JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #7
July 2, 2020
We often talk about the craft of fiction as if there are definitive methods of realizing a piece of fiction and any departure from those methods will cause it to fail. Something I don’t think gets enough attention is that most advice about fiction presumes an underlying philosophy of what fiction and story are and should be. The guidelines of craft that emerge from that philosophy are such that they are intended to produce writing shaped to conform to particular expectations.
A lot of the advice I give about story arises from the presumption that story comes from the interaction of character and plot, a character choosing a series of actions in order to advance toward a goal. Quite a bit of what we give and receive as advice about our stories arises from this axiom. Another presumption is that reading fiction should create for the reader a dream-state in which they more-or-less experience the events of the story as those events are presented. If we assume the fictional dream-state as a necessary feature of our story, guidelines of craft will be geared toward smoothing out the presentation of the fictional world in such a way so as to avoid breaking the dream.
I doubt many people would suggest that the underlying assumptions about fiction I’ve given as examples above are not necessary or just. But it’s not always the case that advice about writing fiction explains why by appeal to first principles. Sometimes it’s necessary to dive into the underlying philosophy of fiction that informs craft advice in order to determine how we might work through a problem in writing one of our stories. Perhaps the story as conceived will necessarily break one of the axioms we ordinarily work under. For example, what if our story does not contain characters? Or perhaps we will discover that we need to restructure our story to bring it into line with what we want fiction to be at the most foundational level. It’s not enough in these cases to simply follow the rules of craft; we must understand and examine why those rules exist and how they promote a particular philosophy of fiction.
Sometimes a writer might be intentionally trying to frame their own philosophy of fiction, and our standard feedback, arising from different underlying presumptions, will not apply to their work. This is why it is important to ask of any story for which we are giving feedback, what does this story seem to want to be? What are its governing rules? And our feedback should be geared toward helping strengthen the story in its own terms.
This is something I have to keep reminding myself when I read: although I have internalized particular assumptions about fiction for my own work, and although I might deliberately break with those in particular pieces, I need to forget all of that and approach other people’s stories as they are, not as I would have them be. On the other hand, sometimes a story is trying to adhere to familiar axioms but has fallen short. In that case, I can apply the advice I’m familiar with. The key is not to make any assumptions, but to let the piece show itself for what it is.
Next: On "Having a Hook"