your readers’ endurance. Move-by-move montages slow the excitement down to a crawl. In the time it takes to describe our protagonist’s journey from weakling to warrior, entire civilizations could rise and fall.

That’s when I have to remind writers that their readers signed up for an actual adventure. Save the blow-by-blow bumbling for a newsletter subscriber bonus, and get to the good stuff—you know, the part where the character uses their hard-earned skill to save the day (or the entire world—we’re not picky).

Let’s get to it, O Writes-ers, as we deepen our practice of The Writes of Fiction.

Training scenes work in movies. They (usually) suck in novels.

Novels can’t get by in the same way on visuals alone or action for the sake of action, no matter how vivid your physical description may be. Since readers are so much more attuned to the characters’ motivations, readers are usually less willing to just “go with it” to watch a relatively meaningless scene for the sake of it being visually cool. Banter for the sake of banter also tends to ring hollow in novels.
Instead, in novels characters are more often thrown directly into the fire.—Read Nathan Bransfords’s Training scenes work in movies.

More on your character’s progress: Lengthy passages of dialogue or action without enough interiority leave readers locked outside the character’s frame of reference. When thought is saved exclusively for a post-action analysis, it often comes across more like a narrator’s explanation than spontaneous character experience. Inner life that’s tacked on in flabby lumps after the action or dialogue is over can feel forced.

So stay in touch with the characters’ reactions on every page—sometimes every paragraph. Keep the spigot of your viewpoint character’s interior analysis flowing. Infuse every page with their opinionated judgments and personal perspective about virtually everything they encounter.—Keep reading The art of the progress report: Breathing life into characters.

Have your fired Chekhov’s gun?

Another “unfired Chekhov’s gun” situation often comes up with the introduction of minor characters and, um, “spear-carriers.”
You don’t want to introduce the pizza delivery guy by telling us how he got the nickname “Spear” followed by two paragraphs about his javelin-throwing expertise — unless he’s going to reappear later in the story. And he’d better be doing something more javelin-related than delivering another pie with extra pepperoni.
This is a common problem with newbie fiction. In creative writing courses we’re taught to make every character vivid and alive. So every time you introduce a new character, no matter how minor, you want to make them memorable. You want to give them names and create great backstories for them.—Read Anne R. Allen’s Writers, have you fired Chekhov’s gun?

More on action-reaction dynamics: When characters fail to react to what’s happening around them, it’s as if nothing is happening at all. A snappy line of dialogue goes nowhere if it doesn’t get under someone’s skin. The first glimpse of a long-sought clue builds no excitement if nobody notices it. A punch in the nose might as well not have landed if it doesn’t start or end a disagreement.

When characters don’t react to the conversations and events around them, readers will assume they don’t care. If the characters don’t care, why should readers?—Keep reading 3 action-reaction misfires that flatten your writing.

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How to point readers’ attention in the right direction

In general, we’d lampshade a line, plot event, or element of our story that might pull readers out from their immersion, due to plot holes, implausibility, coincidences, illogic, etc. The lampshade attempts to keep readers in the story by getting them to trust our storytelling and/or writing ability, regardless of their first impressions.
The methods we might use to get readers to trust us fall into several categories, so let’s break down those categories — going from “usually more explicitly lampshaded” to “usually more subtly lampshaded” — and the reasons for when and why we might lampshade an element in our writing…—Keep reading Jami Gold’s How to point readers’ attention in the right direction.

More on story logic: It’s easy to blame the tinny, artificial quality of an unconvincing story on external factors: plot holes, improbable scenarios. We just don’t believe that the plot could happen that way.

But dip into any well-written speculative novel or a tightly crafted psychological thriller, and you’ll see that readers are keen to be led into all sorts of farfetched nooks and crannies. They’ll overlook a certain amount of hand-waving and even step willingly over minor plot holes as long as the characters are all in.

If characters forge a fathomable path into the story through their thoughts and reactions and emotions, readers will dive in alongside them.—Read more at The link between character thought and credibility.

The problem with avoiding “formula”

Romances with other elements like a mystery or the paranormal often lose sight of the romance and let the other genre drive the plot. Part of this problem is poor branding or a misunderstanding of what a romance is.
If you want to break the rules of a genre, you must understand them first as well as the audience’s expectations and then, very carefully, make your changes so that they make sense within the genre or genres. Then you must brand the book as the correct genre or genre cross-mix so you find the right readers for your book.—Keep reading Marilynn Byerly’s The problem with avoiding formula.

More problems from writing to a specific formula: In any discussion of story structure, the three-act model inevitably dominates the conversation. Even as plotting methods such as Save the Cat, the Hero’s Journey, and the Snowflake Method gain popularity, the classic beginning-middle-end form reaching back to the dramatic theories of Aristotle remains the essential core.

But here’s the rub: Three-act structure produces a disproportionately large act in the middle of a novel—the double-stuff cream in the three-act Oreo—leaving writers with a puffy, gooey act notoriously recognized as the most difficult section to write. Act 2 of a three-act story is twice the length of the other acts, forcing writers to combat the infamous “saggy middle” effect using a hodge-podge of plot tangents and pacing tricks.—Keep reading The missing link in three-act structure.

Fiction Fuel

A writing tutor I know refuses to talk in terms of "submit" and "reject", but instead "offer" and "decline": a much more equal relationship.—Emma Darwin

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