18 Mar 2005 @ 19:12, by Craig Lang
As I've described in my log over the last few months, I've been taking a few classes in creative writing. During the Fall, I took a more general class which surveyed writing genres and styles. This term, I am taking a class in writing novels - specifically to get direction in the writing of my book "The Fifth Key". And I have found some interesting relationships between fiction and nonfiction. What I have found is that writing fiction is much harder than writing non-fiction.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've noticed that fiction tends to be dynamic - more about doing, than being. Whereas nonfiction (at least the way I envision it) generally seems to portray the way the world "be's".
Specifically, in fiction there is a need to rapidly capture the essence of a new universe - beginning with what the reader needs to know first. The author needs to portray the scenario with a "show" rather than a "tell" - portraying attributes and actions of the characters by action and simple description, rather than by relating of one's (perhaps more abstract) knowledge of them. As my instructor put it, you need to "show me" (using action), rather than "tell me" how things are...
As a writer mostly of non-fiction, I find this more difficult than others seem to. I've found that it is much easier to portray a world and the relationships within it - i.e. to "tell". It is far easier to describe the intangibles of these. This is much of what non-fiction thrives upon. However for fiction, this is not as true (at least according to our instructor).
Some "novel" thoughts on a Friday afternoon...
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