Writing What Matters Most

When it comes to writing fiction, there are 6 billion things to know and learn. I've counted. Stayed up all night once just counting and counting.

Inevitably, the question arises: What is the most important thing? What matters most when it comes to fiction. It's a good question, one I've been thinking about for awhile now. And I'm going to share my answer with you.

Yes, I have an answer.

Really. I do.

Stop smiling, I'm serious.

In order to tell you my answer I first need to tell you a story.

Once upon a time I was sitting at a kitchen table reading part of a manuscript. Across from me was the author of said manuscript. She watched me read, picking her nails, crossing and uncrossing her legs, trying to be quiet while I read.

All the time I was reading I was thinking this writer wanted my opinion on the quality of her writing and what I thought of her work in general. I was wrong. She wanted something very different. Very impossible. But I didn't know that at the time, so I put the manuscript down and started talking to her like a writer. She nodded, yes, yes, all well and fine, good, good, I agree with you.

I pushed the pages across the table. She pulled her hands back fast, like the papers might be poisoned. She wouldn't touch them. "Should I keep writing?" she asked me. "Am I good enough? Or should I just forget it?"

I pulled the pages back and glanced through them again. I understood what she was asking. Her writing was good. Technically, nearly perfect. Her transitions were smooth, her characters well defined. She had nice, clean descriptive and her grammar was enviable. Nicely done.

But.

Hmmm. What was missing? Something.....oh......something like - a plot? No, no, that wasn't missing. She had a plot all plotted out with plot points and pointed plotting. That wasn't the issue. Some else, less tangible, but important. More important than anything else.

The story. Something about the story itself. No, no, it was a good story.

Hmmm. What then? Why was I so willing to put the manuscript down and not pick it back up? Let's go over that again:

Writing skill ............... Check!

Clean manuscript ......... Check!

Good plot ................... Check!

Yet, the thing just laid there, like a dead mackerel, staring up at me with its one good eye.

Then it hit me! (the answer, not the dead mackerel)

She was a skilled writer, not a skilled story teller.

I grinned at her. "You are the only one who can decide if you should keep writing. My advice is to stop writing and start telling stories."

Have you ever picked up a latest bestseller and thought, "Jeepers, this isn't the best writing I've ever seen?" If you have, you're probably a writer - because no one else is worried about the writing. Readers want a great story told in an interesting way. They want to be engaged, have fun, get lost, fall in love, feel something new, and forget time and place.

But doesn't great writing help all of that to happen? Yes, of course it does. But good writing means seamless writing - writing that is so good the reader can forget about it and just have a ball in the story.

What's the most important aspect of writing? Storytelling. How you tell the story matters more, carries reader further, and, in the end, sells more books than technically great writing ever could.

Want to test my theory? Here's what to do:

Find a familiar story to tell. Could be Goldilocks and the Three Bears, could be an old fashioned ghost story, could be a famous work - something you like. Get a friend or two or three gathered around. Then tell the story. I mean tell it, all hands on deck, no holds barred, tell the story. Make mental (and later concrete) notes on the people's reactions. Did you hold their attention the entire time? Did you hook them with your opener? Did they laugh when you thought they would? Did they smile at an unexpected time? Did they cry?

Later (say, in a week or so) as your friends what they remember about the time you told them that story.

No one is going to say, "I remember that you used just the right words at just the right time and your characterization was spot on, oh, and when you got to a tricky part in the plot you made it so easy to follow!" Nope, they won't say that. They'll say, "Oh, that was so fun! I love the way you told that story."

Writing is only the means. The story is what matters.

I bid you good writing - and storytelling.

Welcome Guest Blogger - Jane Kirkpatrick

Jane Kirkpatrick is a writer, speaker, teacher and mental health professional. Her award-winning essays, articles, and humor have appeared in over fifty publications such as Decision, Country and Daily Guideposts. She has written 14 books (count 'em! 14!) and is a very nice woman.


I decided the best way for you to have a peek at Jane's books is to visit her website http://www.jkbooks.com/ and browse around. If I listed all of her books it would take up the entire blog! What a joy it is to welcome her to Fiction Matters. She is going to speak to us about Passion in Writing. How to show your passion, and how planning and well thought out ideas are the key to expressing passionate stories.


Here is a sample of Jane's latest book release:











"From the Change and Cherish Historical Series ...
“Of all the things I left in Willapa, hope is what I missed the most.” So begins this story of one woman’s restoration from personal grief to the meaning of community. Based on the life of German-American Emma Wagner Giesy, the only woman sent to the Oregon Territory in the 1850s to help found a communal society, award-winning author Jane Kirkpatrick shows how landscape, relationships, spirituality and artistry poignantly reflect a woman’s desire to weave a unique and meaningful legacy from the threads of an ordinary life. While set in the historical past, it’s a story for our own time answering the question: Can threads of an isolated life weave a legacy of purpose in community?"




Passion in writing – Jane Kirkpatrick author of A Tendering in the Storm a Christy Finalist.

Some time ago, I had a character living in 1852 who had been a photographer. I wanted the book to be about clarity, about doing what one thought was right even when others around us might be challenging our passion. I wanted to use the word focus as we use it today meaning clarity. But I wasn’t sure it was used in photography in the 1850s. Turns out, focus is a very old word from the first century. But it doesn’t mean clarity. Rather it means hearth as in the center of the home.


For me, passion flames out of that word “hearth.” In first century homes, people exchanged information at the hearth, they were fed there, they made their connections at that gathering place. Because there was no central heating, it was also where the fire was. The farther one moved away from the hearth, the colder one became. As a writer, that word became a metaphor for passion, where the fire is, and how we go about keeping it in our stories, never straying too far from those flames or we become cold and so will our readers.


To focus that passion, I’ve begun each of my 14 novels with “work before the work” as I call it. In a book called Structuring the Novel, writers Meredith and Fitzgerald invite a would-be author to answer three questions before they begin. First, what is your intention in writing this novel (the elevator question). Second, what is your attitude, what do you feel deeply about in this story? Finally, what is your purpose for writing this book, how do you hope a reader will be changed by reading this work and use words like “I’m going to prove that….” So you can convince a reader of your purpose.


Before I begin, I may spend many pages answering each question; then I synthesize each to a single sentence that I paste at the top of my computer. It doesn’t mean that once I start writing that those answers might change; I expect them to.


Then, before I revise a manuscript, I ask myself those same questions again to see how the story has changed since I began to write it and how it has changed me. National Book Award winning writer Ivan Doig says he likes revisions best because that’s when he finds out what the story is all about. Me too.


Most of all, I use those three sentences and the work before the work to help me when I’m writing and I get into the muddle in the middle and I’m lost, wishing I’d never begun this novel it seems so foolish or inept. But then I remember where the fire came from, that passion that made me want to spend hours in a room alone living in the heads and hearts of characters hoping to bring them to life. I re-read what I care deeply about and what I hope a reader will take away and that helps me regain that passion.


A friend of mine, Dori McGraw, a writer, screenwriter, actress, says she gains her passion from the characters themselves. “ My idea of passion is when the characters, both protagonist and antagonist are so focused on what they want that it drives the story. To me that desire, or passion, is what keeps me interested regardless of whether they achieve their goals or not. If the antagonist is nature there is still its relentless movement toward what it always is and has done. The protagonist still has their desire to achieve their goal.”


I also think that passion is portrayed through the specificity of word choice. My thesaurus and synonym-finder are the two most used books in my craft closet. Language that is rich, that touches our five senses, at least one on every single page, gives movement to our stories. Strong verbs are what provide description and movement and fiction is all about movement. I may not worry about this in the first draft but in revision, strong, specific words will bring the passion front and center.


Ron Benery in his book Idiot’s Guide to Writing Christian Fiction calls certain paragraphs “magical” by creating a fictional dream using “Signal – which head to enter;’ Twang – a sense or start a thought process; Show – what the character experienced; and Start the character thinking.” I think that writing such paragraphs brings passion to our work.


So passion is a blend of craft (the work before the work, language choice, magical paragraphs, character desires) and being clear about what matters as we write and having the courage to write the words that warm the hearth of our hearts.


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Okay, faithful blog readers, its time to share your passion! Do you have a warm up routine that works for you? What subjects, ideas, or concepts are you passionate about? How do you take the raw passion and make it wieldy, readable, and interesting?
Does passionate writing mean better writing?
Lets hear your stories!

I bid you good writing.