Fiction Swipe Files
File this under “topics I thought I’d already covered but can’t find.” This is more relevant because filing is exactly what we’re going to be discussing in this article on the fiction swipe file.
For those of you who write copy, you’ll be aware of the practice of keeping great examples of other people’s work in a folder so that you can draw inspiration from them when needed.
This is a great practice that should be done by all writers (and probably all people.) Yet it’s only really consciously practiced in advertising. Or so you’d think.
I have a friend who memorises passages from books he reads. I always thought he had a photographic memory because he could recite entire passages from books on a whim. It turns out he writes out useful information and then repeats it to himself.
He’s not a marketer, but he has a swipe file of facts.
Back when I was at University, one of my favourite professors told me a tip he’d been given back when he was studying: Don’t catch yourself fishing for quotes and references. Get a filing cabinet and a stack of post-it notes and write the quotes and references, and thank yourself later.
I took that on and did it for years before learning about swipe files.
Now, fiction writers don’t keep fiction swipe files. But believe me, they should.
I write fiction as a profitable side hobby. Despite what some idiots might say, it’s perfectly achievable to make a living as a fiction author.
(Check the archives for more on that.)
Whether you’re looking to write fiction for fun and profit or looking to make it a career, you should build a fiction swipe file. I will tell you how in this article.
What Is A Swipe File?
Some of you are going to come to this from Google or other places on the internet, so I won’t assume you know what a swipe file is. Don’t worry… it’s easy to explain.
A swipe file is used in advertising, and particularly copywriting. It’s a collection of successful ads that you keep in a folder (digital or real life) that you can take ideas from, steal the structure of and otherwise draw inspiration from.
For instance, you might have to write an ad selling dog food.
Now, you could just start from scratch and spend hundreds of hours coming up with the right words, pictures and ideas for your ad.
Or, you could consult your swipe file, see that there was a really successful ad selling cat food in it, and then just chop and change it so that it applied to dogs.
This saves hundreds of hours, creates better results and most importantly, saves your brain the task of re-inventing the wheel.
What’s A Fiction Swipe File?
A fiction swipe file is the same sort of thing, but with a key difference: Books are long.
You can keep an entire ad, even if it’s long-form sales copy, in a folder somewhere, and digest the thing in its entirety when you’re looking for inspiration. You can’t do that with a fiction book.
Say you want to write a nice little murder-mystery. You can’t read Agatha Christie’s whole back catalogue before writing your book. You wouldn’t get started.
What you can do, however, is pull apart the different elements of a book and then keep those. I wrote about this in “The Best Fiction-Writing Exercise.”
Essentially, you can collect all sorts of things and put them in your fiction swipe file, according to your needs.
There’s an adage; if you want to be a good writer you need to read a lot.
That’s true, but it’s only half the story. You have to learn from what you read and make it an active exercise. Most importantly, you can’t waste time.
Learning stuff you don’t need is a waste of time. Having to read things twice because you kind-of remember something but don’t know where it is or what you read is a massive waste of time.
Creating a fiction swipe file is easy to do and stops you from making either of the above mistakes. Let’s talk about the specifics of what to do before wrapping up.
How to Build A Fiction Swipe File
You build a fiction swipe file by taking pieces of work which you enjoy and find useful and putting them in a folder. That’s the absolute, most basic description.
Here’s what I suggest to take the idea further.
Think about your genre. (I presume you write genre fiction but if you’re a literary fiction kind of person, this will work.)
If you are like most writers and want to eat like a king as opposed to a pauper, then you’ll be writing in one of two (possibly three) genres: Romance, Crime, (and horror/thriller; most successful horror is more thriller (thus crime) but not the subject for today.)
In Romance and Crime alike, there are certain beats. You need to be aware of these.
The Meet-Cute in Romance is one and The Twist/False-Reveal is one in Crime.
Essentially, every novel will break down into certain parts.
Those are the first parts you want to target for your swipe file. Take one, ten or a hundred books from your genre and find the particular scenes and descriptions. Copy them and file them under the hook or plot-point.
Then, when you come to write that scene in your own work, you’ll be able to reference. Better yet if you annotate what’s good and bad.
Once you’ve done that, you can move on to other things: Character, setting, descriptions, etc.
This can become as specific as you want. You can have a sub-folder for descriptions of random objects if you want. If you’re a crime writer, you could pull examples of how weapons are described. If you’re an adventure writer, you could keep a list of how treasure-filled caves are described.
The end goal is to create an environment where you never say, “I don’t know how to write about this.”
Final Thoughts
Creating a fiction swipe file will help you in your writing. Undoubtedly. If you’ve read the above and think, “Gee… that sounds like hard work” then you’re mistaken.
If you want to write well, you probably already read a lot. Really, you’re already doing the work anyway. All you’re not doing is pulling the passages, scanning them into your computer (or copying them from one App to another) and keeping a record of them.
Over the course of weeks, months and years you will build a priceless resource for yourself and make your own work easier, quicker and likely of higher quality.
This simple exercise will put you ahead of 99% of fiction writers.