The Week In Writing
Here’s another problem: going down the rabbit hole.
We’ve all been there: the storyteller who isn’t an effective storyteller. They start telling you what they are going to tell you, and you’re with them…so far. You know what is coming. Except you never get there.
Instead, you get every detail -- so much detail and way too much information -- that you do not need for the story. Often, this is where the listener has no choice but to finally jump in and ask, “So what happened? Did you (fill in the blank)?”
In his book Developmental Variation and Learning Disorders, Dr. Mel Levine identifies “poor narrative sequencing” as a possible manifestation of a Sequential Ordering Problem, or what I like to call being stuck in the middle. The student has the beginning, ones hopes that there will be an end, but, for the moment, they cannot get there because they are in a muddle in the middle.
Another reason this may come up is what Levine refers to as “sense of the audience” (or lack thereof) which can be a sign of a Higher Order Cognition problem. For such storyteller, it is almost as if there is no audience, and they are simply in their head but speaking each thought and detail aloud.
How to support such students?
First, signal how interested you are in their story. Let them know how hard you think they worked on it and how much you want to find out what is going to happen.
Second, use positive language to reinforce said interest, i.e. “I love the dialogue you used for your characters and the way they are interacting with each other.”
Finally, remind them that they want to keep their reader engaged, and that in order to do so, their story should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Asking them to identify what information is crucial to the story and what is not can help writers stay on track with the stages of their project, whether it be fiction, non-fiction, or academic assignments.