Jennifer M. Leonard

Fiction for my Fancy

Taking eighteen hours a semester I am required to read pages and pages of text and most of them I find tedious and boring. This semester taking Creative Writing promised to be a break in that monotonous practice of reading just to meet the course requirements. To my surprise and with perfect timing I was assigned a non-fiction book for Medieval History that was written in a literary manner. Becoming Charlemagne, by Jeff Sypeck is the first textbook I have ever read that was entertaining. Coupled with what I was learning in Creative Writing this opened my eyes to how important a well crafted story is to the reader whether true or fiction.

            I have always enjoyed reading and writing fiction but wasn't sure my writing was any good. I was also fairly certain that compared to the books I am required to read for my Humanities Text courses that the fiction I choose to read is not seen as worthy of literary status. However, it is these books that I pick up and flip page after page until it is two in the morning and I have finished the book. While lacking the high brow appeal of Dante or Shakespeare I find these books entertaining. The question is why.

                       I learned that one of the things that makes a page turner is the pacing. How important it is to pace your story to keep the reader intrigued and that many of the best sellers we read today may not be well written by conventional standards but are in fact so well paced that we can't put them down.  This was evident in the textbook I read that somehow for the first time had me willingly finishing a required text without prodding from my paper deadline.   Anything written with good movement will entice the reader.    

            I did not expect this class to change my view of fiction. I simply sought to bolster my writing abilities and take a class that would hopefully be as enjoyable as it was educational. What I got was an experience that was extremely educational and more rewarding than I had imagined. In discussing fiction I learned that there were as many genres as there were people in class who enjoyed them. When I next visit the bookstore I won't just head for the historical area, I might read a mystery or a sci-fi book instead.

            Regardless of the genre or the plot story the nuts and bolts are the same. There are some elements that we have to have in order for our stories to be developed.  However, by learning the conventions we can break them and may in fact create a new genre or convention. Also, I realized that the conventions changed and what we have been taught in our Literature classes may not hold true for future works.  What is as varied as the subjects, is the motivation of the writers and the forms of fiction they choose to write.

            I will continue to write fiction stories that I fancy, filled with characters I want to see and whether they are ever published I will share them with my family and friends. Getting their input as well as that of other writers will improve my writing and make the experience of writing more enjoyable. I have discovered through this class that fiction is how we explore and express our reactions to our current environments and experiences. Mainly I am taking from this course that there is no bad fiction writing just first drafts waiting to be developed and improved.