The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes by Jack M Bickham Page B
Authors: Jack M Bickham
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary Criticism, Reference, Authorship, Language Arts & Disciplines, Writing Skills, Composition & Creative Writing, Creative Writing, Fiction - Technique, Technique
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stories do end up implying some idea or feeling. But the convincing—if any happens—is a by-product of the storytelling process, and cannot be its goal or the story almost certainly will come out like a very bad Sunday sermon rather than as a story.
So perhaps you have been convinced not to try to use fiction as a delivery system for your opinions. A soapbox is better. But what about those inadvertent, well-meaning technical slips that might also read like a lecture in your copy?
These are sometimes harder to catch. As we've mentioned in Chapters Twelve and Thirteen, you'll establish a viewpoint and write in such a way as to remind the reader often where that viewpoint is. It should be relatively easy for you to slip in material that you the author want in the story as long as the viewpoint character needs to think about it .
What do I mean here? Simply this: Faced with the need to work some factual material into her story, the good writer does not say, "How can I get this into the story?" Instead, she asks herself, "Why does my viewpoint character need to learn (or recall) this information?" Or, "How can I get the viewpoint character to notice what I want noticed here?" Which is quite different from sitting back as the author and shoveling in data.
The more you practice your handling of viewpoint, the easier and more like second nature it will become. The more solidly you're writing in viewpoint, the less likely it is that you'll launch into a distracting lecture by the author.
Look for lectures in your fiction. They tend to be chunks of information that you the writer stuck in there because of what you wanted in the story—rather than what the viewpoint character would be thinking or dealing with. If or when you find such obtrusive chunks of author intervention, figure out how to get them in through the viewpoint.
Ask yourself such questions as:
• What can happen in the story to make my viewpoint character remember this?
• What can happen to make my viewpoint character seek out and get this information in the story "now"?
• What other character might come in to tell this information to my viewpoint character—and why?
• What other source can my viewpoint character come upon to bring out this desired information? (A newspaper story, for example, or TV news bulletin.)
There are always ways you can devise to avoid dumping information into the story via the author lecture route. There are always ways... and you must always find one of them.
15. Don't Let Your Characters Lecture, Either!
As discussed in chapter fourteen , it isn't a good idea to dump factual information into a story via the author-intrusion route. Sometimes writers realize this, but unfortunately decide to use their characters as mouthpieces for the desired data, making the characters lecture at one another in a totally unrealistic way.
Usually dialogue is not a good vehicle for working in research information. Characters tend to make dumb speeches for the author's convenience, rather than talking like real people do. While dialogue does convey useful information in a story—and a lot of it—dialogue's primary function is not to give the author a thinly disguised way of dumping his lecture notes. Maybe you know the kind of lecture dialogue I mean:
Charlie walked up and said, "Why, hi there, Molly McBride, who was born in Albany in 1972, of poor but hardworking parents, your father was a store clerk! How nice you look today, wearing that red blouse that goes so nicely with your shoulder-length blond hair! My goodness, as I recall, you must still be married to Brad, the world-champion tennis player, whose last tournament appearance saw him reach the semifinals at Flushing Meadow, where—"
This kind of nonsense is every bit as obtrusive and dumb as the direct author lecture discussed in Chapter Fourteen.
Dialogue emphatically is not made up of sequential lectures by various characters intent on telling each other what they
So perhaps you have been convinced not to try to use fiction as a delivery system for your opinions. A soapbox is better. But what about those inadvertent, well-meaning technical slips that might also read like a lecture in your copy?
These are sometimes harder to catch. As we've mentioned in Chapters Twelve and Thirteen, you'll establish a viewpoint and write in such a way as to remind the reader often where that viewpoint is. It should be relatively easy for you to slip in material that you the author want in the story as long as the viewpoint character needs to think about it .
What do I mean here? Simply this: Faced with the need to work some factual material into her story, the good writer does not say, "How can I get this into the story?" Instead, she asks herself, "Why does my viewpoint character need to learn (or recall) this information?" Or, "How can I get the viewpoint character to notice what I want noticed here?" Which is quite different from sitting back as the author and shoveling in data.
The more you practice your handling of viewpoint, the easier and more like second nature it will become. The more solidly you're writing in viewpoint, the less likely it is that you'll launch into a distracting lecture by the author.
Look for lectures in your fiction. They tend to be chunks of information that you the writer stuck in there because of what you wanted in the story—rather than what the viewpoint character would be thinking or dealing with. If or when you find such obtrusive chunks of author intervention, figure out how to get them in through the viewpoint.
Ask yourself such questions as:
• What can happen in the story to make my viewpoint character remember this?
• What can happen to make my viewpoint character seek out and get this information in the story "now"?
• What other character might come in to tell this information to my viewpoint character—and why?
• What other source can my viewpoint character come upon to bring out this desired information? (A newspaper story, for example, or TV news bulletin.)
There are always ways you can devise to avoid dumping information into the story via the author lecture route. There are always ways... and you must always find one of them.
15. Don't Let Your Characters Lecture, Either!
As discussed in chapter fourteen , it isn't a good idea to dump factual information into a story via the author-intrusion route. Sometimes writers realize this, but unfortunately decide to use their characters as mouthpieces for the desired data, making the characters lecture at one another in a totally unrealistic way.
Usually dialogue is not a good vehicle for working in research information. Characters tend to make dumb speeches for the author's convenience, rather than talking like real people do. While dialogue does convey useful information in a story—and a lot of it—dialogue's primary function is not to give the author a thinly disguised way of dumping his lecture notes. Maybe you know the kind of lecture dialogue I mean:
Charlie walked up and said, "Why, hi there, Molly McBride, who was born in Albany in 1972, of poor but hardworking parents, your father was a store clerk! How nice you look today, wearing that red blouse that goes so nicely with your shoulder-length blond hair! My goodness, as I recall, you must still be married to Brad, the world-champion tennis player, whose last tournament appearance saw him reach the semifinals at Flushing Meadow, where—"
This kind of nonsense is every bit as obtrusive and dumb as the direct author lecture discussed in Chapter Fourteen.
Dialogue emphatically is not made up of sequential lectures by various characters intent on telling each other what they
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