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Fiction Writing Tips

Inevitable Narrative: How to Detect what Is Necessary in Your Fiction

December 7, 2020

characters, ending, narrative, plot, writing

Learning how to detect what is necessary in your fiction allows you to write an inevitable narrative. A narrative that is inevitable is structurally solid and leads to a sense-making ending.

Therefore, it should be fairly obvious that learning to see what’s necessary and what’s not when writing is very important. To put it simply, without having an inevitable narrative you will likely have problems with narrative pace as well as a problematic ending.

Moreover, a non inevitable narrative… inevitably creates problems with over-explaining and exposition. The reason? If something that shouldn’t be there actually is, you tend to (sometimes subconsciously) rationalize it with superfluous content.

In this post we’ll take a closer look at inevitable narratives. I’ll show you how to decide what is narratively inevitable and what isn’t, as well as how to structure your narrative in a way that precisely favors its inevitability.

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How NOT to Write Genre Fiction: The Dangers of Pleasing Your Audience

November 16, 2020

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

art, artist, genre, literature, mediocrity, popularity, writing

There are many guides out there that promise to teach you how to write genre fiction. And yet few of them will tell you the most important thing: Writing genre fiction is an inherently people-pleasing act, which is an always dangerous business.

In a sense, genre fiction is the opposite of literary fiction. Whereas literary fiction deals with abstractness and generality, genre fiction deals with concreteness and specificity. To put it another way, if literary fiction is about “everyone, always”, genre fiction is about “that one, right there and then”Of course, this is a somewhat simplistic way of putting it. Quality literature (including genre fiction) can always extrapolate from the specific to the generic, even if it does so operating on a subconscious level. Take a look at my review of The Lighthouse..

If this sounds a bit too theoretical, worry not; I’ll unpack it in more detail in this post. My purpose is not to offer you tips on how to write genre fiction, but tips on how not to write genre fiction – though obviously enough, the two processes overlap.

In other words, I’ll highlight the pitfalls of writing genre fiction, together with my opinion on how to avoid them (there’s a twist in the plot here).

write genre fiction — If you’re writing genre fiction (say, fantasy with witches), there are things you can do, and there are things you *can’t* do. This is always a problem in anything that would like to call itself artistic creation

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Finding Connections in Writing Fiction: Why It Is Important

November 2, 2020

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

affect, connections, fiction, meaning, symbolism, writing

The title of this post claims finding connections in your writing is important. Actually, it’s more than that: It’s crucial. Indeed, I’d go as far as calling it critical. If you can’t find connections in your writing, you’re in serious trouble.

I’ve mentioned this before, in my post on imagination and creativity: “Creative writing is a connection game, and that’s where imagination plays a major part; in helping you see the connections”, I then said.

In today’s post we will expand on this concept. I will show you

why finding connections in your fiction is crucial
how to find such connections
what to do with them

As a sneak preview I could mention that finding connections in your writing has to do with the bigger picture and the affective power of your novel.

finding connections in writing — Finding connections in your writing is the foundation of affect

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