It’s quite trendy to attend different workshops and seminars because learning is a hype nowadays. Anyone who is good at some activity can organize a lecture or class to share his/her knowledge with others. And it’s pretty cool because apart from the knowledge you gain, you can meet new people, network and find a lot of beneficial opportunities (if we talk about physical seminars).
With the online age, this whole process has become even easier and much cheaper. Getting more popular, offline seminars have started to charge considerable entry fees, and Internet educational platforms have seized this opportunity. Now they provide different online courses for a token payment or even for free, but in order to obtain and train the skills you want to improve, especially fiction writing, you need to devote a great deal of time and efforts for e-classes.
As you can see, in available case scenarios you must spend either money or many hours to achieve your goal. But we here offer you to do one thing first: follow nine core described below principles, that each fiction writing class brags about, to save time and funds. If they are not enough, online courses and workshops are not going anywhere.
1. Grammar Is Your Everything
You can’t be perceived seriously if you make spelling, punctuation or syntax mistakes. The modern audience is quite demanding and picky, so don’t make them toss you into the category of low-quality writers.
2. Show, Don’t Tell
Well, this is probably the phrase that no fiction writing workshop does without. Use precise and descriptive language and pay attention to details as they tell the story much better than simple statements.
3. Make It Easy to Follow Your Line of Thought
Don’t jump from one action to another without the relevant transition. You need to create a smooth flow of events, dialogues, etc., that don’t disrupt, but gradually change from one scene to another.
4. Create a Tone Consistent with the Content
If your main character is a teenage boy from a bad neighborhood, make sure he doesn’t speak like a college professor.
5. Hold Your Horses with Adjectives and Adverbs
We know how difficult it is to keep all the adverbs and adjectives under restraint. But it’s better to use “to stare” than “to gaze intently”.
6. Opt for Action
The readers are usually bored with long descriptions. They desire action because this makes the story more interesting. So, use this peculiarity to make your writing more engaging.
7. Work out the Mechanics of Dialogues
Check the right punctuation rules for dialogue settings and the correct introduction of participant’s phrases.
8. Start with the Past Tense
If you’re a newly-minted writer, don’t play with all the tenses you know. Just use the Past Tense which is perfect for narration, and stay on the safe side.
9. Keep the Exclamation Under Control
It’s tempting to include exclamation marks every time there is an emotional scene. But statistically, it’s a good practice to use 2-3 of them per 100 thousand words in prose.
These nine main points will help you to get started with the fiction writing. However, as we said before, if they don’t work for you in such a form, look for the next writing seminar and share your experience with us!