The Rules of Fiction

I'm baaaaaaaaaack!

I know all of you nonexistent people missed me. I'm touched. Truly.

In all seriousness, it was a busy summer for me. My motivation seems to be on the mend, however. We'll see how long that lasts.

Anyway!

In this edition of the Lorelee Tate show, not only will I be making my usual stupid jokes, but I shall also attempt in an unprecedented feat to explain something of the rules of fiction. Because yes, fiction has rules. We're still talking about the English language, folks. You'll never escape. Muahaha.

Now, I know that all of you probably harbor long-standing grudges with your childhood English teachers for subtracting all those points off of your writing assignments for comma splices and fragments and run-ons and whatnot. Think of it as that nasty-tasting cough medicine that was supposed to taste like cherries but actually tasted something more like mouthwash mixed with rubbing alcohol: it may suck (pardon my French) when you're taking it, but it makes everything a whole lot better in the long run.

But grammar rules are not the point here. Sure, you can end a sentence with a preposition and the world will not end. But there are other things to keep in mind as well.

I'll use this as an example: don't switch points of view. Pretty basic concept, really, and it has a good reason for its existence. When you switch points of view, it becomes more difficult for the reader to follow the writing. If you start off in Billy Bob's point of view, and then suddenly switch to Sally Sue's, somebody's not going to follow somewhere at some point in time.

But here's where it gets fun.

Are you ready?

Yes?

Okay.

Brace yourselves.










Rules in fiction are meant to be broken.

With discretion, that is.









I'll give you a moment to recover from the shock.




Better now? Okay, then.

I'll confess something to you. I've switched points of view before in my writing. And do you know what else? I'm not the first. Want to know why? Good, because I'm going to tell you anyway. Because rules aren't as clean-cut in fiction. Think of them more as guidelines than actual rules, and yourself as the literary equivalent to Jack Sparrow.

In fiction, writers break rules right and left. The key is that there has to be a reason for it. If you're switching points of view just because you want to make sure that your reader is paying attention, that probably won't cut it. But if you're switching between the protagonist and the antagonist in order to develop the relationship between the two characters, that will probably work.

The thing about writing is that it's not a science, so there are very few absolutes, if not none. Writing is an art, and art is extremely subjective. I will confess something to you: I despise TWILIGHT and everything related to vampires, particularly when they sparkle. But that's just my opinion. Obviously there are people out there who disagree with me and find Edward Cullen to be the epitome of masculinity and heroism. And you know what else? That's fine. It's art. It's subjective. I can sit here at my desk and write about how you shouldn't switch points of view or use dialogue tags other than "said" or "asked" or that you can only have a certain number of adverbs per page, but that doesn't mean I'm right. If you are just burning to use the word "pontificated," I can't stop you. And the world won't end. Amazing concept, I know.

Now, that's not to say that there are no suggestions that shouldn't be taken seriously. There are always going to be ways to improve your writing and sometimes it takes another opinion in order to be able to realize that. But the rules can still be broken.

Here's what I say about rules in fiction: know them before you break them.

Quote of the day: "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." --W. Somerset Maugham

Apathy

So.

I'm actually not going to talk about apathy as it relates to writing. I might eventually, but who knows? I told you I was going to talk about plot, and then I didn't. It's how I roll. I just keep everyone guessing.

What I'm actually going to say is that, due to my severely apathetic state presently, I will probably not be updating this blog any time soon. I know you're shocked, seeing as how my last post was a month ago. If I do update before the end of May, it will be incredibly spontaneous and probably due to intense boredom, don't you feel special now. 'Cause that's how I roll.

Quote of the week/month/year/semester/quarter/season/whatever the heck you want to call it:
"That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there." --Anne McCaffrey

Plot

So I still don't really feel like writing this at this point in time (I mean, come on! It's a Monday for crying out loud.) but I'm going to anyway. I figured that if I screw up royally and say something dumb, it won't matter since there's no one reading this. Once I have finished discussing plot, I shall then reveal valuable CIA and FBI information that I'm actually making up off the top of my head. And no one will ever know...

Anyway. Plot.

First, let's clarify something: every novel has a plot. I know I made some comments when talking about characters about how some authors don't have a plot, but that's what we call hyperbole, to sound all fancy and literary. If you don't know what that means, here is a handy link to dictionary.com. Back to what I was saying, every novel, every story, has a plot, however simplistic it may be. Yes, this does include TWILIGHT. Poetry is a little bit different, but I won't get into that. To be honest, I'm not an expert on poetry so I probably won't ever talk about it here. Not that anyone will notice.

Let's use LORD OF THE RINGS as an example, since I have no shame when it comes to plugging. A very simplified version of the plot is as follows: dark lord Sauron creates Ring, Frodo gets Ring millennia later, Frodo and friends go to destroy Ring, thereby ridding the world of evil, Frodo and friends encounter countless hardships spanning many hundreds of pages, Frodo destroys Ring, everyone is happy. You get the idea. By the way, if any of you nonexistent people reading this have no idea what I was just talking about, you'd better spend some quality time at your local video store. The library would be preferable, but I can't expect too much of you seeing as how you don't even exist.

Do you notice anything about all those plot points I just mentioned? (The correct answer to this question is yes, by the way.) Every single one of those plot points mentions at least one character. *insert dumbfounded looks and head scratching followed by mutterings of "I thought you were talking about plot..."* Just to make sure we're all on the same page, I am talking about plot. The thing is that plot and characters are really inseparable. If you have characters at all, chances are extremely high that they will be involved in the plot. As in, I have no idea how you would have characters and not have them involved in the plot. That just baffles me. And, what's more, since we're talking about fiction here, it's pretty much a given that there will be characters. Even if you're writing about an inanimate object, chances are that you'll do something to personify it. I know, big words.

Now, I'm sure all of you know something about the structure of plot. At least I hope you do. You know, like rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, that type of deal? Yeah, well, I'm not really going to go into that at the moment. I might break it down more in the future, but I'm not making any promises. That's the beauty of such an informal medium. I can be as noncommittal as I want and no one will be able to do anything about it.

You probably also know something about plot-driven (also known as action-driven) stories vs. character-driven. But the difference is, in a few words, that plot-driven stories focus more on the action (see how the other term ties in now?), whereas character-driven stories tend to focus more on the characters and their emotions, reactions, reflections, etc. In a character-driven story, things still happen. In a plot-driven story, there will still be characters. That's because it's almost impossible to have one without the other. I'm probably beginning to sound like a broken record, but I can't stress that enough. The next time you read the most boring book of your life, like one of those books you had to read in English class before you wrote several essays on it in order to extrapolate every unimportant detail, just remember that there is actually a plot there. It may not be very exciting, but it's there.

But that's not what I'm getting at here. I can hear you all groaning now and wondering when this stinking blog post is going to end. You've read this far, you might as well actually get to what I'm trying to say here. The point is this: plot and characters together make up a ginormous portion of what we do as writers. Yes, I just used the word ginormous. Get over it. It's easy to think that an exciting story alone will sell the novel to those reading it. But you can't have a plot without characters. Don't sacrifice one for the other. It'll only hurt your writing.



Quote of the week: "The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical forms of literature." --George Orwell