How to write fiction

How to write a fiction masterpiece… in theory

low angle shot of man sculpture
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What an excitement! We’re to write our first baby!  By the end of the pregnancy, we can start to feel like killing outselves, thus write your will and hang on, some kids take longer than others to be born. Now, the advice to write.

1. DETERMINE THE STAGE AND BASIC PLOT:

Planning….  It is more difficult than it seems. Besides Sarah Domet’s (90 days to your novel), we can use the one of the website; to make lots of questions about the thing itself (novel, short story, being, etc). Yet, before that. One thing that can help is to choose the genreso you know the requirements or points to be fulfilled and the controlling idea. The controlling idea is like a compass to guide you in the wild.

Consequently, decide if it is romance, sci-fi or an erotic depiction for vampires. Also, pick up if revenge is satisfying or it destructs the main character. If love is not enough or if love conquers all. That’s the controlling idea.


2. AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DECISION, THE POV:

I didn’t use to know that POV means the point of view of the narrating voice; so I said in the original entry that they were confusing point of view with the narrator. Now I know, it is about who is telling, therefore the narrating voice is the POV.

And despite this decision looking a bit obvious, it is not. First because names such as first person, limited third person and omniscient person can change to the tune of the person doing the explanation. Just like «if clauses» can turn into «present conditional»/»zero (first, second…) conditional» to the tune of the elite person in the throne of knowledge who wishes to change the furniture of the office with a name makeover. And if you don’t actualize your vocabulary, you’re taken as obsolete no matter how much a network FTP is the same thing as “the cloud”.

Therefore, we need to decide who is going to speak. Because of three reasons.

a) Clarity of speech (with this you know what grammar to use).

 b)Chasm (I’ll clarify this later) and

c)Head hopping.

About the chasm, Robert McKee thinks to change the POV to every action the characters do, since this is what creates the chasms that keep the reader hooked into your piece; since they’re the things that complicate the main character’s life.

I’ll explain myself: if the detective is hoping to get the door opened for him, he is sent to the freakish Goulag cause he got in turn, an old moody goat who hates cops. In consequence, he doesn’t open the door and the detective work gets delayed. He can’t talk to the one only witness because; cherry on top, our detective has been accused of excessive strength before thus he can’t irrupt in the place. Then, he gets to talk to the moody goat by cheating him with a fake warrant. The lead ends being pretty vague due to the old goat wearing magnifier glasses or glaucoma. Your call. As a matter of fact, this advice is mostly about picking a narrator and following their POV for as long as possible but following the actions a character would take against the expectations of the character in spotlight. It makes sense… In novels and short tales (specially in short tales where there’s no really much time to be switching POV). But…

What happens in comics and movies? A comic, image wise, is much more flexible than a novel —were we doing a long one. A four choma or strip, doesn’t have that leisure.

A comic can even be deemed more flexible than a movie script. Why? Because movies with a voice in off explaining things… Don’t work as well as movies where the things are being shown. It is not as easy have this «I am Peter Parker» in off or omniscient anonymous narrator who never said a mu until the breaking heart event. Movies almost never have a limited narrator such as friend or bystander since it has the advantage Hillary Mantel mentions in Adaptation[1]: movies have a spotlight of a camera telling us, this is your hero.

When writing, we need to think the capabilities and weaknesses of our media. In movies we expect movement and action not a voice in off telling us what’s happening. In a novel it is all right to have thoughts and more thoughts despite us needing conflict. A comic can have both. McKee says a boring book is one with a lot of explaining…

I doubt McKee read “Doña Flor y sus dos maridos[2]” by a Brazilian called Jorge Amado in spite of (I think) liking the movie. En the book, there are a lot of «explanations» in recipe form of all the dishes the FL can cook —speaking of recipes l, if you happen to speak or be learning Spanish, Meg’s kitchen has a lot that look quite delicious or at least, are written as Sunday friendly gossip[3].

A movie has music to take us to feelings. It has visual rhythm. A novel is made in fists of words. This one in particular is a little bit like  “The witches of Eastwick”  by John Updike, in the sense that everything that might look as redundant in a not as experienced author’s writing, gets a rhythm with Amado: 1, 2, 3 turn around, 4, 5 step ahead, stomp, do a hand right pass, turn again and the double is over.

It is the tool for an author to rise tension or to indicate tension or, as in Mistress Flor’s inquiry, to burn slowly unable to quench your tail. And it depends on how each writes.

3. WRITE A SKETCH:

¿Isn’t it already sketched? To Domet, we have already done that entire job. To Libby Hawker (“Take off your pants!”), we have already established motivations, strengths and weaknesses and the rest of almost entrepreneurial info! In my opinion what follows is the next advice.However, for the moment, that’s more than enough. You have material to think over until the next advice.

Pasto Kalo. Have fun thinking how to solve the problem. Gift me a like, subscribe, comment. Or maybe not. This is… Pure fiction. 


[1] One of the five Reith lectures of 2017. You can get it in the BBC radio website.

[2] Back then I read it in thin slices. It was and still is a very curious thing filled in Brazilian cuisine. You can watch the movie in YouTube, it is part of a cinema university course. It is in Portuguese but I don’t know if there are subs in English.

[3] Thank you for reading the nonsense in this blog. I hope you’re still around cause without you, I wouldn’t be translating. I’d love to know how to really cook and invent recipes but it seems I’m just an inventor of bubbles.

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