Fishing for Readers: Advice on Writing Genre Fiction

You want to write fiction. Not just any fiction – you want to write stories that people will talk about and remember. You want to hook readers with your brilliant prose and reel them in, one after another. You want to feel that thrill of success, followed by another one, a bigger one. You want bragging rights, not just another fish tale. (“You should have seen the reader that got away; I swear he was THIS big…”) When you talk about your ambition, you get a lot of advice. Most of what you hear is a variant of “Don’t quit your day job” or that old chestnut “Write what you know”. So, you make sure you have a steady income and you review your personal knowledge base, but you still end up staring at a blinking cursor. After an hour or two, some twisted part of your mind is convinced that this bit of technology is mocking you. You wonder where you left the hammer (that’ll take care of the crafty mouse). This would be a good time to take a break (away from blunt objects) and think about how you write.

Relax. This won’t hurt a bit. Writing fiction is a craft, not unlike making wooden toys. You start with a shape in mind and some sort of plan or blueprint. You might be a person who isn’t comfortable unless you know everything you’re going to do, and in what order. Writing fiction without a detailed outline is probably painful for you. Conversely, you might draft a bare outline and then not want to write the story; why bother, if you already know what’s going to happen? Then, you are better off writing a very rough first draft and fixing your errors in the next versions.

Whatever method you use, all stories start with a thought. Do you close your eyes and see a grassy meadow filled with bright red poppies, as far as the eye can see? (MGM has copyrighted that image; their attorneys will be in touch.) Did you ever believe (in a tiny corner of your heart) that the monster [under your bed/ in your closet] was real and adults told you it wasn’t because they were too scared to look? Do you wonder why that beautiful skinny blonde is hugging the large slob wearing the Star Trek tee shirt and the ‘Where the f-ck is Kansas’ baseball cap? Do you wish you could kill your [teacher, fellow student, roommate, ex-lover, ex-friend, total stranger who cut you off in traffic] and get away with it, but then you feel guilty for even thinking about it because he/she is really not that bad, and what kind of twisted thought is that to have, even for a minute? Breathe. Then realize that it is not your fault – you have an overly developed sense of curiosity and imagination; it is part of what makes you a writer. If you don’t ask ‘what if’, then you don’t write the answer (fiction).

You have a thought. Maybe it is an idea for a plot point, or a vivid setting, or a fragment of a dream. What starts the story is the thought. Characters make the story memorable. The first thing you want to do is design a character to suit your initial thought. Who will walk through that field of poppies (er, I mean that field of unspecified brightly colored flowers of some sort)? Who is that beautiful skinny blonde, anyway? What is it about that person you are mad at that enrages you? You may want to write timeless literary texts that showcase a person or place or era. I wish you luck and redirect you to the question of character building because I am a craftsperson, not an artist, and I write what I know. So, I will demonstrate the technique of crafting characters for various genres in popular fiction.

Let’s start at the beginning, with a basic sketch. Remember the beautiful skinny blonde with the fat guy in the Star Trek tee shirt and the ‘Where the f-ck is Kansas’ baseball cap? They’re gone, to class, to lunch, to Cleveland, but you still have an image of these early twenty-something students in your mind’s eye. You can sit down and write the details you want to use.

The woman was between five foot two and five foot four, had shoulder-length ash blonde hair with wide platinum blonde highlights (Miss Clairol 27), cornflower blue eyes, and a full figure. She was wearing low-riding hip hugger jeans, the kind that are supposed to show off your incredible muscle tone and part of your pelvic bones (assuming that you have incredible muscle tone and have actually seen your pelvic bones recently) and a belly-baring, low cut powder-blue cotton shirt. She did not have a flat stomach, although she was not fat, either. She was, however, top heavy enough to rouse a prurient curiosity for a moment; if she breathed really deep, would she fall out of the shirt, and was the bra you hope she was wearing enough to prevent an indecent exposure charge if she did fall out if the shirt? She wore platform flip-flops and her toenails were painted the same shade of blue as her shirt (which was still doing a great job caging the cleavage). [On a side note, my second grade teacher, who was full-figured in every sense, wore a halter top to school one day and she fell out of it. After that, the school dress code was amended to exclude halter tops of any kind. I resented it at the time, as I would not even have cleavage for several years and the school lacked air conditioning.]

The man was four to six inches taller than the woman. He wore jeans (standard button fly) with the tee shirt and black athletic shoes. He was out of shape, had a peach fuzz beard, wore sunglasses under the cap, and had brown hair (messy, from what you could see). His clothes fit and they were clean and not wrinkled. He had been doing most of the talking, his large hands gesturing wildly, almost hitting a passerby once.
So, you know where they are (on the sidewalk where you first saw them, talking in low tones) and what they look like. Now what? It is time to ask why and what if: why are they on the sidewalk, why are they dressed the way they are, and what if… Here’s where the genres come into play. A rule of thumb is if you like to read it, you will probably like to write it.

ROMANCE: This genre is about romantic relationships, usually in a positive light. So the blonde and the guy in the cap are supposed to fall in love. But first, they need names; for this category, let’s call them Robert and Elizabeth, after the Brownings. They have physical descriptions and names – now, we need conflict. The best conflict is caused by character traits, whether they are flaws or strengths. At a casual first glance, this couple seems lopsided because she is beautiful and he is only average; an observer’s first thought may be that she could do better. You could play into that or against it. Let’s say that they have known each other throughout high school and the first year of college. Scenario One: She has had a crush on him since the day he killed a garter snake in her back yard, but he has never given her any hint that he wanted to date her; she wonders if there is something about her that he doesn’t like. He, on the other hand, thinks she is out of his league and doesn’t want to hurt the friendship, since that’s all he’ll ever have. Scenario Two: He’s had a crush on her for years; she barely noticed him until they started college, where she was the fish out of water. Now, she wants him to notice her. Scenario Three: She has had a crush on him since he won the science fair, but he only dates people he considers smart or interesting and she does not qualify. Can she change his mind?

Maybe Robert looks the way he does because he has given up trying to be one of the beautiful people. Maybe Elizabeth wears the revealing clothes to catch his attention. If you want to add comedy, you could weave in dueling wardrobes; every time she wears something more eye-catching, he wears something that clashes with it. Maybe Robert writes plays and Elizabeth is an actress, so they see each other nearly every day and she is always trying out a new look. One day she wears a poodle skirt, knit shirt, bobby socks, saddle shoes, and a pony tail (not a hair out of place) and he shows up styling ‘early Seattle grunge’; she wears prim business suits and he copies Billy Idol, complete with safety pin through the nose and trademark sneer. This not only engages the reader, but it reveals that Robert and Elizabeth are alike, even compatible.

MYSTERY: New genre, new names. How about Nick and Nora? Too bad, you’re not here to argue. Change it in the rewrite. Nick and Nora may have a romantic relationship, but it is not the focus of the story, nor is it necessary. They could be siblings. But, since we paired people who looked just like them a minute ago, let’s assume that they have couple potential and no common DNA. In the mystery genre, the point of the story is usually to solve a murder, so we start with a corpse. Scenario One: A friend of Nora’s older sister has been murdered. This friend was [someone who shared some characteristic with that person you wished you could kill in paragraph three – shh] a student on campus, involved in all sorts of groups and organizations, making enemies everywhere. Nora, a third year criminal science major, decides to investigate – after all, her sister is a suspect. Unfortunately, Nick knows that she’s not a student. He is. He agrees to pretend to be her significant other to give her a reason to be on campus. Scenario Two: Nick is accused of murder. Nora, who knew him in high school, leaves her criminal science studies long enough to prove his innocence. Nick resents what he thinks of as Nora using his problems as field research. Scenario Three: Nora is accused of murder. Nick leaves his musical studies long enough to help her solve the puzzle; after all, music is math-based, as are most logic problems. In any of these scenarios, his outfit is his idea of a disguise and he finds her revealing outfit hilarious.

SUSPENSE/THRILLER: Steven, an English major, has just won a prize for best first novel. His wife is thrilled; she would have come to the reading, but the baby was running a slight fever. He is on top of the world. He knew his looks and intelligence were average, but finally he found a strong talent in writing. Saundra, a beautiful blonde, asks him to sign her copy of his book. She is the first to ask. Euphoric (and a little silly), he signs the inside page the way he absently signed birthday cards for relatives: “With love, from Steven”. She takes him at his word and plans their future together. He slowly realizes she’s stalking him and feels afraid, but no one believes that she would go after him with no encouragement. What will he do? In a suspense/thriller, you have to pick a character to be your protagonist; the other becomes the antagonist by default. The reader wants to know more about Steven than Saundra and most of the time, the narrative is from his point of view. Maybe Steven is shy; maybe he is flattered by the attention at first, and then feels guilty when he realizes that she is obsessed. There are a lot of ways to spin this character to make compelling drama.

HORROR: Saundra, a beautiful blonde History major, reads the first novel by Steven, another student on campus and realizes that the main character is just like her, the first half of the novel describes events that have actually taken place in her life, and her character dies in the last chapter. What is she going to do? Will she confront him directly? Will she break into his apartment, looking for clues? Will she hop a plane to Reno? That depends on her character traits.

FANTASY/SCIENCE FICTION: Saundra and Steven buy their dream home with the money from first novel grant. The problem is they have a nosy neighbor. The bigger problem is their neighbor lives in a cave below the basement of their house. The biggest problem is that their neighbor is an exiled goblin prince who has become the rallying point in an Otherworld civil war. Where is the Neighborhood Watch when you need them? Will Saundra demand a refund? Will Steven find this fascinating? Will Saundra use their neighbor’s problem as a topic for her dissertation? How will they react? What characteristics do they have that will eventually win out over incredible odds (because they are so alien to the goblins that the goblins have no defense)?

The main things to remember when crafting character are:
Tags
Traits
Loves & Fears

Tags are small things about the character’s appearance or personality that can be described in five words or less; they serve as reminders to the readers of who the character is (ex. a specific shade of eye color – cornflower blue).

Traits, in this instance, are dominant aspects of a character’s personality that fuel their behaviors (ex. an edgy character may always want to sit with his/her back to the wall, frequently scan the area, and jump to conclusions with minimal evidence).

Loves and fears are pairs that are vitally important to create compelling fiction. You must show the reader what your character values above all else, show how happy this person, place or thing makes your character, how devastated he/she would be without it. Then, you must threaten to blow that most valued thing to Kingdom Come, metaphorically speaking.

You bait the hook by crafting characters with interesting and offbeat tags and traits. You set the hook by inviting the reader to share your character’s joy in [being near the person of his/her dreams, having his/her talent rewarded, receiving large amounts of cash, owning his/her first home] the valued thing. Once the reader has experienced the joy vicariously through your character, the reader must also have an emotional investment in protecting the valued thing. You can reel him in. The reader wants to know what will happen. If you tell a story that is true to character, then the character (and your story) will live on in the reader’s memory. That’s not just a fish tale.