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Fundamentals of Fiction Writing Online Fiction Writing Course

My new online writing class, Fundamentals of Fiction Writing, is now open for enrollment. This is a self-paced, nine-week course. You may begin the class at any time.

In this course, you will learn how to write a story or novel using the fundamental building blocks of fiction. The course is divided into nine sections. Each craft section focuses on an essential element of narrative craft. Through video and written lectures, you will learn the tools you need to begin writing fiction:

Characterization
Point of View
Setting and Description
Dialogue
Plot
Structure

In the final week, we will focus on revision, a necessary step to getting your work out into the world.

Each section includes writing exercises to help you practice what you’ve learned and deepen your understanding of the material, as well as a discussion forum and suggestions for further reading.

Who should take this class:

If you’ve always wanted to write a story or novel but don’t know where to begin, or if you took a couple of writing classes in the past and want to brush up on your knowledge and reinvigorate your writing practice, this course is for you. Led by a New York Times bestselling author with more than a decade of experience teaching creative writing at the university level, Fundamentals of Fiction Writing provides a great foundation for anyone interested in writing short stories, novels, or novellas.

Although this is not a critique class, your enrollment entitles you to a free one-hour Google hangout, during which I will answer student questions. You can also subscribe to the workshop add-on to get one-on-one critiques from the instructor.

The regular tuition for Fundamentals of Fiction Writing is $79, but readers of this blog can enroll in July for just $49.

Use coupon code serif to get 30% off in July, 2014. (expires June 31, 2014).

Or follow this link to get the discounted rate.

A Handful of Glorious Pages

Are you a novelist, a short story writer, or both?

I’m currently reading Ann Patchett’s essay collection, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, which chronicles Patchett’s journey to becoming a writer. There are plenty of quotable passages in the book, but one of my favorite has to do with the short story form:

Love the short story for what it is: a handful of glorious pages that take you someplace you never knew you wanted to go.

As both a novelist and a short story writer, I can tell you that I love the way stories happen: you write a sentence, and then another sentence, and a few weeks and twenty or so pages later, you have arrived at a totally unexpected destination.How does this differ from writing a novel? With a novel, while I don’t know exactly where I’m going or where and how the novel will end or what tangents it will take, I do usually begin with a general sense of direction. A sense of direction is important, because I know that a novel will require an investment of at least a couple of years. So I begin with a setting, a character, and a problem that needs to be solved or a question that begs to be answered.

In my forthcoming novel, Golden State, for example, I began with two questions: 1) What would happen if California tried to secede from the nation in the present day? 2) What if the narrator’s estranged sister suddenly reappeared in her life? The novel was built from these questions, which married the personal with the political in a way that was very enjoyable to write and, I’ll admit, quite challenging to orchestrate.

With a short story, I feel more free, because I know my investment of time will be much shorter. I often don’t know what the problem is when I begin, or even who the major players are. I start instead with language–a series of words that present themselves in my brain and somehow compel me to follow them with other words.

Many novelists write only novels. Some short story writers write only stories. But the vast majority of published fiction writers do –or have done–some combination of both. Fiction writers frequently debut with a story collection, which is followed by a novel. One reason for this pattern, I believe, is that short stories tend to be the preferred form in graduate writing programs, so many writers come out of their MFA program with a story collection in near-publishable shape. After the writer gets a few good reviews and catches an agent’s eye with a story collection, he or she either a) decides that it would be fun to write a novel or b) concedes to the demands of the marketplace, which favors novels over story collections.

As for me, writing novels is my bread and butter, and I never feel quite whole unless I’m working on a book-length project. In fact, I can’t remember a time in the past twelve years when I wasn’t working on a book! But there is sustenance to be had in short stories too, and when I am feeling tired of my novel-in-progress, or antsy, or simply inspired in a different direction, I often begin a short story.

When you are feeling at wits’ end about your novel, I encourage you to set it aside for an hour or day or a week and begin a short story instead. It is possible that the writing of the story will push you back, joyfully, to your novel, and that you will abandon the story in short order for the bigger project. But it is also possible that you will sink blissfully into the freedom of the story, and that you will emerge, days or weeks later, with “a handful of glorious pages.”

As always, happy writing! Please join the conversation on twitter, stop by my facebook page, or read (and submit) good stories at Fiction Attic.

Book Writing – Should You Outline Your Novel?

People are always asking me if I outline my novels before I begin.

Never.

I work associatively and thematically. For example, The Year of Fog is a novel about a missing child. But to say it’s a novel about a missing child is somewhat misleading. The major plot line of the novel is the search for a missing child. But the novel also tackles a few other things: memory, photography, and first love.

As I researched the novel, I wrote up small pieces, one to two pages each, about memory: memory case studies, interesting facts about memories, how memories are recorded and stored, etc. All of these items, I kept together with one paperclip. Thus The Paperclip Method was, inadvertently, born. My work on photography included quotes and research from Henry Horensteins classic text, Black and White photography, memories of my own time spent in darkrooms as a college student, notes on the use of the camera that my narrator, Abby, used (the Holga), etc. Another paperclip.

The first page of any stack is just a blank white page with a handwritten identifier: Photography, memory, the search, Jake, Emma. Eventually, all of the stacks go on the dining room floor. It looks something like this. My cat Phoebe loves this part of the process. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I can hear her moving things around. Seriously.

Believe it or not, that mess of papers on the floor of my dining room is now in galleys over at Random House. Which is to say that, what looks like nothing does become something, if you just have the patience to see it through. For the longest time, as I was working on that novel, it didn’t look as though it would ever come together. For the longest time, I was ready to give up. But then, in the end, it did. The process I’ve grown to trust once again paid off.

So, if your outline is giving you a headache, if your plan has gone all awry, take a step back. Ditch the outline. Write two pages about something that matters to you. Tomorrow, write another two pages. Keep at it. Eventually, you’ll have enough pages to spread out across your dining room floor.

Want to put The Paperclip Method into practice? Learn more about the method here.

How to Submit a Story for Publication

So you’ve written a story, revised it, and are ready to send it out. Here are a few tips for submitting your stories for publication to literary journals and other magazines.

• Visit the magazine’s website to see what they publish. Read a few stories. Pay attention to their submission guidelines.

If the literary magazine asks for a cover letter with your submission, make it brief. Your letter should mention where you’ve published in the past, and should include a very short bio. Your cover letter should NOT explain or praise the story. That is very bad form, and will likely result in your story being deleted before it is even read.

• Do submit to more than one place at once. This is called a simultaneous submission. Five is a good number to start with. Include the wording, “This is a simultaneous submission” at the end of your cover letter.

• Never send a publication a second story before the editors have responded to the first.

• Never call to check on the progress of your submission.

• Shorter stories are more likely to be accepted than very long stories.

• Always double-space your story, use one-inch margins, and indent every paragraph!

Here are some two great resources for anyone looking to submit fiction:

Newpages.com—litmags, publishers, and book reviews
www.webdelsol.com–Contains many useful links to literary magazines and resources for writers.
pw.org – the Poets and Writers website features ongoing calls for submissions

More great resources to check out before you submit:
• Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market (Writer’s Digest Books)–This is probably the best; it covers many of the better publications with detailed descriptions of tastes, editorial guidelines, payment, and rights.

• Pushcart Prize Anthology (Pushcart Press)–Annual anthology of the best of literary magazines and presses selected by editors themselves; you’ll not only find fiction in here, but a list addresses of prize-winning magazines and presses.

For current publishing contests, check out the Writer’s Chronicle, published by the Associated Writing Programs (www.awpwriter.org) and Poets and Writers Magazine (my personal favorite), which has upcoming deadlines for literary contests, as well as calls for submissions.

Some of my favorite literary magazines, in no particular order

Fourteen Hills
The Sun
Other Voices
Alaska Quarterly Review
Mid-American Review
Ploughshares
Granta
Boulevard
Story Quarterly
Quick Fiction Online
CutBank
South Carolina
Review
Missouri Review
Bellevue Literary Review
Mississippi Review
Gulf Coast
Identity Theory
North Dakota Quarterly

Any publication is a boon and a definite validation of your talent, but here are the magazines that can really jump-start a career: The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Zoetrope, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review. It never hurts to send to the major magazines as long as you’re sending out a bulk submission.

Learn how to write short stories in my online course Master the Short Story.