Minimizing the Time to Fun
A post about cutting to the chase
So, last week I mentioned I’m working on a comedic thriller set during the Cold War. And with that book I am doing something that I am often a little judgmental about. (I would argue that a key part of becoming a professional writer is becoming judgy about other people’s writing, but that’s another post…) I am doing that thing where you show an exciting bit of the story from near the end, and then you flash back, and spend most of the book explaining how things got that way.
This is a pretty time common technique. I just saw it most recently on Season 1 of Your Friends and Neighbors, which is a fantastic show I thoroughly recommend. That show started with a man stumbling over a murder and then spent its first half getting him back to that point. Basically, the flash forward prologue creates a little tension which can get you through the character-building lull that almost inevitably follows. But it’s precisely that fact—the idea that the prologue signals “don’t worry, the fun is coming after a bit”—that makes me suspicious about it. Because the prologue ends up feeling like a bit of a crutch. Because shouldn’t the character development be fun too? Shouldn’t it all be fun?
And now… the inevitable tangent.
This will be surprising to no-one, but I’m a big gamer. Mostly video games. Board games when I can talk people into spending several hours micromanaging fantasy heroes with me. But I just started playing a long, involved roleplaying game the other night and… it put me to sleep in short order. And then it did the next night too. Now, is this in part because I’m playing these games at 11:00 pm on subsistence levels of sleep? Well, does the pope wear a silly hat? But I play a lot of video games under these circumstances and involuntary slumber isn’t necessarily a common occurrence.
Really, the problem with the videogame is essentially that it’s slow. And it’s slow because it’s over-written. There’s just a ton to read. Except… I like reading. It’s one of the main things in my spare time (when not playing video games anyway). So, why in this format, is it making my eyelids heavy?
Well, I think a lot of it is to do with the sort of promises a video game makes, and the sort of thing I am looking for out of a video game. It’s a roleplaying game, so yes, I am expecting some sort of epic adventure. But it’s also not an epic fantasy book. And it’s not an epic fantasy movie. It’s a game. I’m expecting some gameplay. Some combat. Some interesting and meaningful decisions. And with this particular video game, it can take a long time get to those things. There is a lot of fun to be had in the game, but the gaps between those moments of fun can be protracted.
In online shooter games like Call of Duty and Battlefield there’s often talk of “time to kill.” Essentially how long do you have to go before you get to shoot someone? Because in those games, shooting at someone is the fun. So, they try to get you into the action pretty quickly.
With the video game I’m playing right now, I think essentially my biggest complaint is that the “time to fun” is protracted. It’s not that the character development, and storytelling is bad. It’s just delaying the time to the most fun bits. The ratio of quiet to loud is a little off.
OK, I’m going to try to pull this back together. Bear with me. But last night, I started to think about how that idea of “time to fun” could be applied to writing. And it occurred to me that that’s what the little flash forward prologue that I’m deploying, and that Your Friends and Neighbors deployed, and which is so common in so many books is doing. It’s cutting the time to fun down to zero right at the beginning of the book. It’s getting your right into the good stuff. And it’s doing so very efficiently.
So maybe, I’ll be a little less judgmental about those sorts of openings (although… probably not), but I think perhaps there’s a broader lesson here as well. Because I think it’s probably a good idea to understand what exactly is fun about your book. Or what sort of fun your theoretical readers will be looking for.
A lot of that is going to come from the ostensible genre you’re writing. Is it a murder mystery? Well then there better be a mysterious murder early on. There better be some investigating, and clues, and red herrings. Because that’s what’s fun to people who read those things.
But writing for a nonexistent reader is always tricky, and shamelessly complying to genre expectations isn’t always (or even often) the secret to fun. So, it’s good to know what it is about your book specifically that makes it fun. Is it the prose style? Is it the interaction between the characters? Is it the setting? It could be any or none of those things. It could be all of those things. It’s not really important what it is. It’s just important you know what it is.
As an aside… In my experience this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. The thing you think is the fun thing may not actually be the fun thing in the execution. As a writer, you’re often too close to a book to be truly objective about it. This is where people like beta readers and editors can save you. They can help identify exactly what was fun about reading your book.
OK, back to my main point: a lovely piece of writing advice is Elmore Leonard’s “leave out the boring bits” and maybe I could have truncated this whole post by just writing that. But I do think perhaps it’s a little more nuanced than that. And perhaps “minimize the amount of time between the fun bits” is a less pithy, but more practical way of expressing my take on the idea. Knowing what it is about your book that’s fun and making sure you supply that thing (or those things) frequently is going to keep readers engaged. And shortening the parts that aren’t the fin thing will do the same, even if those parts are often things you think would help. That’s why, for example, characters are often underdeveloped in action thrillers—because the fun is the action and the thrills.
Basically: maximum fun. Reading as hedonism. That’s what I’m advocating here. Or at least, the reasonable version of that.
Now, please, go forth and be very judgmental about everything I’ve written here.
Thank you for reading Something’s a Little Off. Fun fact: I have a novella coming out on September 15th. You can pre-order it today.