I just received by snail mail “Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques” by Prof. James Hynes. It’s 24 DVD lectures and a book of the same title by an experienced novelist and fiction writing teacher. Looking forward to getting acquainted with James’ wisdom. Until now, Stephen King’s On Writing and John McPhee’s Draft No. 4 have been my only explicit guides since my lone college creative writing course in the early 1970s. Whatever little else I’ve gleaned about the craft of fiction writing was acquired from reading fiction and trying to improve my writing by imitating particularly effective works.
Fishbein, Ascending means three things to me. First, it’s my psalm of thanksgiving; second, it’s an extended lucid dream; and third, it’s my cautionary tale. Whether or not I effectively could explain to an aspiring writer how to pen a novel, I can explain to my readers how I set about writing Fishbein, Ascending. Perhaps in that telling, I’ll explain why I made certain choices among ten thousand decision points.
Fishbein, Ascending unapologetically diverts the reader from the straight line coming of age tale. It requires concentrated reading for maximum enjoyment and ingestion of food for thought. That’s harder work than the usual “airplane read,” begun at the departure gate and completed by when the plane empties at its destination. This novel is an exercise (by which I mean “drill”) in intelligent skepticism. (That’s a later post, perhaps about Installment 5 or 6.) The reader’s first requirement is not accepting at face value everything relating to the dual narrators. (Sometimes such a speaker is called an “unreliable narrator”; while some unreliable narrators are ignorant of facts, it’s not true here.) At least one of Matt’s or Chago’s tales doesn’t square with events and prevailing conditions from time to time. Some label this “magical realism.” For me, this is the heart of my cautionary tale: Think about what you’re being told as fact – consider its source and the authoritativeness of the speaker. There’s lots of folks who’d prefer that you believe exactly what they’re telling you, whether publicly or in confidence. Sound like someone you’re familiar with?
To me, writing fiction has numerous decision hinge points. The first is, “what’s the message?” The second is “what’s the vehicle?” By vehicle, I include deciding who’s among the cast of characters and what are the story’s locations. The third is identifying the voices and attitudes of the characters. Deciding the vehicle (character and settings) is the most entertaining to me, so it feels the least confounding part of writing fiction. It’s what my next post will address.