What I Learned
I've been recollecting what I blotted up about writing when I attended my first western writing conventions. I listened, rapt, to veteran writers who made a good living at it and who didn't mind sharing their insights with neophytes. They are long dead but their insights stay with me.
One of these was to get into the story immediately, preferably in the first paragraph. Set up the drama, the dilemma, and then fill in the characterization, the backstory, later. Ideally, a story should put the protagonist in trouble in the first sentence. And then it was our task to keep him there, force the reader to wonder what would come next.
We learned that Hemingway was right. Use short words in simple declarative sentences, words that yield a solid understanding of the trouble facing the characters. Use adjectives and adverbs sparingly, if at all. They are not needed because forceful verbs or nouns do their own work. You don't need to say "it was very hot" when "it was hot" does the job.
We learned to avoid meandering, or long asides, or literary ornaments that slowed the flow. Readers didn't like to be diverted. We learned to keep our stories relatively simple: a dilemma arose, and the story was about resolving it.
Most of these things ran contrary to what critics and academics tried to teach about writing fiction, but my mentors knew their audiences, knew their publishers, knew what would work and what would sell books, and wrote to meet the marketplace rather than the college lecture hall.
I have tried to make these things my own foundation, and when I've strayed I've usually paid the price. I sometimes wish I could go rewrite some of my novels, especially ones that meandered, and whip them into tight form. Maybe some day I will. I'll always be grateful to the old timers at the conventions who steered me into a successful career writing fiction that was accessible to everyone, in every station of life. Over time, I've stopped yearning for critical success, and instead, look at numbers as the hallmark of my achievement.
One of these was to get into the story immediately, preferably in the first paragraph. Set up the drama, the dilemma, and then fill in the characterization, the backstory, later. Ideally, a story should put the protagonist in trouble in the first sentence. And then it was our task to keep him there, force the reader to wonder what would come next.
We learned that Hemingway was right. Use short words in simple declarative sentences, words that yield a solid understanding of the trouble facing the characters. Use adjectives and adverbs sparingly, if at all. They are not needed because forceful verbs or nouns do their own work. You don't need to say "it was very hot" when "it was hot" does the job.
We learned to avoid meandering, or long asides, or literary ornaments that slowed the flow. Readers didn't like to be diverted. We learned to keep our stories relatively simple: a dilemma arose, and the story was about resolving it.
Most of these things ran contrary to what critics and academics tried to teach about writing fiction, but my mentors knew their audiences, knew their publishers, knew what would work and what would sell books, and wrote to meet the marketplace rather than the college lecture hall.
I have tried to make these things my own foundation, and when I've strayed I've usually paid the price. I sometimes wish I could go rewrite some of my novels, especially ones that meandered, and whip them into tight form. Maybe some day I will. I'll always be grateful to the old timers at the conventions who steered me into a successful career writing fiction that was accessible to everyone, in every station of life. Over time, I've stopped yearning for critical success, and instead, look at numbers as the hallmark of my achievement.
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