How to Make Fiction Writing Easier: We Don't Need Teachers, We Need Characters

All writers have a dream of writing the next great American novel. That is an assumption on a cliché, but most do have this dream. The problem is this: we forget much of what we learned about the basics, and forget that true writing is not honed with the help of a teacher. This article will feature strategies on making your fiction pieces easier. It will guide the novelist and short form writer down a road-not necessarily success, but of enjoyment.

The Rules

Writing can be learned, but we learn our best lessons ourselves-not with the help of teachers. There is a book called "Writing Without Teachers" by Peter Elbow. This work's thesis was that fact-we do not need teachers to teach us writing. We can learn where to put the semicolon, the comma, and the exclamation point, but we learn more about the rules through action than sitting in a classroom studying Henry James or Ernest Hemingway. If we actually read writers like Hemingway, we will see a style that, for its time, was incredibly unique. Hemingway broke rules; some he should have, and others perhaps he should not have. If our narrator is a lunatic who thinks he is God, it won't work. Actually, that is what the teachers will tell you. Break that rule as an exercise. Have an insane narrator; break the rule that a narrator has to be reliable. Writing is about breaking rules, but do not break basic grammar rules. They will lead you into rejection piles. It is easier to break some rules than to follow all of them.

The Character

Let the character breath. This sounds like a critique, but we, as writers, often do not let our characters breath. We can save much of the headache in writing fiction by allowing the character to come alive. A living, breathing character acts for himself. The author can try to put him or her in odd situations, but the situations have to make sense for the character. A recovering alcoholic would likely not put himself into a bar where there were plenty of booze. He (or she) would avoid that situation. Let the character move somewhere and you make it easier on yourself as a writer.

Write Short Form

The novel is one of the harder creative projects there is. We should consider how long a novel will take before we begin it. A novel will take hundreds of hours to work out unless we can write with great speed. Writing short form fiction, especially for the beginning writer, is much easier. We put less pressure on ourselves with a short story. We can experiment with crazy narrators. We can learn the basics.

Fiction should never be defined as easy, but it can be if we make it. Take your pick of the ideas in this article and run to the page with it.