Avoiding Filler (Or turning it into something useful)

I got over several hurdles in my writing, but now I'm concerned about yet another thing.

I keep writing those filler scenes even though I don't want to. Often, when shifting from scene A to scene B, there is a lot of things in between, and those things tend to span longer than either scene A or scene B (mainly due to conversation derails). The most recent example is getting 'A is heading back home' to 'A is interrupted by his friend, who is asking a favor (the favor is trivial)' to 'A does the favor, and in the process, important conflict starts'.

Usually filler consists of A's friend to explain his motives of asking her said favor, or, just conversing about his opinions on other characters involved, which while shedding new information about A's friend, adds no more than a penny to his character.

In other words, I don't want Side Character #7 to converse with the main character about how she constantly breaks her stationary in 400 words nearly every damn time I try to make progress in my story. It makes the plot proceed ever so slowly.

Have you guys encountered a similar problem, or have you any ideas on how to prevent this?

You recognise the problem, and you recognise what it's causing. Now look why this happens. What keeps you doing fillers?

In case it's just a habit, keep steady and delete all the filler that shows up mercilessly. Your brain will figure it out, "I'm only going to delete this later so no use writing it in the first place".

In case it's some deeper reason, weed that out. For instance, if you suffer from wordcountitis, forget wordcounts for a good while. Forbid yourself from looking at your wordcounts. Meditate on the importance of well paced fillerless work compared to filler-bloated sloppy blather.

The best way to work out filler is going through in revisions and cutting out everything that isn't necessary. Remember that a hint of something that happened can work just as well as an explanation of how it happened, and if it's not something you need to be telling the reader, just cut it out. For instance, if there's a jump between Alice heading home, and Alice doing a favor for Bob, as long as the reader knows what's happened ('Alice thought sometimes she was too nice to Bob, but she owed him, after all. That was why her walk home was taking a detour by the milk store.') they don't necessarily need to know why Bob is asking Alice to do it.

I tend to instantly ignore any filller. If the author doesn't have any interest on the side story why should the audience?.

However filler is a great opportunity to develop your characters personality, soul and interaction without a big villain.On the contrary If filler is just used as a time waster the audience won't bother.

What do your characters like to do when having fun/going to the cinema/eating?. Slice of Life as filler can be very interesting if handled well and used to explore what the main story can't.

Avatar the last airbender did some of the best filler episodes imo, I recommend you to check them out

edited 11th Aug '12 12:09:34 PM by FallenLegend

I get this problem, too. I think this is one of the times when you should reverse the old rule of 'show, don't tell' - not everything needs to be shown. Sometimes just summarising a conversation or a journey or an event is simply better than showing it.

You guys have some good advice, I'll make sure to make use of them.

The reason for this topic is because my stories tend to kick the maximum word limit in the nuts, and burn it in the incinerator. After getting a beta to cut on the word limits, usually the characters ends up off and the events feels choppy.

Honestly, I like this sort of thing. As Fallen Legend says, it's a good way to flesh out characters, and it helps dispel the impression that the entire world revolves solely around your plot.

I wouldn't even call this filler at all, really - "filler" in my book is totally irrelevant material, whereas this sort of thing merely doesn't advance the plot.

Filler is not neccesarily a bad thing. Look at the A:tlA episode Tales of Ba Sing Se. The vignettes don't move the plot forward or are in any real way connected to the story was a whole. What they do though is give us moments of insight into the characters: their motivations, how they act around people, moments from their pasts etc.

Quoted for true.

The way I usually do it is to make up short stories and vignettes outside the main plot.

My personal take on it is that filler is okay as long as:

1. There is time/space for it in the novel/show/etc (i.e. doesn't turn 200 pages of plot into a 1000+ page doorstop).

2. It provides something (be it character development, world building, etc).

3. It isn't BORING (this may be the hardest to figure out).

edited 11th Aug '12 10:18:49 PM by peasant

So they can be called 'not fillers' as well, if they contribute to the characterization? (even if said contribution is minimal?) That's a good point as well.

I have been told by some others at FF.net that I'm better off writing Slice of Life stories, but I don't know, it just doesn't click with me. Although I do enjoy seeing my characters doing mundane things with all the peace they get, it felt lacking and honestly, characters are hard to develop (for me) without clear conflict.