the art of writing fiction to entertain

It doesn't really matter how many years we spend honing our skill as a writer or anything, really. We will always have a weakness that is hard to overcome.

Personally, I don't think I'll ever be good at character tropes. As much as I love certain character tropes, I just can't pull it off. At all.

Regardless, the art of writing has a few rules we should all keep in mind when in doubt:

Exhibit A: A discussion between two individuals about a scenario during which a terrible war was fought where one of them tried to suck lethal snake venom out of the other man's cock? – People are entertained.

Exhibit B: Multiple pages about the war where warriors rose and fell, the king of the lands was slain, and everyone lived happily there after? – Boring.

Exhibit: A cop discovers a corpse hidden away at the public square – the assumed and easily predicted end is the cop solving the murder, avenge the dead, and corrects whatever wrongs which led to the death in the first place – What happens in between that plotline could be anything; as long as what happens are in pursuit of getting the cop to the decided ending, allowing the story to move forward. But indeed, what happens here in the in-between, is where we entertain. The cop could travel to Venus, eat Korean BBQ with the president, wake up at a graveyard, discover he's a cyborg―whatever we need to do in order to entertain our readers.

#writingtips