I want to write beautiful, generous, precise, and insightful short fiction. I have a writing routine now, but I don't know how to improve my craft. I would love recommendations on concrete tactics, exercises...and maybe workshops to take (online or in London).
A brief backstory: in high school I read a lot and wrote a lot of fiction (but I never showed people my work and never published). I was dissatisfied with my writing and felt I had nothing to say, so I essentially quit reading and writing fiction for a number of years. This changed in the last year: I'm devouring short fiction and novels, and small plot and character ideas keep on bubbling up in my mind. Now that I'm older, it feels like I finally have the life experience, research skills, and work ethic to say something interesting.
But I feel so immature as a writer. I'd love to know how to improve. If it helps, I'm interested in "literary" fiction, but have a huge fondness for magical realism and sci-fi—I think Ted Chiang and Carmen Maria Machado's short stories are masterful.
Assume that I have the work ethic in place. I've been doing near-daily morning pages for over half a year at this point, and I've been practicing pitching and submitting (for my creative nonfiction and essays). Only humble student publications so far! I would like to be in a position where I am submitting short stories in 2022, racking up rejections—and hopefully a few acceptances.
Where I want to improve:
- Sentence-level craft: I struggle with writing lyrical, eloquent descriptions that don't feel overwrought. I love writers that have a sense of psychological and environmental ambiance, and I appreciate plots that linger on the small, beautiful details. Two recent examples: Mieko Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs, Dominique Barbéris's A Sunday in Ville-d'Avray (I'm reading a lot of translated works right now). But my descriptions are ungainly and they weigh down my writing; it feels like there's very little plot and a lot of unappealing description. How can I improve this?
- Narrative: Because I haven't written short fiction for years, I feel really new to...constructing conflict, thinking about maintaining tension and rising action and dynamism in a story. I think I'd benefit from learning more frameworks or ways of thinking about this, or ways of picking apart existing writing to understand how others do it.
- Characterization: When I was a teenager, I remember seeing these little character info sheets floating around where people would fill out basic biographical details about their characters, likes and dislikes, etc. Do these kinds of exercises work? I am coming up with fairly vivid initial ideas for characters, but I want to get better at expanding on who these people are and what about them (as individuals, in relation to other characters) is propelling the plot forward.
The gap between my work and the work I'm reading feels huge, but I would love to narrow it. I keep on hearing people say you should copy the greats to learn from them, but...what does that mean exactly? I would also love to find a community where I can critique other people's work and receive critique as well. (From my non-writing day job, I've learned that carefully analyzing other people's work has an incredibly positive effect on my own.) How do I find a community? Can I find them through workshops? Any recommendations on workshops (online or in London)?
I would be grateful for any and all recommendations!
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