Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Wednesday, October 5, 2022

Style: Checklist For Fiction Writers by Crawford Kilian

 

Style: Checklist For Fiction Writers

 by Crawford Kilian

As you begin to develop your outline, and then the actual text of your novel, you can save time and energy by making sure that your writing style requires virtually no copy editing. In the narrative:

  1. Do any sentences begin with the words ``There'' or ``It''? They can almost certainly benefit from revision. (Compare: There were three gunmen who had sworn to kill him. It was hard to believe. or: Three gunmen had sworn to kill him. He couldn't believe it.)

  2. Are you using passive voice instead of active voice? (Compare: Is passive voice being used?) Put it in active voice!

  3. Are you repeating what you've already told your readers? Are you telegraphing your punches?

  4. Are you using trite phrases, cliches, or deliberately unusual words? You'd better have a very good reason for doing so.

  5. Are you terse? Or, alternatively, are you on the other hand expressing and communicating your thoughts and ideas with a perhaps excessive and abundant plethora of gratuitous and surplus verbiage, whose predictably foreseeable end results, needless to say, include as a component part a somewhat repetitious redundancy?

  6. Are you grammatically correct? Are spelling and punctuation correct? (This is not mere detail work, but basic craft. Learn standard English or forget about writing novels.)

  7. Is the prose fluent, varied in rhythm, and suitable in tone to the type of story you're telling?

  8. Are you as narrator intruding on the story through witticisms, editorializing, or self-consciously, inappropriately ``fine'' writing?

    In the dialogue:

  9. Are you punctuating dialogue correctly, so that you neither confuse nor distract your readers?

  10. Are your characters speaking naturally, as they would in reality, but more coherently?

  11. Does every speech advance the story, revealing something new about the plot or the characters? If not, what is its justification?

  12. Are your characters so distinct in their speech--in diction, rhythm, and mannerism--that you rarely need to add ``he said'' or ``she said''? 

 

Except from "Advice on Novel Writing by Crawford Kilian."

 

 About the Author 

Crawford Kilian
Crawford Kilian was born in New York City in 1941. He moved to Canada in 1967 and now resides in Vancouver B.C. Crawford has had twelve science fiction and fantasy novels published. He has been nominated for an Aurora Award 3 times for his novels Eyas, Lifter and Rogue Emperor- A Novel of the Chronoplane Wars. His latest contribution to SF is a non-fiction book for would-be SF writers called Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. Crawford has two more novels in the works.

To learn more about him at Wikipedia.

 

Crawford Kilian Books at Amazon

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