Why You Should Try Writing Fiction
The majority of my writing is non-fiction. However, I enjoy writing fiction and there are numerous reasons to write fiction even if you don’t intend to make it your livelihood. Some are economic reasons, some are psychological reasons and some are knowledge-based reasons. I’ll talk you through some of the reasons I write fiction in this article.
As always, you’ll have reasons in addition to mine that I won’t have thought of. (Drop them in the comments.) Also, some of these reasons might seem stupid to you. We’re all different, and as long as you try it your experiences are perfectly valid.
Reason One: MONEY $£$£$£$£$!!!
My first professional writing payday was $25. It was for a short story in a little indie publishing house. This was long before I became a writer, and I did it for fun. Still, it showed me that there was at least enough money for cheeseburgers in writing fiction.
There’s a lot more money than that in writing fiction. Yet if you were to go on the most popular professional writer forums, you’d see a lot of squabbling and general bemoaning of the fact there’s no money in fiction. Ignore them, and listen to me: You can make money writing fiction. You can make lots of money writing fiction.
In fact, writing fiction is a really interesting way to make money because the rules of the game are different. When I write nonfiction work, I’m judged by the value I provide. In a sense, this is tangible: I write a how-to article and people will read and base the value of that writing on whether it solves their problem. It’s very direct.
With fiction, people are paying you for entertainment. You can’t put a price on a story in the same way you can a how-to book, because you’re transporting people to an entirely new world and putting them in an entirely new story. The pricing for that is completely different.
People will pay more for a short story of five thousand words than they will an essay of five thousand words. When you consider the fact that Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption is not much longer than that, you know that there’s lots of money and success to be had in short fiction.
Reason Two: Publishing Knowledge
The first thing I self-published was – you guessed it – short fiction. Again, I wasn’t a “professional writer” at the time. In a sense I was – I’d been paid for a few short stories and I was obviously publishing the story which I’d go on to make money from. However, in reality I was just a guy uploading stories to Amazon.
In doing so I learned the following:
- How to format a book
- How to design a cover (Although I’m terrible at this to this day)
- How to finish a story for real (not just “finish it” to a Word document somewhere)
- How to upload a book to Amazon
- How to upload a book to Nook
- How to upload a book to Smashwords
- How to upload a book to Kobo
- How to write a description on Amazon (etc.)
- How to create an author page on Amazon (etc.)
- How to go through the Amazon (etc.) publishing process
- How to read an Amazon sales report
- How to set up banking information on all the sites I’ve mentioned
- What the terms, conditions and payment schedules are for those platforms.
If I’d waited until I’d written a full length book, then by the time I’d written a full length book I’d still have to learn all these things and I wouldn’t have made any money from the short stories I’d already written either. Incidentally, all of those stories make money to this day without my doing anything. Some of those stories are over three years old, and I don’t even write any more material for or promote (or remember) their pen names.
Reason Three: Psychological Reasons
Writing fiction is fun. It’s good for your brain because it’s productive procrastination at worse. At best, it can be productive procrastination whilst also a form of therapy, idea generation or literary experimentation.
If you’re afraid of spiders, then channel that into the next great Arachnophobia horror story. (For more info on how to turn your fears into money-making fiction, check out my review of Writing Monsters.)
If you’ve recently gone through a terrible break-up, then use your fiction as therapy; write yourself as overcoming heartbreak in the arms of a beautiful woman or handsome man (or vampire/alien/werewolf/robot army – I won’t judge!)
If you’d like to experience what it’s like to be a vampire/robot/different race/different gender/alien army, then write a story based on that. Again, there’s no judgement because it’s fiction. Write whatever you want. (For reference, there are people selling dinosaur themed erotica out there; however weird you think you are, there’s someone weirder.)
If you’d like to try out some new literary idea you’ve thought of, like post-modernist-folk-gender-fluid-adventure stories, then you can try that out too. Don’t expect to sell many copies though; people love the traditional forms, hence why they’re traditional.
Fiction is basically a sandbox for new experiences which you don’t actually have to have to write about. I like adventure stories but I’m decidedly not an adventurer. Like most men, I watch James Bond movies. Most writers who write adventure stories are not James Bond in real life, they’re guys like me. Whatever it is you want to experience, you can write for a market that wants to live vicariously through your characters as much as you do.
Final Thoughts
In short, you should be writing fiction if you enjoy writing in any way, shape or form. As always, leave your own ideas in the comments. A final thing: If you’re looking to write fiction professionally, then there is obviously more to take into consideration than I’ve written about above. I’ll write about those considerations in future topics on the subject.