The Cambridge introduction to creative writing

The practice of fiction
161
A
I M Imitation of style, subject and point of view are useful training. Writers leave room for the reader to do some work, to negotiate a deliberate fissure and write their own experience into that space. Filling these fissures allows you to share this sense of fiction’s continuum with the reader. You can replicate the effect in your own work. This game is also one way to begin creating anew story,
‘in dialogue with a known story.
Form and structure
In Chapter
Three
, we introduced the practical notion that design leads to more surprises in writing than free expression, and that form, such as patterns and restrictions, liberates creativity and imagination. Form in fiction can be as specific and as conscious a decision as choosing to write in the form of a journal, a blog, or letters (epistolary, or emails between characters, or by choosing not to use the letter e in your story. Form is simply a decision about the way your piece is written, and your final decision may take several drafts and unsuccessful trials before you realise which suits the material best, and carries the story inevitably. Did you know that Jane Austen initially wrote Pride
and Prejudice as an epistolary novel?
Deciding your form
Some writers use the terms form and structure interchangeably because it is almost impossible to separate them in the act of writing. The structures of literary fiction allow you to frame your decision the architecture of all the action how you place incidents, and when where you position and resolve conflicts whether you write the piece as a third-person narrative, or as a rapid- fire burst of taut first-person narratives from the point of view of each of its several characters. The most important matter fora new writer is that they understand the structure they have chosen, and wide reading will help develop this.
The categories of fiction (which many writers also call the forms of fiction, such as novels, short stories and flash fiction, are like different species of a literary genus. Although many understand these forms to mean differences in length, they also refer to differences in structure, and the demands made by them. In this way, they mirror some of the expectations and restrictions setup by using verse forms in poetry. However, calling one form of fiction by a name is not an exercise in Linnaean classification each form flows quite

162
Creative writing
fluidly through another. As Ailsa Cox explains in Writing Short Stories, there is obsession among creative writers about the classification of literary forms because of a question of status. Historically, the novel has been the dominant form, and it is still difficult to establish a literary career based purely on short fiction (2005: 3). However, this business of status is not your war – not yet.
One challenge is that you might not know at first which forms are the most appropriate for your story. Again, you must trial several to find the one that works. You might well have some notion beforehand. For example, if you feel your story is thorny with events, swarming with characters and powered by a succession of conflicts, then you are probably writing a novel. If you wish to write about a moment of significance, some life-changing event that deals with,
say, one character, then your miniaturist instinct is creating a short story. If you want to hit-and-run the reader, and then quickly shift out of view, flash fiction fits the action. Experiment with all of them. Like poetic forms, the choice you take with the form and structure of fiction will automatically begin to shape what you can do, eliminating multiple possibilities at a stroke.

Download 2.89 Mb.

Share with your friends: