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Restraint in Writing: Doing Your Characters Justice

March 15, 2021

ambiguity, fiction, pace, patience, restraint, writing

I’ve often talked about patience and “less is more” in my posts. I’ve also often referred to the importance of subtlety and ambiguity, rather than over-explaining. Restraint in writing is part of this grand concept, and it basically refers to keeping your authorial eagerness in check.

To exercise restraint while writing means to understand narrative journeys. Exercising restraint and subtlety means to resist ~~divine~~ authorial intervention: If a certain outcome, way out, or solution is unlikely to happen in real life, then it’s twice as unlikely to happen in fiction.

Remember that, although life doesn’t need to make sense, fiction does!

And so, in this post I’ll show you why restraint when writing fiction is important. I’ll also show you ways to find and maintain this restraint. The way can be challenging, but the result will be worth it: You will end up with a narrative that is far more mature, engaging, and rewarding for you and your audience alike.

But, as a first thing, we need to zero in on the concept of restraint. So, let’s begin with some definitions and examples.

For many authors, restraint in writing sounds negative; it connotes limitation, being chained. Well, as you can see in the next photo, further below, being chained can be a good thing!

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How to Less Is More in Fiction

February 15, 2021

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

affect, exposition, less is more, over-explaining

Notice how the title of this post is an example in itself. I didn’t say “How to Do ‘Less Is More’ in Fiction”, or anything like that. Yet still, you figured it out. The meaning was conveyed.

Of course, this blog post is nonfiction, which makes it about facts. Fiction is about affect, which makes “less is more” even more crucial.

Why?

But because learning how to “less is more” in fiction allows you precisely to strip any excess preoccupation with facts and focus on conveying this affect.

I have partly talked about this before, mostly in my posts on narrative exposition and over-explaining, so feel free to take a look at those two posts as well. You’d also learn a lot reading about the lessons from my poem shuffler program.

In this post, we’ll instead focus more on, well, how to less is more in fiction. In other words, I’ll show you some practical tips on how to make sure you strategically withhold some truths from your readers.

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How to Write Your First Book

January 25, 2021

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

book, feedback, imagination, writing

Writing your first novel is a big deal. If you pardon the ridiculous metaphor, writing your first novel is not unlike the first time you slept with someone: It’s exciting, scary, fascinating, and – looking back – kind of special yet also pretty “meh”. The trick in learning how to write your first book lies in understanding what to expect.

But there’s more.

To continue the same symbolism, just as a new partner makes it feel like the very first time all over again, you might have written ten books, but you can still get the “writing my first book” experience all of a sudden. In other words, even if you have already written at least one book, this post applies to you too.

Drawing from my own long and sometimes painful experience, in this post I will give you some simple but useful tips on how to write your first book of fiction – whether it’s your literal first or the first book in a new beginning you want to be making.

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