Things I’ve Learned* About Writing Fiction
*Am still learning
This past week I took a little self-styled editing retreat, as I work on getting this manuscript in shape. The trip, to one of my favorite places on the N.C. coast, was planned well before I signed a contract with an agent. But it hit at just the right time. I’d start each day with a long walk along the water, make my coffee, and get to work. Perfection.
I’ve spent decades learning how to write. And while there is a LOT more to learn (see also, the asterisk above), I feel like I’m finally, finally, figuring a few things out.
Over the past few weeks, as I’ve been editing and sharing the news about signing with an agent, it’s inevitably led to a lot of conversations about what I’m working on and how this process has gone. And that has led to some personal reflection on what I’m learning.
Obviously, a lot of that has been about the business process of this whole thing. But also, some great, “what I know now that I wish I’d known earlier” moments about the actual writing piece. Here are just a few nuggets, should they be helpful to you, too.
First lines, first pages, and first chapters are the most important part of your book. In commercial fiction in particular, you have a very short window to grab people. You better have a banger of a first line, first page, and first chapter that leaves people wanting more. The first pages set the tone, put the action in motion, introduce your key characters, and basically make you want to spend the next 300 pages with these people. Or should, anyway.
Conflict and change drives plot and story. One thing (of the many, many things) I’ve learned from The Shit No One Tells You About Writing podcast is that your opening pages should start on the most interesting point in your main character’s life. And what makes it interesting has to do with conflict and change. A change of circumstances. A change in power dynamics. A conflict between characters or between a character and their circumstances. Whatever it is, that’s why we’re here: To see how this character deals with whatever that is.
No one’s interested in nice people (in fiction). This is a particular challenge for me. Like many Southern women of a certain age, I have a serious case of “good girl syndrome.” We were raised to be nice, polite, and deferential. And that makes writing flawed people who do not so nice things hard. But no one wants to read about nice, boring people. You have to make your characters a bit unlikable. We still need to want to root for them; that’s how you make them human.
Editing (and writing) means reading your manuscript approximately 452 times. People sometimes ask me for advice on getting a Ph.D. And what I tell them is this: You better love it and be excited about it when you start, because there will absolutely come a time when you hate it. Same goes for writing. You WILL read your manuscript approximately 452 times. So you better love it. You better be excited about it. Or no one else will, either.
Your process is your process. And every story needs a beginning, middle, and end. There are oodles of books, blog posts, substacks, and Instagram posts telling you how to write a book. And many of them are likely quite good. In fact, my writing became immeasurably better when I hired a professional editor for a different manuscript, and he sent back feedback that was, essentially, a beat sheet (as in, you need these 4 beats and you don’t have them. Harsh, but fair.).
From there, I plotted my current novel, starting with those 4 beats and the major dramatic question for each of my POV characters, then expanding to a full outline, then putting those points onto index cards, then into the computer… etc. That worked. FOR ME. In no way does that mean that process will work for you. Figure out what works and use it.
But the non-negotiable is this: a story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning starts with conflict or change, the ending provides a resolution, and the middle is the journey.
Sort of like writing, itself.