I don’t read much fanfiction. I get a little nauseous slogging through what’s out there. There is just so much, and so much of it is just…wow.
What the fanfiction universe has to offer is a very interesting cross-section of amateur writing. There are a lot of levels of seriousness and dedication. You can tell who is interested in actually writing and who is mainly interested in uh…toxic relationships between questionable character pairings.
And a lot of the writing is absolutely horrible. I won’t slam it too hard, since I know a lot of the writers are young and we shouldn’t expect too much. But when you’re browsing Wattpad you can tell right away when a story is going to be unenjoyable to read. You can tell by the first sentence, typically.
But every now and then I come across something shocking. I come across something stunning—something that sounds like it came out of a published novel. And not just any published novel but a good one. A turn of phrase that’s memorable, emotional, quotable, iconic. It’s a piece of art.
Does that mean I want to read the rest of the story? Does it mean the character development is powerful with a deep transforming arc? Does it mean the plot is well-paced and intriguing or the theme is subtle and meaningful?
No. But does it make me, just for a second, kind of wish I could read it anyway?
Believe it or not, for a second, it does.
For a while now, writers have kind of looked down on prose.
Now, it’s absolutely true that prose can be overdone. You can use way too many words to describe something that could have been evoked in two or three. Sometimes the fancier world is less specific. Not every sunset is worth a whole paragraph.
But some sunsets will be. More on this later.
There’s something I’ve got to tell you. It might be hard for you to hear, but here’s the fact: if you’re reading this, there is a one-hundred percent chance you are not Earnest Hemmingway. How do I know this? Because Hemmingway is dead.
Sparse is not always better. I almost think a lot of the advice the fiction-writing world has adopted is academic writing advice. Clear and concise, brief as possible, only saying just enough to relay the necessary information. If you really love minimalism, I won’t knock it, but sorry, that doesn’t sound like art to me. And fiction is supposed to be art.
I have read professional published novels that sound like eighty-thousand-word outlines because the author was afraid of prose. Is that really what people want to read? Because I don’t actually find it that satisfying.
So, what makes good writing?
I’m going to stick to four main things:
- Character development
- Character-driven plot
- Well-handled theme
- Beautiful prose
Let’s look at these one at a time.
Character Development
This one is huge. There is no story without character arcs. This is easily the area I have put the most study into because, first of all, I love it, and second, your characters and how they change and respond to the events of the plot literally is the story.
If you want to learn more about building characters and crafting powerful, satisfying arcs, I highly recommend Abbie Emmons. I’m pretty sure I’ve watched every one of her videos at least once and her free worksheets are incredibly handy. She’s been a game-changer for my character work.
So has K. M. Weiland’s Creating Character Arcs. I really appreciated how well this book tied plot-structure and character development together, which leads into the next point.
Character-driven Plot
Plot and character development are intrinsically linked, and really shouldn’t be separated. The plot should be driven by the characters’ decisions, which in turn are driven by the characters’ inner changes. This keeps the plot from feeling like an awkward series of disconnected events strung together.
Oh, my tip for this is study three-act structure and always bring it back around to who the characters are and what they’re seeking. That will put you way ahead of a lot of writers already.
Well-handled Theme
I didn’t used to think much about theme. I just kind of let it happen. You can do that as long as you don’t neglect getting into your characters’ heads and finding out how they think. But you shouldn’t be afraid to use theme in your fiction. As long as you keep it grounded in the complexity of your specific story and your characters’ circumstances, it won’t come off too preachy.
Prose
Prose is the medium you’re working in when you write. It’s your paint, your clay, your graphite. You have to use words to write. Without prose, your story can’t materialize. Everything else on this list is just an abstract idea. When you begin to write, it finally condenses out of that haze in the form of prose.
But why is prose important?
For one thing, it ties back to character. Whether or not you write in first-person, your prose is the voice of your point-of-view character. On the most basic level, it shows us what they see, hear, feel, smell and taste as they move through the story.
It also shows how they perceive it all. Prose gives us a look through their lens—it’s effected by their emotional state, by their understanding of their world, by their preconceptions and assumptions and fears. It’s not security-camera footage that just flatly shows what happened.
And beyond that, prose is about pulling a reader into a moment. Some moments need to be highlighted and lingered on. You might want to describe that sunset after the city burns. You don’t need action at that point. You don’t even need characters at that point.
This is for the reader. They need a second to take it in. Your reader is a human too. Humans need time to feel.
Writing is probably the most complicated art form that can be wielded by one person. Film takes a team. Operas and ballets enlist whole companies. But when you sit down to type out a novel in the solitude of your room, you have a whole universe at your command—and you can’t skimp on anything. Readers will notice.