Here’s the little secret on how to write good Fiction: there isn’t a secret
The truth is, there is no real way to teach writing. One of the best lectures on the matter was when a writer (Sinclair Lewis) walked on stage and simply told the hotly anticipating audience to ‘Go home and Write’
I am not qualified to give Writing advice, but if I was, it wouldn’t make this list more meaningful, as no one can ever be fully qualified to do this.
There are no rules. There are principles, but they are unique to each writer, and are constantly shifting, from story to story. With all the technical terms and expressions, you’d think there just might be a scientific way to do it. There isn’t. So in offering writing tips, all I can do is search the deepest parts of my mind and soul, and present a naked list of my raw and most importantly personal principles. This is November 2011. I’m saying that because these principles can easily change, and if I eventually grow out of them, I don’t want the spacemen of the future thinking that the elitist idiot 16-year old hubristic me represents the dashingly charming 26 year old me. Just Saying.
1) Write not just because you want to write, but because you have to write. There are so many ways to express yourself, why choose writing fiction, something that is often a cryptic and layered affair? Because it allows you to express the otherwise inexpressible; your most personal, compulsive emotions and thoughts. This brings me to my next point…
2) Smooth Segway strike 1! Usually write personally.
Unless you have a really earth-shatteringly Kubrickian reason to be impersonal, don’t be. Don’t think that being impersonal will make your work more accessible because it won’t. One of the most sublime oddities of storytelling is that the more personal the work is to the author, the more likely it is to be personal to others. Though being proudly and intimately infused with your work is not to say you shouldn’t ….
3) …Be Subtle (Smooth Segway strike 2!)
Hitting someone on the head with your ideas and feelings can often be lead to the reader/viewer/whatever feeling completely detached from the piece, with the heavy hand cutting through the natural connection between man/woman/whatever and page/screen/stage/whatever. Understating thoughts on the surface is a way of us slowly realizing the point. That sudden pang of realization is what makes the writers understatement an emotional or mental overstatement in our heart and mind. Don’t underestimate the audience’s intelligence, and don’t assume a lack of compassion either. This brings me onto my final point…. (It’s a smooth Segway hatrick!)
4) Feel deeper than you think.
Simply being clever is not enough to be a good writer. In fact, that’s the easy part. Intelligence is the bare minimum of a good writer. Who wants to knowingly experience something made by an idiot? Even if the story is a fun, fast, flowing action extravaganza, as opposed to a philosophical study, it should still be intelligently made. The Scott Pilgrim vs the world movie, for example, understands how to put together a film, and understands the balance of humour and drama. That’s because they people who made it are smart, they just don’t have to show it by making a needlessly complex plot. Being overtly complex for the sake of looking clever is like having an’ intellectual’ circle jerk. Except you’re not actually being intelligent, you’re just indulging in your own academic knowledge, which is not the same as being wise.
What sets you apart from all the other smartass philosophy/Literature majors, is your feelings. That you have something welling up inside you, an ineffable force of feeling that can’t be described literally, but must be shared. So you put the audience through the same state of mind as you feel. This requires a great attempt of introspection on your own feelings, and trying to present them in a way that is engaging and thought-provoking.
Often, we try to psychoanalyse the great artists. We try to come up with some logical reason as to why they resonated among us so much. And yet, this thinking is flawed, as they were great artists because they expressed something that could not be understood any other way. That is why a squarely congruent conclusion is rarely met. Like with the recent film ‘Nowhere Boy’, that tells the story of a young John Lennon. But what do we learn from his emotional strife? It’s an interesting story, with the wide palette of relationships, involving the sophisticated drollness of his aunt/guardian, and the strangely charged (and short lived) relationship with his ebullient mother, Julia. Not to mention the unconventional and freethinking edge of his youth. But what does that have to do with his music? Why was he so good? The film doesn’t reach any kind of point or explanation, much to the dismay of critics. But with the remarkably idiosyncratic combination of angst, melodrama, humour and wistfulness in Lennon’s early life, I was able to draw something from the film. Had I written a review of it, I would’ve ended simply on this: ‘John Lennon played good music because he felt so deeply’
This is not to say, that being a melodramatic sob will make you a good writer. God no. It’s more understanding your heart and the experiences that fuel it, and knowing when to employ it, and within what frame. Whether an elegiac tragedy, a farcical comedy, or an inspiring adventure.
Now go and Write!
