How to write fiction: understanding the basic mistakes (more mistakes)

Yep, more mistakes you should make and correct quickly with this guide or wiki (I just comment on the advice). You should make them in order to become a great fiction writer or laugh it off with me.

               4. Don’t be too predictable:

Oh beloved cliché. Does it need to be treated in depth? This is a sloth case. Reading is a must. If you don’t, how are you to know anything and everything out there so you don’t repeat? If you don’t read the genre you want to write in, how the heck are you to know the requirements of the gente to change them? Do you think Lee Dong-gun (author of Yumi’s cells)  just popped up the idea of making the love interest to enter scene later? I mean, this is more like real life than the usual rom com but it fits the requirements of the genre and tears apart the idea that love interest has to appear at the very beginning of the plot.

LEARNING IS A MUST. And there audio books and podcasts. Not wanting to read[1] or not having time for reading is not an excuse.

Remember:  there must be a chasm between what the reader expects and the way it happens. What the reader’s expect can happen but try to make it in a way they don’t expect at all. This is being unpredictable.

Example:
Lancelot is a coffee table knight. It has been a few days since he noticed something strange in the cloud. Every now and then pop ups float whenever he opens the usual porn pages. The weird thing isn’t the damn add block to malfunction. It is what the pop ups say: «The world is ending in 7 days, help us find princess Celeste»

Yeah, this is nonsense. It is. But if my genre is action plus comedy; Lancelot is to SAVE the world and SAVE the princess getting himself into ridiculous situations. It is a requirement. The issue is: HOW THE @£££*-¥π^?

5. Show, don’t tell:

Conceal don’t feel…. Now they know, let it go….

To show or not to show? To save reader the trouble or not? Since this ain’t a novel, I’ll repeat it. Depends on your talents and what you aim to do. Let’s check out this example from the wiki:

[«—Let’s go!— said Julia impatiently». This tells the reader Julia is impatient but doesn’t show it. Now consider this sentence: —» Let’s go! —shouted Julia romping on the floor» The readers anyways will get Julia is impatient but you haven’t tried to tell them. You have shown it]

In design we would call the first dialogue » the whole instead the part» * Literary knowledge calls it synecdoche and since everything I know about design comes from linguistics terms, it is practically the same…  Which is nothing but showing the whole image or object without close ups since you need a fast understanding of what is happening. Your message requires expenditure and not trifles [more like details.]

The second belongs to «a part instead the whole«; like when you zoom into an object and you show a part of the object sacrificing the whole visual. This happens when you want a Gestalt effect and prefer the reader to complete the message on their own. You do it when you need subtlety not agility.

This last one seems to be the favourite of writing manuals writers who either complain of the excess of adverbs use (slowly, evidently) or would like to imprint the rule by repetition slams.

Exception: Robert McKee. Most probably because he concerns himself with script writing and scripts require action more than words, so to him it seems futile to speak of adverbs. The same comes for comics. You can read the character’s thoughts but you will never find a «he kicked weakly». More like the character kicks and the bully shows no pain.

Maybe the exception is in theatre, for it depends more on what is said than on what is done on scene. Not that there is no action in theatre plays but the amount of movement done is limited to what is possible and affordable in a stage.

Chuck Wendig says in “250 things you should know about writing”, dialogue is even better when it has the character doing something at the same time. This is good advice.

So… do we tell? Do we show? It depends.

Most of the time, using this technique gets a better immersion in the fiction.  Nonetheless…  Andrea Camilleri. Have you read him? He semi breaks this concept by using adverbs sometimes and expressing the emotion directly. And he got his Montalbano in the RAI tube.

6. No rule is set on stone:

As it becomes, six rules later we are told we can break the rules. And it is quite worthy to quote what the website goes on about: «a side of writing is discover the self voice and writing style so you feel free to experiment. Just be mindful not every experiment works out so of you try something new and it doesn’t produce what you thought, don’t feel guilty of it»

WHO HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING, HAS NEVER MADE MISTAKES. We are to make mistakes, even with the mistakes we shall not make if we’re to get better at all.

I’LL BE BACK. Did you make the mistake of liking this? Don’t forget to $%&(“° it and like, comment and subscribe!  

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[1] Many writers and editors despise people who want to watch the movie instead of reading but… There are so many ways people can be happy out there and learn things that just choose the one way you like and let them tear apart their clothes biblical fashion.