Writing Fiction

Is it possible that the urge to write fiction stems from the urge for adventure? If so, that means that to read and write fiction is to chase something that fiction can't give you.

In that sense, it's no different from porn consumption. You're getting an artificial version of the thing you crave.

I do wonder sometimes if we revere stories too much. Don't we have better things to do, more interesting things to talk about, than television?

When writing fiction, what do you focus on?

To what extent do you need to focus on anything? What are you focussed on when you write fiction? You try to get absorbed in the world, to hear and see what's going on. It's not so concrete. It's more like an approximation, but then again, in prose at least, that's what a story is. A story looks different inside every head that reads it.

So is it enough to focus on verisimilitude? Or do you go on layer deeper, and try to trick your own brain into thinking it's real. Presumably, if you can trick your own brain, you can trick other brains.

So how do you do that? How do you trick your own brain into believing the story in your head is real?

When has your brain been tricked? When the story is good. When it is convincing. When it makes me forget that I am watching a movie or reading a story. A good story lets you get lost in it. But as you're writing the story, it isn't good yet, and to make a brain get lost in a story the writing has to be good.

But good is defined as whether or not a story makes you get lost it in it. So what we want to know is how to do that.

We can recognize when a story works. But how do we reverse engineer that?

We have to think about what the good stories have in common.

What does Salem's Lot have in common with The Assassination of Jesse James? They are written in totally different voices, but the prose is clean. It's confident. It's easy to read. It doesn't get in the way, and it doesn't try to impress. It just tells the story.

That's why I'm wondering if focussing on good prose is enough. If the prose is good, is the story necessarily good?

That depends on how you define "good." So what makes good prose?

Well, good prose has to make sense. You can't have a bunch of poetic sentences that together add up to nothing. Well, you can, if you're a poet. But if you're a storyteller, the story has to make sense.

I guess what I'm wondering is, what actually goes on in your head while writing? The prose can be cleaned up later. In any case, the words are a means to an end. The end is the story, and the first draft is written in your head. Then you approximate it on the page. You don't necessarily have control over the story. It just comes to you. There might be problem-solving moments when you need this character to do this thing, or get from a to b. But those moments can be dangersou, because you risk contrivance. The story is the boss, as Stephen King says.

Everybody works differently. I like to get writing and mess around. Like playing with clay. I slowly mold the story into a shape that makes sense. This is apparently how Paul Graham codes, and it's how I write. I don't see anything wrong with that.

The recipe for great work is: exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it. So you just have to know what a story looks like in order to write one. And beyond that, it's just a matter of practice. Because you can't just watch baseketball all day and be a great basketlball player. You have to teach your body as well as your mind. And you can only do that by doing the thing.

Part of what I'm struggling with here is that I'm not at all sure that the process I'm trying to describe can be described. It is what you might call procedural knowledge, which is knowledge that only be demonstrated and practiced, but not articulated.

So really it comes down to practice.

But that's not to say there isn't a contemplative side to it. Athlete's will watch tapes of themselves to find their weaknesses and see what they can improve.

Likewise, writer's will read what they've written and see what they can improve. But you can only do that once you actually write something.

It is a little different though, because writing a good book is harder to define than playing a good game. In a good game, you score a lot of points and win, you had a good game. In writing, there are no points, and there is no winning. So how do you define success?

When you've written something you like, and that at least one other person that matters to you likes.

The goal is important, because you can't say you want to write well without defining what that means. So you say you want to write a good story. What does that mean? It means you've written something you like, and that someone you love also likes. But you can't know whether you like it until you've written it.

So you have you to get lost in it first. You have to lose yourself in the story before a reader can do likewise.