Book Editing Associates
Every form of fiction writing has its strengths and limitations—as do fiction writers. Therefore, it’s important to figure out your strengths and limitations and then match them with a writing style that plays to your strengths. Here are a few different forms of fiction writing. See which one appeals most to you.
Screenwriting is highly visual; everything is externalized. If something will not appear on the screen in terms of a sight or a sound, it shouldn’t appear on the page.
Novels and short stories, on the other hand, specialize in articulating the inner world of their characters—or possibly even the narrator as he or she offers a unique perspective on the story’s events. Think of the great Russian novels, such as Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, for example. While we hear and see many things on the page, the power of the novel comes from the perspective offered by Prince Myshkin, the main character, and Dostoyevsky, himself.
Theater deals in dialogue. Look no further than the works of Shakespeare, and you will realize stage direction is almost always secondary to the words characters speak on stage. In fact, this is the genius of theater, because the same script can be staged 1,000 different ways. This allows the director to set a play in its original time period or possibly update it to a more contemporary setting in order to provide social commentary on current events.
Finally, we have poetry. While the content of a poem is important, unlike the previous forms, when it comes to poetry, the way a writer says something is as important—if not more important—than what the writer actually says. Of course, the best poems combine beautiful form with significant content, but not always. Sometimes a poet is merely trying to push the limits of the form in terms of sound, rhythm, rhyme and so forth, so it’s more about an aesthetic experience than imparting a message.
Now that you have a better sense of the lay of the land, stand back and ask yourself the following question: What are your strengths as a writer? Are you highly visual? Perhaps you should consider screenwriting. Shane Carruth, writer/director of such films as Primer and Upstream Color started out thinking he was a novelist until he realized he was actually writing novelized screenplays, so he quickly switched genres.
Are you a deeply introspective person? Do internal monologues and witty or insightful commentary come naturally to you? Are you an armchair psychologist? Do you like to dig deep into your characters and uncover their hidden thoughts and motivations? Again, I refer you to the great Russian writers, such as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or Chekov, particularly Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which is a master-class in psychological observation and analysis.
Perhaps your characters simply won’t shut up, and you can write pages of witty banter without breaking a sweat. You may never have considered writing a play, but I have a sneaking suspicion you will find your home in the theater.
Or maybe painting cloud pictures is your thing. You abhor clichés. You can’t resist turning a phrase, finding a rhyme or describing something in a completely new and imaginative way, just for the fun of it. If so, perhaps you’re a poet—but you didn’t know it. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Just to be clear, I’m not saying you can’t find success in more than one form. Many writers have multiple areas of strength. I’m also not saying that the strengths of one form can’t be exploited in another. For example, even though voice-over narration is looked upon as a crutch in screenwriting (it’s telling rather than showing), under the right circumstances, it can become a brilliant storytelling device. High concepts and powerful moral dilemmas are the foundation of every form of storytelling, and poetic imagery is what separates literary fiction from mere genre writing. However, the sooner you find your fiction-writing niche, the sooner you’ll hit your stride, freeing you to experiment with any and every fiction-writing form.