Fiction Writing Tips – Page 2 – Robert Plamondon's Fiction

“Am I Good Enough?” My Instant Cure for Imposter Syndrome

That's not the king! It's an imposter! — He’s not the king, he’s an imposter! The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), MGM.

A lot of writers feel like imposters, and not in a good way, like Rudolf Rassendyll in The Prisoner of Zenda. What to do?

Imposter syndrome, obviously, is when you feel like an imposter without actually being one, or at least not on purpose. It not only makes writers feel bad, it makes them hesitate to share their work with readers—the ultimate artistic tragedy! Again, what to do?

Well, several things, but let’s start by recalibrating your expectations. Against all the evidence, we tend to believe that all successful authors write really well: far better than we do. But do they? Let’s find out!

Who’s the Imposter Now? Check out the Bottom of the Amazon Top 100 List

It’s time to take a look at successful books in your niche and see how good the worst of them are. You can do this for free with the Search Inside the Book or Kindle Free Sample features.

Obviously, if you write as well as the worst stories on the Top 100 list, you’re good enough for the Top 100 list. Maybe just barely, but good enough nonetheless. How good is that? Let’s find out.

Continue reading ““Am I Good Enough?” My Instant Cure for Imposter Syndrome”

All About the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula: Step-by-Step Story Creation

Lester Dent was the creator of the classic pulp-fiction hero, Doc Savage, and a powerful story-creation formula, The Lester Dent Master Fiction Plot, published in 1939. I’ve presented it below, fleshing it out where needed with my own commentary.

From here on out, Dent’s words are shown in normal text, while mine are in italics.

The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot

This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6,000-word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western, and war/air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words. Continue reading “All About the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula: Step-by-Step Story Creation”

Using First-Person POV for Characters With Attitude

Photo credit: *The Letter Writer* by Johanne Mathilde Dietrichson.

If you have a main character who’s articulate and has plenty of attitude, then first-person narration has more sizzle and sparkle than a more neutral third-person viewpoint.

Why? Because a first-person narrator can tell their tale with passion and conviction. This is quite hard to do with third-person narration.

One of my stories starts like this:

My boyfriend is a real piece of work. Oh, I’m sure you’ve heard of girls whose boyfriends are vampires, werewolves, or even zombies. Those girls are lightweights. I don’t mean to brag, but they wouldn’t last five minutes with my boyfriend. Not that Frank is undead or anything. That would be too easy.

That’s Jen. She has a sharp tongue and a soft heart and her storytelling gives the reader both barrels. Continue reading “Using First-Person POV for Characters With Attitude”

Write Like You Talk. No, Seriously!

Lots of great talkers are terrible writers. Put a pen in their hand and they become dull and inarticulate. Why is that?

I’ll give you a hint: I saw a TV program once that showed kids selling goods at a farmer’s market in Brazil. They made change effortlessly and with near-perfect accuracy. But when researchers asked them to use the arithmetic they’d been taught in school, they became slow, hesitant, and inaccurate.

It’s the same with writing. In school, we’re taught a cumbersome approach that cuts us off from our existing skills as completely as the guillotine cut off Marie Antoinette’s head. That isn’t a good look!

Why do schools do this? Not my problem. This isn’t about fixing the educational system: it’s about you.

It’s the same thing with public speaking. People who are fascinating when you talk to them at lunch become awful if you put them on a stage. But we’re not going to fix that one today.

If you can tell an interesting story without having your audience run away three times out of five, you already have what it takes to be a writer.

Any halfway decent talker can be an interesting writer. You just have to write as entertainingly as you speak. The “making stuff up” part of fiction writing is less of a problem. Channeling a lifetime of telling whoppers into writing comes more naturally.

I admit that you’ll eventually need to learn all the nuts and bolts of the written word: how to place paragraph breaks non-randomly, for instance. But the things you were taught in school that still give you that deer-in-the-headlights look today aren’t that important. Some were never important in the first place. The others you’ll pick up soon enough. In writing, the main thing is to get your story written at all, because you can’t fix it until it exists.

Surf the Colloquial Wave

The trend in writing over the past hundred years or so has been informality. These days, professional writing (and especially fiction) has its tie missing and its sleeves rolled up. It’s been a long time since the button-down look has been fashionable.