#137: 5 Tips For Writing Better Fiction (Even If You're Just Starting Out)

Speaker 1: 0:25

zoom out and say, okay, what perspective am I in? Am I trying to be in all the perspectives at once, or am I, you know? Let's say I'm stuck in that author's perspective, so I know everything that's going to happen in the future. I know everything that's happened in the past and because of that I'm just feeling stuck on what this character would do in the moment or things like that. So if you're feeling that in a scene and you realize you're stuck in the author's perspective, you can be consciously aware of that and say, okay, I need to zoom into my character's perspective. And there's a few ways to do this, depending on your practice and kind of what helps you.

Speaker 1: 1:08

Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week, I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started.

Speaker 1: 1:37

In today's episode. I have something really fun to share with you. I asked a handful of my peers to send me a voice note with their favorite writing tip, and I gathered them all up for today's episode. You're going to hear from Emily Golden, daniel David Wallace, nicole Meyer, abigail K Perry and myself, because I couldn't resist throwing my own tip into the mix. But, seriously, you're in for a treat, because many of these tips are born from personal experience and every single one of them is juicy and super helpful. So, with all of that being said, I won't make you wait any longer. Let's dive right into the first tip from Emily Golden.

Speaker 2: 2:06

Hey, everyone, I'm Emily Golden. I am an owner and book coach at Golden May, as well as an adult fantasy author. I work with tenacious writers to ditch hustle culture and merge their unique brains with craft knowledge that works, so you can develop a process that gets you across the finish line, book after book. When Savannah asked me to share my favorite tip for writing a novel scene, structure immediately came to mind. When I first started writing, I didn't understand what a scene was. I knew it had to take place in a certain setting and something had to happen, but I didn't really understand the purpose of a scene within my story, and so I had a lot of scenes that meandered, and I started a lot of scenes with my characters sitting and standing in places and thinking about things without any action, because I was setting up context. Too often writers in that situation that I was in approach the page with a kind of visceral trepidation. They ask themselves questions like where should I start this scene? How long should it be? How do I establish context and jump into action right away? Are there too many characters on the page? How do I know if this scene is interesting and awesome? And these aren't bad questions, but they're often the wrong questions.

Speaker 2: 3:14

Even if you've studied scene structure, it's easy to fall into the trap of looking at your scene in isolation. But scenes are not isolated moments. Scenes are links in the chain of your story, and learning how scenes link together changed the way that I see story forever. So let's talk about the chain. In each scene, your character should open with a goal that gets shoved off track by a conflict that eventually forces a character to make a choice. The resulting consequences of that choice should change something that sets up the circumstances of the next scene. In this way, scenes are forming a chain of reactions from the start of your story to the end. So it looks something like this Goal conflict choice consequences. Goal conflict choice consequences. Goal conflict choice consequences. I think you get the picture. Your mission as a writer is to keep this chain as tight as possible. If you remove a link, it should break the chain. If you can't fit a link, then the chain doesn't need it. By doing this, you'll ensure that your character's choices are always setting up the next scene, so that your readers feel a cohesive sense of direction and connection that keeps the pages turning.

Speaker 2: 4:27

Now, my favorite part about this is that Ready. Built into this chain of goal, conflict, choice, consequences is the tie between your external story plot and your internal character arc. What your character wants and what they believe will show up in their scene goals and choices, and that gives you space to build their character arc over your story scene by scene. Your story's plot shows up in the scene's conflicts, in what's happening externally. That's getting in the way of your character getting what they want. And the most magical part is that the consequences of every scene tie both your story's plot and your character's arc together by having the choices that your character makes shape the plot of future scenes. If you've achieved that tight chain, then you know your plot and character arcs are working really well together. You know you have a tight story that's driving from beginning to end.

Speaker 2: 5:25

If this is a new way of thinking about scenes for you, I would start by zooming out and looking for the chain. Start at the beginning of your story and ask yourself for each scene what's my character's goal? What conflict gets in the way of that goal, what choice does my character make in the face of that conflict and how do the consequences of that choice set up the next scene? Follow those questions slowly through your scenes. If you find it hard to determine goals, you might revisit your character's desires. If you find it hard to determine choices for your scenes or find choices in your scenes, you might see where you can give your character more opportunities to act on the page. And if you find scenes that don't link together, you probably don't need them. Wishing you all the best with your plotting, drafting and revising. Happy writing.

Speaker 3: 6:15

Hi everybody. Thank you so much to Savannah for inviting me to be part of this. My name is Daniel David Wallace. I am the creator of the Character First writing approach, which I teach in courses and live classes, and I'm the host of Escape the Plot Forest, an annual summit all about storytelling, planning, plotting and drafting. So the technique I'd like to share today is simple to focus on the forward action of your story.

Speaker 3: 6:47

I feel like so many writers come to me with stories they would like advice on, and they arrive with extremely developed backstories and yet the present action of their tale is hazy. There's often a point where we I asked them about, say, the halfway point, maybe even earlier, and they're not really sure what's going to happen, even though they can tell you so much about every supporting character. It's totally understandable to not always know where your story is going, but sometimes it seems like these writers and I maybe include myself in this the more they work on their story, it's not that more story appears, but rather more backstory appears. If that sounds anything like you, then all I'm trying to say today is try to focus your pre-writing and drafting and revising efforts on the present moment of your story. I mean. Keep it really simple.

Speaker 3: 7:48

Imagine the moment you write your first page, a clock has started ticking. The reader has questions about the situation you've created, the character, the setting, the plot. They want to see those questions answered in the forward time of that ticking clock, not backwards. Before the clock starts ticking, they are kind of unsure what they think about anything. What they want to see is does she get what she wants? Does he get his act together? Does this other person end up with the person they like? All kinds of things. Do they survive? That's their primary interest. Now, I know this sounds like I'm attacking flashbacks, but I like a good flashback. I actually mean my advice more broadly. Sometimes, even when a story is technically moving forward you know it's 9 am in chapter 1, it's 10 am in chapter 2, it's 4 pm in chapter 3, the story is technically moving forward in time. But it can sometimes feel like we're meeting new people, we're arriving at new scenes just to give the excuse of releasing more backstory, more context, more world building, more deep analysis.

Speaker 3: 9:03

An analogy is coming. Imagine you're walking in a desert and you see an upside down pyramid, an inverted pyramid, and as you get towards it you see there's a door in the tip of the pyramid, right by the sand. You can actually climb right in and you realize once you're inside the pyramid. It's designed to be this way. It's small at first and easy to explore, but you can tell that more is coming. There's a big pyramid above you that you can start exploring bit by bit. As you get more used to the pyramid, it expands and there's more and more interesting stuff there.

Speaker 3: 9:38

Obviously, that's what I think a novel is often probably should be. It should start off in a simple and clear way to the reader and then expand. Instead, many novels in progress feel like a normal pyramid. Just to get up to the next floor you've got to explore so much, you have to ingest so much backstory and context that it can feel kind of draining.

Speaker 3: 10:02

So, as if you're a writer, I'm saying focus your attention on the present moment of your story. You know, before you start the actual writing process and when you're into it, ask yourself how can I slow down moments in my present moment story of discovery, of revelation? I've got to try to avoid rushing interesting scenes. Maybe I can insert additional beats, additional setbacks, false victories. How long can you take to write out the moment, while your character walks up to someone and asks them for a dance, or overhears someone they trust saying something shocking, or tries to persuade a tired secretary to let them see the hospital records. Elongate these scenes, I said, but instead just hint at past mysteries, just refer to world-building features, just indicate at a character's deepest lack, at least until we're deep into the novel. Build that inverted pyramid. Your readers will thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this. Thank you, savannah.

Speaker 4: 11:11

Hi everyone. I'm Nicole Meyer, author, book coach and developmental editor. I also host the Steps to Story podcast for emerging authors. I work with fiction writers who are looking to craft strong manuscripts and develop a strong writing community in order to follow their novel writing dreams.

Speaker 4: 11:30

When Savannah asked me to share my favorite writing tip, I knew immediately what I wanted to share, and that is know your protagonist and map out their journey. Okay, first, here's a secret I write character-driven novels. In fact, my fourth book releases this year, but I'm going to admit that mapping out my character's journey was something I didn't even consider in the early days. The result was feedback from agents who said things like love, the premise can't connect with the protagonist. Yikes, not what I wanted to hear, right? That's why I love working with writers now, over a decade later, because I want to save you from this kind of feedback. It wasn't until I really understood that you could map out a protagonist's inner journey, much like you'd map out your book's plot, that something clicked into place. So here are some things to consider when it comes to your story's protagonist. First, ask yourself whose story you're telling. Sure, you know things about your main character, but consider whether or not you've gone deep enough when it comes to knowing them. This is where I'll pause and say that, when working with writers, I've found that one of the top reasons they get stuck isn't writer's block. It's actually because they don't know their protagonist well enough. So I encourage you to take your time to consider your main character's inner journey, one that allows them to grow, learn and evolve over the course of the story. Make sure you understand their quote big want on both an internal and external level, and think about the why behind them wanting this. Once you have this, you can then move on to listing out what's standing in their way. How will they push through adversity to reach their goal? Each of these elements will feed into your protagonist's arc of change, that thing that causes them to come out an evolved person by the end of the book.

Speaker 4: 13:29

If you want a fun exercise, I recommend doing a bit of free writing around these questions in order to get really clear. If you want, set a timer and write down everything that's top of mind without self-editing. Then walk away and come back to it a day or so later with fresh eyes. Next, I would encourage you to get crafty. Grab some paper and colored pens or, if you're like me, grab a whiteboard I love a good whiteboard and begin to create a kind of map that represents your character's journey. This can take the form of bullet points, a drawing or a mind map, which is a fancy word for brain dump with graphics. Treat this project like a fun experiment that you can keep adding to as your ideas come, that you can keep adding to as your ideas come. Finally, don't forget to keep this map somewhere in your workspace where you can refer to it often and let it inform your scenes as you write forward. Okay, I hope you find this helpful. Happy creating everyone, and thanks, savannah.

Speaker 5: 14:29

Hey everyone, I'm Abigail Perry, a book coach and certified developmental editor who specializes in book club fiction, women's fiction, curio fiction, YA fantasy and the query process. I'm also the creator and host of the podcast Lit Match, which helps writers find the best literary agent and business partner for their writing career by learning how to blend business with passion for their writing career. By learning how to blend business with passion, Savannah asked me to share my favorite writing tip and I knew immediately what I wanted to talk to you about. She's probably not surprised about what I picked, as both a writer and a book coach.

Speaker 5: 15:06

One of the key fiction elements that I love to emphasize with writers is the importance of writing a knockout midpoint scene for your story. In my opinion, the midpoint is one of the most important moments in your story, since this is the moment that blends the A story, or plot main plotline, with the B story, which is the character and internal art. By doing this, you therefore drastically raise the stakes for your story, both externally and internally. Plus, the midpoint is the moment that I think tells us what the story is really about. Before I learned about midpoints, with my first aha moment coming from James Scott Bell's book Superstructure, I was struggling to build the stakes in the middle of my story. Muddle through the middle was a real reality for me as I trudged forward with plot events that often failed to be character-led and felt like they just were filler moments. I constantly felt frustrated by this, looking for ways to create plot events that felt like they had meaning, with rising stakes instead of little awareness about where my plot was going and why this mattered to the character. Today, I want to give you the key details you need to know about planning and writing your midpoint. My favorite tips come from James Scott Bell's craft resources Write your Book from the Middle and Superstructure, as well as Blake Snyder and Jessica Brody, who did book from the middle and superstructure, as well as Blake Steiner and Jessica Brody, who did the Save the Cat. Blake Steiner with the original and Jessica Brody does Save the Cat Writes a Novel. So some quick bullets for you.

Speaker 5: 16:46

The midpoint happens at the 50% mark in your story. If you were to literally open up your book and divide your pages in the middle, If you were to literally open up your book and define your pages in the middle, it's happening right on these pages or around these pages. It's also known as a mirror moment. A mirror moment means that this event forces the main character, the protagonist, to look inward in a metaphorical mirror and question if who they are at that moment in the story is the type of person that they want to be. And from that moment, are they going to move forward to start to become the person that they want to be, or are they going to turn the other way?

Speaker 5: 17:27

Midpoints are a false triumph. This means that your protagonist has succeeded so far or a false failure. If your protagonist has succeeded so far or a false failure, if your protagonist has failed so far, it's a big plot event that either seems like it's the greatest triumph they've had in the story or it's the greatest failure that they've had in the story. Depending on that, act two, part one or you might hear it as a fun and games beat or poorly will determine if your midpoint is going to be a false triumph or a false failure. If they're going well, it's usually a triumph. If they're going poorly, it's going to be a failure.

Speaker 5: 18:04

The A and the B story also merge in the midpoint. This means that the plot and the internal arcused together in this moment and therefore I believe this also tells us what the story is really about. Going forward from this moment, the character, going back to that metaphorical mirror, that mirror moment is going to constantly be aware of how the events are impacting their growth and their change, and that's going to be reinforced by what the main stakes of the novel are. Protagonist is also going to go from reactive to active. In the midpoint moment, Typically what happens is up to the midpoint, the protagonist is pretty much reacting to their events. That by no means means that they're not making decisions in the story and on a scene level, but it does mean that usually events are commonly happening to them instead of them actually initiating action and moving forward on their own terms. So after the midpoint moment, they start to usually take action and initiative as they're going towards their climactic moment.

Speaker 5: 19:13

Some examples of what a midpoint moment might be an intimate moment. If it's a romance, this could be their first time having sex, or this could be a big confession of love. Another example could be that they're taking on a big performance. If we are dealing with some sort of sports story another type of performance story A time clock could be introduced, we could hit an iceberg. Those are just some examples of what a midpoint might look like.

Speaker 5: 19:39

The Hunger Games is my personal favorite. It's a pretty miraculous midpoint in the first book and really really defines what the story is, on both a plot and character level. So the midpoint moment for the Hunger Games is the moment that Katniss is trapped in the tree by the careers and she decides to cut down the track of Jekernest and in that, because of her action there, she's faced with this decision of if she's going to continue running in the games and not fighting back, or if she's going to and therefore inevitably going to, be killed, or if she's going, and therefore inevitably going to be killed, or if she's going to start fighting back. And when she cuts down the tracker jacker and as she gets her first kill, simultaneously in that same scene we also see the stakes being raised drastically in the love story, because Katniss is questioning whether or not Peeta is for her or against her, because Peeta actually saved her life. In that moment, as she tries to escape and she's stung by the tracker jackers, and also from that moment we see Katniss really start to take initiative again, going from reactive to active. As she starts to form an alliance with Rue, she comes up with the plan to take out the food for the careers. She is the one who goes and finds PETA when the rules are changed and there's a succession of events that continue to challenge her internal arc and who she sees as the real enemy and helping her bring that into her gameplay.

Speaker 5: 21:15

I want to emphasize from my own experience once I started to understand make points, I started to have a great deal more confidence in understanding how to raise the stakes in the story and ensure that when I'm coaching or writing stories myself, they are character-driven novels that contain plot Planning and writing. The middle no longer felt like I was just throwing out filler moments. They started to have a north star that the main plot worked towards and built from as it moved towards the end of Act 2 and eventually into the climatic moment, and all of this happens while becoming increasingly more personal to the protagonist, that B story. I hope that understanding midpoints does the same for you and if you ever want to chat about midpoints, I love this. This is one of my all-time favorite topics. Please reach out to me. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite midpoint moments are in stories and we can nerd out there. Good luck everyone.

Speaker 1: 22:07

Hello everyone, it's me, savannah Gilbo. I couldn't resist throwing my own tip into this episode because it's one I've seen help a lot of the writers in my group coaching program lately, and the tip is to kind of think about the three perspectives that come into play when you're writing or editing a book. So perspective number one is your perspective as the author. You know everything there is to know about your story, your characters, your world, etc. Right. The second perspective is your characters or your protagonist perspective. So this is limited by kind of what they know in the story at any given time and it's filtered through their worldview. The third perspective is what your reader sees and experiences. So they're operating with potentially different information than your character at any given time, for good or ill, right. So there's three perspectives and the way I like to think about this, or how I like to use this in practice, is, let's say you're writing a scene and you're just kind of feeling stuck. Right, you can zoom out and say, okay, what perspective am I in? Am I trying to be in all the perspectives at once or am I, you know? Let's say I'm stuck in that author's perspective, so I know everything that's going to happen in the future. I know everything that's happened in the past and because of that I'm just feeling stuck on what this character would do in the moment or things like that. So if you're feeling that in a scene and you realize you're stuck in the author's perspective, you can be consciously aware of that and say, ok, I need to zoom into my character's perspective. And there's a few ways to do this, depending on your practice and kind of what helps you so you could journal from the character's perspective. You could just kind of start writing as if it's a switch that flips.

Speaker 1: 23:46

I know that some writers are capable of doing that. They just say, okay, I'm in the character's perspective now and I'm kind of thinking this way and it's easier for them. Or, you know, maybe it's playing the kind of music your character likes or whatever it is that gets you in the zone of their perspective. And I think this is super helpful because if you are one of those people that tends to get stuck in that author perspective and just kind of knowing everything there is to know, zooming into your character's perspective and experiencing the scene from their level I call it like an on the ground level. Right, you're on the ground with the protagonist. It helps to really make sure the consequences and the decisions and the things that are happening are going to affect that person and they're kind of immediate results of whatever that person's doing or deciding or trying to accomplish in that scene.

Speaker 1: 24:32

So the other day I was working with a writer and she was she's like I'm not sure what my character would do next. I just I can't decide what the next action should be for this character, given where the story's going and things like that. So I said, okay, we need to kind of get out of your perspective about this and let's just forget everything you know about where you're going for a minute. We'll come back to that. And I said, what are? List out like 10 things that your character would logically do next, like from their point of view, from their perspective. So again, they don't know how the story is going to end, they don't know the conflict that's coming down the pipeline, right, all they know is what's in that moment, on that day in their life, so what are 10 actions that they might take, given what just happened in the previous scene? And so what happened was this author wrote down 10 things that this character could do and she didn't end up using any of the 10, but her list of 10 actions gave her an idea of what the character could do next, and it was one that she liked and worked with, kind of where the story was going. I really like this kind of exercise because not only, again, does it get you in your character's head, but it also starts to limit your options. Because for this writer, by making that list of 10 things, those are 10 things that she eliminated from the infinity number of choices, right? So for this author, that exercise worked and it really helped her get out of that author perspective and get into her character's head and it allowed her to say okay, with this limited knowledge, what might this person do next? So very helpful exercise for her, and it could be for you as well.

Speaker 1: 26:03

Now let's say that you're someone who kind of tries to balance all three perspectives at once. So you might be writing a scene and you're like well, from the author's perspective, I know I need to set this thing up, and then my character's really mad because of X, y, z. On the other hand, I want my reader to be thinking this, this and this, and there's a red herring and whatever right. It just ends up feeling like a lot's going on, and I know that this is where a lot of writers kind of get stymied and they get stuck and they get overwhelmed. So if you feel like you're one of these writers, just again be aware, like, see that it's happening and say, okay, clearly I am having a moment where I'm in all three perspectives and that's not really conducive to what I'm doing in the moment, and then just decide what perspective is the most helpful for you. So if you are writing a scene, maybe it is being in your character's head or in your character's perspective Again, not to be confused with point of view or anything, right, this is just whose perspective are you experiencing the story through at any given time. So similar but different.

Speaker 1: 27:02

In this context, let's say that you finish your first draft and you're creating a kind of reverse outline. So you list all the scenes and you're kind of editing the big picture structure of your story via that outline and maybe you're stuck again in all three of those perspectives, right? So you're trying to think about what you know is the author, what your character knows at any given time and your reader. Sometimes it's really helpful to kind of split these things up into different passes. So maybe you go through a pass of your outline thinking, okay, as the author, I know that structurally this needs to happen here, or I need to do this in order for something else to happen later, right, whatever that is. And you go through one whole pass looking at the story from your author's perspective and then in the next pass you might say, okay, so now I'm in my character's head. How is the logic from scene to scene? So do their choices make sense? You know, from that character's perspective, does their choice, does their action in this scene make sense and does it lead to the next scene? Am I in their head and in their emotions enough in each of these scenes? And if not, what can I do to fix that? So maybe you do that for one whole pass. That's your second pass through the outline, right? Then the third pass you could go through and say, okay.

Speaker 1: 28:10

So the example I like to use is about red herrings, because that's kind of where this comes up a lot. So you might say, okay, here's my outline, I've got the author perspective handled, I've got the character perspective handled. Now I want to go through my outline and kind of experience things as my reader might. So you know, if you have a red herring set up, you want to make sure that from the reader's perspective, the red herring is the one that they're believing to be the bad guy or have committed the crime or whatever, and you just kind of want to track how the reader will experience the story that you're giving them and then you can also look at, like, the reveal at the end. So does that make sense, given the information you've given the reader and things like that? I find this kind of exercise super helpful to do, especially in this outlining or reverse outlining stage. But honestly, you can do it at any time.

Speaker 1: 28:59

I think what a lot of writers try to do is they try to stay in all three perspectives at once and it just becomes a lot. It's like having three or more voices in your head and it makes the writing process or the editing process that much more difficult. So if this is resonating, then I would love for you to maybe just put a sticky note on your desk and just remember that there are three perspectives or three, we can say, people that are experiencing your story, right, the author you are kind of crafting it and experiencing it as someone who knows everything. The character is experiencing the story from a different angle and they have their worldview that affects everything they do and think for good or ill, right, and then your reader is experiencing it from a different perspective and, yeah, just write that on a sticky note and, like, put it by your desk or put it in your notebook, because I do find this very helpful for getting unstuck whether you're too in the weeds in your character's perspective, or maybe you need're too in the weeds in your character's perspective, or maybe you need to get in the weeds from your character's perspective. It's just a good little reminder that you don't have to do all the things and be in all the perspectives at once, and sometimes it's a great reminder that there even are three perspectives, right, I think it's very easy to forget and, you know, just makes our life more complicated. So that's one of my favorite tips and it's going to round out all of the tips in today's episode, and there were some pretty great tips in the episode, right, I love hearing what has moved the needle for other people, especially in terms of the writing craft, because there are different tips out there that work well for different people, and I love hearing all the perspectives that all the different writers and coaches and editors bring to the table, because, who knows? You never know what kind of tip is going to really make something that you've read or heard 1000 times really sink in. So I thought all the tips in today's episode were fantastic.

Speaker 1: 30:44

I hope you enjoyed the episode and if you want to get in touch with any of the coaches or editors that were featured on today's episode, I'm going to link to their websites and their podcasts and their social media in the show notes in case you want to get in touch with them. I'm sure they'd love to hear from you, especially if the tip they shared on today's episode rang true for you or helped you in some way. So do reach out to them if you feel compelled to. I'm sure they would love to hear from you. And if you liked today's episode, let me know. Either send me a DM on Instagram I'm just at savannahgilbo over there or leave me a review with your feedback. The more I hear from you about which episodes you like or don't like, the more I can create the type of content you love. So please do let me know and if any of these writing tips stood out to you as especially helpful. Let me know that too. I love hearing from you, and I really do hope this episode was helpful. So that's it for today's episode.

Speaker 1: 31:38

As always, thank you so much for tuning in and for showing your support. If you want to check out any of the links I mentioned in this episode, you can find them in the show notes listed in the description of each episode inside your podcast player or at savannahgilbocom forward slash podcast. If you're an Apple user, I'd really appreciate it if you took a few seconds to leave a rating and a review. Your ratings and reviews tell Apple that this is a podcast that's worth listening to and, in turn, your reviews will help this podcast get in front of more fiction writers just like you. And while you're there, go ahead and hit that follow button, because there's going to be another brand new episode next week, full of actionable tips, tools and strategies to help you become a better writer. So I'll see you next week and until then, happy writing.