Status Updates From On Teaching and Writing Fic...

Instead, fiction has a moral dimension because it asks:

How should people treat one another?
What do our choices cost?
What responsibilities do we have?
How do people deceive themselves?
What happens when desire conflicts with responsibility?
What does a person owe to a community?

The story doesn't necessarily answer these questions.

It stages the

good detail reveals something:
setting character mood history social class relationship conflict symbolism

desire → conflict → choice → consequence

The writer shouldn't merely ask:
What happens next?

The writer should ask:
What would this person actually do?
And then:
Why?

ways to play around your lived experience to turn it into fiction
- combining several people into one character
- changing chronology
- inventing events
- altering settings
- changing points of view
- exaggerating certain characteristics
- eliminating irrelevant details

make a decisions about: selection structure sequence perspective characterization language pacing mission emphasis

areas of growth: unnecessary exposition weak characterization artificial dialogue structural problems clichés sentimentality confusing point of view ineffective endings overwritten prose