Writing Good Fiction
Writing good fiction starts with a good story. – So you’re an aspiring author and you have a story you hope people will like. You can see the story in your mind and you can see the beginning and the end. The first real obstacle is whether you have enough clearness of thought to actually tell your story from start to finish in such a way that your readers won’t get lost or feel like the story is missing important details. Even mystery writers who hold back some information still give just enough details to keep the reader immersed in the story in anticipation of the final scenes when everything comes together and the truth comes out. I think this same principle can be used in various ways in all fiction.
If you truly have a good story it’s important to just get it down on paper to start with. Whether it’s a rough draft of the manuscript or a detailed plot outline doesn’t matter. But having it down will help you see where your story is missing information needed for a cohesive story and plot. The next important process in writing good fiction, after you’ve worked out the plot, making the story and timelines cohesive, is character development.
Good Fiction Has Strong Characters
Part of the process of writing good fiction is to engage your readers, making them feel like they are part of the story. Although the story itself can be engaging, without strong characters even the best story will produce yawns and poor reviews. By “strong” I mean that the character comes to life on the page. Readers become part of the story through characters. They identify with a character, their feelings, personality, behaviors and a wide variety of other factors that you can incorporate into your story.
There are different ways to introduce and describe your characters. One is through narrative, where you simply tell a little back story about a character during a scene. Another way is to allow your readers to create their own vision of the character through behavior. And yet another way is to allow an already established character to describe a new character or scene through observation. Here are examples of each of these methods of character description.
- Narrative
- Tony was a tall, lanky man, every bit of six feet, 4 inches. He was clumsy, anything but coordinated and the people that knew him thought of him as a walking cyclone just looking for his next disaster.
- Behavior
- As George continued walking he spotted a penny on the ground which he promptly picked up and put in his pocket.
- Established character observation
- Robert’s attention was instantaneously captured, making him oblivious to everything and everyone else in the room as he watched Angelica descend the staircase. Nothing could have prepared him for the vision of beauty now before him. Her long dark hair pulled up into an exquisite arrangement that accented her face and neck. “Surely this vision of beauty is the transcendence of divine that her name echoes,” he thought to himself.
Did you get a sense of the characters in the descriptions above? None of the descriptions in the above examples are meant to be exhaustive and you probably don’t want to completely describe your characters anyway but rather leave a lot for your readers to imagine.
The Narrative method is pretty straight forward and you’ll more than likely use this method to introduce your main character. It also works well when describing groups of people but you’re not locked into it for that either.
The Behavior method is especially nice for describing minor characters. In the example above you get the sense that George is a miser. With just that simple behavior your mind is already creating a visualization of the character.
I have to admit that the Established Character Observation method above could be better but hopefully you get the idea. You can be as elaborate as you want through the eyes and thoughts of your established character.
So to summarize, two things you’ll need for good fiction are a Good Story and Strong Characters. Of course there are many more things you’ll need to learn along the way but if you have a good story and learn how to introduce your characters you’ve come a long way toward the goal of writing Good Fiction.
Go Forth And Write!
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