WRITING FICTION
The best stories can change your life.
For me, the best stories (in novel form) are as follows:
Great Expectations Charles Dickens
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (though not strictly speaking “fiction”) Hunter S.
Thompson
The Dark Tower series Stephen King
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz
Watchmen Allen Moore
Jane Erye Charlotte Bronte
Sandman series Neil Gaiman
Walking Dead Robert Kirkman
World War Z Max Brooks
Running with Scissors (though again, not strictly speaking “fiction”) Augusten
Burroughs
The Stand Stephen King
The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien
Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare
Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
American Gods Neil Gaiman
The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Harry Potter series J.K. Rowling
Magic Kingdom For Sale, Sold! Series Terry Brooks
House of Leaves Mark Z. Danielewski
Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
Hamlet William Shakespeare
Spanking Shakespeare Jake Wizner
The Giver series Lois Lowry
TIPS
Write from your life. A good place to begin your own fiction is from your own
experiences. This is not to say you should write an autobiography, instead, look
at your own life and try to make sense o certain moments—perhaps small
moments that represent some larger truth—or if they do not represent any larger
truth, ask yourself what they could represent.
A good idea to keep in mind when writing fiction is to look for a place in your life
to start writing about where something changed: i.e.: a death, marriage,
graduation, first love, first sex, first heartbreak, birth, etc, etc, etc.
Or a moment of widespread resonance—something most people understand at
least on the surface level: Christmas, a birthday, the Fourth of July, summer
break, etc. In other words, something several people will automatically connect
with.
ACTIVITY: WRITE DOWN FIVE TURNING POINTS IN YOUR LIFE IN THREE
MINUTES, THEN WE WILL DISCUSS
Another place to start from is by retelling a story someone else told you. But if
you are going to do this, ask yourself four essential questions first:
How would YOU represent the story if you had to write it?
Where would the emphasis be?
How would you render the setting?
How would you capture the voices of the participants?
Whatever your answers are to all of these questions, you can be sure they are
different than the person next to you. A good place to look for stories to “re-tell”
is your parents. Think of their lives and what they have told you about them, now
think about how you would tell those stories (most of them will be flattered that
you took the story and made it into fiction).
EFFECTIVE FICTION RAISES QUESTIONS IN THE MIND OF THE READER, these
questions are FUNCTIONS OF THE PLOT—plot is in fact simply a series of questions,
one leading into the other—what you have to be concerned about as the writer is:
How early the fiction raises the question
How dramatic that question is
How desperate the reader is to know the answer to the question
How long the writer can delay answering that question
You can take all this information dealing with questions and plot and turn it into three
parts: MOTIVATION, CHOICES, CHANGE
Something MOTIVATES characters to make CHOICES that eventually lead to
CHANGE—boom, boom, boom.
CLASSICAL STORY STRUCTURE
1)
SET UP—introducing principal characters and setting, introducing
conflict, having an inciting incident that kicks the story into present
actions as well as raise the MAJOR DRAMATIC QUESTION, the
question the reader NEEDS to be answered
2)
COMPLICATIONS—do the complications increase? Are the struggles
more and more difficult?
3)
CLIMAX—does the climax involve the protagonist taking an action that is
dramatized on the page? Does the outcome address the MAJOR
DRAMATIC QUESTION?
RESOLUTION—Does the outcome resolve the story’s tensions? Has the
MAJOR DRAMATIC QUESTION been answered?
When is it advantageous to follow this format? Probably always.
4)
STORY OPENING STRATEGIES (SET UP)
1)
ROUTINE DISRUPTION—create a routine, then break it—Wizard of Oz by
L. Frank Baum
2)
CHANCE ENCOUNTER—similar to routine disruption, but this involves the
protagonist meeting someone he hasn’t seen in a long time—Oedipus Rex by
Sophocles
3)
ENTER: MYSTERIOUS STRANGER—another one similar to the last tow,
but involving a total stranger, a total new element into the life of the
protagonist—Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
4)
THE SHATTERING STATEMENT—the protagonist has never heard a
particular point of view, a particular “truth” before. Disruption? He hears it
and is now forced to deal with the fact that this truth is now out there in the
open—Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
5)
EXPECTATION VS. ACTUALITY—this is a set up that has a character who
thinks a new situation will be one way, and it ends up being another—“Where
Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
6)
THE ROAD STORY—your characters are in location A and they need to get
to location B—The Road by Cormac McCarthy
MOVING FORWARD TO THE SECOND ACT
Probably the most challenging part of writing a solid story will be making the middle,
“the second act,” as vital and focused as the opening. Ways to achieve this?
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
Ask yourself one simple question: How does this story end? Write toward it.
Ask yourself: What is the BEST possible ending for my character? Write
toward it.
Ask yourself: What is the WORST possible ending for my character? Write
toward it.
Ask yourself: What is the CRAZIEST possible ending for my character?
Write toward it.
DECIDE WHICH IS THE BEST.
Ask yourself what events are required to get your character from here (the end
of the beginning) to there (the beginning of the end). Write toward it.
JUMPING TIME FRAME IN FICTION
Flash forward—jumping ahead in the time of the story. This has a number of effects.
1)
It can take the writer out of the anxiety of figuring out what comes next in
the course of events. Instead, the question becomes WHAT IS THE
LATER EFFECT OF THE EVENTS THAT HAVE ALREADY
TRANSPIRED?
2)
It can lead the writer right back into the story by somehow revealing what
comes next in the story’s time frame.
3)
It delays gratification—it suspends. Readers know what happens in the
future, what they don’t know is how characters got there—this is an
INTRIGUING QUESTION.
Flashback—jumping backward in the time of the story that is presented as happening in
real-time scenes. One of the oldest rules about flashbacks is not to use them . . . ever.
But, when used appropriately, to reveal important aspects of character that could not
otherwise be revealed in the main story, they can be good—but remember to keep
something like this at a minimum.
CHARACTER IN FICTION
Big thing—provide information about your characters without appearing as if you’re
providing information. In other words, it is not just the information, it is the way you
present it. In other words, show the character in action to reveal important information
about him. EXAMPLE—
BAD—Bernstein cared a lot about his golf game.
GOOD—Bernstein slammed his Ben Hogans into the trunk of his Toyota.
Effective characterization is achieved through action and detail, not biographical
information. The action, above shows his anger at obviously losing or doing poorly. The
detail is in the descriptions. They are not merely golf clubs, the are Ben Hogans
(expensive golf clubs). He does not drive a car, he drives a Toyota. The details are
important because not only do they show the literal truth of the moment (he is slamming
his Ben Hogans into the trunk of his Toyota) but it shows deeper truths about the
character as well (he cares more about golf than his car).
TIPS
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
Research characters the way actors do
Play around d with your original conceptions
Write sympathetically about ALL characters
Give heroes or heroines a flaw
Avoid sentimentality (the best way to do this is to remain neutral—try not to
sway the readers one way or the other, let them decide for themselves who the
good guys and bad guys are based on their actions)
Remember, most importantly, characters are the choices they make and the
actions they take
DIALOGUE
There are basically four types of dialogue
1)
DIRECT (DRAMATIC/REAL-TIME DIALOGUE): This is the type of
dialogue you think of when you think of dialogue. Nothing fancy, just a
straight written conversation with breaks/beats/explanations/etc.
2)
INDIRECT DIALOGUE: When the writer summarizes some bits of
conversation, this is commonly used when characters are talking but the
conversation is inconsequential albeit necessary to the story.
3)
STYLIZED DIALOGUE: When dialogue means so much more than the
literal meaning (all dialogue is like this to a certain degree, but when the
writer is clearly and 100% going for so much more, when, for instance, the
dialogue might not even be happening in real time or at all, but symbolizing
something else entirely.
4)
ASYNCHRONOUS DIALOGUE: When there is a conversation going on
between two or more people and none of them are talking about the same
thing. This is closely related to stylized dialogue because the fact that
characters are talking about different things entirely is usually symbolic of
their relationship
THINGS THAT KILL DIALOGUE
1)
When characters say to each other what they already know
2)
When characters response as if they expected to hear what the other said
3)
When characters state the issues of the scene explicitly
REVISION IN FOUR PARTS
1)
MOTIVATION—At every moment, every character in your story wants
something. What? Go back through each one of your scenes and ask
yourself: What exactly is it that Q or X wants here? Is it clear that he wants
it? What is in the way of his getting it? Write the answers to those questions.
If you can’t answer them clearly, your scene might have a problem. Add at
least one sentence per scene that somehow (subtly, explicitly) addresses the
desire or issue most urgent in the scene.
2)
SIGNIFICANT DETAILS—Look for your details (an ash tray, a fork, a drug,
the name of a street). Choose at least one per scene and write one more piece
of description that elaborates on that initial detail. Each time you do this,
you’ll be adding a full sentence between detail and whatever follows. The
purpose of this exercise is to go deeper. Find something else to say about the
detail that makes it earn its place. is there something about it that your
character might consider, might dwell on? Is there something about it that
suggests themes of the story? Work it. but don’t make it decorous. Think
vertical, not horizontal. Go deeper.
3)
REPETITION OF DETAIL—Find a detail you mention on page one of your
draft. Repeat it on page five and page ten, putting some new spin on it with
each new appearance.
4)
RECOUNTING OF STORY EVENTS—Somewhere in the middle of your
story, in the territory of act two, have your POV character recount or ruminate
on the major story events up to that point. This can keep you well-anchored in
the drafting, and the reader well-anchored in the reading.