Tips for Writing Fiction

©Jessica P. Morrell

1. Begin with a compelling opening that pulls the reader into the story, raises questions and starts the reader worrying and wondering about the protagonist. The best openings involve an inciting incident-an action that changes the character's status and inflicts a threatening changes to his or her situation. Open the story by plunging into the action, avoid writing a lot of description or background information.

2. A protagonist is shaped by believable and powerful motivation, made visible in his goals and actions. This motivation should include a deeply-felt emotional need or desire that is somehow linked with his/her past. Often the best way to understand a character's motivation is to determine what they fear most. Is it losing his marriage? Child? Job? Standing in the community? Use that fear as the basis for the story, propels him to act.

3. Create a protagonist with a set of identifiable dominant traits that serve as the foundation for his personality and actions. The dominant traits will help him/her achieve goals and make him or her bigger than life. Generally fictional protagonists are proactive, they keep struggling, trying, reaching-thus causing the events in the plot to happen. A protagonist will also be plagued with a fatal flaw which will cause problems in the story. This fatal flaw (fear, greed, lust, bitterness, envy, weakness) should be integral to the plot, and should be overcome, transformed or acknowledged by the end of the story.

4. Fiction is not episodic but rather are events based on cause-and-effect. The inciting incident starts a chain of events and the characters' actions make more events happen which in turn make more things happen. Blunders, missteps, disasters, reversals, influences from the setting are all part of cause-and-effect.

5. Fiction is fueled by conflict and opposition. It should appear on every page, in every scene and provide tension and suspense. Your characters should be conflict with each other, with themselves and the world at large. Torture your characters with difficult moral choices and dilemmas to involve and worry readers.

6. Fiction is shown, or dramatized in scenes, not told in summary or through other means. Scenes are the building blocks of fiction and each scene should move your protagonist closer to or farther away from his/her fate.

7. Every scene must occur in a specific time and place. Most scenes are based on the protagonist's goal which then meets an obstacle, causing emotional reversal. Scenes expose the emotional life and struggles of the characters. Scenes advance the plot, provide background information such as backstory, and throw obstacles at the characters.

8. Include weather in your fiction. Weather affects humans and events every day and the same is true of fictional characters. Weather should cause things to happen in fiction-a thunderstorm storm knocks out electricity or hides the murderer's tracks; a heat wave presses on everyone's last nerve, a draught shrivels crops and rivers making characters desperate.

9. Besides weather, create an intricate setting as both the backdrop and interactive element in your story. Setting includes lighting, time of day, season, region, geography, towns, neighborhoods, streets, buildings including shops, schools, restaurants, parks, bodies of water, interiors, furniture. Include ordinary and homey details so the reader believes in your fantasy world.

10. Heap terrible troubles on your protagonist. Remember fiction is about characters who are threatened with hideous troubles, lousy luck, trying to overcome insurmountable odds and obstacles. As your protagonist struggles to solve his/her problems, make them stumble, screw up, and make the problems worse instead of better.

11. In a scene before the climax, stage a "dark night of the soul" moment. This is the point where the situation is bleakest--the odds are stacked against the protagonist, the dangers appear deadly, the way out nonexistent. However, the way out of the dark night involves the protagonist overcoming his fatal flaw and relying on his dominant traits. These traits, including strengths, gave readers hope and a reason to cheer him/her on all along. The dark night of the soul should also include the character's last-ditch and mightiest effort to solve the story problem and achieve his/her goals. It is when the character is questioning whether his sacrifices have all been worth it, has he/she done the right thing, made the right decisions.

12. Write crisp, tight, "heightened" dialogue. It is not a copy of real speech, but a much condensed and more interesting version of it. Good dialogue makes each character sound distinctive, flows smoothly and sounds realistic. Most dialogue is embedded with tension or conflict and often contains subtext-the emotions that are unspoken but lie beneath the surface.

13, Write for ALL of the senses so that the reader can taste, see, smell, feel and hear the story unfolding. Flannery O'Connor said, "Fiction begins where human knowledge begins-with the senses." Sensory details convince the reader that your story is "real"-that it could actually happen. Your stories need the smells of coffee, bacon, spearmint and diesel smoke. Include rattling winds, dangerous ice, chilling cold, peeling walls and cracked, dirty windows in the ghetto apartment, moldy cheese, the dry, cracked hands of a factory worker or farmer, the whack of a hammer, the moan of a sick child along with his the feverish tossing.

14. Fiction is not like ordinary life and often works best when it is not based on real events or people. Fiction can borrow from real life, but it is less random, much bigger, scarier, and the stakes are higher. Fiction is artifice. If you are writing a story based on truth you will need to alter it somehow.
"Real life, if yours is anything like mine, tends towards chaos. Fiction has structure, order, refinement. Imposing the artificial-that's what fiction writers do to turn their stories into art. Fiction can be boisterous, even obnoxious at time. The art of writing fiction, like a good magic trick, is often in making it seem easy, effortless-in never letting the reader see all the practice you've put into it.

The temptation, which must always be resisted, is to include everything that happened, rather than making wise selections. Be parsimonious with your experience. Don't give it added weight simply because you're fond of the memory. If you include everything that happened, your book or story risks becoming muddled and weighted down by a voluminous chronicle of your associations. Remember, this is a piece of fiction, not a slide show of your various experiences." Robin Hemley

More Tips:
Make certain that a major crisis, reversal or twist occurs at the midpoint to send the story skittering in a new direction and creating new motivation for the protagonist.

Make certain that your protagonist is struggling with internal conflict as well as external conflict.

The reader's first glimpse of the protagonist should evoke sympathy.

Base fiction around a single dramatic question.

Remember always that you are a storyteller first. Stories are not merely about issues or themes. Fiction is about how threatening events affect fictional people.

While a storyline requires a series of crisis's, surprises and reversals, do not use violence, sex, sin, gore, or murder to enliven a sagging plot.

Don't launch a story with too many characters for the readers to track in the opening.

Keep dialect to a minimum and don't write it without thorough research or intimate knowledge.

Remember that the opening has much to accomplish including establishing the voice, viewpoint, tone, and pacing.

Characters are revealed while acting, talking, making choices and decisions. People are what they do.

Make certain that there is a visual element on every page.

Create a vibrant and quirky cast of secondary and minor characters to enliven the story and reveal several sides of the protagonist.

Don't start major edits or rewrites until you finish your first draft.