The Guide to Becoming a Better Fiction Writer – Edition Two / Part One

The Guide to Becoming a Better Fiction Writer – Edition Two / Part One

[Please note that the first section of this series can be found at Bhokta.com]

An Intro to the Purpose of Fiction

Fictional writing comes with one main purpose. And that is to tell as story. In the first edition of the, “better fiction writer series” I discussed the basic structure of what a good fictional story is comprised of. It’s not difficult when one truly sits down and contemplates these ideas about fiction. It only becomes difficult when one doesn’t have the story laid out before-hand.

The Basic Idea

Okay, the basic idea behind fiction is to tell a story, a good story, a story that people will want to read over and over again; or at the very least, they will want to finish the text. In the previous edition, in lesson one, I talk about how fiction is structured to draw attention to the reader, and that there are certain techniques to keep them wanting to read on. In order for this connection between the text and the reader to form, there must be a level of relatability that the reader can cling onto.

The first thing that the reader will cling onto is the exposition of the story. The exposition will be the text that explains the background of the story. Even sill, it’s important to note that this same information will be applicable to a film setting as well.

Best Approach to Take

When you begin the pre-writing for a fictional story, you need to have pre-writing done for the characters, settings, story line, and plots. The best approach to take is to create short scenarios between the characters and the other forms of context in your book as part of your pre-writing. This will help to create a better idea of what you’ll be wanting in order to form a more perfect idea of what you’re wanting to achieve when writing the story.

When the pre-writing has ended, go over those ideas and ask yourself if they represent what you’re truly wanting. Now, comes the difficult part. In the previous series, I ran through the basic patterns and concepts of the structure that will produce the most effective ways to create a more interesting story for the reader. But in order to do this you need to hint to the readers what it is you’re trying to get across, a better explanation would be to ask yourself if what you’re writing has a purpose. Or, “what is your purpose for writing?”

Every story, whether fiction or otherwise has and needs some kind of purpose behind the writing. A simple way to say this is that you may want to include some sort of value, or moral of the story. All stories have this trait in some shape, form or fashion; but It will be up to the writer to discover this purpose even before the writing process begins. For example, in the short story – “The Tortoise and the Heir,” the moral was slow and steady wins the race. In other words, be patient and good things will come. Take a moment and think about this, if that story was not created to produce some sort of knowledge or inner-thought of some kind; would we sill remember that story. Well, for most people the answer would be no.

We tend to remember things more clearly when they either relate to us, or when they have an effect on us. A moral provides both of these. A stories moral can reflect on something that we’ve been through, and it can very much-so teach us things that would be otherwise difficult to learn on our own. And as noted in the previous lessons, a story plot is most effective when it hits two different wow factors at once.

Conclusion

When beginning a story, you will need to concoct some kind pre-writing. However, before this phase of the writing process, it’s important to understand for yourself what it is that you want to get out of your writing; or, what would be the purpose/moral of the story. This purpose/moral needs to be clear to the writer. This, gaining of clarity, will benefit writers who will be planning on creating multiple books in a single series. The moral will open a level of interest with the reader and will allow him/her to connect more deeply with the characters, setting, and scenes because they will seem to be much more relateable.

On a final note, it will be that sense of relateablity that the reader will search for when reading your story. No matter what genre the story is introduced into. Fiction, Sci-Fi, realism etc. The reader won’t be able to connect without that sense of integration between the story and his/her self. It’s just one of those things you are draw away from when you don’t have enough of. Quit literally, without this sense the reader will just stop caring, and is likely to even throw the story in the trash with only disappointment to describe to his/her friends.