Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #14

[McKenna]

Edited Bit: I finally got around to typing this one up. Sroll down, or click here.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

....is coming soon.

I'm too lazy to type it out right now.

Meanwhile, have a peek at 1-13:

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #1

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #2

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #3

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #4

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #5

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #6

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #7

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #8

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #9

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #10

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #11

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #12


And #13, which was particularly fun:

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #13

 

[Liar]

You fucking tease.

 

[spyman]

Help

McKenna, I think you have a wealth of info. Now I don't know if I'm even on the right thread but here it is. I started The Secrets of the Amazon about two years ago. Most of my chapters seemed to be received well. My problem is when I started the last chapter I just completely shut down. Blocked I guess. I have all kinds of indecision on how to finish this story.
Like one of your suggestions I've kept writing other things but have not finished "Amazon".
I think I went too far with it and now I'm out of gas. Any suggestions?

Spyman

 

[McKenna]

You fucking tease.

I know how you like it, baby.

 

[minsue]

....is coming soon.

I'm too lazy to type it out right now.

Slacker.

 

[McKenna]

McKenna, I think you have a wealth of info. Now I don't know if I'm even on the right thread but here it is. I started The Secrets of the Amazon about two years ago. Most of my chapters seemed to be received well. My problem is when I started the last chapter I just completely shut down. Blocked I guess. I have all kinds of indecision on how to finish this story.
Like one of your suggestions I've kept writing other things but have not finished "Amazon".
I think I went too far with it and now I'm out of gas. Any suggestions?

Spyman

Wow. Well as much as I'd like to step into the guru shoes and offer you the wisdom of the ages, I'm not nearly qualified. All of the above "Most Common Writing Mistakes" were pulled from a book I am reading (The 38 Most Common Fictin Writing Mistakes by Jack M. Bickham.) I'm posting them here to generate conversation, and in the hopes that they will help us all take a closer look at our writing.

That said...

The muse is a fickle bitch, and sometimes not even cajolery will win her back. Patience might, however. I can only tell you what I have done in similar situations:

1- powered through the mind block (forced myself to write the story even when I really, honestly, just didn't want to)

2- put the story away in my "to be completed someday" file ....and promplty forgot it, never to be seen, heard, or touched again *ahem*

If the story means something to you, I'd advise you to go with #1. You can always re-write bad writing, but you can't re-write something that's never been written. Or something like that.

McKenna - temporary guru for hire

 

[McKenna]

Slacker.

Sticks and stones....

 

[McKenna]

Don't Lecture Your Reader


There you are, deep in your story somewhere, and you realize that there's some vital information that your readers really ought to know. So you write something like:

Charlie had no way of knowing this, but it is a well-documented fact that Type A personalities suffer a high incidence of heart attacks, and his enemy Sam was definitely a Type A personality. Sam's troubles had begun early in his life, and an examination of his early background provides an interesting example of how compulsive Type A behavior can be destructive...

It's probably pretty obvious to you that this kind of lecture doesn't fit very well into contemporary fiction. There was a time, in the earliest days of the novel, and before the modern short story had begun to assume its present form, when a fiction writer could address "You, dear reader," and speak author-to-reader like a stage lecturer might speak to an audience. But fiction has become much more sophisticated since those long gone days, and readers now won't stand for lectures by the author.

Why? For at least two reasons: First, lectures by the author violate every principle of viewpoint, as just discussed in the two preceding chapters; second, such lectures completely stop the forward movement of the story, and so distract the reader from the plot, where he should be focused.

Another possible reason for avoiding author lectures in your fiction: you may find yourself deviating from the fictioneer's goal –the telling of a story– to that of a pamphleteer, which is trying to sell a belief. Fiction may convince readers about some moral, ethical or political issue, but if it does, the convincing is a by-product of the tale-telling. Fiction does not exist primarily to convince anybody of anything; it exists to tell a story, and by so doing to illuminate the human condition.

Let me make a suggestion: if you ever find yourself saying that you are writing a story to "prove" something political or whatever, shelve that story instantly, and don't work on it again until you can write it for its own sake.

Of course writers of fiction care about issues of the day. Often they have very, very strong opinions. But the published writers entertain. They don't write to prove anything. If their story happens incidentally to say something thematic, that's grand. Most stories do end up implying some idea or feeling. But the convincing –if any happens– is a by-product of the storytelling process, and cannot be its goal or the story almost certainly will come out like a very bad Sunday sermon rather than a story.

So perhaps you have been convinced not to try to use fiction as a delivery system for your opinions. A soapbox is better. But what about those inadvertent, well-meaning technical slips that might also read like a lecture in your copy?

These are sometimes harder to catch. As we’ve mentioned in Chapters Twelve and Thirteen, you'll establish a viewpoint and write it in such a way as to remind the reader often where that viewpoint is. It should be relatively easy for you to slip in material that you the author want in the story as long as the viewpoint character needs to think about it.

Ask yourself such questions as:

• What can happen in the story to make my viewpoint character remember this?

• What can happen to make my viewpoint character seek out and get this information in the story "now"?

• What other character might come in to tell this information to my viewpoint character -and why?

• What other source can my viewpoint character come upon to bring out this desired information? (A newspaper story, for example, or TV news bulletin.)

There are ways you can devise to avoid dumping information into the story via the author lecture route. There are always ways ...and you must always find one of them.

 

[rgraham666]

Brace yourselves.

I agree with this one as well.

One should never hit the reader over the head with your opinions.

One should never use 'one' in a sentence either.

Am I a hypocrite or what?