These days, you are besieged by online courses purporting to teach you how to write fiction. These are seldom invented by successful fiction writers. Rather, such “courses” are taught by people who believe they have found formulae that, if followed, will result in a best-seller. That the best-seller may be dreck doesn’t matter.
Edith Wharton wrote, “One is sometimes tempted to think that the generation which has invented the ‘fiction course’ is getting the fiction it deserves. At any rate it is fostering in its young writers the conviction that art is neither long nor arduous, and perhaps blinding them to the fact that notoriety and mediocrity are often interchangeable terms….The trade-wind in fiction undoubtedly drives many beginners along the line of least resistance, and holds them there.”
No course will take you beyond that line. What will do it is fiction itself. Instead of spending $19.95 on something with a title like “How To Write That Novel Of Yours,” spend it on The Red And The Black. Edith Wharton herself teaches you admirably in The Age of Innocence. Almost anything by Dickens. The James Joyce who wrote Dubliners. The Toni Morrison of Beloved. Anything by Jane Austen. The Red Badge of Courage. Colson Whitehead. Love in the Time of Cholera. Frank O’Connor. All the Light We Cannot See. There are many, many others, all of whom transcend the how-to-write-fiction course simply by being so compelling in the stories they tell, and especially in the ways they are told.
Read those. Study them carefully. Figure out how they do it. There lies your course.
© Copyright 2022. Terence Clarke. All rights reserved.
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Wow! The pitfalls of the publishing business---I've been there! I'm thrilled you've been able to make self-publishing work for you.