What Is The Best Fiction Writing Exercise?
A reader sent me an email a few weeks back asking what the best exercise for writing fiction was.
“What if you could only recommend one writing exercise? (I’m guessing
copying by hand, but maybe you found something more worthwhile).”
It’s a good question, and I’ll preface the article by saying I’m not an expert fiction writer.
That said, I like to ruthlessly decode various systems, and in this article I’ll break down the singular most effective exercise I’ve found for writing fiction to date.
Bear in mind it’s not an exercise per se., but instead a multi-exercise task set. If that sounds nerdy, think of it as a checklist to do that’ll guarantee you super-human fiction writing abilities or something.
Just to annoyingly make you wait a little longer, I’m going to address a finer point from Claude’s question first.
Should You Handcopy Good Fiction In Order To Get Better At Writing Fiction?
As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of copying out adverts by hand in order to learn copywriting. When you copy things out by hand, you’ll gain an intuitive understanding of their structure and you’ll also be forced to pay attention to what you’re reading. That’s not to be underestimated seeing as you read subconsciously most of the time.
Now, you can copy out fiction by hand. However, I wouldn’t do this carelessly. Most of what we think of as “good fiction” comes from the structure as much as anything. That means that if you want to understand why a book is good, you’ll have to copy the whole thing out by hand. As books are tens of thousands of words, copying out everything by hand will take you forever.
It’s not a great use of your time.
I’ll talk about when to hand-copy fiction later in the article, but for now know that you have to do it selectively.
First Stage: Get A General Writing Book
I’ll talk about fiction writing guides tomorrow. (Look at me with a schedule!)
Needless to say, if you’re a budding fiction writer and you haven’t got a decent beginner guide, get one. It doesn’t really matter which one you pick. Just pick a fiction writing guide that covers the fundamentals.
A lot of people recommend Stephen King’s On Writing. You can choose from plenty of others though. I have On Writing, but I’ve reviewed Laurence Block’s From Plot To Print To Pixel here and that’s an alternative. Really, all these books cover similar ground and like I said, we’ll talk about that more tomorrow.
This stage is basically, “Get one of these books and read it.”
You’ll get a rudimentary understanding of plot, characters, setting and the like from a beginner’s writing book.
Then you want to get specific.
Stage Two: Get Books In Your Genre. Relentlessly Study Them
Take one book from the genre/type you want to emulate. (If it’s horror, for instance, grab a Stephen King book or something. For mystery, Agatha Christie… etc.)
If you’ve got a copy of On Writing or another fiction book, it’ll break down the novel into parts. Character Development, Plot, Setting, etc. Go through your fiction book and create notes on each “part” of the book.
So character, plot, etc. I do this chapter by chapter, that’s a personal preference. You can do it by page, by scene or overall (I don’t recommend this to start with.)
Break down the book until you understand the mechanisms behind it. Really, break it down to the point where if I read a page to you, you’d know exactly where it is and what precedes and follows it. The harder you work at this stage, the easier it’ll be for you later.
Write it all down in note form so you’ve got a kind of “template” for any books you write.
Also, read more books in your genre. You don’t have to go into the excruciating detail again because you did it right the first time. But pay attention to what differs and what stays the same. Also, what does Author A do differently to Author B? What is universal?
This all goes into your meta-file notes and template.
You’ll find for the most part that every book you read will have the same basic elements, and if you keep an eye on the template as you read more, you’ll find you can build a more accurate template over time.
Stage Three: Time To Practice
Writing is a weird creative art in that it’s the only one where “practice” is considered bad and nonessential. In reality, the more you practice, the better you’ll get.
If you’ve done the above two steps, you’ll understand the structure of books. You’ll also understand what your genre entails and how the authors you’ve read approach all the different elements of the genre.
Fantastic. Now it’s time to do something.
Obviously, you’ll want to start writing your own books. I know I said to practice, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t aim to build professional fiction from the offset. You know at this point what goes into the books you want to create, so start.
As far as the “exercise” goes, what you need to do is write naturally, but as you go, pay attention to sticking points. For instance, you might be a budding horror writer.
Write about your protagonist and whatever grizzly fate they encounter. You’ll come to a point where you find something too difficult to do as a stream of consciousness; it might be describing a dilapidated church or trying to create a really terrifying monster.
At this point, we can go to hand-copying those particular elements. You might love the way Lovecraft creates monsters or think the way J.K. Rowling creates Hogwarts with words is exceptional: analyse and copy those passages specifically.
That’s where hand-copying comes in, and at this point it’s far more effective because you’re using it for a particular problem.
Over time, you’ll get a swipe file of fiction on different things. For instance, I have a folder of “Character” stuff and a folder of “Setting” stuff. There’s no reason not to copy-paste passages for all sorts of stuff into your notes to refer to at a later date.
Final Thoughts
This is the best three-tiered exercise I could come up with for fiction writing. It’s close to how I approach the situation, and if you read between the lines, this sort of approach is basically how I approach every problem-solving issue.
- Take what works and analyse it
- Build something around it as soon as possible
- Refer to people who are better than you when you need to
- Stand on the shoulders of giants and build something better based on what’s gone before you
This approach also allows your creativity to take the driving seat because you’re only referring to other stuff when you need to. Eventually, it’ll be inbuilt into your brain.
Now here’s the final disclaimer: this sort of process and exercise works for me. Your brain works differently. Use the above and personally experiment. You’ll find what works for you. If it’s different, then don’t worry. Always go for what works for you personally. Systems are the map and not the territory.