The Edit-As-You-Go Method by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

The Edit-As-You-Go Method

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Finishing your first draft is an essential milestone on the way to publishing your novel. If you don’t finish that first draft, you probably won’t finish the second, or third, and you probably won’t ever get a polished final draft.

And how do you write your first draft? There’s no one right answer. Different writers are different, and what works for one writer doesn’t work for another. Here are four options that have worked for large numbers of writers:

• Writing by the seat of your pants—you just start typing with no planning.
• Writing to an outline—you create a detailed outline and use it to write your first draft.
• The Snowflake Method—the 10-step method I invented to plan your novel’s plot and characters, starting simple and expanding out the details bit by bit.
• Editing as you go—you type the first scene as if you were writing by the seat of your pants, but then you polish it until it’s perfect before moving on to the next scene. You repeat this until you’re done.

And of course many writers mix and match elements from these methods. The right way for you is the one that works.

I created the Snowflake Method, so naturally I’ve talked about it a lot in this e-zine over the years.

In this article, I’d like to focus on the Edit-As-You-Go approach, because I think it hasn’t gotten as much airtime as it deserves. My understanding is that Dean Koontz uses the Edit-As-You-Go method, and that gives it all the credibility it needs.

Why Edit As You Go?

Why might you decide to give the EAYG method a try?

One very good reason to try it is that you resonate with the idea. If you’ve read the short descriptions of the methods above and EAYG has emotional appeal for you, then your instincts are telling you something. I think it’s always smart to listen to your instincts. They might be wrong, but very often, they’re right.

Another good reason to try EAYG is that you’ve tried the other methods, and none of them have clicked for you. That doesn’t make you a bad writer or a defective human. It just means you tried things that didn’t click for you. That’s all it means. If you try EAYG, it’ll either click for you or it won’t. If it doesn’t click, then you’re no worse off than before. But if it does click, then that’s a win. A big win. There’s just no downside to experimenting.

A third reason to try EAYG is when your story and characters are only partly formed in your mind, and you need a lab for trying out different ideas to get them to gel. The novel I’m currently writing is a historical novel in which history records a number of disconnected events, but we don’t know the exact order of the events, and we don’t know the character motivations. The story is unclear, and my job is to find the story. So I’ve found EAYG useful as a lab. I can write a scene in which I audition characters and plot ideas. If they don’t seem to be right, I can edit them again and again and again, until they ooze into focus. Then I can move on. This is not my preferred way to write, but I’ll do what it takes to find my story.

This is Not Complicated

Unlike outlining or the Snowflake Method, the EAYG approach has very few moving parts. You type a scene. Then you edit it once or many times, until you’re happy with it. Then you repeat until done.

So there’s not a lot to say here. Either you like the idea or you don’t. If you hate it, then move on; life is short. But if you love it, give it a whirl and see if you like it as much in practice as you do in theory.

The acid test of any kind of writing is this question: Are you having fun? This matters, because we novelists spend thousands of hours writing fiction. For most novelists, the writing is not super profitable. So it had better be fun, or what’s the point?

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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Epistemic Conflict by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Epistemic Conflict

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

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Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that tries to explain what it means to know things, and how we know that we know what we know.

If that seems dull or weird or spacey to you, then I refer you to your favorite search engine to run a search on the term “fake news.” Fake news is false information packaged up to look like true news. And that’s a hot topic right now. Fake news is a failure in epistemology.

So I claim that epistemology matters in real life. If so, then it also matters in fiction.

I won’t be looking at fake news in this column. I have bigger fish to fry. Instead, I’ll be looking at something I call “epistemic conflict.” This will take some effort to unpack. Work with me for the next thousand words, and I think you’ll find it worth the trouble. You can use this technique forever in your fiction, and you’ll never run out of ideas.

Why Conflict Matters

Every novelist cares about conflict, because conflict is the gasoline in the engine of fiction. Conflict makes your story go. You need conflict, and one powerful way to create conflict is through a misunderstanding between your characters.

And that’s where “epistemic conflict” comes into play. “Epistemic conflict” is one very basic way to create a deep misunderstanding that will get your characters fighting like rabid dogs.

But before I explain “epistemic conflict,” I need another term, which is “epistemic status.” And what is that?

Epistemic Status

People say stuff all the time. Some of it’s true; some is false; some is neither. But it would be naive to think that all statements can be classified as either a “fact” or a “lie.” Because a lot depends on what people believe about the truth or falsity of the things they say.

So when I talk about the “epistemic status” of a statement, I’m thinking of two questions:

• Does the person who made the statement believe it’s true, or false, or neither?
• How certain are they in that belief?

Both of these matter. These two issues raise all sorts of interesting complications. Here are some examples of the many kinds of epistemic status that a statement can have:

• Facts are things you believe because you have first-hand evidence, and therefore you can know them with high certainty. For example, it’s a fact that the sky was blue outside my house yesterday at noon. I saw the sky. It was blue. The only way this fact could be wrong is if my eyes weren’t functioning correctly.
• Mathematical theorems are things you believe because you can prove them using logic, and therefore you can know them with high certainty. For example, I know the Pythagorean Theorem is true, because I have worked through the proof. The only way this theorem could be wrong is if my brain isn’t functioning correctly.
• Scientific findings summarize the results of experiments. A scientist considers a scientific finding to be provisionally true, based on the current data. A scientific experiment should always estimate the certainty of the result. Note that scientific findings sometimes change when more data comes in.
• Mathematical conjectures are guesses about potentially true theorems. Mathematicians consider them “not proven,” but they often have reason to think they might be true or might be false. Math happens when a mathematician tries to prove or disprove a conjecture. For a famous example of a conjecture, do a search on the term “Goldbach’s conjecture.”
• Scientific hypotheses are guesses about potential scientific findings. Scientists may suspect a hypothesis is true, or suspect it’s false, but they don’t know, and they know that they don’t know. As a very famous example, when I was a graduate student in physics, the Higgs boson was widely hypothesized to explain major parts of physics. But nobody had ever seen one in the lab. The Higgs boson was a hypothesis for 48 years, until it finally was detected in the lab. Then it became a scientific finding.
• Faith statements are statements that people of faith make about their religious beliefs, even when they know that no proof is possible. Generally, they don’t assign a level of certainty, because faith is not about certainty. As an example, one of the Thirteen Principles of Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, was, “I believe with perfect faith in the resurrection of the dead.” Believing this is an act of faith, not a claim of certainty. If anyone knew it with certainty, it would not be a faith statement, it would be a fact or a theorem.
• Opinions are things you believe to be more likely true than not. In some cases, the opinion holder may be very certain their opinion is correct, but the reality is that the correctness of opinions usually can’t be known with high certainty.
• Allegations are claims that somebody has made without providing evidence to back them up. Allegations are an interesting case because the person making the allegation usually claims a high level of certainty. But the person hearing the allegation can’t have that same level of certainty until they see the evidence. One thing they can know with high certainty is that the allegation was made. That makes allegations newsworthy, even when they can't be checked. Responsible journalists make it clear that they are allegations, NOT facts. They also look for ways to check them.
• Lies are statements that you don’t believe and you know to be false. The point of a lie is to convince other people that a false statement is true. Fake news is an example of a lie.
• April Fool’s jokes are a special case. They’re not the truth, but they’re also not a lie. When you tell an April Fool’s joke, you believe with certainty it’s false, but truth or falsehood is not the point. The point of an April Fool’s joke is to say something obviously false in a way that’s funny because it’s absurd.
• Satire is another special case. Satire is not intended to be either the truth or a lie. It’s intended to make people think by saying something you don’t believe in a way that highlights some important truth. A famous example is the essay, “A Modest Proposal,” by Jonathan Swift, published in 1729. Swift proposed that poor Irish families could sell their children to be eaten by the rich. This was not a real policy proposal, and probably few people ever thought it was. But it was not a lie, either, nor was it a joke. It was satire, and it made people think about their assumptions.

That’s not a complete list of all possible epistemic statuses. You can probably think of several more. But these are enough to now explain what “epistemic conflict” is.

The Payoff—Epistemic Conflict

So what do I mean by “epistemic conflict?”

“Epistemic conflict” is the special kind of conflict that happens between characters when they assign different epistemic statuses to a statement.

In the real-life case of a “fake news” story, some people claim that the story has the epistemic status of a “Fact,” while others claim that it has the epistemic status of a “Lie.”

But there are many ways to have epistemic conflict. Let’s look at a few possible examples that could arise in your fiction:

Example 1: Your character writes an April Fool’s Day blog post that they think is hilariously funny. But then they discover that hundreds or thousands of people mistook it for a fact, and now there’s trouble.

Example 2: Your character posts a tweet that is intended to be satire. But satire requires context, and people who don’t know the context think your character’s tweet sounds racist. It goes viral and now millions of people are angry at your character, because they mistook satire for an actual opinion.

Example 3: Two characters express conflicting political opinions, but each of them mistakes their own opinions as facts, and mistakes the other’s opinion as a lie.

Example 4: Two scientists publish their scientific findings, but they get opposite results. The scientists know that all scientific knowledge is provisional, and they see the conflict in their findings as something interesting to pursue. But a journalist mistakes these findings as facts, and writes a story claiming there is a “crisis” in the scientists’ field of study.

Homework:

• Here’s a challenge for you. Spend one whole day figuring out the epistemic status of everything you say or hear. You’ll probably have to define some new epistemic statuses, because the list of 11 that I gave isn’t the whole alligator. I suspect you’ll find this exercise exhausting but enlightening. At the end of the day, your reward is that you get to think about how to use all this in your fiction.

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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The Five Tools for Showing by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

The Five Tools for Showing

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Your job as a novelist is very simple: to create a movie inside your reader’s head.

Not a picture. Not a sound bite. Not a word salad.

A movie. Inside your reader’s head.

Do that, and you win.

When editors tell you to “show, don’t tell,” what they really mean is to create that movie in your reader’s head.

You have five tools for showing that movie. That’s all. Just five. Master those five tools, and you’re far along the road to novelist nirvana. Here they are:

• Action
• Dialogue
• Interior Monologue
• Interior Emotion
• Sensory Description

Action

Action is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being doing something. Some examples:

• Hermione jumped on her broomstick and raced after Malfoy.
• Michael Corleone pointed his gun at the head of the police captain and squeezed the trigger.
• C3PO pressed its fingers into the wall socket, tripping the circuit breaker and plunging the room into darkness.

Dialogue

Dialogue is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being saying something. Some examples:

• “You are the last man I could ever be prevailed upon to marry,” said Elizabeth Bennet.
• “Hasta la vista, baby,” said the Terminator.
• “These are not the droids you’re looking for,” said Obi-wan Kenobi.

Interior Monologue

Interior monologue is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being thinking something. Some examples:

• I’ve got to catch that bottle of nitro before it hits the floor.
• Bad news. He loves me and he loves me not.
• It’s not enough to win this fight just for today. I need to win the fight for all time.

Interior Emotion

Interior emotion is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being feeling emotion.

This is more complicated than the other tools, so we need to clarify a few points before giving an example. You don’t need to name the emotion. If you name the emotion, you aren’t showing it, you’re telling it. If you want to show the emotion, you show the character’s physiological response to the emotion, and the reader figures out the emotion and may well feel it right along with the characters.

Note that physiological responses are ambiguous. They are usually not enough to pin down the exact emotion. The reader also needs context. But once you’ve given them the right context, showing them the character’s physiological response will make them feel the emotion.

I’ll give just one example. You can easily imagine different contexts in which this physiological response might signal anger, fear, horror, or possibly other emotions:

• Luke’s face burned, but the inside of his stomach was icy cold.

Sensory Description

Sensory description is showing the environment in a way that appeals to the senses. Some examples:

• The dorm room smelled of peanut butter and dirty socks.
• Neon lights flashed red and blue and green.
• Thunder smashed outside the house. Rain pounded on the roof.

Mix and Match

You have five tools for showing your reader your story. You can mix and match them any way you like. Any paragraph you write can use any combination of these five tools. That gives you endless variety for showing your story.

There are other tools for telling your story—narrative summary and exposition are the most common. You may be asking if it’s okay to use these tools.

Of course it is! These can be powerful tools, used in the right way, at the right time in your story. It’s not possible to spend 100% of your story showing, with no telling at all. Telling gets your reader quickly and efficiently through the boring parts of the story. Showing takes your reader slowly and immersively through the exciting parts of the story.

As a novelist, you get to decide what percentage of your story to show and what percentage to tell. A modern high-octane thriller might spend 98% of the story in showing and only 2% in telling. A slower-paced, more reflective novel might spend only 60% showing and 40% telling.

Just don’t fool yourself. If you intended to show your reader mostly movie, but you wound up breaking into the movie in every paragraph to tell your reader interesting footnotes, then you didn’t do what you intended. You should at least know you’re doing that.

Homework

Look at the most recent scene you wrote for your novel. Highlight every word in the scene that is not action, dialogue, interior monologue, interior emotion, or sensory description. The parts that are not highlighted are the movie you’re creating in your reader’s head. The parts that are highlighted are the interruptions to the movie. Are you surprised how many interruptions you’ve got in your movie? Or is the proportion about right?

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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Writing Realistic Fiction

Writing Realistic Fiction

 

Realistic fiction is a type of fiction in which a story is told that could easily happen in today's society. It contains believable characters and events and takes place in an actual setting, but the storyline itself is one that has never actually happened. Characteristics of realistic fiction include:

• Conflicts that the reader could face in everyday life

• A setting that takes place in the present-day and is an actual location or a fictional place that could be real

• Characters that seem like actual people you might encounter

• Conflicts that are solved realistically

Example: Bethany has a perfect life. She lives off the coast of Monterrey in a beautiful home with a wonderful husband and two small children whom she loves dearly. She has everything she's ever wanted until one day she wakes up and has completely forgotten who she is. With the help of a group of doctors and her husband, will she be able to remember who she is and everything she holds dear?

A Quick Note on Story Stakes in Fiction Writing for the Novice Writer

 

 A Quick Note on Story Stakes in Fiction Writing for the Novice Writer

 

by Ryker J. Phoenix

 

 Great stories are defined by the stakes that they present. Without stakes, a story can become bland and uninteresting. The stakes of a story refer to what the characters stand to gain or lose throughout the course of the story. The stakes of a story can be classified into three levels: personal, interpersonal, and global. Each level of stakes provides a different perspective on the story and adds to the overall tension and drama.

The first level of stakes is personal. This level refers to what the main character stands to gain or lose in their personal life. It is the most intimate level of stakes and often involves the character's emotional well-being. Personal stakes can range from something as simple as a character's desire to find love, to something as complex as their desire to overcome a traumatic experience. Personal stakes are essential because they connect readers to the character's emotions, making them feel invested in the character's journey.

The second level of stakes is interpersonal. This level refers to what the main character stands to gain or lose in their relationships with others. Interpersonal stakes involve the character's relationships with other characters, and the impact that their actions will have on those relationships. For example, a character may have to choose between their loyalty to a friend and their own personal gain. Interpersonal stakes are important because they add an element of conflict to the story, making it more engaging and exciting for readers.

The third level of stakes is global. This level refers to what the main character stands to gain or lose in the larger world around them. Global stakes involve the impact that the character's actions will have on the world at large. For example, a character may have to save the world from a catastrophic event. Global stakes are important because they raise the stakes of the story to a higher level, making the story more epic and grand in scale.

In conclusion, the levels of stakes in a story are essential to creating a compelling and engaging narrative. Personal stakes connect readers to the character's emotions, interpersonal stakes add conflict and tension to the story, and global stakes raise the stakes to a higher level. Without stakes, a story can become dull and uninteresting. Understanding the levels of stakes and incorporating them into a story is key to creating a memorable and impactful narrative.
 

Also see:

• The 3 Levels of Stakes Every Great Story Needs

 

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A Quick Note on Twisting Genres in Fiction Writing for the Novice Writer by Ryker J. Phoenix

 

 A Quick Note on Twisting Genres in Fiction Writing for the Novice Writer

 

by Ryker J. Phoenix

 

Successful writers are often praised for their ability to take the genres they are working in and twist them in a unique way that captures the attention of their readers. This ability to innovate and create something fresh and exciting is what sets successful writers apart from their peers.

Every genre has its conventions and tropes that readers have become familiar with over time. For instance, in the romance genre, there is often a predictable plotline involving two people falling in love and overcoming obstacles to be together. In the mystery genre, there is usually a detective who solves a crime by piecing together clues.

However, successful writers take these conventions and twist them in such a way that the story becomes almost unrecognizable. They may introduce unexpected elements or subvert readers' expectations to create a unique and surprising narrative.

One example of a successful writer who has done this is Gillian Flynn, author of the novel "Gone Girl." While "Gone Girl" is marketed as a mystery thriller, it defies many of the conventions of the genre. Instead of a straightforward whodunit, the novel is a complex and twisted story of a dysfunctional marriage and the secrets that the characters keep from one another. Flynn's unique twist on the genre captivated readers and made "Gone Girl" a bestseller.

Another example is the writer Neil Gaiman, who has gained a following for his ability to blend genres and create stories that defy categorization. In his novel "American Gods," Gaiman takes elements of fantasy and mythology and combines them with a road trip narrative to create a unique and engaging story. By twisting the genre in this way, Gaiman creates a world that is both familiar and strange, drawing readers in with its originality.

By taking the genres they are working in and twisting them in a unique way, successful writers are able to capture readers' attention and create stories that stand out from the crowd. This ability to innovate and create something fresh is what sets successful writers apart and helps them to carve out a place in the literary world. Whether it is through unexpected plot twists, unique characters, or a blend of genres, successful writers are constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible in their chosen genre.


 

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A Quick Note on Writing and Writers in Fiction Writing for the Novice Writer

A Quick Note on Writing and Writers in Fiction Writing for the Novice Writer

 

by Ryker J. Phoenix

 

  Writing is often thought of as a solitary pursuit, with writers holed up in their rooms, typing away at their keyboards or scribbling in notebooks. But the truth is that writers are so much more than just people who write. They are creators, developers, builders, and innovators. They are storytellers who bring new worlds to life and dreamers who imagine the impossible.

At their core, writers are developers. They take an idea, whether it's a fictional story or a non-fictional piece, and turn it into something tangible. They create characters, settings, and plots, weaving them together to form a cohesive whole. They develop their ideas, building on them until they become something that others can read and enjoy.

But writers are not simply developers; they are also creators. They have the ability to bring new ideas and concepts to life, to create something from nothing. They can take a blank page and turn it into a world full of wonder, with characters that jump off the page and settings that readers can imagine themselves in. They have the power to inspire, to move people with their words and ideas.

As storytellers, writers are masters of their craft. They have the ability to transport readers to new worlds, to make them feel like they are a part of the story. They can create tension, suspense, and drama, keeping readers on the edge of their seats until the very end. They can make us laugh, cry, and feel all the emotions in between.

But writers are not just storytellers; they are also builders. They have the ability to create entire worlds, with their own rules, cultures, and histories. They can build complex systems of magic, technology, or politics, creating intricate webs of relationships and conflicts. They can create entire civilizations, with their own customs, languages, and traditions.

Writers are also originators. They have the ability to come up with new ideas, to imagine things that have never been seen or heard before. They can take existing concepts and turn them on their head, creating something entirely new and original. They can push the boundaries of what is possible, exploring new frontiers and breaking new ground.

And last but not least, writers are innovators and dreamers. They have the ability to imagine the impossible, to dream of worlds beyond our own. They can create stories that challenge our assumptions and beliefs, that make us question the world around us. They can inspire us to dream big, to think outside the box, and to believe that anything is possible.

In conclusion, writers are so much more than just people who write. They are developers, creators, storytellers, builders, originators, innovators, and dreamers. They have the ability to create new worlds and inspire readers to dream big. They are an essential part of our cultural landscape, and their contributions should be celebrated and valued.
 

 

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