Being a Better Writer: Moving From Essays and Non-Fiction Forms to Fiction · 9:02pm Jun 4th, 2018
Readers, in case you somehow missed it, Shadow of an Empireis now out! And you should definitely pick up a copy. No, seriously, you reallyshould. Reviews are starting to trickle in, and you definitely do not want to miss this book. Just click that colorful cover to the right there, or if you’re reading this post on an archive binge, the books tab.
Now then, with that said and out of the way (buy the book!), let’s get down to business for today’s hotly requested topic: How to switch from writing non-fiction work like essays and reports to something that’s a work of fiction.
Well, for starters, if you’ve acknowledged that there’s a difference, you’ve made the first step. Believe me, this is not always the case. Not everyone realizes that the two are fundamentally different, or that the experience and knowledge that make one form of writing sing will serve only to drag the other down.
Because writing a piece of non-fiction, be it a textbook, an essay, or a news article (at least, in the days when news articles weren’t clickbait opinion pieces) is a process entirely differentin execution than writing, say, a short story about a character who goes out to buy milk. So different, in fact, that we’re going to run headlong into one of the oldest battles of fiction.
Show Versus Tell.
Thanks for writing this, it was absolutely fantastic. I particularly liked how you dove into show vs. tell here, because while you've discussed it before at significant length, this really brought the context together in a way that your earlier articles didn't to really connect the reason for the "don't" version of the advice with the context it is usually delivered in which makes the rest of the advice much more usable. All things considered, I'd say that this post should absolutely be the first one anyone new to your writing on writing should read, especially if they are new to creative writing in general since it really helps frame the big differences from what they were taught in school they need to learn.