“Change” is instrumental in our fiction.
An agent or editor and readers may pass on your work if “change” isn’t there or if the change isn’t handled well.
Sometimes we forget to update or show changes with simple things: time, day, weather, distance, things affecting the five senses, place. Scene by scene, do we remember or know where we are? Did time pass? Could your novel or short fiction be more interesting if location or weather changed scene to scene?
If your story unfolds in only one place, how does that place change over time?
What about the big things that need to change—character and plot?
“Great stories are all about changes of fortune and the principal actions that bring them about. In real life, every action we take as heroes brings about a change of fortune. It is an extremely important pattern, and they are two of the most important and useful things a storymaker can know about story and a human being can know about life.” ~ Stealing Fire From the Gods, by James Bonnet
For change to happen, of course, you must set up something that needs changing in either your protagonist or the situation the character is in with the antagonist.
Nancy Kress, in Dynamic Characters, gives great advice:
“Change is precisely what you must have if the fiction is to work, even though some story elements may stay the same. Change distinguishes main characters from spear carriers. You the novelist not only have to know who your protagonist is, you also have to figure out what he becomes.
“But is it really necessary that characters change? Well, no. Something has to change, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the characters. There are three possibilities: the situation-change novel [a detective is handed a case she solves by the end], the reader-change novel [the literary novel that piles on details in hopes to change how the reader perceives the characters or the world], and the character-change novel [most novels, where the character changes or grows, not always for the better].”
Make a list of what or who changes or does not in your novel scene by scene and by page number. Are there gaps? Too much sameness of anything for too long? Is the change too subtle? Or over-done and confusing?
Revise for glory.
Christine DeSmet: Author 