On the Different Ways to Write Fiction

October 16, 2024 by Harvey

In today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* On the Different Ways to Write Fiction
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

“In my experience, each failure contains the seeds of your next success—if you are willing to learn from it.” Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft) as reported in 1440 Daily Digest

On the Different Ways to Write Fiction

This is intended only for those who are serious about writing fiction.

If you aren’t—if you’re writing only for therapy or only to mark another “to do” off your bucket list or whatever—that’s perfectly fine but you are not the primary audience for this post.

But if you are serious about learning the craft and writing fiction, read on.

I hear it all over the place: Whatever works for you is perfectly fine.

Those who usually say such things also tend to denigrate anyone who doesn’t outline, plot, plan, revise, participate in critique groups, rewrite, polish… you get the idea.

So according to those folks, “whatever works” is fine as long as you mire yourself in the myths, believe turning out two 60,000 word novels per years is “prolific,” participate in critique groups, and so on.

Oh, and they also don’t actually define the word “works.”

To me, the definition of “works” comes in two parts:

One, you’re writing new fiction (not revising or rewriting old words) regularly, every day that you can.

If you are dedicated to writing fiction—or if you want to become dedicated to writing fiction—there is only one way to do that: Put new words on the page. Write fiction.

Those with day jobs, young children and so on might write for only an hour or a half-hour per day, or only on weekends. But those who are serious about writing fiction write whenever they can.

Those of us who are no longer committed to a day job or young children have more disposable time. During at least some of that time, we also play away from the computer at other interests.

But again, if we want to be fiction writers we have to actually write. For many of us, the writing is what enables us to play away from the computer.

But when we’re at the computer, knee-deep in the current short story, novella or novel we’re playing too. And it’s a funfest. My personal fun meter has been pretty much pegged at the high end since early 2014.

If you start now, today, you’ll be able to say the same thing tomorrow and the next day and the next. I mean that part about your fun meter being pegged. (grin)

And two, you’re enjoying the process. Or you’re maybe even exhilarated with it. Characters will do that for you if you let them.

And those are what I call the “real writers.” That’s just my term for those who write fiction whenever they can. Those who write for the sheer joy of finding out what happens next.

For those writers, the fact that they can covey their characters’ stories to readers is almost a secondary concern. It’s a side benefit. I believe that’s why so many real writers, myself included, fall off Heinlein’s Rule 4 (submit or publish) so easily and so often.

But those other folks—those who are mired in the myths and see fiction writing as “drudgery” or “labor”—are correct in a way too.

I at least agree with them that you should do whatever works and that if you want to write fiction you should write fiction.

But I also know there are only two ways to write fiction:

• you can either bow to unreasoning fear and endure the “sheer drudgery” of forcing a story along one word at a time, or

• you can embrace the fear and excitement of the unknown and enjoy the exhilaration of experiencing what your characters experience as it happens.

Of course, I personally advocate the latter. If the only way to write fiction was to think my way through it, TNDJ wouldn’t be here.

• I would be too busy working at building an outline and character sketches and world-building.

• When I eventually got to the writing, I’d be laboring my way through a couple of hundred “perfect” words per hour for a few hours every day.

• I’d spend hours revising, arranging and rearranging sentences and fretting over whether I’m politically correct enough.

• I would attend critique group meetings, and I would feel compelled, if not commanded, to rewrite all of those “perfect” words, and

• Eventually I would have to get away from the labor and drudgery of writing fiction for awhile.

• And if I was very determined and didn’t stop writing altogether, maybe someday

• I would be one of those “prolific” writers who churn out two novels per year, and

• today I would have 18 “perfect” novels under my belt (instead of 96), each a product of my determination to slog through the drudgery of writing.

Why only 18 novels? Because I took two forced years off during the last eleven years.

All of that said, you don’t have to write in any particular way.

I’m the last person on Earth who would tell you what you “have” to do. Like most things in life, how you wrIte is your choice.

When your characters do something completely unexpected, you’re perfectly within your rights to force them back into the mold you set up in your character sketches and your outline.

After all, it’s your fabricated story, not your characters’ authentic story. Not any longer.

Or (just a thought) you can

• join with your characters in their revelry and race through the story with them, watching and listening as it unfolds around you.

• You can cycle back through the story as you write to be sure everything the characters give you is included.

• Then you can run a quick spell check and ship it off to a first reader (or read it aloud) to correct any glaring errors or inconsistencies.

• Then you can publish it and move on to the next story.

• That’s how you write 96 novels, 10 novellas, and 255 short stories in 11 years and wish you’d been a little more disciplined so you could have told more stories.

If you do that, you will experience the physical senses of your POV character. You will hear the same sounds, smell the same scents, aromas, and stenches, and taste the same sweet or bitter or exciting flavors.

Because you’re trusting the characters to tell THEIR story, the story that they, not you, are living. They’ve only invited you along. Embrace your good fortune and enjoy!

Talk with you again soon.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 1180

Writing of Blackwell Ops 29: John Quick

Day 1…… 1781 words. To date…… 1781
Day 2…… 3792 words. To date……. 5573
Day 3…… 3087 words. To date……. 8660
Day 4…… 3545 words. To date……. 12205
Day 5…… 2667 words. To date……. 14872
Day 6…… 1665 words. To date……. 16537
Day 7…… 3073 words. To date……. 19610

Fiction for October……………………. 48274
Fiction for 2024……………………….. 789782
Nonfiction for October……………….. 16920
Nonfiction for 2024……………………. 320510
2024 consumable words……………… 93431

Average Fiction WPD (October)……… 3218

2024 Novels to Date……………………….. 14
2024 Novellas to Date……………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date………………… 18
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..……. 96
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………. 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………..… 255
Short story collections…………………….….. 29

Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.

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