The Inexorable Rule of Writing Fiction

August 29, 2024 by Harvey

In today’s Journal

* The Inexorable Rule of Writing Fiction
* On the Other Hand
* How-To Books for Suckers
* A Simple Test
* The Numbers

The Inexorable Rule of Writing Fiction

1. If you want to be a fiction writer, you must write fiction.

That’s it. That is the only inexorable, inviolate rule.

That rule alone will knock out of the ring probably 95% of all those contenders who say they want to write fiction.

If you’re still IN the ring, then you only have to decide whether you want to write AUTHENTIC fiction—what actually happens in your characters’ story—or not.

If authenticity matters to you, you must

• ignore or push down your various unreasoning fears,

• trust the story and the characters (and yourself),

• set aside your ego, and

• serve as the characters’ stenographer or recorder.

Put another way, you must come down out of the ivory tower and relinquish control of the story to the characters who are actually living it.

You must roll off the parapet into the story and race through it with your characters, trying to keep up as the story unfolds around you.

Remember you are an outsider to the story, invited to observe. You don’t actively participate in the story. You simply record what happens and what the characters say and do in their reaction to what happens.

Nothing more, nothing less.

In other words, to write an authentic story, you must write into the dark. In the coming days, through TNDJ, I will help you with that.

On the Other Hand

• if you don’t care about the authenticity of the story, or

• if you believe you have to know what happens next and exert control over the story and the characters, or

• if you’re a pretentiious drama queen who believes you have to “suffer” for your art, or

• if you believe you can write a “better” story by outlining the whole thing in advance or by second-guessing your characters with revisions and rewrites,

then I can’t help you.

In that case, frankly, you should strike TNDJ off your list and go back to the safety of the writers boards and critique groups and the myths.

You know, places where the word Writer is accompanied by a chorus of angelic voices. At TNDJ, you’re in the real world.

The whole purpose of TNDJ is to tell you a working journeyman’s truth about writing fiction and what wonderful, freeing fun it can be.

If you don’t want writing fiction to be fun, if you want it to be laborious drudgery so you can drape a forearm over your forehead and tell everyone how much you’re suffering in your martyrdom, then you’re in the wrong place.

TNDJ is for people who want to write true, authentic fiction and who want to actually enjoy the process. And reap the rewards.

How-To Books for Suckers

Some writers believe they can write a “better” story by preplanning (plotting) it. Those folks also usually believe they can make a story they’ve written “better” by hovering over it with revisions and editing and rewrites.

Both of those notions are big steamy piles of fresh bovine excrement. They are pure myth.

In every case the myths are the result of bowing to unreasoning fear, and they fly in the face of writing authentic fiction. You can’t “make up” how your neighbors’ real life unfolds, and you can’t make up how your characters’ authentic (true) story unfolds.

Still, unfortunately, those myths are what most people want to believe. And they are pervasive.

Just last night, I watched an episode of The Crown that featured a scene between a publisher and the senior press secretary in Buckingham Palace, who was also a first-time novelist. An early scene showed him typing ‘The End’ on the last page of a manuscript.

A transition scene showed him plopping the manuscript, in a folder, on the publisher’s desk. The manuscript was at least five inches thick. (The following snippets of dialogue are paraphrased. I was laughing too hard to note them exactly.)

In a scene that ostensibly occurred a month or so later, our valiant writer was in the publisher’s office again, his eyebrows curled in confusion. “No nibbles yet?”

The publisher smiled warmly. “Don’t worry about it.” She laid her hand on the massive manuscript. “If this doesn’t sell, you can always write commercial fiction. Perhaps a political thriller?”

The writer shot dramatically up from his chair and scowled. “No! If they don’t accept my magnum opus, I’m through!” And he left.

Thanks to depictions on television and in films, that’s what the general public believes writers should be: pretentious, chock-full of themselves, and melodramatic.

Okay fine. So lie to them. Tell them you outlined your novel to death. Tell them you revised it seemingly endlessly. Tell them you rewrote it twenty times. Chances are they won’t do the math on a novel you wrote in one month.

In reality, if you write even 1000 words per day, you should finish a 50,000 word novel in 50 days. Or a 90,000 word novel in 90 days. Or a 3,000 word short story in a day or two or three.

Still, to each his or her own: If you’d rather stay with the myths, there are plenty of professional writers out there (many of whom actually avoid the myths themselves and write into the dark) who will tell you the myths work.

It isn’t that they want to keep the truth to themselves. It’s that they want to sell their nonfiction books—most of which only mimic what most of the other nonfiction how-to books on the topic say—to susceptible would-be writers who buy into the nonsense.

I’m here to tell you those writers are selling a bill of false goods in the form of nonfiction books spouting the myths on every fiction-writing topic under the sun. But writers gobble them up.

And that starts a vicious cycle:

1. The writer buys a book that expounds the myths.

2. The writer eventually reads the book.

3. The writer follows the myths, as instructed by the book.

4. Following those myths grinds the actual writing to a halt.

5. The writer becomes frustrated and disillusioned and most often stops writing.

6. Eventually the writer wants to try again, so he buys another book by a different author—and that book expounds the same myths in different words. And the cycle repeats.

If that’s your thing, by all means buy the myth-pushing books and enjoy them.

You won’t learn anything new or anything you haven’t seen or heard dozens of times before, but at least those books will enable you to stay in your comfort zone on your way to stopping writing again.

Hey, whatever floats your boat.

If you’d like to break out of that ridiculous cycle, you can determine in advance whether a how-to-write-fiction book is useful or harmful.

A Simple Test

If you’re looking at a nonfiction how-to-write-fiction book online and it doesn’t have “Look Inside” enabled, don’t buy it.

If it has “Look Inside” enabled or if you’re holding a paper book in your hand, browse the table of contents. Then browse the book.

• If the book recommends you construct a plot or “signposts” or an outline or character sketches or engage in worldbuilding, don’t buy it.

• If it recommends you revise or edit your story or novel, don’t buy it.

• If it recommends you submit your writing to critique groups, or suggests that you cannot write a great story or novel without external input from other writers, don’t buy it.

• If it recommends you rewrite, don’t buy it.

• If it recommends writing more than one (clean) draft of a story or novel, don’t buy it.

If you’ve been writing fiction for awhile, or even if you haven’t started yet but think you would like to write fiction, chances are good you already have some books like that in your bookshelf.

So if you still believe the myths might work and you want to try them, I recommend you save your money and reread the books you already have.

I Write Nonfiction Books Too

Full disclosure, I should tell you I write nonfiction how-to books on writing too. But none of them support the myths. The best, most all-encompassing one is Writing Better Fiction.

Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll be back with a post for those of you who want to write true, authentic fiction. And we’ll continue from there.

Talk with you again then.

The Numbers

The Journal………………………………1350

Writing of Blackwell Ops 28: Ariana Ramos

Day 1…… 2583 words. To date…… 2583

Fiction for August…………………….….… 46093
Fiction for 2024………………………….… 560586
Fiction since October 1………………… 778143
Nonfiction for August……………………… 25440
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 272450
2024 consumable words………………… 747536

2024 Novels to Date……………………… 12
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 5
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 94
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 242
Short story collections…………………… 29

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer, but please try this at home. You can do it.

On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies. They will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

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