It’d be an understatement to say that it’s been a great
sports year where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. In baseball, the Giants
won their second World Series in three years, and now in football the 49ers are
going to the Superbowl for the 6th time in their franchise history.
Needless to say, people have been wearing a lot of sports apparel around here
lately.
This also marks the first time that two brothers are head
coaches of both football teams in the Superbowl, Jim Harbaugh vs. John
Harbaugh, and as a result the sports writers have dubbed the event the
Harbowl. The brothers themselves say the
story is really about their players, not the coaches, but the sport writers are
filling the gap nonetheless with anecdotes about the two brothers. Since it’s often a sports writer’s job to make a story
out of nothing, it got me thinking about how much fiction writing often asks
writers to do the very same thing. Make a story out of nothing.
Maybe you’ve written about actual events in memoir or based
your novel on something that happened, but we all need to make up quite a lot
of material in order to make a story truly engaging for the reader. Perhaps,
change events to happen closer together in the plot or condense three
characters into one. Stuff like that. So how do you go about generating the
additional content you need when making up a story? What sticks and what doesn’t?
Hello Mark:
ReplyDeleteAs you most likely already know, we have never written any fiction for publication. However, amongst our friends we can count several very successful writers and do know that so much of what appears to be 'made up' does, in fact, have its roots in reality. For it is, of course, life itself from which the majority of ideas are generated.
It's all about making it interesting to the fans, aka the readers. I don't follow football, but it's interesting that the brothers are up against one another.
ReplyDeleteI cut a lot out of my stories in the end becasue I often add details that only I really need. Sometimes, I cut more after beta readers becasue they help me see the virtue in 'less is more.' I don't anything about sports so this was an enlightening post. Go niners! (that's how I say that, right?)
ReplyDeleteYeah, both coaches are a little annoyed with that, but it is interesting.
ReplyDeleteEverything i write is made up, so I guess I don't have any problem with that.
That is a fun thing to happen to the brothers. Such success to celebrate at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI'm editing a WIP right now where I took a short-cut because of how I imagine the MC handling a certain situation. One of my CPs said I was short-cutting the readers, too, by denying them the chance to go through this time period with the MC. I've added 20,000 words. lol
Blah to the Ravens. Yeah, I'm still mad about them beating the Broncos. Just so you know, I'm rooting for San Francisco. :P
ReplyDeleteAnd when I make stuff up I sometimes try to punch people in the gut with a sort of bare-bones honesty from my character. I try not to let her get away with anything passive. I suppose in a way that's very sensationalistic, like an attention-grabbing headline.
This is why I couldn't write a memoir. I like to make up things as I go, that's the fun part of writing! My approach is to put in as much as I can, and then do additional research later as necessary.
ReplyDeleteI think we've all got something in common as far as the need to make up materials when writing:) In the meantime, I'll be prepping for the big game this weekend...Go Niners!
ReplyDelete