The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes
Language: English
Pages: 128
ISBN: 0898798213
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes When you write fiction, you march onto a minefield. This book gives you a map. Oh, what tricky terrain you're traveling! You must reckon with: Character, Conflict, Point of View, Dialogue, Editors, Editors, and Editors, who--by returning stories they see as problem-plagued--can burst your hopes of publication. Where are the problems? Editors rarely take the time to map them out, so Jack Bickham has. In this book, he spotlights the 38 most common fiction writing land mines--writing mistakes that can turn even dynamite story ideas into slush pile rejects. And he guides you in overcoming them. In to-the-point style, he shows you how to: conquer procrastination--and put ink on paper regularly dump wimpy characters--and build characters ready to act look for trouble--and create conflicts for your characters cut coincidence--and put better-than-life logic into fiction escape the fog--and find and stick to your story's direction free feelings--and fire your fiction with passion and emotion In short, Bickham helps you take a giant step toward publication. Read this book. Strengthen your writing. And start setting off explosions where they belong: on the sales charts.
and response as outlined in Chapter Eleven. Now, it may be that you will occasionally allow a character to ramble briefly in order to make the dialogue appear more realistic; you may even let one character briefly lose the thread of the conversation, and need a repeat of something just mentioned. These are fine little tricks. But they are not the norm. Modern dialogue tends to be brief, punchy, single-issue oriented. Impatient readers demand no less. In writing a draft of a dialogue scene, you
which novels are that publisher's expected "leaders" in the next quarter. Finally, some publishers (especially the romance publishers) can provide you with sometimes—elaborate "tip sheets" that specify all sorts of things that publisher wants or doesn't want in submitted novels. It's common for such tip sheets to tell you the desired age of the central characters, settings that the editors may be overstocked on, etc. A letter of enquiry together with a stamped, self-addressed envelope (SASE),
I'll spare you an example of this kind of writing. You have seen too many examples in print, I suspect. Such writers tend to write about rough, tough heroes who grunt and curse and bash a lot. In recent times, however, the male crusher-basher tough guy has a serious competitor: the tough-talking, neurotically independent "modern female." These women need no one, and talk and act as bad as their fictional male counterparts. The existence of all such tough-talk fiction proves that a lot of
motors or describe a sunset to open? 6. Study the viewpoint character(s). One viewpoint must clearly dominate. Make sure of this. Count pages in each viewpoint if you must. Now look at ways you established the placement of the viewpoint. Is it clear where the viewpoint is at all times? Can you find any author intrusions that ought to be taken out? Any excursions into other viewpoints that are slips, or author self-indulgence rather than being required by the plot? 7. Check the time scheme. Make
in good fiction—even at novel length—such descriptions of the character's state of mind and emotion are usually relatively brief. The accomplished writer will tell (describe) a little, and demonstrate (show in action) a lot. Modern readers want you to move the story, not stand around discussing things. In this regard, you may want to think about your fiction delivery systems. There are different ways to deliver your information to your reader. They have characteristic speeds: • Exposition. This