Aspiring Authors Series.
I recently wrote about the three ‘rules’ of fiction writing that I find myself commenting on most frequently when I’m editing fiction novels for clients. But there are many other ‘rules’ to make good fiction that also need their time in the spotlight. If you know why the rule is there and how to use it, you can better decide when to follow it — and when to break it!
So here are another five of the common ‘rules’ of fiction writing…
Rule #1: Don’t start your book with a prologue
If you’ve read my post on the top three rules of fiction writing, you’ll already know I’m a stickler for the rules — in context. What I mean is, most of these supposed rules aren’t black and white. They have clauses — conditions to be met — which dictate when you should (or shouldn’t) follow the rule. This rule about prologues is one of those tricky ones that need a little more explanation.
There’s nothing wrong with a good prologue, per se. I love a prologue. Except, when it’s a prologue, followed by a prologue, followed by… you guessed it, another prologue. As an author, I appreciate that you are trying to show your reader parts of the story through different viewpoints, dip in and out of characters’ perspectives, and show us important scenes through various points in time. But all it does is confuse the reader.
If your prologue is about an old woman being kidnapped by a man in a gorilla costume, then chapter one is focused around a young boy playing with his pet salamander, then chapter two is about a fisherman who gets seasick, and so on, the reader has no idea what your book is about nor which character they’re meant to be invested in.
If you need to write about an event in the past to set up the story, which will be referred back to later for example, a prologue may be a better option than ten pages of backstory exposition in chapter two. However, if you feel that you need a prologue to set up the story, there are a few things you need to do to make it work:
- Chapter one immediately after the prologue MUST include your main character (MC) – your protagonist (or one of, if there are multiple MCs).
- Your prologue needs to set the tone for the rest of the novel, just the same as any other first chapter. If you write a prologue with lots of blood and guts, the reader will expect that to be the tone for the rest of the book. If your reader gets five chapters in and all that’s happened is a couple have moved in together and bought a guinea pig — when the novel is actually about them breaking up and the prologue was the horror movie the MC goes to see with her new beau near the end (because you wanted to subvert their expectations)— then your reader is putting that book down and writing you a horrendous review. Immediately.
- Do not use the prologue for world-building. I know you’ve spent years working on building this world, and it’s all integral to the story – of course the reader needs to know about the war in the year 2942 when the lizard-seahorse hybrids built a space elevator so that Geoff Jones could go up and find some cheese… but they don’t. That’s just it. Not really. And if they do need to know all of this backstory first, then perhaps you may need to start your book at a different point in your story.
Rule #2: Don’t start your book (or chapter) with the weather/someone waking up.
This can be seen as lazy writing. You could probably reel off five books right now which start this way, with a description of the weather or someone waking up… I get it. Why can they do it but I can’t? That’s Because it’s difficult to do well. The advice isn’t to never do it, but to be wary of doing it, because you may not pull it off. It has to be evocative, and there usually needs to be a reason for it.
If you want to describe the weather, ask yourself why. Does it in any way affect the plot or the scene? Is it important to the character in some way? If not — if it’s just setting description because you can’t think of another way to start — you may want to think of another opener.
The same goes for waking up. This is another fallback of many an inexperienced writer. You feel like you have to tell us every aspect of your character’s day. So naturally you start with the first thing that happens to them — they wake up. It makes complete sense. But, unless there’s a reason for them waking, don’t do it. Unless the reason they’ve woken up is integral to the story, try to find another way to begin. It’s perfectly acceptable — and preferable — to start your scenes/chapters/books right slap bang in the middle of a scene. In the middle of the action so to speak.
Which brings me to my next ‘rule’…
Rule#3: Start your book in the middle of the action
The same goes for chapter beginnings and new scenes. Try and find a way to dive right into the scene, into the thick of it.
Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t set the scene or that you shouldn’t describe the setting. You need to grip your reader, show them something is happening to your character… and then you can spend more time properly setting the scene.
Start in the middle of the dialogue. Skip the ‘hello’s and ‘how are you’s — the soul-destroying, blood-curdling terror that is small-talk (anyone? no? just me? okay then…) and get to the point. Your reader will thank you for it.
One thing that writers often mistake this rule to mean, however, is that they’re supposed to start literally in the middle of the action — as in, an ‘action’ scene. A fight, a car chase, a kidnap, the MC having a tantrum because he can’t find the car keys… you get the idea.
The problem with starting with this type of action (starting the whole book this way, rather than individual chapters, that is) is that we don’t know who the characters are. We don’t yet know who to root for, or why we’re supposed to care. Many thrillers and suspense books start like this — often with a prologue — in which the ‘victim’ is kidnapped/held hostage/about to be murdered. Then, the rest of the book dives into a story with a detective/doctor/lawyer (etc) as the MC. This can work well if it’s done right. And the reason it works is because we expect it. We know the rules (tropes) of the thrillers, mysteries, and suspense genres. But if we dive right into the middle of a fight scene with our protagonist, how do we know our protagonist is the one to root for, and not “the other guy”? How do we know to care that our main character is being beaten up? For all we know, he’s the ‘bad guy’.
‘But, Lee Child does this in every single Reacher novel,’ I hear you say… good for him! He’s a practiced, experienced author writing a well-known series. We know Jack Reacher is the main character, we already know who to root for. Just because pone of your favourite authors can pull something off, be careful about assuming it will work for your manuscript, as it may not fit.
Again, context is key — in this case, the difference between being able to start in the middle of an ‘action’ scene or not generally depends on genre, style, and experience.
Rule #4: Don’t describe every aspect of your characters from their hair to their freckles
This is one rule I tend to agree with 99% of the time. Unless you’re writing a historical romance and we absolutely need to know she’s wearing a corset to increase the tension as he fumbles at the laces in their stolen five minutes under the oak tree. Avoid detailed character descriptions as much as you can. And you usually can. Avoid detailed descriptions of facial features and clothing, especially. Avoid describing every character the second you introduce them too. If the character has one line, immediately disappears, and never appears again for the rest of the book, we don’t need to know their name, let alone that he’s got bags under his eyes, his second cousin’s middle name is Vinny, and that he’s overdue a doctor’s appointment for the small mole on his left buttock…
That said, it doesn’t mean you should never describe a character — that’s going too far in the other direction. Some character description can be useful in helping the reader visualize that character. You could describe them using something other than their name every time you mention them; often, a hair colour or a stand-out feature works well — maybe they’re tall, or have really, really knobbly knees (okay, maybe not the knees). And if you’re writing a science-fiction or fantasy, you might need to describe them, just a little, to give us an idea of what it’s like in your world. Just don’t overdo it.
And, just a word of warning: unless you have to, try not to have a whole scene where your character looks at themselves in a mirror and describes their appearance. This is another one of those aspects many consider to be indicative of lazy writing, and can mark you as an amateur — even if you’re not!
Rule #5: You need to set the scene, but don’t wax lyrical about the setting for five pages.
This one can seem a little contradictory. And it’s kind of linked to rules 1–3. Let me explain:
This tends to happen when a writer is told they need to show more, or that they need to root their character in the scene and get out of their heads, or that they are under-writing. The immediate reaction is to do the opposite (I don’t know why. We all do it. It knocks our confidence. We panic).
This results in long, winding descriptions using large, complex words which last for page upon page. This is how and why we often learn about the mouldy bathroom floor she’s walking across which squelches like a frog in a Floridian pond, the varnish peeling from the doorframes looks like a dried-up waterfall in the Mojave desert, the paint peeling like a woman who’s had a chemical peel, and the fluorescent lights buzzing above her head remind her of that summer in Cabo where she was ravished by the waiter and then had a Steak Diane on the patio with a cool, refreshing glass of bubbly which was how she met Derek, the refrigerator repairman… when all that happened was she went to the bathroom.
Setting the scene — rooting the character in the scene — may mean you start by showing the reader where the character is before you dive into their thoughts. It only needs the most cursory of descriptions. The trick is to be careful in choosing the words you use. Instead of using more words, use more specific words, to convey the scene.
It’s great to have your character recalling a past event from their childhood to set up the story for later. However, if we don’t know where the character is, or what caused the recollection, then we’re simply being ‘told’ a lot of inconsequential information in an uninteresting way, as far as the reader is concerned. It’s you – the author, inserting themselves into the sort, in a way.
However, if you were to start with something like the example following, you are letting the reader know where the character is and lead into her reminiscing in a way that gives context: “Marie hated being back in this town. She slammed the car door and headed inside. The perpetual smell of manure mixed with granny’s perfume took her right back to those long, summer nights, whiling away the hours after school with Laura. The one that got away.”
Summary
I hope that by explaining why and how to use these ‘rules’ for better writing, you can apply them to your work in an informed way. If you’ve not read it already, then check out my previous post on the three top rules of fiction writing I find myself commenting on most when editing fiction manuscripts for clients.
Remember, rules are there for a reason — but the trick is knowing when and how to break them.
Originally posted on Medium: https://medium.com/swlh/five-rules-for-fiction-writing-5e660e3ca941