Writing Fiction
- Revealing Characters’ Background
- A Beginning, A Muddle, and an End
- Intimidation and Writer’s Block
- No Time to Think about Writing
- Fiction Writing Workshop #6
- Making Characters Sound Different
- Creating New Characters
- Fiction Writing Workshop #5
- Fiction Writing Workshop #4
- Fiction Writing Workshop #3
Revealing Characters’ Background
Posted by
Jennifer Jensen
Jennifer Jensen
Anna Quindlen, Tony Morrison and some television writers introduce us to characters a little at a time, instead of explaining all the backstory up front. Read how.
I don’t know how many of you were Jericho fans (CBS television show that has reportedly been permanently cancelled), but from the time I first watched it, I fell in love with how they developed the characters, and the parallels with good fiction.
It’s important to have fully fleshed out characters and story, and yet start in the middle of the action. But by only revealing the characters’ backstory a bit at a time, you leave some mystery for the reader to follow. If the characters are good, readers are fascinated as they get to know them little by little.
Read Reserve Backstory in Fiction for ideas and literary examples by Toni Morrison and Anna Quindlen, and then give it a try.
It’s important to have fully fleshed out characters and story, and yet start in the middle of the action. But by only revealing the characters’ backstory a bit at a time, you leave some mystery for the reader to follow. If the characters are good, readers are fascinated as they get to know them little by little.
Read Reserve Backstory in Fiction for ideas and literary examples by Toni Morrison and Anna Quindlen, and then give it a try.
A Beginning, A Muddle, and an End
Posted by
Jennifer Jensen
Jennifer Jensen
Avi’s book on writing, A Beginning, A Muddle, and an End, is worth a read and a re-read.
A copy of Avi’s new writing book, a “fable” called A Beginning, A Muddle, and an End: The Right Way to Write Writing, arrived in the mail almost as soon as it was released. It was fun to be contacted by a publicist, but even more fun to read this delightful book.
If you’ve read The End of the Beginning, you’ve already met Avon the Snail and Edward the Ant, and you know you’re in for a treat. This time, the puns, wordplay and philosophy deal with writing, with a lot of succinct, thoughtful commentary on writing well.
Read the whole review, Avi Gives Advice on Writing, and then go out and get the book!
If you’ve read The End of the Beginning, you’ve already met Avon the Snail and Edward the Ant, and you know you’re in for a treat. This time, the puns, wordplay and philosophy deal with writing, with a lot of succinct, thoughtful commentary on writing well.
Read the whole review, Avi Gives Advice on Writing, and then go out and get the book!
Intimidation and Writer’s Block
Posted by
Jennifer Jensen
Jennifer Jensen
Trying to include all the elements of a perfect story can be intimidating enough to cause a bad case of writer’s block.
About two decades ago, when I had been writing for just a few years, I attended my first children’s writer’s conference. It was an intense, weeklong event. Morning speakers filled our brains, and we spent the afternoons in workshops with the same group and instructor each day. Evenings included dinner, keynote addresses and/or writing time.
Things that I had “known” became more in-depth that week: interweaving action and dialogue, making dialogue real, finding the conflict in a story, making characters real, making setting an integral part of the story. The list could go on. Unfortunately, I didn’t.
I had set aside another week at home to just write, to use what I had learned. But when I tried, all I could think about was how much I had to incorporate to write a decent story. It had to start with a bang, have incredible characters and a fast-paced narrative. Its language had to sing, dialogue needed to be snappy, and the whole thing needed to be relative, real, and important to a child. And I couldn’t do it.
If the scope of everything it takes to write well seems too much to you, you’re not alone. It took me six months to get past it - don’t let it stop you that way!
Give yourself permission, deep-down gut-level permission, to write something other than a perfect story. It might be practice writing, poetry, character studies, or just junk. You’ll find more ideas in The Complex Scope of Writing a Novel. Then, no matter how good or bad the end product is, write!
Things that I had “known” became more in-depth that week: interweaving action and dialogue, making dialogue real, finding the conflict in a story, making characters real, making setting an integral part of the story. The list could go on. Unfortunately, I didn’t.
I had set aside another week at home to just write, to use what I had learned. But when I tried, all I could think about was how much I had to incorporate to write a decent story. It had to start with a bang, have incredible characters and a fast-paced narrative. Its language had to sing, dialogue needed to be snappy, and the whole thing needed to be relative, real, and important to a child. And I couldn’t do it.
If the scope of everything it takes to write well seems too much to you, you’re not alone. It took me six months to get past it - don’t let it stop you that way!
Give yourself permission, deep-down gut-level permission, to write something other than a perfect story. It might be practice writing, poetry, character studies, or just junk. You’ll find more ideas in The Complex Scope of Writing a Novel. Then, no matter how good or bad the end product is, write!
No Time to Think about Writing
Posted by
Jennifer Jensen
Jennifer Jensen
Major life events, such as marriage, babies or moving, can shove any room for writing out of your mind.
I’ve been very smug, writing articles and blogs about making time to write, setting priorities, and even writing when sick or on vacation. I’ve done it. I know it’s possible, even if it takes determination.
It’s different now.
We’re moving from the U.S. to Ireland in three short months. The house needs to be on the market by the end of April, so I’m stripping wallpaper, finishing trim projects and painting every wall in sight. I’m still helping with homework, scholarship essays, and Eagle Scout deadlines; making author visits to schools and meeting other grant requirements; sorting through thirty years of junk, inventorying what we’re taking and what’s going into storage, and selling the rest; planning a house-hunting trip, making arrangements for college kids, and trying to find homes for the cats. Plus my class.
I’m getting very resentful of the fact that while I love my weekly fiction workshop, it’s just an island in the midst of the hurricane. I can let go of marketing and revisions on other things I have written, and my Suite101 articles keep me in the writing world, but I have no room in my mind to think about stories and characters, and I don’t like it!
Sometimes life events are so big that finding time to write or even think about writing becomes impossible. I’m trying to convince my inner self that it’s OK, but I’m not succeeding awfully well.
It’s different now.
We’re moving from the U.S. to Ireland in three short months. The house needs to be on the market by the end of April, so I’m stripping wallpaper, finishing trim projects and painting every wall in sight. I’m still helping with homework, scholarship essays, and Eagle Scout deadlines; making author visits to schools and meeting other grant requirements; sorting through thirty years of junk, inventorying what we’re taking and what’s going into storage, and selling the rest; planning a house-hunting trip, making arrangements for college kids, and trying to find homes for the cats. Plus my class.
I’m getting very resentful of the fact that while I love my weekly fiction workshop, it’s just an island in the midst of the hurricane. I can let go of marketing and revisions on other things I have written, and my Suite101 articles keep me in the writing world, but I have no room in my mind to think about stories and characters, and I don’t like it!
Sometimes life events are so big that finding time to write or even think about writing becomes impossible. I’m trying to convince my inner self that it’s OK, but I’m not succeeding awfully well.
Posted by
Jennifer Jensen
Jennifer Jensen
Critique discussion says most of my story was very good, but the ending sucked.
We critiqued my short story this week in the ongoing fiction writing class.
I didn’t know if I had the nerves to sit through it, but this was a story I had written years before, and my emotions weren’t so vested in it. So sure, why not?
Dan (the instructor) has set up the critique structure as:
I not only survived, I got a lot of validation.
The first 90% of my story was good – characters, rising tension, dialogue, sensory details. They really liked it! But I “punked the ending” by taking a shortcut to end it. (Not actually, but I knew the end when I started, which created the same result.) I took the decision away from my protagonist and left her literally hanging in the wind.
I had planned on learning from the critique, but not re-doing the story. However, I know how to fix a particular character interaction, how to explore possible endings, and I’m pumped up by the general reaction to the story. So guess who’s working on a rewrite during her freewriting time?
I didn’t know if I had the nerves to sit through it, but this was a story I had written years before, and my emotions weren’t so vested in it. So sure, why not?
Dan (the instructor) has set up the critique structure as:
- Determine one-line description, TV Guide style.
- Discuss what’s working in the story.
- Support the story – how could we make it better if we were writing it for ourselves?
I not only survived, I got a lot of validation.
The first 90% of my story was good – characters, rising tension, dialogue, sensory details. They really liked it! But I “punked the ending” by taking a shortcut to end it. (Not actually, but I knew the end when I started, which created the same result.) I took the decision away from my protagonist and left her literally hanging in the wind.
I had planned on learning from the critique, but not re-doing the story. However, I know how to fix a particular character interaction, how to explore possible endings, and I’m pumped up by the general reaction to the story. So guess who’s working on a rewrite during her freewriting time?
Making Characters Sound Different
Posted by
Jennifer Jensen
Jennifer Jensen
Let each character’s dialogue phrases and speech patterns show who they are. Their personalities, attitudes, and background will come to life.
As I’ve been freewriting, first letting the voices in my head turn into characters, and then letting them go where they want, it’s interesting to watch their voices come through.
One dialogue started with an old woman who was cold, and her frustrated-but-patient daughter showed up. They both started out with my voice, but the old woman’s speech patterns turned into short, clipped comments with some old-fashioned expressions thrown in. She rambled from topic to topic in short bursts, but kept coming back to “I’m cold.”
The old woman ended up sounding much different than her daughter, and became a real character that I may go back and play with for a short story someday. Read more about individuality in dialogue in the article, Characters Need Unique Dialogue.
I missed last week’s fiction workshop (migraine), but my short story gets critiqued tonight. I’ll keep you posted. Keep writing!
One dialogue started with an old woman who was cold, and her frustrated-but-patient daughter showed up. They both started out with my voice, but the old woman’s speech patterns turned into short, clipped comments with some old-fashioned expressions thrown in. She rambled from topic to topic in short bursts, but kept coming back to “I’m cold.”
The old woman ended up sounding much different than her daughter, and became a real character that I may go back and play with for a short story someday. Read more about individuality in dialogue in the article, Characters Need Unique Dialogue.
I missed last week’s fiction workshop (migraine), but my short story gets critiqued tonight. I’ll keep you posted. Keep writing!
Posted by
Jennifer Jensen
Jennifer Jensen
Daily freewriting time lets the voices in your head turn into real people. Let them develop and see where your new characters take you.
My last few blogs have been tied directly to my fiction writing class and our assignments. In our discussions, though, we’ve talked a lot about our reactions to our freewriting, what has come out of them, and how characters develop naturally.
Character-driven stories begin with story people who develop on their own, without being put into a pre-determined plot. It’s all too much information to put in a blog, so I posted an article, Let Characters Reveal Themselves, to talk about the process and how it works.
Set aside some regular freewriting time, let the voices in your head develop organically into characters, and see what happens!
Character-driven stories begin with story people who develop on their own, without being put into a pre-determined plot. It’s all too much information to put in a blog, so I posted an article, Let Characters Reveal Themselves, to talk about the process and how it works.
Set aside some regular freewriting time, let the voices in your head develop organically into characters, and see what happens!
Posted by
Jennifer Jensen
Jennifer Jensen
A new way of workshopping a story, and a new freewriting assignment.
In my fiction-writing class, we finally got to our first short story critique. Only it wasn’t a critique like I’m used to. Instructor Dan said we would be learning more from each other’s stories than from what we submit ourselves, and he was right.
Workshopping Guidelines
First, the author of the story was “not in the room.” No questions, no comments, and we were to pretend she wasn’t there; therefore, we didn’t have to worry about hurting her feelings.
Then we had three steps:
Writing Assignment
We turned in the envelopes from our week’s writing, but Dan still isn’t saying what he’ll do with them. This week’s assignment is still 30 minutes of longhand freewriting, but doesn't have to be strictly dialogue. Hurray! And we don't need to put them in envelopes - he feels we've learned how to not go back and edit. I suspect that the whole purpose of the envelopes is the letting-go process.
Read Fiction Writing Workshop #1 to start at the beginning of the writing class blogs.
Workshopping Guidelines
First, the author of the story was “not in the room.” No questions, no comments, and we were to pretend she wasn’t there; therefore, we didn’t have to worry about hurting her feelings.
Then we had three steps:
- Come to a consensus on what the story is – drama, comedy, character sketch, etc.
- Discuss what works in the story, in this case, very good characterization and details.
- Discuss what doesn’t work in the story, namely that it needed a plot. It was a good character study, but we weren’t even sure whose story it was.
Writing Assignment
We turned in the envelopes from our week’s writing, but Dan still isn’t saying what he’ll do with them. This week’s assignment is still 30 minutes of longhand freewriting, but doesn't have to be strictly dialogue. Hurray! And we don't need to put them in envelopes - he feels we've learned how to not go back and edit. I suspect that the whole purpose of the envelopes is the letting-go process.
Read Fiction Writing Workshop #1 to start at the beginning of the writing class blogs.
Posted by
Jennifer Jensen
Jennifer Jensen
Having fun with the dialogue practice, and letting characters come alive by themselves.
Dialogue Writing Assignment
I actually had some success with the writing assignment this week. The three-person dialogue was difficult in some ways - I tended to have one person with something to tell and the other two made comments. But usually the two secondary characters would develop their own attitudes in commenting. One supportive, one wise-cracking. One eager, one reluctant.
No Internal Editor!
I tried hard to set aside my internal editor before I started, and to not try to start with particular characters. Instead, I started with one person and one line of dialogue, and let whatever lines wanted to follow, follow.
Revealing Character
Sometimes my main person would say something off the wall and instead of redirecting her, I let it go where it wanted. Sometimes Character Two or Three would add a comment to their mouthing off, and I let the subject turn completely. I found out that one girlfriend really didn’t like the other’s fiancé. And my two sniping siblings turned into a younger brother teasing his sister about her first crush. Not what I expected!
Writing for Fun
It wasn't easy - I had to keep reminding myself. But if I succeeded in letting go, it became downright fun! Which is what Dan was after.
Still turning envelopes in, still don’t know what will happen to them, but I don’t really care. I’m getting it. Next week we start workshopping stories.
To start from the beginning, read Fiction Writing Workshop #1, then #2, then #3.
I actually had some success with the writing assignment this week. The three-person dialogue was difficult in some ways - I tended to have one person with something to tell and the other two made comments. But usually the two secondary characters would develop their own attitudes in commenting. One supportive, one wise-cracking. One eager, one reluctant.
No Internal Editor!
I tried hard to set aside my internal editor before I started, and to not try to start with particular characters. Instead, I started with one person and one line of dialogue, and let whatever lines wanted to follow, follow.
Revealing Character
Sometimes my main person would say something off the wall and instead of redirecting her, I let it go where it wanted. Sometimes Character Two or Three would add a comment to their mouthing off, and I let the subject turn completely. I found out that one girlfriend really didn’t like the other’s fiancé. And my two sniping siblings turned into a younger brother teasing his sister about her first crush. Not what I expected!
Writing for Fun
It wasn't easy - I had to keep reminding myself. But if I succeeded in letting go, it became downright fun! Which is what Dan was after.
Still turning envelopes in, still don’t know what will happen to them, but I don’t really care. I’m getting it. Next week we start workshopping stories.
To start from the beginning, read Fiction Writing Workshop #1, then #2, then #3.
Posted by
Jennifer Jensen
Jennifer Jensen
Write pages of dialogue and mail them to each other? Why? What are we learning from this creative writing assignment?
Dialogue Writing Assignment Update
First, what did we do with the envelopes of our dialogue pages? (Read the assignment requirements here, and my reaction as I wrote here.) We passed them to someone else, wrote our address on the packet we got, and then mailed them down the hall. When we get them, we are to put a rubber band around them and bring them back to class without opening them! Seems pointless, but Dan (the prof) is the boss.
And this week’s dialogue exercise is to do the same, but with three characters instead of two!
Strange Thoughts About Writing
The odd thing was where my mind went on the way home and into the next morning. I would think, “Oh – she’s going to read that!” And then I reminded myself that she was bringing my pages back unopened. Followed immediately by, “I wonder if she’ll know the type of people my voices are.” Followed by, “Duh! She’s NOT opening them.”
The back-and-forth in my head kept going, and I spent the entire next day fascinated by my reaction.
Letting the Internal Editor Go
I knew I had written for publication, structured and planned, for a long time. But I never realized how hard it would be for me to let go of any purpose or future readership. I can actually see a purpose in this. It was fun to let myself have fun the next day, but the second writing got tedious again. We’ll see if I can get back to fun and truly free writing for the next set.
Click here to read the next post in the series.
First, what did we do with the envelopes of our dialogue pages? (Read the assignment requirements here, and my reaction as I wrote here.) We passed them to someone else, wrote our address on the packet we got, and then mailed them down the hall. When we get them, we are to put a rubber band around them and bring them back to class without opening them! Seems pointless, but Dan (the prof) is the boss.
And this week’s dialogue exercise is to do the same, but with three characters instead of two!
Strange Thoughts About Writing
The odd thing was where my mind went on the way home and into the next morning. I would think, “Oh – she’s going to read that!” And then I reminded myself that she was bringing my pages back unopened. Followed immediately by, “I wonder if she’ll know the type of people my voices are.” Followed by, “Duh! She’s NOT opening them.”
The back-and-forth in my head kept going, and I spent the entire next day fascinated by my reaction.
Letting the Internal Editor Go
I knew I had written for publication, structured and planned, for a long time. But I never realized how hard it would be for me to let go of any purpose or future readership. I can actually see a purpose in this. It was fun to let myself have fun the next day, but the second writing got tedious again. We’ll see if I can get back to fun and truly free writing for the next set.
Click here to read the next post in the series.