Jack Smith

Guest Post by Jack Smith

Robert Garner McBrearty, author of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Prize for his collection Episode, recently shared a technique he’s been using to draft a novel.

Write the whole thing through, regardless of length, and then expand from within.

This is a great process idea. Of course, prior to drafting, you do need a sense for your character and where you want to take this character. But, assuming you have that, just shoot through the draft. Don’t worry about all the scenes you might flesh out your novel with, all the secondary characters you might come up with, subplots, etc. Just write through what appears to be the essential conflicts—the ones that tell your basic story. Continue reading

Guest Post by Jack Smith

Let’s say you want to create an ironic tone in a story or novel—it’s just needed.

First off, what is tone? On the one hand, we might say that it’s the apparent attitude of the narrator toward the characters and the world they people. But it should also be said that everything in a fictional work relates in some way to the tone. If every character in your story drives crazily and exceeds the speed limit, this will certainly affect the tone. If all the clocks are off twenty minutes, this will too.

To create the right tone, you need to think about character actions, dialogue, and setting. All of these will affect the tone of your story or novel. But you also need to attend to matters of style. Continue reading

Tag: Jack Smith

Drafting Your Novel: Expanding from Within

Creating an Ironic Tone in Your Fiction