A Lot Of Fiction These Days Reads As If—as I Saw Peter Raleigh Put It The Other Day, And As I’ve

A lot of fiction these days reads as if—as I saw Peter Raleigh put it the other day, and as I’ve discussed it before—the author is trying to describe a video playing in their mind. Often there is little or no interiority. Scenes play out in “real time” without summary. First-person POV stories describe things the character can’t see, but a distant camera could. There’s an overemphasis on characters’ outfits and facial expressions, including my personal pet peeve: the “reaction shot round-up” in which we get a description of every character’s reaction to something as if a camera was cutting between sitcom actors.

When I talk with other creative writing professors, we all seem to agree that interiority is disappearing. Even in first-person POV stories, younger writers often skip describing their character’s hopes, dreams, fears, thoughts, memories, or reactions. This trend is hardly limited to young writers though. I was speaking to an editor yesterday who agreed interiority has largely vanished from commercial fiction, and I think you increasingly notice its absence even in works shelved as “literary fiction.” When interiority does appear on the page, it is often brief and redundant with the dialogue and action. All of this is a great shame. Interiority is perhaps the prime example of an advantage prose as a medium holds over other artforms.

fascinated by this article, "Turning Off the TV in Your Mind," about the influences of visual narratives on writing prose narratives. i def notice the two things i excerpted above in fanfic, which i guess makes even more sense as most of the fic i read is for tv and film. i will also be thinking about its discussion of time in prose - i think that's something i often struggle with and i will try to be more conscious of the differences between screen and page next time i'm writing.

Best Prompt Lists of 2022!

Intimate Moments

One Hundred Compliments

Meet Cutes

Bed Sharing Scenarios

Saying I love you…

30 Days Writing Challenge

Daily Writing Challenge

Teasing Dialogue

Pregnancy Prompts

Romantic One-Liners Part II

The year 2022 is coming to an end. I wish all of you only the best for 2023!

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ajkiranwrites

4 weeks ago

thank you Canada 🇨🇦

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ajkiranwrites

1 year ago

SWOT: characters, archs and conflicts

If you’re in business, you’ve probably heard of SWOTs: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It’s meant to analyze other players in your field (i.e. your competitors) and to define future steps to improve your own business.

I have slightly modified this idea to build characters, to give them archs and to make up conflicts with other characters.

1. Strength

Let’s say you decide your character is enthousiastic, always gives 100% in any situation. That’s a strength, right? It means your character is overall a dependable person, and agreeable to be around.

Now write a scene in which you introduce this character without explicitly telling the reader about their personality. How would you notice such a character trait in real-life people? How does it show in your character?

2. Opportunities

Opportunities can arise for people who are happy to take on the work, when they prove themselves to be a good friend (“Can you pick up my mom from the airport?”) or when their boss sees how much they get done in a day.

Write a second scene, in which your characters reaps the rewards for their character trait.

3. Conflicts

I will rephrase “Threaths” as “Conflicts”. For your character, who is the most annoying or dangerous kind of person? Someone who is the opposite of them. This doesn’t have to be big, it can show in small details.

For your hands-on character, this could mean a colleague who does the bare minimum and gets away with it. Or a family member who never gives a helping hand. A class mate who is too chill about group assignments.

Can you see how this will get under your character’s skin? Write a scene in which your character’s personality contrasts with that of another character. Will they confront the other person or will they let it stew? The way they deal with this conclict shows the reader a lot about your character.

4. Weakness

How can this character trait turn into a weakness? When is this character trait not the best strategy? A quick trick is to imagine how other characters react to it.

Maybe your character’s hands-on mentality means they sometimes forget to take other people into account, even when they mean to help that other person. (“Thanks for painting my new fence, but I didn’t want it white, I wanted to keep it natural.”) Maybe their enthousiasm means they are too blunt, and they unwillingly hurt other people’s feelings. Maybe they even lose friends over it. Maybe always giving 100% makes your character wear thin. Maybe people take advantage of them.

See how the fortress is crumbling? Write a scene in which your character shows a bad side of themselves or gets into trouble because of their character trait.

5. Your story

The early part of your story is a good time to show the strenghts of your character, and next they move into the opportunities. Everything is going so well, people value them for their worth, oh happy day! Wouldn’t it be a shame if they encounter a conflict… And another, and another.

Maybe circumstances in your story push your character to reveal their character trait in a more extreme way than they would have done if they had the time to think before reacting. Maybe your character is the only one with this character trait in a majority of conflicting personalities.

After a number of conflicts, your character’s weakness grows, internally and externally. How will this evolve? Will they learn from their conflicts? Will they make amends? Find people who do value them as they are? Accept their true self? Learn how to prioritize?

And there’s your story.

You’ve got this! Now go write!

I hope this was helpful. Don’t hesitate to ask me any questions, and happy writing!

Follow me for more writing advice, or check out my other writing tips here. New topics to write advice about are also always appreciated.

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ajkiranwrites

1 year ago

The writeblr side of my dash is pretty inactive, so please interact with this post if you're an active writing blog! My main is over at @brw, so that's where follows will be coming from :)

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ajkiranwrites

4 months ago

I just read that Donald Trump and his circus took down a website called reproductiverights.gov

This was a website to help women learn about their reproductive rights in the US and to find health care.

This is absolutely disgusting so I’ll share in this post some resources in case you need them: