Fran Shaff's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"
Fiction Writing Mistakes and Solutions
A few of the mistakes we fiction writers sometimes make are listed below. It's always helpful for us to have a refresher in things we need to watch for as we continue to produce new work or revise old projects. I hope you find these things of use to you.
And, to my U.S. friends, have a happy Memorial Day.
Fiction writing mistakes and solutions:
1. Over-describing anything. Use of fewer, more powerfully descriptive words is better. A paragraph of descriptive prose can get boring.
2. Using real people. Instead of using actual people in stories, create vivid, compelling "bigger than life" but believable characters.
3. "Head hopping" or using multiple POVs in a scene. Generally it's best to choose one point of view per scene and stick with it throughout the scene. If a change of POV during a scene is necessary, make the transition smooth and obvious so the reader feels neither confused nor jolted by the change.
4. Choosing the wrong POV. The point of view in a scene belongs to the character whose goals are most at risk.
5. Undefined goals. All major characters need goals. These goals should be clearly defined. Without goals, characters are merely wandering through the pages with no purpose. Readers need to be connected to characters and their goals.
6. Poorly defined reasons for actions. A character's plan of action for reaching a goal should be clearly defined--not that all the details need to be obvious. Keeping a little mystery in the reasons for a character's actions can enrich the plot, but if readers don't understand what the character intends to do and why, they may become frustrated.
7. Long, boring transitions. Transitions between scenes should be crisp. Fill in as needed and move to next scene.
8. Giving TMI. Research your subject thoroughly, but don't attempt to convey EVERYTHING you learned to readers. Too much information can bog down the pace of the story or, worse yet, bore readers.
9. Lecturing readers. Don't lecture, no matter how passionate you are about a subject. Characters shouldn't lecture either, no matter how passionate they are about a subject.
10. Sensory deprivation. Blandness is a no-no. Enrich scenes by letting readers see, feel, taste, smell and touch their literary environment through the senses of the characters.
11. Digressing. Stick to what is important to the storyline/character definition. Don't wander off on tangents. Such a practice weakens the story and makes it unappealing.
12. Inactive scenes. Scenes should move. Dialogue, action/reaction, tension, conflict, complications, cliffhangers should all work to keep a scene moving ahead.
Have a great rest of May, and I'll see you again in June!
Fran
Fran Shaff, Award-Winning Author
http://sites.google.com/site/fshaff
And, to my U.S. friends, have a happy Memorial Day.
Fiction writing mistakes and solutions:
1. Over-describing anything. Use of fewer, more powerfully descriptive words is better. A paragraph of descriptive prose can get boring.
2. Using real people. Instead of using actual people in stories, create vivid, compelling "bigger than life" but believable characters.
3. "Head hopping" or using multiple POVs in a scene. Generally it's best to choose one point of view per scene and stick with it throughout the scene. If a change of POV during a scene is necessary, make the transition smooth and obvious so the reader feels neither confused nor jolted by the change.
4. Choosing the wrong POV. The point of view in a scene belongs to the character whose goals are most at risk.
5. Undefined goals. All major characters need goals. These goals should be clearly defined. Without goals, characters are merely wandering through the pages with no purpose. Readers need to be connected to characters and their goals.
6. Poorly defined reasons for actions. A character's plan of action for reaching a goal should be clearly defined--not that all the details need to be obvious. Keeping a little mystery in the reasons for a character's actions can enrich the plot, but if readers don't understand what the character intends to do and why, they may become frustrated.
7. Long, boring transitions. Transitions between scenes should be crisp. Fill in as needed and move to next scene.
8. Giving TMI. Research your subject thoroughly, but don't attempt to convey EVERYTHING you learned to readers. Too much information can bog down the pace of the story or, worse yet, bore readers.
9. Lecturing readers. Don't lecture, no matter how passionate you are about a subject. Characters shouldn't lecture either, no matter how passionate they are about a subject.
10. Sensory deprivation. Blandness is a no-no. Enrich scenes by letting readers see, feel, taste, smell and touch their literary environment through the senses of the characters.
11. Digressing. Stick to what is important to the storyline/character definition. Don't wander off on tangents. Such a practice weakens the story and makes it unappealing.
12. Inactive scenes. Scenes should move. Dialogue, action/reaction, tension, conflict, complications, cliffhangers should all work to keep a scene moving ahead.
Have a great rest of May, and I'll see you again in June!
Fran
Fran Shaff, Award-Winning Author
http://sites.google.com/site/fshaff
Why Didn't They...
Why didn't they just...
Sometimes when I'm watching a movie or reading fiction I wonder, why didn't she do...this...or that. For example, I was watching Hitchcock's "The Birds" one night this week and I wondered, why didn't the protagonists pack up the mother and the little girl and head to Mitch's place in San Francisco after the kids were attacked by the birds at the birthday party? Or at least after the mother found her neighbor killed by the birds?
I heard a comedian during a routine he was doing question why the characters in the Amityville Horror didn't just leave the house when weird things started happening.
Certainly, these sentiments are common to most of us. That's why the comedian used that material in his show.
Sometimes characters do the things they do because it's in their "nature" to behave as they do. Using "The Birds" again as an example, neither Mitch (who was a criminal lawyer) nor Melanie (who kept company with a "wild" crowd) were the type of people who ran from a fight. Each of them, as we learn during the picture, stood strong and faced challenges rather than running away from them. So, they stayed in Bodega Bay instead of seeking the safety of San Francisco.
I can live with the question "Why didn't they just..." if the answer is as clear cut as it is in "The Birds." I understand characters should behave according to who they are. I WANT them to be true to their nature, even if the actions they take seem ill advised. If they use poor judgement or make mistakes, it only makes them more human.
We readers or movie viewers are only cheated when writers of novels or screenplays "force" characters to do what it is not in their nature to do or when their actions are directed by the writers who are fulfilling an agenda for the story instead of letting characters be who they were created to be.
For example, the author of a book I read earlier this year "forced" two old sweethearts into a reunion leading to marriage without any attempt at resolving the titanic problems which had festered between them for nearly two decades. All of a sudden, each of them forgot the terrible pain they'd caused each other and just decided, hey, let's get married.
This book left me asking, why didn't she just..., but this time the "she" wasn't a character, it was the author. Why didn't she put the hero and heroine in a situation where they needed to rely on each other to make it through a crisis? It would then be logical and believable that they could somehow realize the old feelings they had for each other were even stronger than any of the problems they'd had in the past.
Life's complicated, writing fiction is complicated.
However, reading fiction should be pure pleasure and a complete escape from life's complications. Shouldn't it just?
Fran
Fran Shaff, Award-Winning Author
Fran's Web Page
Sometimes when I'm watching a movie or reading fiction I wonder, why didn't she do...this...or that. For example, I was watching Hitchcock's "The Birds" one night this week and I wondered, why didn't the protagonists pack up the mother and the little girl and head to Mitch's place in San Francisco after the kids were attacked by the birds at the birthday party? Or at least after the mother found her neighbor killed by the birds?
I heard a comedian during a routine he was doing question why the characters in the Amityville Horror didn't just leave the house when weird things started happening.
Certainly, these sentiments are common to most of us. That's why the comedian used that material in his show.
Sometimes characters do the things they do because it's in their "nature" to behave as they do. Using "The Birds" again as an example, neither Mitch (who was a criminal lawyer) nor Melanie (who kept company with a "wild" crowd) were the type of people who ran from a fight. Each of them, as we learn during the picture, stood strong and faced challenges rather than running away from them. So, they stayed in Bodega Bay instead of seeking the safety of San Francisco.
I can live with the question "Why didn't they just..." if the answer is as clear cut as it is in "The Birds." I understand characters should behave according to who they are. I WANT them to be true to their nature, even if the actions they take seem ill advised. If they use poor judgement or make mistakes, it only makes them more human.
We readers or movie viewers are only cheated when writers of novels or screenplays "force" characters to do what it is not in their nature to do or when their actions are directed by the writers who are fulfilling an agenda for the story instead of letting characters be who they were created to be.
For example, the author of a book I read earlier this year "forced" two old sweethearts into a reunion leading to marriage without any attempt at resolving the titanic problems which had festered between them for nearly two decades. All of a sudden, each of them forgot the terrible pain they'd caused each other and just decided, hey, let's get married.
This book left me asking, why didn't she just..., but this time the "she" wasn't a character, it was the author. Why didn't she put the hero and heroine in a situation where they needed to rely on each other to make it through a crisis? It would then be logical and believable that they could somehow realize the old feelings they had for each other were even stronger than any of the problems they'd had in the past.
Life's complicated, writing fiction is complicated.
However, reading fiction should be pure pleasure and a complete escape from life's complications. Shouldn't it just?
Fran
Fran Shaff, Award-Winning Author
Fran's Web Page
The Importance of Secrets
Every one of us has a secret, something which we haven't told anyone--not our spouse, not a parent, not a best friend.
Something bad, maybe even horrible, happened to us; we did something which we deeply regret; we intentionally hurt someone; we did something heroic which no one witnessed.
Secrets buried deep within our souls sometimes have a big affect on how we behave, how we see the world, or whether or not we trust other people.
While these furtive facts about ourselves can wreak havoc in our lives, secrets make good fodder for fictional stories.
Soap operas just wouldn't be as intriguing without a baby who could be the result of a clandestine affair.
The Oedipus Rex would be just another story without the protagonist's mother issues.
A murder mystery is much more compelling when the killer eventually confesses he hated the boss he poisoned because he looked just like the stepfather who used to lock him in the mouse-infested feed bin of a lonely country barn.
When developing characters writers delve into the pasts of these fictional people. They ask all kinds of intimate questions of their characters, so to speak.
When they learn Sarah was bullied as a teenager, or Mike saved the life of a little girl and no one knew what he did, or Cecily gave away a daughter to adoptive parents and then learned she could no longer have children, writers understand something very important about their characters. They understand that past secrets influence present behaviors. Once writers are aware of what makes their characters tick, writing plausible stories about the characters' reactions to certain situations becomes a little less challenging.
Whenever we read a book or watch a movie, the story always becomes more interesting when we take time to discover just why a character acts the way she does. We should always spend time getting to know the secrets of the Sarah, Mike or Cecily in the fictional story we're reading or viewing. I guarantee the character creator did.
Fran
Fran Shaff, Award-Winning Author
Fran's Web Page
Something bad, maybe even horrible, happened to us; we did something which we deeply regret; we intentionally hurt someone; we did something heroic which no one witnessed.
Secrets buried deep within our souls sometimes have a big affect on how we behave, how we see the world, or whether or not we trust other people.
While these furtive facts about ourselves can wreak havoc in our lives, secrets make good fodder for fictional stories.
Soap operas just wouldn't be as intriguing without a baby who could be the result of a clandestine affair.
The Oedipus Rex would be just another story without the protagonist's mother issues.
A murder mystery is much more compelling when the killer eventually confesses he hated the boss he poisoned because he looked just like the stepfather who used to lock him in the mouse-infested feed bin of a lonely country barn.
When developing characters writers delve into the pasts of these fictional people. They ask all kinds of intimate questions of their characters, so to speak.
When they learn Sarah was bullied as a teenager, or Mike saved the life of a little girl and no one knew what he did, or Cecily gave away a daughter to adoptive parents and then learned she could no longer have children, writers understand something very important about their characters. They understand that past secrets influence present behaviors. Once writers are aware of what makes their characters tick, writing plausible stories about the characters' reactions to certain situations becomes a little less challenging.
Whenever we read a book or watch a movie, the story always becomes more interesting when we take time to discover just why a character acts the way she does. We should always spend time getting to know the secrets of the Sarah, Mike or Cecily in the fictional story we're reading or viewing. I guarantee the character creator did.
Fran
Fran Shaff, Award-Winning Author
Fran's Web Page
