When NOT to Connect the Dots
One of the joys of a Netflix account these days is the ability to re-discover old, beloved television. I’m a bit of an old fogey when it comes to the media I enjoy; I grew up listening to motown with my mom, and watching Nick at Nite, so I know more about I Dream of Jeannie than whatever was on MTV when I was a teenager. One old television show I’m happy to be re-watching is The Wonder Years. It’s a classic show that often beautifully taps into the experience of growing up and facing a large and frightening world, particularly during a time of fracture and conflict (the show is set during the 1960′s).
As much as I love the Wonder Years, though, I also love to use it as an example for what NOT to do when write a short story or novel. What works in the framework of a half hour television show — a framework in which we often expect strong, clear emotional setups and sentimentality — often falls flat in writing. A teacher of mine called this problem “The Wonder Years” syndrome.
Here’s the setup: you’ve managed to pull your characters into a nice juicy conflict and given them a great payoff. The action has come together into a nice, poignant moment. And then, you ruin it. You step in with a large heavy-handed voice-over and connect the dots for the audience, telling them exactly what it is they’re seeing, what it means, and how it is significant in the larger picture. If you’re familiar with the show, you’ll know that this sounds familiar; at the end of some great bit of poignant action, the voice-over will come in and wrap everything up tidily, telling you what everything means.
After the jump: how to resist the syndrome.
Not connecting the dots
So how can we resist this problem? It’s often highly tempting to fall into the Wonder Years syndrome because we as authors have already done so much work figuring out in our heads what things are supposed to mean. “Here, let me show you what I’ve done,” we end up telling our readers. “I’ll just draw a little diagram so it’s clearer.” The problem is that readers don’t want the dots connected for them. They want the telling gesture and an accompanying silence, a chance to do the legwork themselves. That’s what makes reading a very different art form from most television: it requires active engagement and a little detective work.
To keep yourself from falling into the Wonder Years syndrome, try a little experiment on your next draft. Write up your emotionally climactic scene the way you normally do, figuring out what everything means as you go. Then delete the last three sentences. Allow a little silence and a little space to let your last action hover in the air, unexplained. This also means you’ve got to trust your reader a little more, and have faith that the reader is as smart as you are and as capable of figuring things out.
