The Pecman

Do you know most authors? Where's your evidence that "most authors are novices"? Maybe most authors here are, but not in the whole wide world, certainly not published authors. I can think of a few authors who are, in fact, experts at language in terms of having a college degree and vast amounts of study and research. Stephen King (as one example) has a degree in English and taught high school English for several years, before breaking out as a huge best-selling author.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one to notice that! My theory was that J.K. Rowling was so big at that point, the publisher grew afraid of changing even a semicolon from her manuscript. As a result, there were all kinds of run-on sentences, disconnected dependent clauses, a bunch of clumsy stuff... none of which affected the first three books. I also think they were trying to rush the book out because she had turned it in late, and they had to make a sales date. I can remember a time when no hardback book would ever have typographic errors or grammatical problems, back in the day when publishers would have no fewer than six proofreaders tackle the manuscript before and after typesetting. Those days are gone. My favorite is when I see misspellings in movie credits! Totally ridiculous.

Absolutely terrific story.

All the Harry Potter novels are told in 3rd person omniscient, but more about Harry than anything else. But every so often, the camera (or the narrator) will show things happening where Harry is nowhere near. For example, the meetings of Voldemort's followers, or the flashbacks where it shows Voldemort as a child. In general, though, most movies tend to stick with the lead character, except during specific cases where we discover the lead character is about to be in grave danger for reasons they don't yet suspect.

I think a better point is not to do it at all, because it looks sloppy. I usually run screaming from the room (or the page) the moment I encounter amateur fiction written from two different 1st person points of view. There are numerous ways to handle this in 3rd; it just takes effort.

Excellent comments from Cia above. Though I have to say, I like to bounce ideas off people, and having another person as an editor helps contributes new ideas to the story, especially if they question a choice I've made or suggest, "hey, what if the character does such-and-such" at a key point in the story. The other valuable thing is that they may point out something I've never even thought of before. I had a case some years back where I wrote a novel where in one scene, the murderer killed a pet dog. All my friends who were reading the chapters in advance hit the roof with me and demanded that I not kill the dog, so I reluctantly had the dog live. I didn't know about the "Save the Cat" rule where you have to be careful about alienating your readers with stuff like this, so if I'd been left to my own devices, I would've gone right off the cliff. In this case, it all resulted in a reasonable payoff with the ending, so it worked out very well. I also agree with Cia's idea that even if you write on a monitor (as 99% of us do), I think it's a good idea to print it out and edit it on real, physical, "analogue" paper. Number one, it's an emergency backup when the EMP hits and all our devices are temporarily blown out, and number two, seeing your text on paper gives you a different feel about how each paragraph relates to each other. I think this is a very valuable thing that you don't have with a computer monitor. BTW, anybody see the story the other day about how George R.R. Martin writes Game of Thrones on an old DOS machine running WordStar 4.0 (circa 1988)? His excuse is, this way he can't run off and get on the web and be subjected to distractions. It's just cold DOS text on a monochrome monitor. Clearly, this approach works for him.

But I see an awful lot of online writers who do it very, very badly.

I think this is the best advice. One key problem with writing with 1st person is that the entire story is presented through the eyes of one person. If you need to bop back and forth to other characters, then just use 3rd person omniscient. But be wary of changing internal monologues or thoughts too frequently, particularly when two people are in a scene together. Even in 3rd, most of the time you're mainly concerned with one central character (with rare exceptions).

Well, you know what a lot of screenwriters do: they take every major plot point, write it on a 3x5 card (analogue!), and pin it to a corkboard. When they need to juggle the plot elements, they re-arrange the cards. Sure, sometimes when you make a story change 1/3 in, you have to ripple the changes on down and change some stuff at the end, but that's the way it is. I don't go to the trouble of a cork board, but I get that there are a lot of different ways to work, some of which are good for some people, some aren't. At least having the bullet points is helpful, especially if you finish a chapter and then go back and check the list, then wind up saying, "damn! I left such-and-such out of the story!" And that does happen to me on occasion, so I have to dive back in and revise. To echo Redsunshine's comments above: no less than Stephen King said that he has written several of his novels completely in longhand, on yellow pads, mainly because either he was in pain from health problems or he wanted to try a different approach. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels were initially written in longhand on yellow pads while the author sat in her favorite coffee shop; it clearly worked for her.

The three things I do for a novel (not a short story) are as follows: 1) I write a list of bullet points of what needs to happen in the chapter -- not in any great detail, but just one sentence. At most, I get six or seven main points down. 2) write a list of character names and descriptions, including age, height, physical characteristics, a little background. None of this need ever be seen by anybody but you. 3) create a timeline that provides the time and location where everything takes place. When you have multiple events, this will help keep them separate, so if you know you said "March 5th" in one part of the story, it won't magically change to "March 8th" later on. I personally think a 6-page outline is too much for a short story, and in truth, I think it might even be too long for a novel. I once ran into awful trouble when I had over-outlined a novel, because in truth one of the greatest things about writing is the journey of discovery, where you're forced to invent or react to interesting situations that come out of nowhere. So to me, just having the bare bones down on paper is good. But: every writer works differently, and there are actually writers out there who take no notes, have no outline, and just make it all up on the fly. My memory isn't good enough to do that, especially if I have a story with 25-30 speaking roles and forget that Joe is 6' tall and Mary is 60 years old.

I bet there are resources out there on the web for 90% of your questions (ranks, military bases, job descriptions, pay, language, culture, protocol, all that stuff). But... the devil is in the details. I once wrote a novel where one of the characters gets drafted, and boy, I heard from my readers about my mistake in giving him a specific rank. I think I had called him "Technical Specialist," which apparently is not a rank in the Air Force. This is what happens when you try to fake it and it's almost convincing... but not quite. That was also written in 1999-2000, before it was as easy to research stuff on the net as it is now. Tom Clancy is an example of an author who has extreme detail about the military jargon in his "Jack Ryan" spy novels. I don't like the emotional distance of those stories, but his description and inside info is amazingly well-informed.

Gee, Google, Wikipedia, and Dictionary.com do 90% of it for me. It's incredible how difficult it used to be to research any kind of writing, and now you can get it done in a few minutes. <in wheezy old man's voice> Eh, these kids today with their search engines! In myyyyyyyy day we had libraries with books... and weeeee liked it! From a fiction perspective, one thing I really like is that you can set a story in a specific city, even on a specific city block, and then use Google or Apple street view to get right on the pavement and see what the characters would see. (Assuming the story took place in modern times.) Very useful.

I'm reluctant to mention this, but I work a lot in the film & TV business here in LA, so if anybody wants any background on what actually goes on in film studios, TV sets, agents' offices, editing rooms, meetings, and all that stuff, I'm your guy. I've read a few gay stories that got all this stuff woefully wrong, and a lot of it was just head-smackingly stupid and wrong. I think a lot of fiction writing involves a lot of research to make sure you get the subtle details right, particularly in how people speak, what specific cities look like, and how the situation feels. It's so much easier now to do this than it was 20, even 10 years ago, but too often, I encounter writers who don't want to do the work.

I also think it's a very, very bad choice to do long sections as text messages, emails, or anything other than standard body text. I personally think it takes the reader out of the novel and calls too much attention to itself. I think for brief passages -- like a paragraph or two -- it works fine. Otherwise, it just gets drudgerous to read.

There is some precedence for using what I call "the cork storyboard/file card" approach, where story points are written down on 3x5 cards (analogue!), then loosely pinned to a cork board. Over time, you could literally have dozens, maybe hundreds of cards over an entire wall covered with cork. This way, you could figure out how to go from Point A to Point B, even if it's just one sentence: "Joe accidentally kills Mary" and "Joe goes to Hawaii to escape." You might want to insert a sequence that says, "Police find more clues at the crime scene," and insert that inbetween the two existing scenes. Writing down short notes will save you the trouble of figuring out unplanned shifts in direction. Many, many major Hollywood screenplays and TV shows are written this way. Sitcoms, too. On the other hand... there are people who like to write wild 'n' free, and if that works for them, more power to them. As long as the writing is good and the reader is entertained, it doesn't matter how you get there.

Much good advice above. I would add a few more ideas: 1) try to write at least 1000 words a day (maybe 3-4 manuscript pages), every day. 2) plot out the story somewhat with an outline, even if it's just two or three bullet-points per chapter: Joe gets lost... Joe meets X... Y almost runs them over with a car... Joe calls the police. Keep it simple and very basic. 3) create a timeline so you know when each situation develops in context to everything else in the novel. If somebody gets knocked in the head in March and has to go to the hospital, make sure you remember this by the time you hit chapter 20 and a different character refers to it. 4) create a character list that only you see, listing the characters' names, their approximate ages, their general appearance, likes, dislikes, and other important details. This need not ever be published; it's just a reference to remind yourself of who the characters are when you're deep into the story. I also try to set most of my stories in real places, and I'll use Google Maps and other resources to reference specific streets and landmarks. Some people prefer to use a mythical place, and there's justification for that, too -- but again, you'll need to keep the details straight over a long period of time, including directions, distances, and the characteristics of different buildings and locations. Don't be overwhelmed by the size of the novel. In truth, a novel is just a bunch of interrelated short stories (chapters) with ongoing characters that form a larger story arc. Just focus on each individual chapter, one at a time.

God, I hate it when people use the word "grow" as a verb. How about: "What are some good ways to increase your readership for stories?" That works. (I also can't stand using "impact" as an adjective: "How has your story impacted readers?" vs. "What kind of impact has your story had on readers?") Promotion is one of the most difficult things about publish-on-demand authors, and it's the same for eBooks and online fiction. Mark Arbour's comments above are 100% right, but still omits how to get the word out, which is the missing link for commercial success.

I think there's a balance between being reasonable and being ridiculous. You might not describe the person on the first page, but I'd hope by the second chapter you'd know if they were in a wheelchair, if they're blind, if they're young, if they're old, or at least some vague idea of who and what they are. Common sense covers 90% of this stuff. Well, here was your statement: Surely "tips for writing good fiction" would work just as well, or are there special rules we should be using if we/our characters are gay? All I did was reply that the piece being referenced by the o.p. didn't have the word "good" in the title, and that the rules work for all kinds of writing, and there are no special rules for gay fiction. These aren't so much rules as guidelines, because (as many have cited above) there's thousands of ways to bend or even break the rules. An old pal of mine, Nick Archer, used to joke in the last ten years that we should try to write a short story that had every possible cliche often seen with online fiction. Alarm clock, characters "meet cute" by running into each other, tearful confessions, and on and on and on... there's a thousand of them. Here's his own list of some of the worst cliches, which parallel a lot of what's on my list: http://archerland.disbelieve.org/nonfiction/jump.htm

I think "simple" has different meanings for different people. If you mean in terms of description, Anne Rice is an example of a successful author I sometimes point to who gets very, very over-winded in describing certain kinds of action and situations. I can remember in one of her past Vampire Lestat novels, a character comes up to the gate of an old decaying house, and it took her three pages to get the character inside the house, after describing what the character saw and felt in the surrounding grounds. Is this excessive? I dunno, but the book sold two million copies and she got great reviews and enjoys a lavish lifestyle. Stephen King spent 100 pages describing a 3-day ordeal of a mother and her 4-year-old son trapped in a car by a rabid dog in Cujo, with almost no dialogue. Both were way too long for me, but I can't deny the books were successful and had huge audiences. Many books can benefit from having good editors with good taste and knowing where to cut and where not to cut. In each of the above cases, I think the story could be told every bit as well in about half that much space... but that's me. And no question, the specifics of where to cut are like the differences between good surgery and bad surgery: one slip, and the patient is dead on the table. Absolutely true. And nothing kills a gay romantic story for me quicker than when the opening paragraph says, "Let me describe myself: I'm this tall, have these features, and I'm this old, and let me describe my anatomy." I'm done before I hit paragraph two. Next! If my characters are described at all, it happens through the eyes of other people over a period of several chapters. We learn over time how tall the characters are, what they think of themselves, what they see as their flaws, what their health and age are... just enough information to get a general idea of how they look. I never resort to saying, "you look just like <insert famous movie star's name>," because that to me is the kiss of death. Leave it vague and let the audience take the image and focus it. You don't have to over-describe anybody or any place... give them just enough information to make it real.

Absolutely true. There are some very impressive novels that use a flashback structure, or jump ahead in the narrative or even tell the exact same story Rashomon-style from different points of view. It's possible to pull that off... if you're brilliant, which I don't see a lot of out there for free on the net. The greatest novels ever written tend to stick with a chronological structure and lay the story out with a beginning, middle, and end, the story makes sense, the characters move from point A to point B, and maintains internal logic. Can it work otherwise? Sure, but I don't see it done well very often. Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is an example of a movie that has completely scattered structure, and still won an Oscar for best screenplay and made hundreds of millions of dollars (and deservedly so). Godfather II told its story with numerous scattered flashbacks and also won many awards and made hundreds of millions of dollars. Would either have done as well if they had started at the beginning and followed a conventional structure? Probably not. But the difference is, I'd argue that none of us here are as talented as Tarantino or Francis Coppola. Google can be your friend: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/passive-voice/ http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/active-voice-versus-passive-voice http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/passive.htm

The word good does not appear in my article's title: it was merely "Tips on Writing Gay Fiction," and follows that with "better gay fiction." If you actually read what I have to say, I said several times that the same rules apply to all forms of fiction writing, not just gay fiction. Gay fiction has to be a genre that appeals to me, and I see an awful lot of bad gay fiction out there -- not necessarily here, but at various places on the net and published as eBooks. If anything, the quality of writing is much worse now than it was ten years ago, sadly. And it's certainly possible to adhere to all the guidelines and still come up with a lousy story. There are many writers who are brilliant technically but ultimately come up with a story that falls short in terms of characters, story, structure, and a satisfying ending. Another sense: time. We instinctively know when an hour has passed by, or eight hours, or a day. Use that as well. I absolutely agree, adding sensory descriptions helps let the reader know how the character feels, which is very important. This was one of the tips in my article as well: engage the senses. No special rules. Fiction is fiction, and that counts for straight, gay, action, suspense, adventure, romance, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, and everything else. And I mentioned this in my piece.

I don't agree. I think all forms of drama need to cling to the same basic rules, and that goes for written fiction, film, TV, comic books, and stage plays. The essential principles are exactly the same: 1) create characters with which readers (or viewers) can emphathize, even if they don't necessarily like them. 2) tell stories with a beginning, middle and end, and make the structure logical and consistent to keep everything clear and accessible. 3) maintain a sense of believability through internal logic; even fantasy stories have rules [as witnessed by Harry Potter, among many others], and sometimes the rules actually make the story better. 4) take the reader (or viewer) to a place they've never been before, and make them believe they've been there. 5) don't be boring. Get to the point and keep the story moving at a decent pace. Cut everything unnecessary that gets in the way of the story. Make every moment count. So in that respect, you're dead wrong. I agree that there are certain things that work better in fiction than in film, and some stories that are essentially unfilmmable. (Much of Ray Bradbury's work is one example, since so much of it relies on his poetic use of language.) But the bare bones above work for everything I can think of. [And I confess to borrowing several of these ideas from the late film critic Roger Ebert's books on how he reviewed films for 45 years.] Great tips from Adam above, BTW. Listen to him -- he knows what he's talking about.

Oh, come ON. I knocked this article out in 15 minutes -- for free, as a favor to the guy who runs Nifty -- plus it was written more than ten years ago. Most of the points are still perfectly valid. 99% of the bad stories on Nifty violate every one of these rules, so what I said then is still (mostly) true. The most important rule of all is to not be boring and surprise the reader. I can take a lot of crap writing to a point, but the number of people that endlessly repeat boring aspects of human behavior and rehash scenes we've already been through before is tiring beyond belief. Wiser men than me have said, "drama is simply human life experience with all the boring stuff cut out." Another great trick, which also applies to filmmaking, is to start scenes in the middle. Too many amateurs will cover a dinner scene by showing the characters being seated, argue about what they're going to order, they get the food, they begin eating, and on and on and on to the end. It's far more interesting to just slam right into the middle of the dinner and have one character say, "what the F do you mean by that?", with the conversation already having started. And the argument ensues. You can mention the restaurant details in two or three sentences, and that eliminates a solid two or three pages of superfluous dialogue. The other trick I think is to understand the balance between description and dialogue. I see tons of amateur fiction on the net where the writer either tries to do the entire thing with almost zero dialogue, or does each chapter in 100% dialogue. In general, I think this is a bad idea. I think you need to strike a balance between the two so that you have a feel for the setting for each scene, a general understanding of what the major characters look like, where they are, what they're doing, and just get to the bloody point. Far too much of what I see on the net -- particularly those stories that have 120 chapters without end -- could easily be cut in half if they just chopped out all the unnecessary verbiage and picked up the pace. The best novels already do that. Note also that (as I said in the article) 99% of what I referenced in the piece all comes from existing texts on writing. These are not just my ideas; I even provided the references at the end of the piece. Some of them -- like my note about the Orson Scott Card book -- I should delete, just on general principles. There are other books that cover the same subject as well or better. But very few of the ideas came from me. Consider this just a "good writing's greatest hits" compilation that provides a "do's and don'ts" list of what I think works and what doesn't. And know also that it is possible to break the rules if you're extremely talented and very clever. It's rare I see that these days, but it happens. But not often.

Wow, that's very harsh. I would've done the paper, not used the word "very," and then said, "I very much hope this satisfies you very much, you silly bunt. Sincerely, verily yours, Adam." You could also do what Harlan Ellison did with his college writing teacher, and mail the teacher a copy of every one of your published books (assuming you have a career someday). I think self-control is one thing, but censorship is something else. One use of the word "very" in a chapter ain't gonna kill anybody. Overuse is something else.

I just think it would be odd in 2014 if somebody got an actual oil painting made of their likenesses and then the painting aged while they didn't. It's a little dated. It works great for 1890, when the story was written. No question, Oscar Wilde was an immensely talented, extraordinarily glib man who yielded some of the greatest quotes in history. I'm sure there's some interesting fodder for new stories among his classic work.