Hott Tips for Writing Fiction

Straight from my notebook, distilled into 450 words.

Last week I spent several hours reviewing all the notes from the second year of my MFA, and transcribing the ones I wanted to remember and refer back to. I share them here in the order they were retrieved from my notebook. I can’t attribute every note individually. Surely some of them came through by way of other authors and teachers. But I will credit everyone whose knowledge is noted here: EWU professors Greg Spatz, Sam Ligon, and Polly Buckingham. Visiting writers Morgan Talty, Ashley Wurzbacher, Arna Hemenway, Dana Johnson, Megan Cummins, and Sindya Bhanu. A panel at AWP 2023 in Seattle on writing queer historical fiction. Here are the most valuable tips from the second year of my MFA, in 450 words:

• Terminal modification – switch up yr structural pattern at the end of a story/novel to notify that you’re coming to an end.

• Em dashes refuse to prioritize details.

• What does a character want that another character has?

• Explore a “strange phase” of life. Ask: who can I bring in to make things boil over?

• Convert backstory into a second storyline.

• Characters make and break connections in an escalating pattern > reconfigure > break again

• The end of a story controls/revises the meaning of what has come already

• Specific characteristics make a character identifiable – how does this character do “the thing” differently?

• Look for places that keep the reader at a distance from experience

  • Watch for interior interpretations to match the age/wisdom of a character, aligned with the narrative distance of the telling.

• Efficient character development > see character under duress. What would make them the most uncomfortable?

• Don’t interrupt the dream of the story.

• No convenient absences: make it complicated, confrontational.

• Don’t mix up theme and conflict.

  • Conflict = theme embodied in action

  • Setting = physical manifestation of something bigger than the character

  • Theme = abstract manifestation of the same

• Switching POV may be an evasion, rather than going into what is challenging to write.

• Stay one step ahead of the reader > keep them hypnotized.

• Transitional movements (from one space to another) are opportunities for transformation.

• Get characters in the worst kinds of trouble.

• Fill the temporal frame until it explodes.

• Don’t bail on your most dramatic scenes. Get closer, go slower.

• Trust the reader to enjoy the mystery of not knowing. This goes against other advice to reveal what you know rather than withholding and creating false tension.

• The story will tell you how much backstory to use.

• Historical fiction requires an accuracy of affect that resonates today.

• Don’t place what you want to be true into the past. Ask:

  • What is my intervention and how am I subverting expectations?

  • How do my characters know what they know?

• Yr whole job as a writer is to describe things > challenge assumptions about the world.

• Dialogue should be tonally different from narration.

• When writing character relationships, identify how each scene changes or develops the relationship. Make sure never to repeat the purpose of a scene.

• Repeated images or color can be a powerful tool to progress a narrative. Track the movement of an object.

• The relationship of binaries drives fiction forward – energy comes from contrast and contradiction.

• Subject matters: regional, marginalized, obsessions in terms of topic, recurrent images/types of stories, vision/worldview (kind or harsh to characters).

• What am I obsessed with, what images do I return to, what feels natural vs. unnatural to try.

jkjkjk I only filled 2 notebooks w MFA notes.