Sticky Notes for Fiction Writers Part 2

<Part 1 here>

Yesterday I posted 10 possibly useful points from my notes taken from an informal discussion with Tom Grimes. Here are the rest of them.

1. Sentences are fiction’s bedrock. Write sentences that show aesthetic integrity as opposed to careless, sloppy, cliched, or imprecise sentences.
2. Characters’ actions have to be understood on a purely functional level. Motivation has to be irrefutable.
3. Use your five senses. What does a place–any place–look, sound, smell, taste, and feel like? transform these into words.
4. The world is chaos. Artful fiction satisfied our human desire for order, and excavates meaning from the rubble of incomprehension.
5. Listen. Watch. Observe the minutest details.
6. Revise endlessly until you find your narrator’s voice.
7. Make yourself inconspicuous and pay close attention at the same time.
8. Develop a sense of form and structure. Develop sentence precision. Landscapes sharply drawn, sensual imagery and appropriate metaphor.
9. Dramatic action always. Dramatic action always has consequences.
10. Develop a distinctive voice.
11. Literature exists inside you, not outside you. It’s dynamic, not static.

I will leave you to interpret some of the more enigmatic of these points.

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