The 10 Recommendations For Those Just Starting Out...

Though I've come close, I’m presently unpublished, so yes, this is like the blind leading the blind. I have no mountain to come down from, no commandments written in stone, no magic formula to impart. But, if you're just starting out, consider 10 Recommendations:

[1] Participate in an online critique group like Critters (highly recommended), Critique Circle, or Hatrack. By finding gems and flaws in another’s writing, you learn what works, and what doesn’t in your own. And of course, you get valuable feedback and perhaps a reality check by having others review your work. Sometimes it might feel like a punch to the gut, but mistaken kindness, having people tell you what you want to hear, is in the end much crueler.

[2] Begin with short stories. If you can’t craft a short story, how will you write a novel? You can always go back and novelize a shorter work. Think: Ender’s Game.

[3] Don’t overload the story. Say you have some brilliant ideas for your milieu. If the reader can’t catch on, or has to jump through too many hoops in their already busy and complex life, then it’s been wasted. They will quit reading. Or won’t enjoy it. Try a story with one or two “What Ifs” to start with and those ideas will shine more than if they have to compete with a dozen.

[4] Don’t explain too much, that is infodump. Gradually drip exposition throughout the story, but in a natural fashion according to the viewpoint character and the plot.

Think: Not all of us understand or think about the detailed workings of the car we drive or our computers, we just use them and they work. What’s important is how we use it. If the story isn’t overloaded to begin with, than that’s half the battle.

Always remember: Not everything needs to be explained.

[5] Don’t explain too little. If you don’t explain enough, then you leave the reader in the dark. This is essential when you start the story. From the first paragraph, the reader must understand where the viewpoint character is, what they are doing, what their name is, and what the story is about. And often, the first reader will want the genre to be clear from page one. Clarity, clarity, clarity!

[6] Master third person limited viewpoint and stick with it for now.

True, some of our favorite stories have a first person narrator, but when learning the ropes, it’s best to learn third person limited, which can be every bit as in depth as first person and, as Orson Scott Card says in Characters and Viewpoint, has the illusion of immediacy in past tense that first person does not. Avoid third person omniscient, it is very difficult to do well and has fallen out of fashion. In third person limited, the narrator is almost indistinguishable from the viewpoint character. The narration shows the story through the viewpoint character’s senses and through their thoughts.

Thus it’s unnecessary to say: Billy Vader turned and saw a hobbit push a cart down the cobblestone street.

Rather: A hobbit shoved his cart over the cobblestones. (We know the viewpoint character saw it, so why tell us?)

And that’s why it’s unnecessary to always say: A potential apprentice, Billy Vader thought.

Rather: The hobbit had the makings of an apprentice. If only he could be turned to gray side.

If you apply third person limited right, there will be no withholding of crucial information. The reader should reasonably know what they know and see what they are thinking and remembering. Thus if you try to withhold just to elicit a twist, such as, in a who-done-it and the viewpoint character ends up being the killer all along, and it’s not revealed until the end, the first reader (aka the editor) will be quite mad. You violated point of view. Television, movies, and other visual media can do this because the viewer sees the story from the outside in. With written fiction, the reader observes the story from the inside out.

[7] Show AND tell.
Don’t tell: The unsanitary hobbit was happy.

Rather show it and prove it: The hobbit smiled, revealing yellowed and brown teeth. Even his bloodshot eyes seemed to grin. He rubbed one grimy hand against another and slimed muck across his calluses. “Ready to feast on the cockroaches?”

On the other hand, don’t show too much, only what’s important to move the story along. Otherwise the story can be weighed down in too much detail. Mundane activities can be regulated to narrative summary. Why burden us with the ingredients the viewpoint character picked up at the market for that night’s dinner? Don’t list every item on the mantelpiece in detail. Is it pertinent to the story? Then why are you telling me? Yes, set the scene, but don’t take it too far. Trust the reader’s imagination. It’ll fill in many of the details, and if you strike a good balance, you’ll have given the illusion you showed it, even when you didn’t.

[8] Avoid passive main characters (NOT to be confused with passive voice, but avoid that too!). Your story can’t just be about what the main character observed or what was done to them. They need to drive the plot. They can try and fail, but they should at least strive for goals. And where they do reach a goal it shouldn’t be handed to them on a silver platter or by a Deus Ex Machine. They have to surmount many obstacles with their own hard work. Otherwise there’s no story.

[9] Avoid clichéd expressions, characters, and plot. Since you’re the writer, you’re supposed to create your own expressions, not borrow common ones from everyday speech, such as: cool as a cucumber, fly on the wall, when it rains it pours, raining cats and dogs.

How many times do you watch a show and can predict what’s going to happen? Don’t you hate that? Sure, it’s fun at first, but then it gets old. If a reader can predict what’s going to happen, then why are they reading it? They already know the story.

In Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card said that the first thing we usually pull from our mental shelf is probably a cliché, so we might have to go back several times and pull something else.

[10] Remember Card’s MICE quotient [milieu, idea, character, event] when deciding when a story is to begin and end.

* Got a milieu story? Then the story begins about the time the character confronts a strange new world and ends when they leave, or when they won’t leave, or when they find out they can’t. In novel forms examples are: The Hobbit, Rendezvous with Rama, and the duology Eon and Eternity.

* Got idea? As in a mystery? Or a problem that calls for a purely technological, scientific solution? Then the story beings with the problem and ends when the problem is solved, by discovering who did it, or the application of a device that fixes that deadly leak in the space-time continuum.

* What about a Character story? The story begins when the character is unhappy with themselves or their place in a sociologic structure (their family, community, ect…). The story ends when the character changes themselves or their place or decides It’s A Wonderful Life after all. Or not. See: Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

Event. The milieu is out of whack. A monstrous overlord threatens the land. A battle of good and evil ensues. The world is doomed unless a hero steps forward to undergo a quest that will make everything aright. The story begins when the hero, knowingly or unknowingly, starts on the path that will try to right the wrong, and ends when the crisis is abated OR the worst happens, the bad guy wins, the milieu is ended, or things remains as they always were.