To Write Great Fiction You Must First Write Crappy Fiction
Embrace the suck.
In every technique, you need to suck before you excel.
Your first C chord on the guitar will suck. Your first article will suck. That’s as certain as your printer running out of ink when you need it most.
Now, train that C chord for 20 minutes, every day, for one month. Commit to writing at least 50 articles. What will happen? You’ll get better. A decent C chord will be heard, one of your articles will go mildly viral.
Writing fiction is no different. There is a technique to be learned and, yes, you will suck at it at first.
To learn a new technique, having a good teacher is how you shorten your suck period
And I found a great one: John Truby.
In his book “The Anatomy of Story”, he explains, with a myriad of examples, what makes a good story and gives a blueprint on how to write one. From Casablanca to Star Wars, from Tootsie to Harry Potter, he dissects those great stories and teaches, step by step, how you can write your own.
This book opened an entirely new world for me. I hadn’t even finished it when I watched Kung Fu Panda 4 and immediately understood why it is so inferior to the first movie. It was like wearing glasses for the first time.
So, thank you, John, for the amazing lessons on the technique.
Technique, technique… Hey, we’re talking about art here!
We are. But if your technique sucks, your art will suck too.
We need to master the technique first. When we do that, we free our minds to let the art flow. And, if a poor technique blocks the art, a refined one unleashes it. A painter who doesn’t know how to properly hold a brush will never paint the next Monalisa.
OK, and how do we master the technique? Well, we practice, we make silly, dumb mistakes. We start writing very bad fiction, then we move to bad fiction, then average fiction, then… OK, you got it.
So, are you ready? Then, grab a seat while I introduce you to your new colleague: ChatGPT.
Having ChatGPT as a fellow student is a blessing. Use it.
When studying the technique, I used ChatGPT a lot — and I’m glad I did it.
For example, one of the things I learned from John is that we need to be very clear about the message we want to impart to the reader, which is the moral argument of the story. “Hey, this is how one should live” is the moral argument in simple terms.
After this lesson, I talked with my colleague, ChatGPT, about the moral argument I had in mind. After exchanging a few ideas, we reached an agreement.
And I did that for the whole “course”, if I can put it this way. After each lesson, I had exchanges with ChatGPT on how to apply the newly acquired knowledge to the story I was writing — or trying to! Yes, because even following the blueprint I almost got lost. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be trying to write fiction without grasping the basics first. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, seriously.
At some point, just to give another example, John explains how dialogue must not do the heavy lifting of conveying the moral argument, but rather add a refining touch to it. As he explains, the overall story structure must convey the argument, which is done mainly through the characters’ actions.
I took a look at my final battle scene for example, and noticed it could be enhanced by adding some witty dialogue to it. Then, I talked with ChatGPT about what could be done. In the end, we came up with a better scene.
The final result? Crappy fiction.
But also a guy who now sucks less at the basic technique, who will never see stories in the same way again, and — maybe most importantly — a guy who enjoyed every step of the way and is eager to exercise the technique once more in a new, not-so-sucky story.
Beware, Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, ’cause I’m just getting started! :-)
