Below you will find six true statements about writing fiction today.
True, that is, if your intention is to compete for readers, either via traditional publication or through self-publishing.
This is what astute writers — many with buckets of blood lost in pursuit of these truths — have discovered as contradictions to what some consider to be the conventional wisdom.
1. Not all story ideas are viable as the basis for a novel.
Nobody is going to stop you from pursuing a weak story idea. Yet, based on results (from someone who has read and evaluated many hundreds of story idea from newer writers), and as my colleague Art Holcomb recently said to me, “We need to find a way to help these people land on better story ideas.” That statement, which I agree with wholeheartedly, was part of the impetus for this book.
Among the common pieces of advice from the front of the workshop room is this: Write what you’d like to read. Write what you know. Write for you. It’s hard to argue these points, until you realize (which new writers hardly ever realize) that what you like to read, or what you know, just might reside within a small demographic.
There are specific criteria for a story idea what works. In the same way that there are specific criteria for someone trying out for a job as a sumo wrestler.
2. A manuscript can’t fully work until the entire story is known to the author.
When a writer begins a draft without an ending in mind—even as a temporary placeholder—that draft is merely an extension of the search for story.
In fact, it is only that, because an ending discovered mid-draft is destined for a major, if not complete, rewrite. Everything that has been written prior to that moment in which an ending crystallizes requires careful analysis, which almost always involves massive, necessary rewriting. Because we cannot foreshadow a story in which the ending remains unknown, nor can we set up that ending.
Writing a draft without an ending in mind is a consequence of your choice of process (because this is just as true if you are compiling an outline). It may serve you if you understand that you are still in search of an ending, and that the draft will need to be re-evaluated… and it may sink you if you think you can just bolt on the sudden inspiration for story resolution at the end of your early-draft-in-process.
The latter is like someone deciding they want to become a doctor and practice medicine as a career… at the age of 59.
3. Genre fiction is not all about the characters.
Writers and gurus who say this—and they are legion—are at best only partially right. For literary fiction, this is often true. But genre stories are about how a character responds to a calling, to the solving of a problem, via actions taken and opposition encountered, thus creating dramatic tension that shows us the truest nature of who they are. Genre fiction uses plot to illuminate character, while literary fiction turns that inside out, with the primary dramatic tension coming from within the characters.
4. It isn’t a story until something goes wrong.
Carve this into the hard plastic that surrounds your computer monitor. Dramatic tension stemming from something gone wrong is the lifeblood of fiction, in any genre, including literary works (which tend to be driven by internal conflict versus the external focus of genre-based stories). Conflict is essential to fiction, to an extent you could argue that it is the most critical element of a story among a short list of other critical elements, all with available criteria to help us assess and optimize.
A 350 page guided tour of the amazing story world that came to you one night in a dream… that just won’t ever work, if that’s all there is.
5. A story isn’t a situational snapshot. It is a movie in the reader’s head.
This is critical context, and it speaks to one of the most common mistakes newer writers tend to make. Theme and setting and history and character backstory—all of which are common sparks for the original story idea—need to be framed within the unspooling forward motion of the narrative along a dramatic spine (drama stemming from conflict), in pursuit of a dramatic question, facing obstacles along the way, driven by things that happen—to, and because of, your protagonist—rather than a static snapshot of what is, which too quickly can become an essay or a manifesto about a specific condition or belief.
Two people drive off a bridge, land upside down, and are trapped there. For three horrible days. And then… they die. The end. That’s a story idea that won’t get a call back from an agent or an editor, no matter how well its been written.
6. Structure is omnipresent in a story that works.
Structure is, for the most part, a given flow of unspooling exposition, rather than a unique invention, too often linear and episodic, to fit the story you are telling. It is not something you get to invent, nor is it unique to you or the story you are writing. Rather, like gravity, it is a universal principle of story, heading in only one direction.
Nor is it a formula, because you are free to do what you’d like within this given flow. The game of golf requires that you play specific holes in a specific order. There is no rule about which clubs you use at any point along the hole, though there are expectations and best practices that show you the common wisdom. As a professional, you concede that nobody has won a championship putting with a fairway wedge.
That caveat — as a professional — applies to all of these points. Hopefully, it also applies to your writing aspiration. Now you know. There are lines on the playing field, and ingrained expectations from the cheap seats.
These excerpts are taken from my new craft book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves.” Feel free to share with your writer friends, directly or via social media.
