Fiction Writing and Style Guide

So You Want to Write

When you decide to write a story there are many things you need to think about, and sort out, before you even start to write the story itself. The following list is not a comprehensive one, but it does identify most of the major decisions you have to deal with first. Later I'll go into each item in more detail.

Can I handle rejection and abuse?

What is the intended audience?

Will I charge for it, or make it free?

How will I publicise my story?

Which presentation media: on-line or print or both?

All these questions need very clear and definitive answers before you start a single word of what you want to write, because they will strongly affect the way you write the story or document, and how you present it to the world. Changing your mind after you get started will leave your material looking unprofessional, or it will require a lot of extra work to fix it, often much more work than what it did to write it in the first place.

The reason is the answers to these questions decide how your story will appear to the reader. Different formats are usually required for different media and different subjects. How you write an article for a group of academics is totally different to writing a text book, a technical manual, a love story, an action adventure novel, or an erotic novel. Each has it's own subset of rules that are applied to how it should be written and look. Many have very similar rules, while some are not the same.

For example, technical manuals are expected to be extremely brief with a minimal number of adjectives, and are set out in dot point lists wherever possible. Academic works usually have a lot of acronyms and terms that are common usage within the field of study the work is being written for. Text books are expected to have a lot of acronyms and terms used in the field it's about, but it's also expected to have very simplified definitions and explanations of them in a Glossary list. Such material is expected to be written in perfect, technically correct English, while novels use less formal language. More on this later when I discuss writing style.

I will not be covering such things as marketing or merchandising your story in any way. That's a whole different field that varies with the type of story and the country of origin or intended sale.

Writing is not an easy task, and it often takes a lot of practice to get right. Later I'll cover some details of punctuation, grammar, and spelling, but you must know there are variances in these areas around the world, and they affect the understanding of the story by the readers from those areas. All know of the US versus UK spelling of words like color / colour and ass / arse when referring to the human posterior. However, some words are regional in usage, and others have localised meanings that are different to the rest; so you must take care when using such words. Some regions who use English as a first language also use a lot more commas in their stories than other regions. There are plenty of websites that provide advice on punctuation and general English usage, so I won't cover those topics in full detail, except where they're best used differently in writing fiction stories. You can find a lot of current websites by using the search engine of your choice. Be warned there are a lot of writer blogs with faulty or regionalised advice as well.

Some of the decision points I mention early in the list are noted in the list so you will consider them well before you start, and not find them a reason to quit near the end, or when you've finished writing your story.

Rejection or Abuse

Whatever you choose to write you can be sure someone will abuse your story. They will point out perceived, or actual, errors; while others will reject it because they don't want to read it, or be involved with it. Make sure you are ready to handle and deal with this, or you will go crazy with anger and angst when it happens. This is part of being a writer. You must accept it happens, get over it, and get on with life. Other people are entitled to their opinions, and you're just as entitled to totally ignore their opinions if you want to.

If a publisher or editor rejects your story and bothers to put some comments on it take time to talk to them about their comments, if they'll agree to talk to you. Take their comments in, don't reject them off hand, because they have years of experience and are usually offering you help in making your story better for their target market group, or the general market. Also keep in mind the publishers are concerned about what's good for their market demographic, and it may not match what's good for other markets or target groups. Also, it may not match what you really want to say in your story.

Regardless of how much rejection or abuse you get, you will live through it, so don't let it annoy you too much.

The Audience

What is your intended audience? I bet you thought this was easy; it isn't. Your audience is the people who you hope to get interested in the story, be it free or paid for. If paid for you want to interest as many as possible to maximise your income. You need to answer the following questions about the readers you want to read your story.

Age

Gender

Employment

Educational level

Subjects of interest

Nation of origin

Religious background

Cultural background

Racial background

Ethnic background

Social background

Financial situation

Economic background

In many cases the answers to these questions won't matter; but in others they'll matter a lot. Some people will see certain things above as being the same as others, yet each is a different aspect of an individual or a group of individuals in a society. These are the factors that go to make up a lot of what a person is, as well as how they think and behave.

You don't have to please or appease anyone with your story, unless you specifically wish to. However, you do need to be aware of how some people will react, due to their personal aspects of all these factors.

These factors may affect the story in a number of ways:

How you think and write.

How they understand what you've written.

How they perceive what you've written.

How their emotions respond to what you've written.

They may affect certain types of stories in different ways and to different extents because of the type of story and content. In all cases you need to consider how the factors may affect your story or how you think it will affect the audience, due to these factors. An example of a possible effect would be a fiction novel that has a character enter a religious shrine and not show the proper respect for the shrine will likely see an adverse reaction from that sector of the reading community. That could lead to a loss of sales for that story and other stories if they boycott you as a writer.

People often confuse religion, race, culture, society, ethnic group, and nation as being closely linked. However, the truth is each of them will often mix across the others. A racial group can be spread across a number of countries, cultures, and societies. A society may have many different religious or ethnic groups within it. A religious group can be spread across many ethnic, racial, and societal groups. Even within a very large society with the same ethnic, racial, and religious background you'll find differences caused by their different ages, education levels, gender, economic background, current financial situation, and sub-groups of each of the above. How much you need to consider these issues will depend a lot on what you're writing, for some they won't matter much while they won't matter at all in others, but they'll matter a lot for some.

You need to consider all of this in how you intend to write your story. If you're aiming for an audience in the teenage group the use of words and behaviours suited to their grandparents won't get a good reception or high sales. The same applies for all of the factors stated above. Some examples of the different writing for different intended audiences are:

Romance novels use a different tone and word list to an action adventure story. A western tale about cattle rustling will vary in the words used to those of a love story set in the same period and place. If the story has any violence the level of violence and the descriptions acceptable to the reader usually varies with their gender or age. Gender of the reader is important in writing erotic stories because the descriptions of people and activities often get different reactions from men to that of women.

An often mentioned difference is women prefer stories with lots of emotions described and acted out while men prefer less emotions being described. The validity of this generalisation is often challenged, and the matter has never been fully resolved one way or the other. While the sales of certain types of books seem to support the generalisation. This is often argued about because the content and story types also differ a great deal to the extent they may be the reasons for the differences.

The reading ability of the story will vary with the educational level of the reader. This will appear in word choices and sentence structure. The younger the intended audience the simpler the sentence structure and words you should be using. If people find the start of the story, or a randomly selected section, difficult to read they won't read it at all.

The educational level will also affect the amount of knowledge it's safe to assume the reader has, and their ability to deduce things from what is in the story. This is important when writing something like a mystery novel because the educational level will affect how they put the clues together. Due to research reports on what's seen as the best level to use in fiction most fiction writers aim for a level equivalent to a year ten education since this is reasonably understandable by most people.

Mixed into all this is the use of nicknames for people and acronyms for organisations. What may be very common and well understood in one area of a country may not be known at all in another area of the same country, and is totally unknown in another country. A few US based stories I read mentioned a place called IHOP, but the context didn't match what looks like a dance club's name. I later learned it's a restaurant called the International House of Pancakes. The authors didn't make it clear what happened at an IHOP, they just assumed everyone knew it.

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Note: Often you will brush over many of these items as not relevant to the story, and that's true; but it's best if you first take a little time to consider how they may apply or affect the outcome or the reader's response to the items mentioned.

Free or Charge for It

Regardless of if you give your story away free by publicly posting it on the Internet or you sell it to a publisher you still own the copyright, and that is protected by law in most countries around the world. You, as the creator or author of the story, can decide how much remuneration you get for your story, if any. Some people will put a story out in the public view for free because they want to get the message out. That is putting the story on public display, not in the public domain. You still own and control it, and you have the legal right to protect it. Check your local laws on intellectual property rights and copyright for more information about that aspect in your area. I'll say more on this later.

However, the way you intend to provide your story to the world at large will have an effect on how you go about writing and preparing it. This is because it affects how much time, effort, resources, and money you're prepared to put in to preparing the story. It also affects many of the later decisions on media and format because the methods of display and distribution vary between what you can charge for an item and what you can put out publicly for free, and where you place it publicly.

With enough of your own personal money there's no difference. But most people wish to distribute Free of Charge