Fiction Writing Tips

Fiction writing isn’t really that hard if you know how.  I’ve created a list of writing skills you must have before you charge into a fiction project:

• Do you know how to combine scene, description and summary?  The scene is people and things in action around your character, Description is describing landscapes, interiors,weather,human features, reactions, dress as it relates to your character’s sentiments, conversation, appearances, and perceptions to one or more of these elements.   How hard is it to have conversation, mood and description, all in one?  Never try to separate scene and description in different passages. The summary is a change in time, a change of circumstances and even of character focus. It is sometimes boring to do and boring for the reader unless skillfully done.  If the story moves along, one chapter after another sequentially, then you will never have to deal with idle time in your fiction. The best way to deal with changes is not to try to account for the change in words. Instead use a white-space break. That alone prepares a reader for the change that is coming.  A new chapter will do pretty much the same thing if they are not overused.
• Viewpoint is a choice that every writer has. Before one makes that choice however, one must decide how intimate he wants the story to become. The first person ‘I’ or ‘We’ gives a story immediate intimacy – moreso than ‘he’ or ‘they’ do.  If you choose ‘I’ or ‘We’, you must be careful not to make your character too heroic, too egotistical, too boastful and at the same time, you need to make sure your character is not too retiring, too shy or you’ll be creating a wimpy nerd.  You can go with ‘you’ but good fiction writing rarely has a second person point of view. Good fiction writing often uses the fly-on-the-wall viewpoint to create authority and a stable reference point for the reader. It’s what a camera would see or what a recorder would hear.  There are plenty of third-person fiction stories but even there is a choice whether to write as an omniscient author , that will put you on the page or the author as a subjective character limiting what the reader can see or feel or touch to the character’s viewpoint. The purpose of your writing should be to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the author and even the book  itself. Instead, the purpose of viewpoint is to transport the reader on the journey of your story.
• Show, don’t tell:  Excite the imaginations of your readers by showing, not telling the reader. Let the reader’s imagination fill in the gaps of the events in your story. Use action verbs and powerful nouns and you will be able to paint vivid scenes and situations. Then don’t conclude an action. Let the reader do it.  “He raised the long sword high over his head, muscled it violently downward and walked away. Silence filled the air where frightful noises once disturbed.”  
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