More from "Immediate Fiction"

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Jerry Cleaver, author of Immediate Fiction, notes emphatically that emotion defines a character:

Who does she love & hate?
How does she love & hate?

It's in this realm of emotion that I'm most withholding in my fiction. It has to be dragged out of me every time! This time, I'm going to try to overdo it, at least at the start.

This quote from Immediate Fiction is spot on:

If you go too far out with your story, you can always cut back. An old writing rule says: The best way to find out what's enough is to do too much.

I need to keep this in mind this summer while writing the first draft. No brakes!

Want/obstacle/action

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Yesterday I finished the outline — or "blueprint" — of The End of Magic, working title of The Next Novel. Sixty pages! (Although there is lots of white space.) Twenty drafts! (Although many of these involved minor changes.)

Now it's time to move back to our country home and get to work. I've allowed myself four months to write the first draft.

One of the things I've enjoyed about our two-month stay in Toronto is use of the Toronto Public Library system. It's so easy to request a book on-line, so easy to pick it up. Jennifer Glossip, a wonderful fiction editor I've known for decades, shared with me the list of good books on fiction she gives out at workshops. A number of these titles were my favorites, as well, but several I hadn't heard of ... and so I've been having a look at some of them.

The one book that I gobbled up, covering it with post-it notes, was Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver. It had an immediate impact on my outline. What do my characters want? What is the obstacle? What action results?

Want/obstacle/action ...

These need to be evident on every page.

What I love about reading a book like this is that it sets off ideas, sparking like mad. I'll be posting more about this book in days to come.

Letter to an aspiring writer

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I got an email today from a young woman who passionately wishes to be a writer. Here was my advice to her:

I urge you to follow your dream. Everyone feels insecure about writing, even the greatest.

I advise you to read books on writing. It's also important to read — constantly — for pleasure: this should be the writing you aspire to, and by reading, you develop an "inner ear."

I also advise you to write every day, even if for only for 15-30 minutes. Novels can be written in this way. Writing never really pays, and it's best not to put that burden on it. Find a way, rather, to work it into your normal life.

But whatever you do, persevere. Understand that there is an important difference between being a writer, and being published. You can be a writer now. It often takes decades to be published. Do it for the love of it.

How to begin

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A reader writes that she wants to write a book. She has a story in mind, but she doesn't know how to begin.

How to begin? This is a hard question to answer, but I'm going to try ... in part because this is where I am myself right now: back at the beginning.

I could start by saying something about focusing on the story — dreaming about it, walking with it — not even thinking about that looming scary thing: a novel. Anne Lamott wrote about this in Bird by Bird, an excellent book on just this thing — beginning — and I would suggest reading this book first above all the others. Another good book at this point is Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. She talks about the importance of dreaming, as does Butler, in From Where You Dream.

But for me, when I was beginning, I wanted a "how-to" system. I needed to know the nuts and bolts. I wanted steps to follow. "Dreaming," would not have helped me then. I had the good fortune to find a book that outlined the procedure of writing a novel, aptly named How to Write a Novel. The author described how to write down thoughts on index cards, and then sort the cards, grouping them into scenes. This I could do. A novel: no. A stack of index cards: yes. That book unfortunately appears to be out of print, but another author, Ken Atchity, describes a similar system in A Writer's Time. It gave me what I needed to write my first novel.

And now? Now I'm back to dreaming. I'm typing my thoughts onto the computer this time, but soon, I plan, I will transfer each onto an index card and begin anew.