A Simple Fiction Writing System
I haven’t forgotten about the big Fiction Writing Challenge I said I’d do. It’s behind schedule, but I can quickly bring it back.
As always, I’m a big systems-thinker and fiction writing is like all my writing; I create systems for it. I recommend you do. Now, that said, a simple goal with a fiction writing system is to create something that improves your output and helps you with ideas as opposed to limiting them.
With systems, people get caught up in the idea that you have to do this or that; and that’s simply not true. If you’ve got an idea and want to run with it, then go ahead.
But here’s a simple workflow using free resources that’ll get you off the ground with writing fiction.
#1 Lester Dent Formula
Google Lester Dent’s formula for a short story construction.
It’s 6,000 words, and four-acts. There are many different variations of templates and structures you can use, but I know that this is both simple and in the public domain.
Find that, and you have your structure.
#2: Go To Reddit’s No Sleep Section And Read That
NoSleep is a subreddit for writing short horror stories in the first-person. The quality is hit-and-miss, and sometimes a lot more miss than hit, but I picked it because it has a simple style and structure to basically every story that you’ll be able to recognise and recreate pretty quickly.
(Person experiencing something weird, investigates the weird thing, shocking thing happens, weird twist.)
With the two things above, you’ll be able to a) structure a story universally, and b) apply that structure to a particular genre.
Then we’ve got resource three. It’s also from Reddit.
#3: Go to Reddit’s Writing Prompts Section
There are a few writing prompt sites and subreddits, so search to your heart’s content. But a simple way to get started is to browse that main subforum and take some random ones.
It doesn’t matter if they fit. It’s probably better that they don’t. But ultimately, you want to think in your head, “I can take this prompt and structure it this way and then write it in this style.”
These three things together give you a simple exercise for writing something but, importantly, they are the starting seeds for what can be incredibly complex systems that you evolve over time.
More on this to follow…