Quick Guide to Writing Fiction

This book is written for beginning writers. It is not designed to be all inclusive guide for professional writers. If you learn to write books in the manner I have described in these pages, then you will be well on your way to a career as a professional writer. One of the secrets to writing well, is rewriting and then rewriting again. Editing is a completely different function. You should always plan on having three drafts, not including your editing stage. The first draft is the creative version. Your goal here is to fill as many pages as you can while the idea is still new and exciting.

The second draft is the first rewrite. In fiction the goal is to insert clues for your reader, move scenes around, delete unnecessary or redundant paragraphs, add new scenes, and, in general, turn your rough work into a wellorganized book that makes sense to the reader. The second rewrite is dedicated to turning your functionally perfect story into a piece of literature that you can be proud of. We refer to this as painting pictures with words.

The simplest and best stories are the old fairy tales because they have been told and revised thousands of times until they have perfect plots and all the other requirements of good stories packaged into very small, economical bundles. Most people don’t want to learn how to use a formula to tell a story on the erroneous assumption that using a formula will stifle their creativity. If a carpenter refused to read the house plans before building your house, you’d fire him. A book publisher or a movie producer feels the same way about your story. If the story does not work, he will never invest his company’s time and money into publishing your manuscript.