Writing Filler?

[Philip Overby]

This is just something I notice I do a lot, especially in sort of "journey" stories. Having characters do stuff without making it seem superfluous. For example, here's a bare bones version:

"Where are we going?" Gretchen said.

"To the black tower. How many times do I have to tell you?" Barth said.

"We should turn back."

"No, it's too late for that," Barth said.


OK, so this is just dialogue. It's not terribly interesting as it is and you don't get to know too much about the characters other than that Gretchen is forgetful and nervous and Barth is more headstrong. So is it better to leave it as is with just the dialogue? Or to gussy it up with some filler? Here's an attempt at filler (bear in mind I'm just making this up right now ).

"Where are we going?" Gretchen examined the shrunken heads hanging from her waist. She found comfort in stroking their leathery skin.

"To the black tower." Roland gritted his teeth as he looked at the witch. He turned back to the manticore's trail. Bending down, he winced in pain. "How many times do I have to tell you?"

Her hands trembling, Gretchen lit up a thin yellow cigarette. Sticking it into her left nostril, her eyes fluttered as she inhaled the pungent smoke. The manticore had already stuck Barth in the leg with its stinger. She didn't suspect the bounty hunter to last much longer. "We should turn back."

Roland stared straight ahead into the canopy of drooping moss, spider-webs criss-crossing in heavy gossamer blankets. He uncorked a bottle of Medusa wine and guzzled it down. "No, it's too late for that."

A smell of rot and old bones hit Gretchen as she followed the hunter. A smell that made the witch feel right at home.

I think the second version helps develop the characters, plot, and setting a bit more in various ways.

1. We find out that Gretchen is some sort of witch and Barth is a bounty hunter.

2. We find that Gretchen has weird ways to deal with her nervousness.
a. playing with shrunken heads
b. inhaling smoke up her nose

3. We find out that they are actually pursuing a manticore which:
a. is going towards the black tower
b. has already wounded Barth (this develops Barth as a character that doesn't give up easily)

4. We get the idea that this is a tenuous alliance, as the POV character Gretchen doesn't seem overly concerned that her companion may die, but shows enough concern that she says they should turn back.

5. We know they're in a forest and the "blankets of spider webs" suggest that more danger is up ahead. With Barth already possibly poisoned, can they make it?

6. The last narration gives the reader the impression that Gretchen is used to death and finds more comfort with dead things than living things. This could be played up going forward.

In the above example, I made Gretchen the POV character, but I think if I wrote this whole story, maybe it would be better from Barth's POV. This would of course be something I'd have to weigh before going forward or if I wanted to do multiple POVs.

So, what kind of filler do you use in your writing? Do you use it help develop your characters, plot, and setting in some way or just use it to fill empty spots in between dialogue?

I think too much filler can be distracting at times, but good filler can help bring out the story a bit more. The above example is pretty rough, but it gets the gist of what I'd like to do in my writing without making it too ham-fisted.

 

[Steerpike]

Phil: I think you are right about the second version. It does quite a bit of work. It's not "filler," in my view. If it contributes to the story, it's not filler. If it is filler it should be cut A lot of subjectivity on what contributes and what doesn't.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I've seen a distinction made between "plot-focused" and "character-focused" works, and while this is to some degree artificial, it can be useful for thinking about what you want to do with your story. If the characters who're involved in the narrative are largely conveyances for the narrative itself, this sort of character development may not be necessary. (Robert Silverberg argued in Science Fiction 101that character development can even be detrimental for speculative fiction, although I disagree with him in most cases.) On the other hand, this "filler" is not just useful, but necessary for writing a story that serves largely as a character sketch.

My current story is quite literally fifty-fifty on this--it's inspired by the narrative style of cutscene-heavy video games, so the "tactical meeting" chapters are largely character development (with a bit of plot-furthering), and the "night patrol" chapters are largely action-oriented (with a bit of character development). I think it's working out well so far, although of course I'm too close to it to really judge.

 

[Penpilot]

So, what kind of filler do you use in your writing? Do you use it help develop your characters, plot, and setting in some way or just use it to fill empty spots in between dialogue?

Here's an excerpt from my post in your thread http://mythicscribes.com/forums/wri...sion-doesnt-match-your-writing.html#post67612

Here's what Mary Robinette Kowol says about it in a exchange with Brandon Sanderson on an episode of Writing Excuses.

[Brandon] So the fourth principle of puppetry that applies to writing?

[Mary] Is meaningful movement. That idea is that with puppetry, you generally speaking don't have facial expressions. Everything that you've got is body language. So it has to mean something every time the puppet moves. You'll see a lot of bad puppeteers who walk into a room and they bobbed the puppet's head up every time it says something. We call it head bobbing.

[Brandon] Very descriptive. Very nice.

[Mary] Thank you. Most puppetry vocabulary is in fact just that blatant. The problem is that it's conveying no information, so you're just putting a lot of mud on the stage. My feeling is that when a character... any time a character is moving... again, because I can only show the audience one thing at a time, that movement has to convey meaning. If my character decides to pick up a water glass, there has to be a reason that it's going for that water glass at that moment. So that it's conveying either an emotional content, plot content... that there is some meaning that that is conveying.

[Brandon] So no extra words is what you're saying?

[Mary] No, I'm not saying no extra words. I'm saying... well, maybe it is no extra words. I don't... it's not so much...
No. A lot of times, again, you know that there needs to be a pause in a piece of dialogue. So the... it'll be something like... the main character is talking and she says, "I don't like what you're saying to me." She looked away from him. "I don't understand it at all." Okay. She looked away is largely meaningless. Because there are many... what is she looking at? So, what you do is... "I don't like what you're saying to me." She fiddled with the knife on the table. "I don't understand it." That fiddling with the knife on the table immediately starts to tell you what she's thinking about, because she's... if she's going from "I don't understand what you're saying to me" to I need to play with this knife...

[Brandon] Yes. Put that knife down, please.

[Mary] Yes. The two things that I've done there is that I've given you some emotional content and I've also set the scene. So I'm using that one thing I can show you at a time to do two things and I've made that meaningful.

 

[wordwalker]

The "puppet approach" really does help see the larger picture. The question might be, which things are you trying to "fill out"?

If it's plot and suspense that matter, simple "are you sure" pauses are still a real moment in weaving suspense back and forth and reminding us what's on whose mind. They look awkward if they're written in bare-bones, but for some styles that's actually best because it's consistent with how the rest is written-- or it may be that at this moment in the flow, anything more would be bad pacing and a distraction.

(Okay, I'd still hate to add a bit that's that plain, without a couple of words trying to jazz up the moment the right way. And I'd make triple-sure I didn't phrase things in a routine way that made it look lazy.)

But I think a lot of style is about consistency. If you like more details of characters, actions, whatever, and you think you have the right balance for how that density means less plot per story or bigger stories, sticking to that level of detail means a lot. A high-speed story probably wants at least a few moments like that in simple form, to crank suspense that extra notch. But the more detailed a story's tone is, the more rushing something like that sticks out-- so it's a starker choice between a rich half-page or more that covers a lot of bases, versus leaving it out completely or tucking it into another moment.