| Elements of Fiction. And other basics you'll need to write your novel. Before you drive a car, you must learn the rules. After you learn the rules, you must practice. Practice, learn the rules, pass the test, practice some more, follow the rules, and soon you'll be a terrific driver. Driving will become second nature. Ahh . . . and so it is with writing a novel. There are rules to learn, and a huge test to pass. You must practice! Are you ready to get started? |
| What do you need to write a story? How will it work? Well, what do you like most about your favorite stories? Do you think you can write like your favorite author? Do you think you can write better? Do you want to try? What does a story need? The first answer usually is: conflict. It has almost become a writer's cliché. ConflictConflictConflict. Don't write a story without it. Well . . . Think about this. What is more important: conflict, or the people experiencing the conflict? Is the conflict more important than how the people struggle through it? Is it the crisis or the journey? A little vague, isn't it? What is conflict? Something bad that happens, right? Why does something bad have to happen? So we can cheer when the conflict is resolved. We read and read until we find out how the people settle their conflict. The more harrowing the conflict, the more we cheer. But are we cheering the resolution of conflict or the people who stand tall at the end? My point? It is far easier to begin the process of writing a novel by focusing on the characters you're going to write about than by focusing on the conflict they're going to get themselves into. Develop characters you literally fall in love with. Cut out magazine pictures of people you will never know and use them to put faces to your new imaginary best friends. Start with the people, then allow them to get themselves into their own messes. How? What does it take to create full-bodied people who exist only in your imagination? How do you translate what you see in your mind's eye to the written page? Close your eyes. Do you see someone there? Is that someone smiling and waving at you, and acting almost embarrassed to be doing so? Does that person feel like a friend? Someone you love? If you don't love the characters you create for your story, neither will your readers. If you're not passionate about the story you're going to create involving the characters you've created, who will be? If you're not passionate about your characters, great conflict will not be enough to make your story work. Your story simply will not work. But what if, when you close your eyes, there's no one there? The idea of writing a novel has intrigued you, but you absolutely have no idea where to begin. Don't worry. There are characters and stories out there everywhere. Are you ready to start looking? Where do you find a good story? Remember, start with the people. Watch people. Watch their eyes. Look for their moments of confusion. Look for their moments of wariness. What does this mean? Look for people experiencing moments of conflict. A husband mistrusting his wife? A child separated momentarily from his mother? A hungry person hoping for someone to care? Begin to form the images of the people you want to write about. A child? A husband? A wife? Think about how you'd like to tell their story. From their perspective? (First person.) From your perspective as you watch what they are experiencing? (Third person.) One way will seem totally daunting, but the other way will feel more comfortable. You don't even have a story yet, but you are beginning to form characters, and you are beginning to formulate how you want to tell their story. Two significant steps. Look for pictures of people in magazines or newspapers. Sometimes you'll find a picture of a person involved in a situation that just tears at your heart. For instance, when I was thinking about how to write my novel about two female Desert Storm veterans (which later became Wounded Healer), I looked back through old newspaper clippings I had saved from the war. For some reason, the picture of a group of U.S. Army nurses treating an injured Iraqi soldier tore at my heart. It was years later that I took that same picture and used it to formulate one of my main characters (Erin): how she looked, how she tenderly and efficiently cared for the sick no matter what race or creed, how she exhibited a strength, a courage, how she stood proudly for what she believed, for the colors she proudly wore on her uniform. All of that came out of a simple black and white newspaper photograph. I didn't even save the article that came with it. Basically, I fell in love with the image of a real person I didn't know, but wanted to. So, I created her. Isn't that the first step in being a novelist? Isn't it all imagination? Create two or three people to start; bring them to life by giving them a name, a look, a reason to live. Unless you're writing science fiction or syrupy-sweet romance, make them REAL! Make them someone your readers can relate to. Someone you can relate to. Fall in love with them. Even your villains. Despise them with the same passion. Some authors say you must keep detailed specifics on your characters: height, weight, hair color, eye color, etc. For logistics' sake, yes. You don't want your heroine to have blonde hair in chapter one and red hair in chapter six. But I say, create as many detailed specifics about your characters as you can and keep track of them simply because it's so much fun! Because the more you get to know your own characters, the better their story will be! And isn't that what we're striving for? (You as the writer, me as the reader?) Some authors say to sit your characters down and interview them. Although I'm a little too afraid to admit that I enjoy talking to my imaginary friends, it really is a terrific idea. Get the entire ensemble together, like the cast of a movie, and seat them in a circle around you. Listen to them laugh; listen to them intermingle with each other. Ask them questions about the story they want to tell through you. Watch how they react to each other. Find their differences; find the personalities that make them who they are. Give them specific names—names that fit their individual personalities. Is there a Fred in your group? An Agatha? Chose names you can live with; names your characters can live with. (Is he a Willy? Or a Davidson. Davidson Parker Sinclair. Stock Broker. Willy Bob Crawl? Bait and tackle shop owner.) Just a note? On naming characters: after you come up with a first name, disregard the first three last names that pop into your head. Why? Because they will automatically be names that match the first name. They will be names you've heard before, names of real people. My first thought for a middle name for Willy Bob? Pete. Any veterans out there? Willy Pete is short for White Phosphorus (horrible stuff in bombs). In my story, if I had chosen Willy Pete Crawl, I would have lost all my vet friends because they would have spent the next few lines of my story thinking about white hot bombs falling from the sky instead of the goofy name of my bait and tackle shop owner. Try it. What names do you think of when I say: Stuart. Does the last name Anderson pop into your mind? Stuart Anderson is taken. Little? Taken by a tiny mouse. Stuart Bomgrass? Hmm. Not taken as far as I know. Can you picture in your mind what a Stuart Bomgrass would look like? Naming your characters can almost be as fun as creating them. Throw in a few twists sometimes. Name your villain Thomas, or Michael; nice names that seem to fit a nice man. But Thomas turns. Michael becomes despicable. Patrick's smiling eyes sharpen with cruel intentions. But what happens if you create a handful of great people to write about, and there's still no story? Then delve a little deeper. Take the person you like most and go back, back through their past: college? Marriage? What decisions were made that she'd now go back and change? Then go forward. Where would she rather be? What makes her tick? What lies ahead for her? Is her child going to get sick? Become unruly? Is her husband's love going to fade? Does she long for something more? Somewhere, somehow, a little rain must fall. Once you've created a group of great characters, there MUST be something that happens to them, something that makes us want to know what will happen next. Pages must turn, hopefully in a frenzied fervor. Questions must be asked. Breath must be held, anxiously awaiting the outcome. This is the entire purpose of conflict. What is conflict? The stuff that makes us wants to read books! No, really, what is conflict? Here are some examples. A husband's wandering eye. A mother's weariness of mothering. A child's need to go against everything his parents stand for. Financial crisis. Physical crisis. Mental crisis. How will a husband cope with his wife's impending breakdown? Violence. Today, unfortunately, violence causes crisis, causes conflict in far too many lives. The news teems with violence. Movies. Games. How will a mother fight to keep her child safe from violence? She is conflicted about the safety of her child. Conflict. Choose a specific form of violence she stands up against and tell her story! I wouldn't mind reading it! Great characters, conflict . . . what's next? I'd have to say, dialogue. What's dialogue? Say what? Yes, I know you know what dialogue is. But how do you know what dialogue to include and what to discard? The short word on dialogue? It must advance your story. Characters cannot simply sit around and talk about the weather, unless the weather is a vital part of the conflict of your story. Anything discussed by your characters on the pages of your novel must have a purpose: either to describe, to explain, to strengthen, or to show. Emotions, personalities, levels of intimacy . . . all can be shown in dialogue, most times more efficiently than in the author's narrative. Action should still take place throughout the dialogue. Action moves your story forward. Don't let unnecessary dialogue slow down the action. One way dialogue bogs down a story is when dialogue tags (or speaker attributions) are used improperly. Stick with the tried-and-true "he said," "she said." Readers have struck a compromise with these tags. The reader says, "I'll bleep over you quickly, if you promise to keep who said what from becoming confusing." Tags are absolutely necessary to dispel confusion, but certain tags are not dialogue tags at all. They are action beats. Action beats keep dialogue moving by showing what the character is doing as he is speaking, but action beats must not be used to describe how he says the words. Words such as he smiled, he shrugged, he grinned, or he laughed are action beats because a person cannot smile words, or grin words, or shrug words, or laugh words. As you write dialogue, if it is necessary to avoid confusion as to who said what, tag what your characters say with dialogue tags (said, grumbled, whispered, shouted, etc.), and what your characters do as they speak with action beats (smiled, shrugged, laughed, nodded, etc.). Avoid using words like complained, explained, protested, queried, lamented, countered, puzzled, etc. as dialogue tags. (Just for fun, click here for a running list of words that are NOT dialogue tags. Remember, a dialogue tag must be a physical way to speak words.) And avoid using -ly adverbs to describe how something is said. Words like determinedly, emphatically, sarcastically, humbly, angrily, etc. Make the dialogue speak for itself. So, developing strong characters, determining what overall point of view to tell your story in, causing conflict to strike your beloved characters, creating the dialogue that flows between them . . . is that enough to get you started? There are more elements of fiction, of course, but I don't want you to worry too much about the "how-to" of writing a novel. Just do it, as that shoe company says. Take it slow and easy; keep in mind how other stories you love work. Remember, don't copy another writer's style, develop your own. Don't worry if what ends up on paper or on your computer screen isn't perfect. As your story expands in your mind, it will gush out of you. Let it. Just get it out; get it down on the page. Don't even worry about typos and misspelled words. Let the process overwhelm you. It truly is a delightful process. I'd love to hear from you. Do you have questions? Do you need help sorting through logistics? Send me an e-mail! donna at donnafleisher dot com For more information on the basics of writing a Christian novel, Gilbert Morris (one of the most prolific authors in Christian fiction) and Penelope Stokes have both written wonderful guides. Mr. Morris's guide slants more toward authors who enjoy meticulously outlining their story before beginning to write. It's an amazing process that he undergoes with each of his stories. His way is definitely different from my way of writing novels, which is why you should check his guide out. (And why you should not take anything anybody says about writing your story as law. There are as many different ways to write a story as there are ways to sing a song.) I wish you the best as your story comes alive! |
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| Exodus 5:1-2 Afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, "Thus says the LORD God of Israel: 'Let My people go.'" And Pharaoh said, "Who is the LORD that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, nor will I let Israel go." |
| Matthew 13:3 Then He spoke many things to them in parables. |
| 1 Samuel 17:45 Then David said to the Philistine, "You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied." |
| 2 Samuel 12:1 Then the LORD sent Nathan to David. And he came to him, and said to him: "There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor." |
| Numbers 12:3 Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth. |
| Galations 6:11 See with what large letters I have written to you with my own hand! |
| 1 Chronicles 3:19-20 The sons of Pedaiah were Zerubbabel and Shimei. The sons of Zerubbabel were Meshullam, Hananiah, Shelomith their sister, and Hashubah, Ohel, Berechiah, Hasadiah, and Jushab-Hesed— five in all. |