I LOVE TO WRITE FICTION

I'm thinking about football because I'm a fan.

Football players wreck their bodies and put them through incredible punishment for what? They usually begin playing as children and those with talent are encouraged early. By middle—school they’re playing on a team. Most of them, if they don’t get hurt, play in high school. But only a few will get scholarships to play in college and only a very few will get scholarships at major universities. Out of those, a tiny fraction will make it to the pros.

The chances, I’m told, of playing pro football are one in a million. And those few who make it will play for an average of three years. Almost all players will be finished as a player by the time they’re in their early thirties. (Thank the gods, authors, because we can write until we take our final breaths).

So what about this? Why do they do it? For some there’s the possibility of the escape from poverty, the lure of girls, the chance for fame and riches. Everyone has a mix of motives for pursuing something that takes singular dedication and sacrifice. But I think most of them do it for one main reason, and it’s the same reason writers write and actors act and painters paint. Love. How many people love what they do? A big part of who we are is what we do, and yet most people don’t love what they do. It’s worth a lot of struggle and heartache and pain, physical or otherwise, to find the thing you love to do and do it

I make a pretty good living off writing fiction, thanks the success of my series Strangely Scary Funny. Nine books and counting. Soon to be ten. But I've written a lot of things that made me no money or very little money. I kept writing. Because, to paraphrase, Ted Lasso's Dani Rojas, WRTING IS LIFE and also WRITING IS DEATH and also WRITING IS JUST WRITING but mostly WRITING IS LIFE.

Or so I think today.

You Can't Trust Real Life

It's Called Fiction For A Reason

“But that really happened,” the writer says. “That’s exactly the way it really happened.”

He’s saying this in response to criticism from his critique group that the scene doesn’t seem real.

“It is real,” he says as if he’s throwing down a royal flush. “That scene is as real as it gets.”

Au contraire. The scene maybe true in the sense it happened, but story requires more and less that the literal truth because, again, it's fiction, a creation.

 

I think this is one of the big mistakes of beginning writers. Often times faithfully rendering something that really happened in life will lead the writer down the wrong path. Either he’ll put in the wrong details or too many details or the whole scene will not fit with the rest of the novel. 

You can’t trust real life when it comes to fiction. (Of course you can't trust real life when it comes to real life sometimes but that's for another blog).

 

Of course you use your life and things that have happened to you and things you’ve felt in your fiction (we need to do this), but you always have to remember that you’re writing a story. You're controlling what happens, how much to tell and show about what happens, and you're trying to do it in an interesting way.  You have to carefully pick and choose details that serve the character and story. You can’t be true to real life and do that. You have to be true to your story. 

 

Disclaimer:  the opinions of this author do not reflect the opinions of this author in either the future or the past. 

 

Thank you for reading.