Tag: Writing Exercises

Reflections: Practical Reminders When Editing Your Fiction

Arshan Dhillon

The book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers has plenty of practical advice and exercises for editing fiction. The following are the reminders that stuck with me after reading the book. It should be noted that these aren’t as black or white as they may seem. Ultimately, the right balance is required in a story.

  1. Look out for over narration. Scenes can be harder to write which is why people slip into narrating a story rather than unpacking it. By merely summarizing some instance you can take away from the engagement of your story. Scenes are generally more engaging and they do a better job of bringing a story to life because you have to include specific details, dialogues, and characters in a scene. Good way to go about implementing this is by identifying those blocks/pages of texts and seeing if they can be broken up into smaller scenes or dialogue.
  2. Remember to Resist the Urge to Explain (R.U.E.). When it comes to your character’s emotions, make sure you aren’t just explaining them to the reader. The reader should be able to understand the emotions through action and dialogue. So, if you do your job correctly, you can simply cut away any explanation of a character’s emotions and not lose anything.
  3. Show the character. Unpack the characters’ personality through his actions, reactions, interior monologue, and dialogue. Or, if you have to describe the personality, let it come from the point of view or dialogue of another character who tells us his/her opinion of the character. Or let the personality come through the attitude of the character by describing something from the viewpoint of the character.
  4. Speaking of viewpoint, keep in mind what the character will notice and what will go unacknowledged. An 80-year-old man notices different things than an 8-year-old girl. For the 80-year-old, the falling snow may be a nuisance but for an 8-year-old it might be pleasant and fun. However, if there is no emotion attached to what the character is seeing, then your writing is emotionally detached, which only works if you’re aiming for an emotionally detached story.
  5. Well written dialogue should erase a lot of explanation. The dialogue itself should let the reader know that a character is astonished or scared. The reader shouldn’t need to read the descriptive tag. In fact, the best thing you can do for your dialogue is to never explain it.
  6. Be conscious of the beats in your text. For a tense dialogue scene, fewer beats the better. However, beats also allow you to ground your story. They can unpack setting and character traits/habits which allows the reader to use their imagination.
  7. Read your story out loud. By reading out loud you get the sense of the rhythm of your story, especially your dialogue. You can hear where the pauses should be, where some action is required, where there is too much talking and so on.
  8. Be aware of repetition. You don’t want your sentences to convey the same info or your paragraphs to establish the same traits or have multiple characters fulfilling the same role. Repetition can take away from your story.

Two Things That Have Made My Fiction Writing Easier

Stephen King Writing Tip: Build Your Toolbox

Writing/Life Advice: Don’t Get Overwhelmed

Vladimir Nabakov On What Makes A Great Writer

Tell Your Truth Through Writing

Vladimir Nabokov & Storytelling Techniques

Neil Gaiman & Generating Story Ideas

Writing Advice From William Faulkner

Haruki Murakami On Writing

Charles Bukowski & The Use Of Conflict In Storytelling

Ernest Hemingway On What To Write About

Simple Writing Advice From Stephen King

Youtube: Learned Living

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/learned_living/

Poem: The Many Yous

Article: Indirect Battle Strategy and How It Can Help Us Overcome Our Own Obstacles

Short Story: Everything Work’s Itself Out

Tell Your Truth Through Writing

Arshan Dhillon

I am one of those people who is constantly daydreaming. It’s almost an ailment because I am always thinking of different “what if” scenarios. I’m sure I am not alone in this. In fact, I’m positive that as a species, the ability to wonder and to allow our minds to create possibilities is one of the ways we have evolved to this point in history. I say this because one of the things a writer attempts to do is to put into words these “what if” scenarios and different possibilities.

And that is where the problem arises. If only it was as simple as copying what is in our heads and pasting it on a sheet of paper. Not to mention the greater issue which is that these words feel lifeless, these scenarios that excite our minds are rarely ever as exciting on paper perhaps because the act of writing requires one to flesh out the idea, to fill in the gaps which are bypassed by our consciousness and through this tedious act of unpacking a scene, we are left with something that is dull, bland, without wonder because our original aim was sensational pleasure rather than an attempt to say something that is truthful.

To say what is truthful to you takes courage because you open yourself up to the scrutiny of others. Yet, it must be done. One of the pleasures of writing is to discover who you are through your writing. By not aiming for the truth, you deprive yourself of this pleasure.

As Anne Lamott says in Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life:

Good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are.

The natural question that arises from this is how do we go about doing this? How do we tell the truth? Where to start?

For Lamott, the process starts at our childhood.

Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can.

This task can seem overwhelming because there isn’t a clear direction, nothing to focus on. So, you must create your own boundaries so you can zoom in to a specific time period of your childhood and get a truthful picture.

So you might start by writing down every single thing you can remember from your first few years in school. Start with kindergarten. Try to get the words and memories down as they occur to you. Don’t worry if what you write is no good, because no one is going to see it. Move on to first grade, to second, to third. Who were your teachers, your classmates? What did you wear? Who and what were you jealous of? Now branch out a little. Did your family take vacations during those years? Get these down on paper. Do you remember how much more presentable everybody else’s family looked? Do you remember how when you’d be floating around in an inner tube on a river, your own family would have lost the little cap that screws over the airflow valve, so every time you got in and out of the inner tube, you’d scratch new welts in your thighs? And how other families never lost the caps?

Write down everything you can remember about every birthday or Christmas or Seder or Easter or whatever, every relative who was there. Write down all the stuff you swore you’d never tell another soul.

This exercise is useful because it makes you unpack your own life, your own thoughts, opinions, beliefs and most importantly, your own truth. It is not so much about the event that is being described rather it is the perspective of the individual describing the events that make the writing unique.

So, you must sit down with a piece of paper in front of you or a laptop screen or even a typewriter and write as honestly as possible. You must do this every day, around the same time, creating a routine which allows you to be open and vulnerable but more importantly, truthful.