First Experiences in Writing Fiction

[Nabeel]

Spoiler alert: I have to admit that there's no obvious question or assertion in this posting. But if anyone wants to take the trouble to read it and then pass on some responses, I'd be grateful.

Well, I've finally done it. New Year's Resolution in January, and then starting to write fiction in May. A Creative Writing group opened two minutes from my house, and I decided that I just couldn't ignore this. It's a small, friendly, and highly appreciative group, and it gives me just enough stimulus to feel I've got to produce something each week.

I have written 7 non-fiction works, so I'm not new to what might be called 'word-craft'.

But I have now written three short stories. They are all very short: between 2,000 and 3,500 words. I have enjoyed writing them. There have been some evenings when I just felt too tired to write non-fiction, and so switched to writing fiction, and the words just flowed.

Another big difference is that I can write fiction with a glass of wine by my PC, but I can't do that with non-fiction.

Crich and several others among you have recommended various structure-enhancing devices. I appreciate the advice, but I find I'm just not thinking along those lines. This idea of a type of spatial representation of narrative just doesn't make sense to me. Instead, I find I'm thinking in terms of several snapshots, or perhaps video clips, in a line. I need to get the right clips, and I need to get them in the right order. The nearest I come to a structure is just sorting them out, scene by scene.

I find I'm reluctant to write dialogue, and this is something that the creative writing tutor has picked me up on. I prefer paraphrase, with a few key exchanges in 'real' dialogue. Is this important?

I'm finding the descriptive element relatively easy. Basically, I don't bother with the 'he was tall man with brown hair and a square jaw' stuff. I find it boring to read, so I don't bother writing it. But more interesting is giving the reader some details of physical location without making it sound like an architectural survey.

I'm consciously experimenting with styles: one story in the first person, one in the present tense.

More-or-less as an exercise, I'm going to try writing a series of short stories round the theme of 'lost'.

I'm sending these out to friends, and I'm lucky enough to have a couple of literature lecturer collegues: I am pestering them for opinions. One problem is that while - so far - everyone has been extremely positive, they make different suggestions about improvements and revisions. I guess I'll just have to think for myself.

I'm still not sure where to go with this. Maybe it's just an interesting hobby. Maybe I'll upload the package onto Smashwords, and wait for something to happen. Maybe I'll really work on these and approach an agent. At the moment I don't know.

But it is fun!

N.

[crich70]

Maybe you will find your form in Flash Fiction. It;s short enough that you don't have to worry about outlining a lot of scenes etc.

[gmw]

Welcome to the club, Nabeel.

You do realise that you might be making a mistake? Writing is addictive. It can take up huge amounts of your time, even when you're not actively writing your head will either be in a story or noticing things that seem to be a part of a story (because everything is). It rarely pays well, if anything at all. You'll rarely be completely satisfied. But you will do it anyway ... because when it's working there is nothing else quite like it.


I've said that I don't plan my writing, but that's a simplification of the truth. I start with, as you describe it, snapshots or video clips in my head. At this point I know nothing about the story. For me, the only way forward has been to write those images, to immerse myself in the scenes so that I can meet the characters and see what they're like. With that done, I step back and try and work out what it means; who are these people, why are they here, how did they get there and where are they going. I still tend to avoid detailed planning, but after a while I know where things are headed and so I try to work out what should happen next, and next and next.


Creating natural sounding dialogue is difficult. One of the problems is that normal/real conversations aren't suitable for narratives. People waffle on a lot (just look at how much I've written already ). If you think about it too much you just become self-conscious and get nowhere. My best advice is to read a lot. Find authors that do it well, Stephen King springs to mind, he's an author that manages to impart a lot of information about his characters through the dialogue.

And dialogue is important. It's too easy to fall into passive story telling when you avoid dialogue. Dialogue helps to force you into the imperative. From the reader's perspective it helps to break up the writing and to set the mood of the scene as well as the characters.

A while ago I wrote a short story (3300 words) that was entirely dialogue. No descriptions, not even any attributions. It was told as a series of interviews (I pretended I was listening to a radio). While I haven't had the time to clean it up enough for publication yet, I'm very pleased with the result. It helped to prove to me how much you can describe your characters just through what they say and how they say it, and to demonstrate that it was possible to avoid all those bumbling "he said", "she said" attributions that so often distract. Since you're in the mood for experimenting, you might try something like this, it's interesting.


As for getting friends to review ... I had the same trouble. Lots of nice things said, but not much in the way of helpful criticism (eg: what bits didn't work). The thing to remember here is that only writers and editors look at writing that way. Most people just read, they read what's there on the page and accept it, they rarely analyse. So unless it's completely appalling the reaction tends to be positive. Yes, some will pick up the occasional bit of grammar and spelling, but that's not important yet (not until final proof-reading before publication). This is where your writing group is likely to be the most help, working with others who know what you need.

One common, but good, piece of advice is: when you first finish a story, put it away for a while and try not to think about it. Come back in a few weeks or months and go over it again. When you come back you can ask yourself: Does it still work? Which bits need to be cut? The extra distance from it really does help.


Also, remember that not everything you write has to be published. Some things don't work. They were still worth writing, I find I have to get things out of my system, but some stuff just doesn't work out as you'd hoped. It's all practice. Move on to the next.

ETA: Will you look at that! So much waffle, you'd think I knew what I was talking about. Bear in mind that all such advice is just one person's experience/opinion ... it's worth about what you paid for it.

[cromag]

Welcome to the chain gang!

Originally Posted by Nabeel

...
Crich and several others among you have recommended various structure-enhancing devices. I appreciate the advice, but I find I'm just not thinking along those lines. This idea of a type of spatial representation of narrative just doesn't make sense to me. Instead, I find I'm thinking in terms of several snapshots, or perhaps video clips, in a line. I need to get the right clips, and I need to get them in the right order. The nearest I come to a structure is just sorting them out, scene by scene.

I don't feel a natural affinity to the structured approach, either. I will generally get hit "out of the blue" with the ending of a story. Next, I have to figure out how it opens. And then I have to fill in all the scenes in between. Usually, they don't arrive in their proper order, either.

Originally Posted by Nabeel

I find I'm reluctant to write dialogue, and this is something that the creative writing tutor has picked me up on. I prefer paraphrase, with a few key exchanges in 'real' dialogue. Is this important?

Personally, I think so. You might be able to get away without much actual dialog if you present the story as a narration -- say, a storyteller entertaining a group around a campfire. It could work as a short story, but it would get tiresome for a reader to get too many of those.

I find that stories with dialog do a better job of putting me, as a reader, into the story.

Writing dialog did not (and really still does not) come naturally to me. But I hope I've gotten better with practice.

Originally Posted by Nabeel

I'm finding the descriptive element relatively easy. Basically, I don't bother with the 'he was tall man with brown hair and a square jaw' stuff. I find it boring to read, so I don't bother writing it. But more interesting is giving the reader some details of physical location without making it sound like an architectural survey.

I'm consciously experimenting with styles: one story in the first person, one in the present tense.

More-or-less as an exercise, I'm going to try writing a series of short stories round the theme of 'lost'.

Good ideas!

Originally Posted by Nabeel

I'm sending these out to friends, and I'm lucky enough to have a couple of literature lecturer collegues: I am pestering them for opinions. One problem is that while - so far - everyone has been extremely positive, they make different suggestions about improvements and revisions. I guess I'll just have to think for myself.

I'm still not sure where to go with this. Maybe it's just an interesting hobby. Maybe I'll upload the package onto Smashwords, and wait for something to happen. Maybe I'll really work on these and approach an agent. At the moment I don't know.

But it is fun!

N.

Yeah, you're hooked.

[pendragginp]

I wouldn't worry too much about the dialogue thing, I think that will develop. At this stage you're feeling your way into fiction writing, and doing it well, it seems.

[ApK]

I'm with cromag and gmw on the dialog.
Dialog facilitates the "show, don't tell" maxim.
You can say a character's responses were angry and sarcastic, but it's far better to have him actually say things that are angry and sarcastic. That's let's the reader learn that about the character 'first hand.'