Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

How do you develop your voice for writing fiction?

Fiona posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’m not a writer or anything, though I wanna be when I’ve finished school. But anyway, around 2 years ago I had this awesome idea for a story, but it was only recently (about 3 months ago) I became serious about writing it as a full blown novel. I planned the plot (written down)and have the characters (a very detailed disciption of each)I also know the ‘voice’. I’ve changed it many times and settled on writing from my main character’s perspective. It sounds great and it really shows what the character is like, but I find it almost a chore to write as. So, I am now in the dilema of going with the terrible ‘voice’ I used to use (before I became ’serious’) that just doesn’t work and makes the plot kind of sluggish or this new one that does work beyond my expectations but is really hard to write in…um, help…please?

Randy sez: The most common thing that editors and agents tell me when I ask what they’re looking for is, “I’m looking for a writer with a great voice.”

So what is that pesky voice, anyway? And how do you develop it?

Larry Brooks deals with that very question in his forthcoming book, STORY ENGINEERING: Mastering The 6 Core Competencies of Successful Writing. (Publisher: Writer’s Digest Books). According to Amazon, this book will release on February 24, 2011. Larry sent me a copy a couple of months ago to read for endorsement, and I really liked the book.

Larry identifies six core competencies:

1. Concept
2. Character
3. Theme
4. Story Structure
5. Scene Execution
6. Voice

Voice is your particular way of putting words together. It’s your attitude. It’s your personality, turned into words.

That’s what voice is. How do you develop it? That’s a harder question, one I’ve been thinking about for years.

In his book, Larry notes that in sports, they say that “You can’t coach speed.” Speed is a genetic gift. You can coach an athlete and help him fix things that get in the way of his natural speed, but if he hasn’t got it, you can’t give it to him.

Larry argues that voice is similar: “You can’t coach voice.” I agree with him.

And yet there are things you can do to build your voice. If you want to develop your speed, then run. And learn how to avoid doing the things that slow you down. If you want to develop your voice, then write. And learn how to avoid doing the things that kill your story. Study the craft of fiction.

The key thing is that you probably are going to need to write quite a lot to really start finding your voice. I think mine took at least 2 or 3 years to start coming out in my writing. During those 2 or 3 years, I learned the fundamentals of the craft of fiction writing and quit doing things that were killing my story. In the process, my voice emerged naturally.

Fiona, yours will too. Write fiction. Write a lot of it. Develop those other core competencies. I divide them a little differently than Larry does. In my teaching, I’ve always focused on what I call the “Five Pillars of Fiction” which are StoryWorld, Character, Plot, Theme, and Style. These have a lot of overlap with Larry’s categories. (What I call “Plot” includes Larry’s categories of Concept, Story Structure, and Scene Execution.)

By the way, let me make a plug for Larry and his book: I don’t think anybody on the planet teaches story structure better than Larry Brooks. If you want the state of the art in story structure (his Core Competency #4), then check out his web site at www.StoryFix.com.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

What happens if you’re a plain old ordinary person trying to write a novel with characters who are anything but plain, old, or ordinary? Can you write great fiction if your own life is boring?

Tammy posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy,

Just a quick question and one that’s been bugging me a lot since I finally decided to stop dreaming and start writing.

What if you think your life is boring?

I understand it’s a necessity to draw on experiences you’ve had in your own life to enrich your novel, but I honestly think my life has been dull, run-of-the-mill everyday toast with butter boring. I have a vivid imagination and I’ve been relying on that to get me where I want to go with my writing but I’m starting to find that characterisation is the bane of my existence. Is it because I’m a ‘never bungee jumping’, ‘won’t smoke or drink’, ‘can’t bear the thought of short-changing someone’, kind of plain Jane?

I’ve tried some psychology books about different habits in different personalities but I still can’t turn my character from a stick figure into a fleshy Mona Lisa!

Help!

How do you take mundane and make it something magnificent?

Randy sez: Join the club, Tammy. I know a lot of writers. The vast majority of them live tofu lives and still manage to write hot curry fiction.

I know a sweet and gracious Southern lady who regular murders people in her novels. I know a guy who preaches in his church every Sunday and writes novels with alcoholics and pimps and . . . lawyers. I know a mild-mannered mom who writes werewolf erotica.

Your characters are not you and they don’t have to be like you. They can do all the bizarro things you’d never do. That’s probably why most writers write — so they can vicariously do all those things that they’d never do.

Tammy, I’ve never bungee-jumped either. I don’t smoke or drink. And I do my best not to short-change people. Are you telling me I’m . . . boring? Not possible. I’m a geek, and geeks are the new cool.

I haven’t seen your writing and I’ve never met you, but my bet is that the problem isn’t with you. If you’re like most writers, the problem is with your writing.

Which is good news, because you can make improvements to your writing a lot easier than you can make changes in yourself.

In fact, the real problem appears to be pretty simple: Your characters are underdeveloped. There’s a cure for that, and it comes in three parts:

1. Read up. There are plenty of good books on characters. I recommend Brandilyn Collins’ book GETTING INTO CHARACTER. Also, Margie Lawson’s course on EMPOWERING CHARACTER EMOTIONS. And while I’m passing out recommendations, chapters 7 and 12 of my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES are pretty decent too.
2. Write on. There is no substitute for getting words on paper. Every day. You get good at brain surgery by doing brain surgery. You get good at writing by writing.
3. Get critiqued. Every writer is her own worst critic, so you have no business critiquing your own work. You need a second opinion — preferably from somebody who is one part nice, two parts honest, and three parts well-trained in the art of fiction. A professional novelist can see problems that you’d never find on your own, if you’re willing to listen and not argue.

So Tammy, don’t worry about being a Plain Old Ordinary Person. You’ll probably live longer not smoking or drinking or jumping off bridges or whatever it is you think would make you more exciting. If you want to write about something you’ve never done before, the information on what it’s like is only a Google away, and you can probably interview online twenty people who’ve done exactly the thing your character wants to do.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

What happens when you overthink your storyworld so much that your novel is filled with thousands of irrelevant details and your story gets lost?

Sam posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy,My name’s Sam. My problem right now is that i have seriously overthaught my story. I dream it, daydream it and effectively live in it from time to time. this means that when it comes down to writing, my story is full of incredibly boring details that no-one really wants to read.

Typically, my chapters end up being 1/5 interesting, 1/5 plot important, and 3/5 of solid, useless details that are important for the imagination, but not to the story.

My question is, How do you counteract the cumalative mind-numbing effects of incredible detail, without compramising the integritory of the story, and ‘putting danger around every corner’ to compensate. how do you make sure that youve said everything important and nessisary, without going overboard?

Ive made the mistake of dreaming up a whole new alien world, with new sights, smells, even the fruit. i want to explain the new world and all its glory, but i dont want to make it boring.

Randy sez: First of all, you’re doing things right by thinking about your Storyworld in Xtreme depth. Most of the novelists I know do that. We may be sick, sick people, living in our own little universes, but that’s what novelists do.

Now, your question, Sam, is how to keep that from being boring.

The solution is one I heard in the very first critique group that I ever attended. One of the critiquers quoted a very famous line from a very famous author (but nobody seems to agree on exactly who that famous author was): “A story is just like real life with all the boring parts taken out.”

And my immediate response when I got whacked over the head with this comment was: “Are you trying to tell me something? Which parts of my story are boring?”

I didn’t get an answer to my question, and I left the meeting that night feeling rather miffed. If somebody is going to tell me there’s something wrong with my story, they at least ought to tell me what it is.

I now know the answer, and by a grand coincidence, it’s found in my most recent blog, where Jonathan asked whether a story really needs conflict.

My answer was yes, a story really needs conflict, because that’s part of the definition of a story.

The reason is simple: Conflict is interesting. Conflict means that some character wants something that he or she can’t have. When you read about a character like that, you either want the character to get it, or you don’t want them to do so. Either way, you want to read on to find out what happens.

So the “boring parts of the story” are those that don’t have anything to do with the conflict. The “interesting parts” are those that contribute most directly to the conflict.

Sam, you’ve cooked up an incredibly detailed Storyworld. That’s Job 1 for the novelist. Job 2 is to only show those parts of the Storyworld that relate to the conflict.

That’s your yardstick with everything you show in your Storyworld. The more a detail is part of the conflict, the more time you can spend showing it.

Does this mean you can’t ever show any other details at all? No, of course not. Those details add texture to the story. But if you’ve got 1000 details you could use for that pesky story texture, and if five of those details are critical to the conflict, then show at least those five — and maybe five others that aren’t critical but which you just want to show.

That might be a good rule of thumb for a novelist: For every detail you add in that’s unrelated to the conflict, show at least one detail that is.

What do my Loyal Blog Readers think? Is that a reasonable way to write a story? Leave a comment and say your say!

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Blog of the Day: Meredith Efken had a couple of good blog posts yesterday and today on her Fiction Fixit Shop blog in response to questions posted here on my site. Meredith is my freelance editor and is helping me catch up on the incredible backlog of questions I’ve got. Today, she talks about dual protagonists in a novel. Yesterday, she answered the question of whether the Scene/Sequel structure needs to apply to the antagonist in a novel.

How do you know when you’re too old to write a novel? Is there a magic cutoff age after which fiction writers need not apply? What if you got a late start and you desperately need to make up for lost time?

Scott posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hey Randy, I have a question for you. What is the best way to get started in fiction when you are a late bloomer?

I’m 28, I graduated from the business school, not liberal arts, and have been in the corporate world ever since. I have only recently become enthralled with writing fiction, I’d say within the last year or so.

Everything I know, I’ve learned from sites like yours. As great as your site is, I’m sure I am missing out on things that someone who has always been interested in writing fiction takes for granted. How big of a disadvantage do you think this knowledge gap puts me? And where would you recommend someone who is completely and utterly raw to the craft get started?

Randy sez: Scott, you’re not a late bloomer, you’re a spring chicken. I didn’t start writing fiction until I was 29. Then I worked on my craft for another ten years before I got published.

Strictly speaking, that isn’t quite true. I actually published the first thing I submitted. Yes, really, when I was in grad school at Berkeley, the first piece of writing I submitted was an article titled “Another Look at the Gauged Wess-Zumino Effective Action.” I sent it to the journal Nuclear Physics B, which was at the time the leading journal in elementary particle theory. They published it. (Hope you didn’t miss this extraordinary contribution to literature.) Tragically, it didn’t win me a single Pulitzer or Nobel, but at least it was a publishing credit, right?

Obviously, that wasn’t fiction. But even then, I was starting to think that I really wanted to try my hand at writing a novel. It took me a few years to sit down and actually start writing fiction. It took even longer to get it published.

The moral of the story, if you want one, is that it really doesn’t much matter when you start writing. If you’ve got a pulse, then you might get published someday. If you don’t, you won’t.

Where should you start learning the craft of fiction? You’ve made a good start. You’re at the right place. (Anyone who wants evidence of that should just Google the phrase “fiction writing blog” and see which blog is the #1 result.)

I recommend a four-pronged approach to improving your craft. You should not think of these four prongs as steps along the way. They are four things you should be pursuing simultaneously. You will never, ever, ever get past these, even after you win your Pulitzer/Nobel/big-honking-award:

• Read. Read good fiction. Read good fiction in all genres. Read good fiction in all genres, including the ones you wouldn’t be caught dead reading. Go on, guys, read a romance once in a while; you’ll learn how the women think and your female characters won’t be just male fantasies. And ladies, read a good book with knife fights and bullets and exploding helicopters; this will put some testosterone in your “girlie-man” male characters.
• Write. You don’t get good at tennis by talking about it. You get good at tennis by playing tennis. You get good at writing fiction by writing fiction.
• Get critiqued. Nobody is an adequate judge of their own writing. You need an outside opinion, preferably by somebody who knows what the heck they’re talking about. But remember that even the greenest reader can still nail a weakness in your writing if you listen. Also remember that not everybody gets your writing, and sometimes that big-shot writer or editor really isn’t on the same planet that you are. So don’t ignore everything you hear in your critiques, but don’t believe everything either. Listen to the critiques, then pick your own path to glory.
• Learn the theory. There are a few geniuses who pick up the craft by osmosis just by reading. I hate those kind of people. Most of us mortals need to listen to lectures or read books about the craft. I did. I learned a lot from Dwight Swain and Sol Stein and Jim Bell and Renni Browne and a scad of others. I recommend all of their books (see my page of recommended books on fiction writing). Being a selfish guy, I should mention that my book (WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES) has been doing really well since it came out last December.

Those are the four things that just about all published authors have done to learn this wretched game called fiction writing. Do those and you’ll maximize your chances of joining our ranks.

Remember one thing: There aren’t any shortcuts in this business, but there are longcuts. When you see someone offering you some magic trick that will make you an instant author, that isn’t a shortcut. You’re going to waste your money on it and possibly a lot of time. That’s a longcut. Don’t cut corners. Learn the craft. Read. Write. Get critiqued. Get instruction. Keep doing all four of those, forever.

Scott, in three or four years, after you’ve followed the above sage advice and got your book published, shoot me an email and let me know. I’ll be delighted. But I won’t be surprised.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

In yesterday’s post, I talked about those pesky “Motivation-Reaction Units” popularized by Dwight Swain. Today, we’ll look at them a bit more, because (by some coincidence) the next question on my stack is also about MRUs.

Adrian posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hello Randy! I found your articles very useful, they gave me real power to create! I’m currently planning my new novel (already wrote one about 6 years ago) and have a following problem during writing the final text… Let’s say I write a scene. My problem is that sometimes my scene looks like this:

ACTION (Did this, did that)
DIALOG
ACTION
ACTION
DIALOG
etc.

It looks like movie scenario sometimes.
Could you please confirm, that MRUs are the best solution to my problem? I guess use Motivation only and lack Reaction? What do you suggest?

Randy sez: Hmmmm, I’m not sure why the above is bad. If you write excellent action and excellent dialogue, then you’re well on your way to writing good strong commercial fiction. If the problem is that they’re not well mixed, then the solution is to mix them better.

On the other hand, if the problem is that your scene is composed entirely of what Swain calls “Motivation” and with none of what Swain calls “Reaction,” then you do have a problem because your viewpoint character is never doing anything.

The problem we novelists face is that we can’t show “everything happening at once” like they do in the movies. The screen is two-dimensional and there can be a lot of action by several different characters all at once. Fiction has no screen. Fiction has only a sequence of letters that combine to form words, then sentences, then paragraphs. Fiction is much more linear than a movie.

Writing in MRUs solves this problem. MRUs force you to switch back and forth rapidly between your viewpoint character and the other characters in the story.

When you’re focusing on anything but your viewpoint character, you are showing action, dialogue, or description that directly affect the viewpoint character and force him to act. These are what Swain calls “Motivations” but the term is confusing and I’ve taken to calling them “public clips” because anyone can see these things.

When you’re focusing on your viewpoint character, you are showing action, dialogue, interior monologue, or interior emotions. Swain calls these “Reactions,” a term I’ve never liked because your viewpoint character is often quite proactive in these. So I prefer to call them “private clips” because they are experienced by your reader as if she were the viewpoint character — from the inside.

I prefer to mix the various elements well when writing either public clips or private clips. A public clip should not always be JUST action or JUST dialogue or JUST description. (It can be, if things are moving rapidly.) Generally, a public clip will be a mix of these.

Likewise, I think it’s wise to mix the private clips up also. You can show JUST action or JUST dialogue or JUST interior monologue or JUST interior emotion. (Again, if you only show one of these, it tends to speed up the pace.) But generally I like to mix two or more of them.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Are you using Dwight Swain’s “Motivation-Reaction Units” to improve your writing? Do you find them confusing sometimes? Join the crowd! Lots of people have trouble with those pesky “MRUs.” Today, we’ll look at them and disentangle things a bit.

Tim posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

German reader here, my English is rather terrible, but… I will try.

I’ve been using MRUs for about two years and although I’ve gotten used to them, sometimes I still don’t feel like I know what I’m doing.

Am I right to assume that MRUs only work within “Showing” as opposed to “Telling”? And will every sentence of a “Showing”-Sequence fit into the MRU-Pattern?

Whenever my character remembers something or immediately interprets something he sees, I end up with sentences that could be either motivating stimulus or internal reaction.

I don’t think they matter enough to confuse the reader but they do confuse me sometimes. I’d like to hear your take on this.

Randy sez: Tim, if you hadn’t told me you weren’t a native English speaker, I wouldn’t have guessed it. Your English is excellent.

First, let’s make sure everyone’s up to speed. Dwight Swain has a long chapter, “Plain Facts About Feelings,” in his book TECHNIQUES OF THE SELLING WRITER. If you want the short version, see my article, “Writing the Perfect Scene” on this web site.

I’ll be blunt, I’ve always hated the term “MRU.” It looks on paper like the military term “MRE” (meal ready to eat, which all military people insist is three lies in one). “MRU” sounds like something a cow would say. Because of that, I decided to change the term in my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES. So in my book, I break MRUs into their two pieces and call them “public clips” and “private clips” — in analogy with small film clips.

My thinking is this: When you’re well inside your viewpoint character’s head, the world is divided into two parts — the outside and the inside. Everything that happens outside the character’s head (and which could be experienced by anybody else) is public. Everything that happens inside the character’s head (and which could only be experienced by the character) is private.

When I split things this way, everything comes into focus for me. Now let’s look at Tim’s questions.

Tim asked if MRUs only work for “Showing” and not for “Telling.” I would turn things around a bit from that. If you want to “Show,” then you should use MRUs. If you want to “Tell,” then don’t even think about MRUs. MRUs are a very natural way to structure your “Showing.” They aren’t relevant for “Telling.”

Tim also asked whether every sentence in a “Showing” section will fit the MRU pattern. The answer is complicated because not all passages can be classified as 100% “Showing” or 100% “Telling.” Furthermore, even passages that are 100% “Showing” aren’t always done well. The MRU pattern helps you in two ways:

1. It helps you identify pieces of a section that are “Telling” when you intended them to be “Showing”.
2. It helps you identify pieces of a section that are poorly done “Showing.”

If a section of your work doesn’t fit the MRU pattern, then chances are good that one of the two above is true. HOWEVER, it’s possible that your work doesn’t fit the pattern and the section is still good “Showing.” There just isn’t any such thing as a paint-by-numbers way to write good fiction.

Tim’s final comment was that when his character remembers something or interprets something, it could be either motivation or response. I would classify any of those as response. More precisely, I’d classify them as “private clips.” (See how easy it is when you ask if something is “public” or “private?” The answer is instantly clear.)

Let’s look at an example to clarify things. I’ll just make something up out of the blue. In this farcical bit of fanfic, Harry and Ron are playing Quidditch and Harry is the viewpoint character but I’m going to scramble up the MRUs and inject a bit of telling:

The Quaffle came hurtling at Harry like a dementor on meth scaring the daylights out of him and making him dodge out of the way and collide with Ron. “Watch where you’re flying!” Ron shouted, which was dumb of him because if he’d been looking, he’d know the Quaffle had gone mental like the time Dobby bewitched the Bludger back in Harry’s second year.

Randy sez: This isn’t fully “Showing” and it isn’t fully “Telling.” It’s certainly mixing motivations and reactions all in one paragraph. You could summarize this in one sentence of narrative summary (i.e., “Telling”). However, it’s exciting enough that I’d recommend that you “Show” it. The procedure is simple: Break it up into paragraphs, so that each paragraph is either public or private, and taking care to turn any sentence fragments into complete sentences. Here’s a first cut at it:

The Quaffle came hurtling at Harry like a dementor on meth.

Fear shot through Harry. He dodged to his right and slammed into Ron.

“Watch where you’re flying!” Ron shouted.

Harry shot upward toward the sky with the Quaffle in hot pursuit. It felt exactly like the time Dobby bewitched the Bludger back in Harry’s second year. Only this time, Harry knew no mere house elf was trying to hurt him. This time it was Voldemort.

Randy sez: If you look at this, you’ll notice it’s longer because I broke things up into paragraphs and had to add some sentences to make sense. Here’s a blow-by-blow accounting:

Paragraph 1 is “public.” It shows what the movie camera would capture — a Quaffle hurtling at Harry.

Paragraph 2 is “private.” I’ve added an explicit emotive reaction instead of the vague original about “scaring the daylights out of him”. Then I’ve made a complete sentence showing his physical response to this emotion. Note that the movie camera could never show the emotive reaction. It could of course show Harry swerving, but this action is still “private” because Harry is the viewpoint character. The reader will experience this action from inside Harry’s skin.

Paragraph 3 is “public.” A tape recorder could catch Ron’s shout.

Paragraph 4 is “private.” It’s all about Harry — his actions, his feelings, and his thoughts. In writing this, it seemed natural to expand on that memory of Dobby and then add in some things about Voldemort that weren’t in my first version. When you write using the MRU pattern, this sort of thing just naturally suggests itself.

There is very much more to say about those pesky MRUs (or “public clips” and “private clips”). If you want to know more, see Swain’s book or my book or read my article on “Writing the Perfect Scene.”

What do my Loyal Blog Readers think? Do MRUs make your life simpler — or more complicated?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

I went out of town last Thursday, so I missed out on our regularly scheduled blog on Friday. I spent the weekend at a writer’s retreat with a bunch of my closest writer friends and we all had a wonderful time.

This is imperative, I’ve found: You need to spend time with other writers once in a while. It recharges your crazy-batteries so that you don’t slip-slide into the gray murk of normal life that will kill your fiction writing.

Kevin posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’m a teen working on a complex novel idea. I haven’t written much as of yet (I have been working on plot development with the Snowflake Method, googling tips for writers, and getting critiques on a first chapter that I’ve been working on through other sources), but I am wondering what are your thoughts on symbolism. I am finding myself trying to cram symbolism everywhere, and am often acting very pick with word choice so that the symbolism isn’t wrecked. Am I simply overdoing it? I am afraid so, for it seems to me that symbolism is hardly noticed by readers today, mainly because I did not learn of its existence until this very school year.

Randy sez: Kevin, I think you’re the first teen who has e-mailed me this year who wasn’t obsessing on the question: “If I’m a teen writing fiction, will anyone take me seriously?” I don’t know quite why teen writers consider this the most important question. It isn’t. The first question editors or agents ask about any writer is this: “How well has this writer mastered the craft of fiction?” If the answer to that question is, “Extremely well,” then age doesn’t matter.

Really, I mean that. Age doesn’t matter. A teen writer with great craft, in fact, will probably have an advantage because that then becomes a selling point.

So congratulations, Kevin, on not asking what all the other teens are asking and for asking something that will advance your craft.

Now on to the actual question. I have three thoughts on the importance of symbolism in fiction writing:

Symbolism is like salt. Salt keeps the food from tasting bland. A little salt goes a long way. The “right” amount of salt is when you don’t notice that it’s there and you don’t notice that it’s missing. Too much salt will make you gag. Too little will make sure you never eat at that restaurant again.

Symbolism is like romance. If you obsess over making romance happen, you probably kill any chance that romance will develop. You cannot force romance. You cannot buy it (although you can buy something similar, which tragically turns out to be the exact opposite of romance). Romance happens when you weren’t looking for it. It grows when you just let it grow. Romance adds joy to life, but only when you aren’t trying to make it the only thing in life.

Symbolism is like humor. If you have to explain humor, it isn’t funny. If the humor is already there, you can tweak it to make it more powerful. If the humor isn’t there, no amount of trying will make it be there. With humor, 90% of the game is timing.

Kevin, it sounds like you may have “new toy syndrome.” This happens to all writers as they learn new elements of the craft and suddenly it seems like they’ve just got to use that new toy everywhere. Don’t sweat that. It happens. Keep working on your craft and pretty soon you’ll add yet another new toy to your collection, and then the symbolism will assume its rightful place in your arsenal. Then your only worry will be how to rein in the next new toy.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Tessa posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I followed the Writing Fiction for Dummies book to the letter after I wrote my novel, all except the part about a scene list. I thought it would take too much effort. I realized yesterday that I need to shift the scenes around, and I so regret not writing that list.

I’m going mad with trying to figure out how it all connects if I move two of my scenes earlier (so that the REAL story question of the book is in the first quarter, and not closer to the middle). There’s ton of things happening in the first 1/3 to keep the reader occupied, and I’ve been dropping clues left and right, all carefully concealed to the best of my ability.

The real story question is basically if the kids should choose between good or evil, but up until then the reader will have thought that the story question is how to get home, since that’s what the kids have been doing up until about 1/3 of the story.

How to get home is the ultimate goal, and the story question of the whole trilogy (this is book one).

How important is it to have the true story question of the book in the first quarter as opposed to nearer to 1/3 of the book?

Thanks in advance. I’ll appreciate help with this.

Randy sez: That depends on which of the “five pillars of fiction” are most important in your novel. The five pillars are Storyworld, Characters, Plot, Theme, and Style. For a plot-driven novel, you really want the story question to be as clear as possible as soon as possible. For novels driven by one of the other pillars, it’s okay to be fuzzier on the story question and to delay it a bit.

Let’s look at a few examples.

THE GODFATHER is a novel about a Mafia family in New York in the 1940s. This novel is, in my opinion, driven by the Storyworld itself — a world of violent crime, backstabbing, and dirty money. The story question takes quite a long time to emerge: Will Michael Corleone ever be able to come home? And the novel would be a fine novel, even if this story question was never clearly asked or answered.

THE TIME TRAVELLER’S WIFE is a novel about a man who has a genetic flaw which causes him to spontaneously travel through time, and it’s about the woman who loves him. I would call this a character-driven novel. As the story continues, it gradually becomes clear that it’s rather dangerous to be a time-traveller when you always end up at your destination buck naked. But the story is about the characters and their love for each other, which transcends time. Even if the story question were never asked, this novel would still work. So it’s okay that the story question only becomes clear late in the game.

THE DAY OF THE JACKAL is a novel about a group of terrorists trying to assassinate Charles de Gaulle in the early 1960s. This is a plot-driven novel and a very good one. The story question is very simple: Will they succeed? The story question sharpens up early in the story to this one: Will the Jackal kill de Gaulle? This is remarkable, because the reader knows very well that de Gaulle was NOT assassinated. Yet the story works because the reader believes that the story could have happened, in principle, exactly as told.

THE SHACK is a novel about a man who spends a weekend with God in the shack in the Oregon wilderness where his daughter was murdered. This is a theme-driven novel in which the primary question is theological: How can a good and all-powerful God allow innocent children to be murdered? The story question is related to that: Will the protagonist come to terms with his loss or won’t he? But again, the story question is actually less powerful for the reader, who cares more about the theological question than a story question about one man’s loss.

It’s a rare novel that’s driven mainly by style, although I suppose I could think of one if I worked at it hard enough. In literary novels, style is very important, but generally they also have either a strong Storyworld, Characters, Plot, or Theme to carry the narrative forward.

So getting back to Tessa’s question, is it okay for her to finally make her story question clear at the 1/3 mark instead of the 1/4 mark? Tessa, if your story is strongly plot-driven, then you probably need to rethink things and bring that story question closer to the beginning of the story. Otherwise, you may be fine as you are.

Question for my Loyal Blog Readers: Think about the current novel you’re working on. At what point does the story question become crystal clear to your reader? Is it soon enough for the category of fiction you’re writing? Leave a comment and tell us!

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Daniel posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

BTW, I’m currently in chapter 9 of your dummies book. I love it! It’s
absolutely great stuff especially the 7 layers of plot and how to use
one layer to get to the next in the chain. I read James Scott Bell’s
Plot and Structure book and got the doorways of no return down pat,
but I never understood how the pieces all related together before.
Kudos for explaining it so simply. I realize now that I’ve been trying
to write my synopsis as a scene list. Go figure.

And I seem to be tackling my own project from both ends. I’m naturally
an edit-as-you-go but this is only after much outlining. Again,
synopsis –> scene list. Arggh! Thanks so much for sharing your
knowledge. It keeps me and all your other faithful blog readers from
getting stuck in this long process. We wouldn’t know what to do or how
to begin without some help and you provide this in spades!

I know this email is getting longish, but I do have an intellectual
question for you and your blog. I’m curious of your response. Here it
is: How is a book like Twilight - which is consistently talked down by
industry professionals for it’s lackluster composition - so
successful? Essentially, I see Twilight as a success because Stephanie
Meyer did one thing and one thing only very, very well - she captured
the emotion of falling in love. However, emotion is not one of the
five pillars of fiction and none of them are done particularly well in
her book: minimal setting, flat characters, weak plot, weak theme, and
adverbial style. Maybe my question is best phrased as, “how does
emotion fit in with the pillars of fiction?” It’s not one of the five
yet if done correctly it can support an entire series. So is emotion
woven into all 5 pillars? Or is it the foundation of them? Or do they
support a roof of emotion? I need a visual.

I begin to think we need a new set of pillars that include emotion and
the concept of flow. (Or does writing this just show how green I am?)
On a related note screenwriters are graded on a similar scale. But in
their case, if the story idea is interesting enough everything else
can be poo and they’ll still make the movie. See
http://livingromcom.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/05/script-coverage-a-few-awful-truths.html
for the awful truth.

Randy sez: Thanks for the kind words about WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES and also the shout-out for Jim Bell’s book PLOT & STRUCTURE. Jim is a good friend of mine and I really love his book. I learned a lot about story structure from him years ago when I was first getting published and it was a huge help. There is a reason that Jim’s book is almost always #1 on Amazon’s list of books on writing fiction. It’s a terrific book.

Now to your core question which I will recast as follows, “What makes Twilight fly?”

Really, it all comes down to the fact that the point of all fiction is to create a Powerful Emotional Experience in the reader. If you do that, then your reader will love your work, no matter what rules you break, no matter how bad your grammar, no matter which “pillars of fiction” you ignore.

Rightly so, in my opinion. I once had Sol Stein as my mentor when he ran a workshop for a small group of writers in Laguna Beach back in the early 1990s. Sol is a living legend and I think we were all in awe of him. He knew I’m a physicist, so he autographed one of his books to me as follows: “Physics is facts; fiction is Truth.”

I’m going to have to disagree with Sol on both counts. (The mark of a great teacher is that he doesn’t create clones who parrot him–he creates students qualified to argue with him, so I don’t think Sol would be bothered at all that I disagree with an off-the-cuff remark he wrote in an autograph. He’d be pleased that I can think for myself.)

In my view, physics is Truth and fiction is feelings. If you want facts, go to an accountant or an engineer. (Both of these classes are fine folks but they deal mostly with concrete facts, not so much with abstract Truth.) Fiction can deal with Truth and often does, but that’s not why people read it. They read it for the emotive punch it gives them. That’s why I read it. I bet that’s why you read it.

So what makes the Twilight series fly? I’ve read the entire series and mostly enjoyed it. Twilight’s primary audience is teenage girls. The lead character in the Twilight series is an intelligent young girl with a lot of angst. Her angst works perfectly with this audience. Girls this age want an answer to the question: “Will anybody love me, even if I’m different from normal people?” The answer in the series is a resounding “Yes!”

Everybody, in fact, asks this question at some time or other, which explains why Twilight has done well outside the narrowly defined niche that it was aimed at. Yes, you can find all sorts of “problems” in the craft of the series. No, that is not particularly relevant to whether Twilight works as fiction.

Twilight gives many, many people an Extremely Powerful Emotion Experience. That’s why it flies. Stephenie Meyer earned her money. Of course, she has room for improvement, like every other writer on the planet. But she’s doing the main thing right. Kudos to her for that. (For the record, I’d rather be a werewolf than a vampire. For whatever reason, I’d rather be hot and furry than cold and stony. So my sentiments were with Jacob over Edward.)

The purpose of the “Five Pillars of Fiction” (that’s a slightly weird term I coined a few years ago) is to let you categorize the main aspects of a novel where you have a chance to create emotive punch with your reader: A plot, a character, a setting, a theme, and style can all resonate emotively with the reader.

But never, never, never forget the reason for those pesky Pillars or for all the rules on writing. The whole point is to create an emotive response. There are many paths to publishing nirvana. It doesn’t matter how you get there. It matters that you get there.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Christina posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

What do you do if you can’t get your characters to ’speak’ to you? I’m attempting to write my first novel, and I’m stuck just creating the characters! I’ve tried asking questions, but she isn’t forthcoming and very tight-lipped. I’ve tried a journal, but all I heard was my own voice instead of my characters’. Do you have any suggestions?

Randy sez: The key thing here is in your second sentence: You’re just starting your first novel. And you’re hoping that the same methods that work for experienced novelists will work for you. Those methods will work for you some day, when you’ve put in hundreds or possibly thousands of hours of learning the craft. Not until.

I’ll bet Danica Patrick’s car “speaks” to her. Mine doesn’t, other than to whine in an indecipherable mutter sometimes when the engine’s cold and I’m in a hurry. I haven’t put in the thousands of hours behind the wheel of a high-performance engine for my car to talk to me.

I’ll bet Lance Armstrong’s bike “speaks” to him. I used to have a bike. It never said a darned word to me. My legs did — mostly things I can’t print in a family-oriented blog. But the bike — never.

I spent two or three years writing before my characters began to get real to me. I remember the first time it happened. I was doing my daily writing in my “notebook computer” — in those days it was a real notebook, made out of actual paper, and you wrote on it with a pen that left permanent black marks on the white paper. I was writing a scene about a certain historical character and I was fictionalizing an event that actually happened. And at the end of the scene, I found that I was crying. And I thought, “Wow, I actually got inside the skin of that character. Finally.”

That novel never got published, but years later I was working on another novel that I had already sold to a publisher. And I wanted to fictionalize that same event from the point of view of another character. I looked up that scene from my old novel, typed it up in a new POV, and the same thing happened. I connected viscerally with the characters and the scene brought those pesky tears to my eyes. That scene is, in my opinion, one of the strongest scenes in that novel. [If you’re wondering, the novel is RETRIBUTION and the scene is in chapter 22 and ends on page 176.]

If you’re just beginning to write fiction, this probably won’t happen right away. That’s okay. Put in a thousand or two thousand hours of writing, and you’ll probably start connecting amazingly well with your characters, if you have any talent for fiction whatsoever. (If you have a desire to write fiction, then you almost certainly have some talent.)

Put in your hours at learning the craft by doing the craft. Eventually, either your characters will start speaking to you or you’ll realize that you were created to listen to a car or a bike or a spreadsheet instead. You can’t forge the gift of fiction and you can’t force it, but if you just put in the time, the gift will show up on its own. Or not.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.