Tips for Fiction Writers

In this forum, Sol Stein provides tips and techniques that have been useful to him and to the writers he works with. He also answers questions of general relevance asked by visitors to this web site.

Question: What's the most important point you would make to a novelist, new or experienced?

Answer: Before we become writers of stories or books, we are all writers of information. We write essays for school, notes to friends, reports for work, messages to everyone we know. Writing fiction is not the passing on of information. We also use writing to get something off our chests. Writing fiction is not getting something off your chest. The object of fiction is to create an emotional experience for the reader. Until we get in the habit of doing that, our fiction will be larded with extraneous matter that interferes with the reader's experience. For fiction we need a new mind-set, thinking of the reader. I've said many times that in the twentieth century we have not learned how to end war, strife, violence, and poverty. What we have learned is that sex has to be good for both partners. That is what is true of writing also: it has to be good for both partners, the writer and the reader. For each scene that we plan and later revise, we have to think "What is the reader feeling at this point?" We don't like stress in life. We love it in fiction. Therefore we have to think, "How can I make the reader tense in this scene?" "How can I arouse his curiosity and take my time before satisfying that curiosity?" If you have an answer to these questions for every scene, you'll have a page-turner, a story or book that the reader will want to read through to the end.

Question: "What do you do when you get stuck while writing a novel?"

Answer: I have several solutions. I open my dictionary (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd edition) at random, and go down the first column on the left-hand page, dwelling on each word for just a second or two until a word stirs my imagination and stimulates what I do next. I seldom have to go to the right-hand column or the right-hand page before my writing engine hums again.

If that doesn't work, I pick up a novel I've read before and like especially. I open it anywhere and start reading. Within minutes I begin thinking things that are not in the novel but in my head or in the novel I'm writing, and I hurry back to my computer to pick up where I left off.

As for beginners who get writer's block, I send them to the WritePro program because it eliminates writer's block. In the program, I ask questions, you answer them, and before you know it you have a viable scene.

Question: "What's the best way to get a literary agent?"

Answer: Always by referral from another writer who is a client of that agent. That's the best way. If you don't know writers who have agents, attend one of the better writer's conferences and you'll meet writers who have agents. The referring writer should have read at least a sample of your work and like it. A brochure entitled "How to Get a Literary Agent to Represent Your Work." This brochure is available FREE by e-mailing your request with your name and postal address to writeproNY@aol.com. Or send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to WritePro, 43 S. Highland Ave., Ossining, NY 10562, requesting the agent brochure. It covers the advantages of having an agent, the characteristics to look for in an agent, the most common errors in seeking an agent, and the secret of good query letters for fiction and nonfiction.

Question: Is there a secret to creating immediate tension in any scene?

Answer: I don't think it's a secret, it's just that so few writers seem to know it. In the Playwrights Group of the Actors Studio, we found that giving each character a different script results in immediate tension. There's a whole chapter on how this process works in my book Stein on Writing, St. Martin's Press, available in bookstores or online from amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com.

Question: "What is an 'immediate scene' and why is it so damn important?"

Answer: The three main components of fiction are descriptions of people and places, narrative summary of events that happen elsewhere that are told rather than shown, and immediate scenes that take place before the eye, on stage as it were, and could be filmed. In the nineteenth century, novels and stories were filled with summations of offstage events, past or present, told to the reader almost always in the form of narrative summary. Today's readers prefer the immediacy and excitement of a witnessed event. The advent of movies and television introduced us to visual media. TV and movies are of necessity full of immediate scenes, visible to the eye, ready to be experienced first hand. This has influenced stories and novels greatly. Twentieth-century audiences now insist on seeing what they are reading. If you examine twentieth-century fiction, you'll find a dramatic increase in immediate scenes and a corresponding decrease in narrative summary. There has also been a decrease of descriptions of indoor and outdoor places that put the story on hold. When they encounter lengthy descriptions, impatient twentieth-century readers start to skip. The use of immediate scenes has helped the writers of nonfiction also. For detailed information and examples on the use of immediate scenes, see chapter 3 of Stein on Writing, also WritePro's Lesson 4, which guides you interactively in handling immediate scenes and narrative summary in your own work.

Direct questions to Sol Stein by e-mail to solstein@aol.com.

For an overview of many professional tips and techniques for fiction, click on WritePro or FictionMaster.