Your fingers work furiously over a set of keys. Words form into phrases, phrases into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs. Inspiration has streaked your creative juices and spilt them out on your laptop screen. Eventually, the fingers slow their pace, paragraphs slow down to sentences to phrases and trickles stop to a few, final words. You lean back into the chair, content.
The Struggle
It is a writer’s bliss when words sweat off our minds effortlessly and allow our stories to take concrete shape. More often than not, stringing a few words together is no less than a search for the Holy Grail, with us stumbling and fumbling our way through it, not knowing whether to go back or forth.
Is there a way to ease the process until we have that moment of inspiration? To find a path to not just one but multiple moments of writer’s bliss?
Yes, there is.
The Process
A writer’s first audience is the writer. If you (the writer) cannot be happy or impressed with what you have written, how will it work for a reader? The transition from waiting and fighting for inspiration to receiving it is a hard, hard one. Worry not, though. Being mindful of some simple things will help accelerate your journey from blank wasteland to creative Eden. Read on to find out how to write fiction.
How to Write Fiction
1. To Write Better, Read Better
I am a firm believer in books that are read for enjoyment and books that should be read to improve your writing skills and creative abilities. It is imperative that you identify writers and stories that push you and out of your comfort zone and stimulate you to think above and beyond your ‘box’. James Joyce is a writer that pushes me out of my comfort zone, which makes me sit up and take notice of the mechanisms employed by the author to tell his story. This, in turn, helps me to chart out my own path when I am stuck for words.
2. Elementary, My Dear Watson
What I am trying to get at is that a writer can greatly benefit from Sherlock’s hyper attention to details. Try and observe everything and everyone around you; take in as much detail as you possibly can and you will be rewarded when you find yourself staring at a blank piece of paper. Observing people will help you to pick out interesting characters for your stories. Observing your surroundings will help you write vivid backdrops that your story will be set against.
3. Edit, Re-edit, Then Edit Again
The first draft is never perfect, no matter how great a writer you are. Go back to what you have written after giving it some time and edit it mercilessly. I believe editing your story is as important as writing it.
4. Dream Your Stories
When you hit the lights off for your beauty sleep do so with two things: a notepad and pen by your bedside, and a story in your mind. It could be something you are working on or an idea you want to develop. Thinking about a story before sleep embeds it in your sub-conscious. The result is interesting to say the least.
Image credit: ronbrickmann on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/img-109061105-0001.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Anand Changali is a compulsive writer whose first love is cinema. He has written scripts for animation shows, and animation films, in addition to blogs and articles for the digital domain. His book, The Princess in Black – An Unheard Story of the Mughals, has been picked up by Srishti Publishers. [/author_info] [/author]