The Facts of Fiction – a writer’s guide

‘Writing a work of fiction, a story about people who don’t exist doing things they’ve never done – that must be really easy huh? I mean, nobody can tell you that you’ve got it wrong because none of it is actually real.’

I heard somebody say this recently and I almost shook. The only way in which fiction is easier to compose than a factual documentary is the matter of having a much wider base of operations to work from. Reporting the facts of a genuine event or situation is a relatively simple process of following what has actually happened. But creating fiction? Nothing is fixed and so it’s much easier for the thread of the story to become tangled, broken, or even just plain lost. Here are some techniques which can help you to create a readable, logically progressive story – and if you can do that, your readers are far more likely to come back for more.

Know your subject

Ok, this bit may seem rather obvious – but you might be surprised how many people set out to write about a subject they don’t understand. Always choose a subject you understand at least to the level at which you would feel comfortable holding a free-and-open conversation on such.

If you are inventing something completely new, then the concept of holding a conversation is invalidated. You would be the master of the new subject, thus releasing you from the responsibility of ‘keeping to the rules of the game’. However, in such cases you must pay full attention to all the remaining points.

Consider your audience

Who do you intend to read your story? If it was to be made into a film or a TV show, ask yourself when you would expect it to be shown and who you would expect to watch. The point here is to ‘tailor’ your story to the likely desires and abilities of your audience. If you are writing for the intended enjoyment of younger children for example, remember to keep the language (and the subject matter itself) nice and simple – and keep the sentences relatively short.

When writing for an ‘adults only’ audience, many people might expect a story to include the traditionally adult themes of violence, bad language and sexual content/innuendo. You shouldn’t feel obliged to employ these aspects to any significant degree, but you would be well advised to consider their occasional use. In any case, such elements must never be used simply for the sake of their own inclusion. Any use of adult themes – whatever your target audience – should only be considered if they would strengthen the expression of an event or situation or where their exclusion would detract from the credibility of the story. Fiction is about escapism, but very few people would consider a world of continuous violence to be an escape; most would regard it as a trap to be escaped from.

A very popular branch of fiction is the realm of science fiction and sheer fantasy. These stories are often aimed at teenagers or written for general/family perusal. If this is the region in which you choose to write, your challenge is to balance the adult themes with youngsters’ comprehension. My personal recommendations are as follows:

Keep actual violence (with blood and gore) to a minimum, but be prepared to show plenty of threat and peril.

Don’t include any swearing per se, but do remember that some infrequent usage of mild language is likely to maintain teenage interests.

Keep the language relatively simple, but use a few obscure words (just a small few throughout the story will do). Younger children will have the natural curiosity to ask their parents what the words mean, whilst teenagers – and some adults – will probably reach for the dictionary themselves. In this way, fiction can be educational and get people thinking; just remember to use such words sparingly or you will find your readers losing interest.

Make a brief summary

Now you’ve decided what you are going to write about, as well as who you will be writing for, it’s time to get to work on the basic plot. But don’t just jump in with both feet and start writing the story itself; you’ll soon get stuck (possibly irretrievably so) if you do. By writing a basic summary of the plot as you invent it, you can easily keep track of what’s happening. If you don’t do this, if you go straight into writing your story in full detail, you’ll get lost rather quickly. I try to look at this aspect of writing as being the equivalent of route-finding in advance of a long drive. Imagine you want to drive from London to Manchester, or perhaps from Chicago to Austin or Melbourne to Darwin. Your first stage of route planning would be to open your atlas at the page which shows you the whole country, so you can plot your basic directions and see which towns & cities you’d need to either go through or pass close to. If you turned straight to the page showing the individual streets of your local area instead, you would be lucky to find your way to the edge of the page and still be heading in the right direction. Now imagine the plot of your story being misdirected in the first chapter and you’ll see what I mean.

Don’t be too direct…

A highly significant element of fiction production is the ability to keep people guessing. If you are writing a detective story or a suspense/thriller novel, you should try to convince your audience that the ‘truth’ of the matter is different from what it actually is. For instance, if Sherlock Holmes identified the killer on page 20, how many people would bother to read through to page 300? Probably not very many. Twist the plot a few times, have the hero of the piece thinking the wrong things – but don’t twist things so much that a) your readers will give up trying to follow the story, or b) you find it difficult to recapture the truth without the story becoming long, drawn-out and ultimately boring.

So, you’re now ready to write the detailed version of your story. You have your plot summary, you know who you want to write for, what do you do next?

...But let them know what's happening

The first details of your story should set out the ‘lay of the land’. To put this another way, you should still strive to explain where people are, what they’re doing there and what’s happening around them. Introduce your first few characters and tell your readers what they are like. Don’t go into too much detail though – you want your readers to be able to visualise the situation (this will help them to follow the story) but you also want them to use their own imagination. The lack of any explanation in the opening would result in confusion, although nobody really wants to get bogged down with excessive detail when there’s a story to read.

Make sure you get it right!

Keep a dictionary handy while you are writing. Spelling and grammar checks are useful if you are using a word processor, but they won’t tell you what certain words mean. If you are unsure of the spelling or meaning of a word (remember those obscure words from ‘Consider your audience’?), check it before you use it. In the last story I wrote, I confirmed the spelling & usage of about a dozen words in this way – as well as finding that I would otherwise have used three words wrongly. Bad spelling, bad grammar, bad punctuation and misuse of words are the stock-in-trade of bad writers.

Hold their attention

In one respect, writing fiction is similar to writing a factual report. You have to keep your readers’ interest or your work will end up being cast aside into a desk drawer – or even into the bin. Since vast amounts of detail would undoubtedly have the same effect, you must be prepared to administer a ‘controlled release’ of action throughout your work. Don’t flood the story with activity or you’ll ‘overload’ your readers; rather you should introduce points of interest or scenes of action at frequent intervals – especially at the end of each chapter.

Ground it in fact

The best fiction is always believable fiction. A useful tool here is to refer to actual facts. If you include references to a few well known events, especially those from recent history, you can create and maintain an air of credibility which might otherwise elude you. If your story is set in the future, you might consider linking such references with events from ‘forward history’ – the period between the present day and the time in which your story is set.

Consistency is vital

One of the most important elements of writing a story is to keep your characters consistent. Once you have established someone’s physical appearance, character or mannerisms, this must be maintained throughout the rest of the story. The same is true of locations and situations; buildings, for instance, must not be perceived as having moved or changed shape between one chapter and the next.

My favourite method for maintaining consistency is the use of record cards. If you have a record card for each character, location and piece of equipment, you can keep the descriptions of such in a form which is easy to refer to each time you come to write something more about that person, place or piece of kit. Actual physical locations of buildings, towns etc can be kept consistent by drawing a map or diagram and referring to this as and when required. With your characters, remember to keep records of where they are, what condition they are in and who they have met. You don’t want to have (for example) Peter talking about Terry as if they were close friends if they’ve never met, especially if Peter is in Toronto and you left him in Vancouver. And you certainly don’t want anyone discussing the merits of the local coffee bar if they died in the previous chapter.

Keep the time-line continuous

Much of this aspect has already been covered in ‘Consistency is vital’. However, you must bear in mind the necessity of keeping things in a logical order. You can’t expect your readers to accept someone explaining the cause of an event which has yet to take place, unless the character is a time-traveller or is directly involved in the planning of that event.

Probably the best way to maintain the continuity of the time-line of events is to keep a ‘diary’. As you write the story, make entries in the diary so that you have a ready-reference summary of events so far. This will also help you to keep track of who has – or hasn’t – met whom.

Finish with a flourish - and tie up the loose ends

There are two good ways to end a work of fiction, and they are similar in structure. They are, in fact, basically the same, but with the division of chapters being different – and this depending on how the story itself is written.

In essence, the penultimate chapter of your story should be the time of the most intense activity. I call this the ‘showdown chapter’. If the story involves a contest (them-and-us, good-versus-evil, that sort of thing), this is the time for the big ‘fight’ which will yield the ultimate victory for one side or the other. To look at this from another angle, it’s the time when the ‘good guys’ win – or perhaps, just for once, it’s when they unexpectedly lose.

A sudden, final plot twist can give a story a good ‘kick’ and serve to keep interest in your work – ready for the next story, or perhaps the next instalment of the present one. Something which can – just occasionally – work at this point is a combination of aspects already discussed: Imagine the look of surprise on your readers’ faces when they find out that the people seen as the ‘good guys’ turn out to have been the bad guys all along. Just remember not to use this idea too often or it will cease to surprise your readers.

No such ‘showdown’, however, should go ahead unprepared. The ‘pace’ of the story should be raised gradually; with indications being given that the showdown is on its way. This will not only help to lead into the showdown from the main body of the story but will also serve to maintain the readers’ interest. Keep the build-up in a separate chapter from the showdown.

Once you have written the build-up and the showdown, it’s time to decide how you will split the chapters of your story to accommodate these features. Look at the length of each of the chapters you have written prior to the build-up. Keep the length of the build-up chapter to something approximating to the average for the rest of the story. The showdown chapter should be among the longest, but – if this would make it significantly longer than one-and-two-thirds times the average chapter length – you should give serious consideration to the possibility of splitting it in two. This would leave you with an ‘overlap’ chapter between the build-up and the final, climactic showdown.

Finally, when the dust has settled (so to speak), a short concluding chapter is called for. Nothing major, otherwise you’d be diluting the impact of the showdown. All that’s needed here is a brief explanation of anything which hasn’t already been explained.

Finishing touches

When you’ve reached the end of your story, you still haven’t finished the job. Read it through, out loud so you can hear your own voice, and see if there’s anything new that comes to mind. Ask yourself questions such as ‘could I have done that better?’, ‘Does that all make sense?’, ‘Have I explained that part adequately?’, ‘Would that character really have said/done that?’ When you’re satisfied that there’s nothing that needs adding, changing or removing, read it all through one more time – from the start to the end. If you’re still satisfied, then you’ve finished.

Good luck!