What is Fiction, How Does it Work?

“The value of great fiction… is not just that it entertains us or distracts us from our troubles, not just that it broadens our knowledge of people and places, but also that it helps us to know what we believe, reinforces those qualities that are noblest in us, leads us to feel uneasy about our faults and limitations.” --- John Gardner, The Art of Fiction

The art is the fiction – the craft is how to write it. To write effective fiction, the hopeful fiction writer must have a firm grasp on both of these.
A well-versed fiction writer writes with the reader in mind. Once your story is complete, your story lives on only in the reader.

“When a book is not passing under the eye of the reader, when it is on a shelf, it is nothing but ink and paper and cloth – an artifact… It lives only in the repeated experience of it, in the memories of those who have experienced it, and in the minds of those who come to it.” ---William Sloane, The Craft of Writing.


“You promise the story will be told in terms of a people. True, you can dress those people in rabbit skins, as Richard Adams did in Watership Down, or in hobbit skins, as Tolkien did in his famous trilogy. But if you’ve read those books, you know that Adams’s rabbits were people and Tolkien’s hobbits were people, too. They thought like people, they acted like people. The story wouldn’t have meant anything to us if they hadn’t.
You promise that they story will have an end – as well as a beginning and a middle. Why mention the end first? One of the greatest frustrations in reading a story is getting to the end and saying, “That’s it?” A piece of fiction needs a satisfying ending. That doesn’t mean everything has to be resolved; the best, most satisfying fiction often leaves some things open. But your readers need you to bring the main conflicts to some sort of conclusion. They need, in the book’s language and rhythm, a strong sense of finality.
Learn to see your fiction as your readers will.”
--- Dave Lambert


“Good writing is always positive, it is always entertaining or useful or both. It is not a puzzle. Or a sermon. Or executed by a superior person for inferiors … . Great writing and writers about greatness have assumed greatness in their readers. Shakespeare assumes the king and the magician and the coward and the hero in everyone.” --- William Sloane, The Craft of Writing



Many Christian novelist, like myself, find it difficult to in learning to think properly about their reader. Although Scriptures tell us many times to stay humble, we seem to creep the arrogance side inside our book too often. We seem to have this conceited excellency about us because we think of ourselves as having written a book and those ignorant readers have never touched pen to paper before. We grow angry on thinking that the reader just might disagree with our views of abortion, theology, morality, politics, or even imagination.

“The writer of fiction cannot think of himself as morally superior to his readers. We have to respect them as our equals, intellectually and morally.
Arrogance is a particular danger for those who write for young people. Many of us have written for them not because we love and admire them and assume greatness in them, but because we want them to become more like us. Instead, our goal should be to humbly invite young people to join us in our quest to become more like Christ. Authors of the best, most effective fiction for young readers convey no sense of superiority. Young people who have made the Harry Potter books best-sellers never sense that J.K. Rowling is writing down to them. Those who decry the content of her books would do well to make their own fiction as respectful as their readers as hers.” --- Dave Lambert


“One of the chief mistakes a writer can make is to allow or force the reader’s mind to be distracted, even momentarily, from the fictional dream… The writer distracts the reader – breaks the film, if you will – when by some slip of technique or egoistic intrusion he allows or forces the reader to stop thinking about the story (stop ‘seeing’ the story) and think about something else.” --- John Gardner


“We’ve all had the experience of immersing ourselves in a short story or novel so completely, we’re not even aware of holding a book. Then blam! We stumble across some awkward exposition, clumsy bit of dialogue, or poorly motivated action. Immediately, we’re aware that we’re reading a book. The author went to great lengths to put is in a fictional dream world, and then blew it.” --- Dave Lambert


Isn’t it true what Dave Lambert says here? For hours on end we sit and allow our minds to soar to worlds never imaginable while our eyes scan black and white words on a page that is so invisible to us. Our heart races when a characters legs run wild across the sands of a beach, our hands begin to sweat as the wild animal sinks his claws deeper into the flesh of our favourite hero, and our mind is beginning to ache with all the excitement, fear, and joy wrapped up in one sentence. But the only thing worst than having someone enter our silent abode of our rich world of reading with an abrupt statement such as, “didn’t you forget to take out the trash?” is the most horrid and distasteful words printed on the page that distorts all we have been sinking our minds into. The beautiful words printed on the page that so envelop our every fiber of being comes crashing down with a fatal blow when the wrong words are chosen for a perfect sentence, or the writer begins to write too quickly and dashes through that intense moment of intrigue. “How dare he!” We exclaim as we would if that person walked into our room exclaiming that the trash hadn’t been taken out. Our thoughts of this heroic writer are almost blown to bits by this one fatal mistake he has made. We writers must take into account that too many times we do the same thing. We become so fascinated with our own writing that we assume that no one could declare our writing to be repugnant. We must never forget to write for the reader, to think like the reader, but at the same time bring in all those little points that the reader might never have expected.


“How does a novelist create the fictional dream? By doing well all the things a novelist must do: creating believable, interesting, memorable characters; putting credible, economic dialogue in their mouths; moving smoothly from one well-crafted scene to the next; handling deftly the complexities of plot; giving the reader enough detail to envision your setting; and so on.
Like learning to play the piano, learning to write fiction is not a matter of memorizing a set of rules. It’s a matter of mastering a set of techniques. The artist – and fiction writer are artists – who desires to excel at fiction must dedicate himself to mastering them. As you’ve heard it said: How does one learn to write? By writing and writing and writing! That’s because the writing itself is your practice. Every page of fictional narrative you write is like that half-hour at the piano keys, honing your skills.” --- Dave Lambert


Writer you must write, you must read, and you must never forget that writing is truly an art, an art for the very few chosen. True, books by the thousands have been printed by so many authors, but only the true writer knows how to shape his words perfectly so as to draw the reader in, make him feel as one of the characters, allow him to love the author, and cause him too feel as one with the writer.
For the love of Christ, and for His honour and glory, we must never forget to place those glorious points into our beloved story that allows the reader to see Christ in so many ways. Much like Jesus did with his parables, allowing the listener to hear a “typical” story and then walk away and exclaim, “I have been defrauded, that man spoke of Christ without my knowing. He was speaking of me when he spoke of that vile serpent, and he was speaking of the Saviour I so need when he described the perfectness of that spotless lamb. I listened intently without even knowing I was hearing a story about my Saviour. Now I know, I need Him!”
Reader, write, write, write, and read, read, read!