Tutorial | Fiction Writing
Seeing through the torrent of time.
All stories exist simultaneously, you have to look for the one you want to tell.
If you’re trying to write fiction, somehow there is too much information and never enough to give you a good footing, we’re drowning in advice. I think I understand a little of the process, let me explain, perhaps it will get your feet on solid ground.
Where’s the story?
Michelangelo famously said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” He did this by removing all the extra bits of stone. That’s exactly what finding a story is like. In a character’s life, all kinds of things are happening from the mundane to the mystical. Star craft may be warping in and out of time, armies may be on the march, and your character may be looking for a sandwich. How do you know what’s important? Where is the story in the tumult of a character’s life?
Somewhere in the rushing torrent of things that are happening, there is a distinct storyline. A continuous narrative of events when taken together, makes up a chain of events that has meaning for our main character. We follow characters along their chains of events, but that’s not the story. That’s just stuff happening…
