Fiction Writer’s Toolshed | Practical Tools for Authors
You can tell something isn’t working in your writing. But what is it?
Maybe revision feels like moving things around until you hope you get it right. Maybe ideas keep disappearing. Maybe you know what you want to write, but getting words onto the page feels unreliable.
Those aren’t necessarily the same problem. They may need different kinds of attention.
In 6 Elemental Pieces of Mastering Fiction Writing -- Part 1, I introduced six areas of a fiction writer’s practice: craft, ideation, design, process, self-sustainment and curation of taste. Here, we’re going to look at signs that each area might need work, then try something practical.
You can use this without listening to Part 1 first. I’ll recap each area as we go. If you gave yourself the one-to-five ratings in that episode, keep them nearby. These questions might change how you see where you are.
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Fiction Writer’s Toolshed
6 Elemental Pieces of Mastering Fiction Writing – Part 2 | ep 004
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1. Craft: make a deliberate effect on the page
Craft is your ability to make choices in the writing itself: language, structure and effects. Making people feel things.
You might need to work on this area if something feels off, but you can’t clearly explain why. Other people might tell you it feels off, and you still don’t know what it is.
Revision might feel like random tinkering. You’re a little lost in the sauce, moving things around instead of making a targeted adjustment.
Another sign is relying heavily on other people to identify basic issues with clarity, pacing or tone. Feedback is useful. Here, we’re working on your ability to recognize and adjust those things yourself.
Try a single-effect revision pass
Take a finished piece of writing you already have. Choose one effect you want the reader to experience: fear, tension, wonder, whatever it is.
Then revise toward that effect using language and word choice. You can switch the order of things, but don’t change the plot, add characters or change their motives to get there.
Don’t fix anything else during this pass. See what the words can do.
The purpose is to practice conscious control over a specific effect through prose. You’re choosing particular words and a style, without a massive rewrite or starting over.
2. Ideation: give your ideas somewhere to grow
Ideation is generating, capturing and nurturing ideas so they can become usable story concepts.
You might rely on inspiration or sudden excitement to start and work on projects, rather than having a way to gather ideas regularly -- ingredients for cooking.
Or you might have lots of sparks and fragments, but few of them deepen or resurface. Everything stays at the surface.
Another sign is capturing ideas inconsistently. Or worse -- oh lord -- trusting your memory alone. Those little sparks quietly disappear, and it’s so sad.
Try an idea compost list
Start one running document where you can drop material as it comes up:
- Questions you searched for because something made you curious.
- A moment from a piece of media you liked.
- Scene ideas, character names and worldbuilding concepts.
- Images or events you can’t shake, real or fictional.
- Things that frustrate you. This part can almost be a venting tool.
No development at this point. Only capture.
Some of this might sound mundane. I’m trying to take some of the heavy lifting off coming up with cool stuff. It’s like doing reps at the gym.
And keep the material in the same document on purpose. “Hey, Tim, should I make a document for each?” No. You want those different things to cross-pollinate and mature over time.
The purpose is to give ideas a way to accumulate without needing inspiration or your memory to keep them alive. Unrelated things can start connecting, and an idea can become more developed.
3. Project design: know something about what you’re making
Project design -- or story design -- is your ability to understand what a project is before you get too deep into it.
One sign this area might need work is always starting a draft with an idea, without deciding what kind of story you’re trying to make.
That can be okay. Sometimes you should go into the fun, free-form version. But I think you should be able to work the other way too. Upper body and lower body.
Another sign is not being able to answer questions about scope, length, form or audience until you’re deep into the draft. Is this a novella? Who are you trying to reach? What do you think you’re making?
Or you regularly realize midway through that the story wants to be longer, shorter, a different genre or a different focus.
Those changes are okay. They’ll happen. If they’re always happening, though, design might be something to strengthen.
Try a short project blurb
Before drafting, write a little blurb that answers these questions:
- What experience is this story meant to give the reader? What do I want them to feel?
- With what I know now, is this on the short, medium or long side?
- What isn’t this project trying to be? Is there anything I don’t want it to be?
- Would this work better in another medium?
Would it be a better comic? Am I set on making a comic when prose fiction might work better?
You’re making some design choices before the words accumulate. That gives the project a stable center of gravity to start attaching things to.
This doesn’t require a complete outline or a promise that nothing will change. It gives you something to work from with what you know now.
4. Process: make the practical steps visible
Process is how you reliably turn ideas and designs into finished writing. Your concrete, repeatable working practices: where you write, how you write, what tools you use, how you draft and revise.
You might need to look here if your setup changes constantly -- where you sit, what device you use or how you begin.
You might be unclear on how an idea in your brain or phone becomes a draft, then a revision. Each project feels like an amorphous fog you drift through, hoping to find points along the way.
Or you know what you want to write, but the physical act of getting words into a document or onto a page feels full of friction. It doesn’t feel reliable.
Describe how you get ideas onto the page
Write a short, concrete description of the steps you take. Answer:
- Where am I physically when I write?
- What device or tools am I using?
- What time of day does this happen -- or could it actually happen?
- Do I outline, discovery write, or switch between the two?
- What does a successful writing session look like for me?
I understand the paradox of asking you to describe this if you aren’t consistently writing. It’s on purpose. We’re trying to get the practical steps out of the fog.
For your next few sessions, change as little as possible. Try about four sessions and see what you want to change from that snapshot.
The purpose is to turn writing from a vague intention into a physical, repeatable practice, like making pizza dough. You’re reducing practical friction so you can get stuff onto the page.
5. Self-sustainment: protect the conditions that support you
Self-sustainment is your ability to maintain the physical, cognitive, emotional and sometimes environmental conditions that let you keep writing over time.
We need you. We need the work that only you can make.
One sign this area needs attention is writing regularly costing you sleep, physical comfort or basic emotional stability.
Another is what I call boom and bust: periods of intense overwork followed by shutdown and avoidance. There are a lot of reasons that can happen. One area worth looking at is the weight and cost of the writing you’re asking yourself to do.
You might also treat exhaustion, resistance or physical pain as personal failure, instead of information that something needs attention.
I’m not a doctor, psychologist or psychiatrist. I’m sharing what has worked for me. These questions are a check on your writing practice, not a medical assessment.
Try a weekly check-in
Once a week, check these four facets:
- Physical: is my body currently capable of supporting the creative hours I’m asking of it?
- Cognitive: are my habits protecting my attention and creative energy, or draining them?
- Emotional: do I have the resources to handle the emotional demands of this work right now?
- Environmental: does my workspace make writing easier or harder than it needs to be?
Emotional resources can be whatever you need to recharge. And the environment overlaps with process, but sometimes you’re stuck writing somewhere that isn’t ideal. That can matter. It can even make you feel like you aren’t a good writer.
The purpose is to treat your mind and body as part of the creative infrastructure: something to maintain, design for and protect. Something to pay attention to, rather than override or ignore.
6. Curation of taste: choose an input and give it your attention
This is more than what you watch or what’s on in the background. It’s the ability to choose and interpret creative inputs on purpose, and start understanding how they shape your imagination and work.
I’m not trying to fix what you like or don’t like. You can’t like what you’ve never experienced.
You might need to work on this area if most of your media comes by default: what’s easy, what’s in your feed, what’s on TikTok or what your streaming platform promotes.
That’s fine, as long as you also sometimes choose inputs intentionally.
Another sign is not being able to explain why certain work excites you while other work dulls you or leaves you feeling “eh.”
And I’m stepping on toes here: you might rarely give your full attention to what you’re consuming. There’s almost always another screen or distraction alongside it. Or most of it runs in the background while you do something else.
I do these things too. This isn’t a command to stop. It’s an invitation to occasionally put those things away and see what the work does for you when it has your attention.
Choose one piece of media on purpose
Once a week, choose something: a short story, an episode of a show, a chapter, even a film scene. It could be a YouTube clip -- I’d suggest roughly five to seven minutes for that.
Give it your full attention. No second screen. No multitasking. No note-taking during it.
You don’t have to like it.
Afterward, ask: did this feed me, drain me, or leave me neutral -- and why?
The purpose is to notice how different inputs affect you when you’re fully present. Your future choices can become more intentional instead of purely habitual.
What did you discover about your writing?
Look back at the six areas and your ratings. Do these questions change how you see where you are?
Where you recognize a difficulty, try the exercise. See what it helps you notice and what you want to work on.
These are tools to use while they’re getting the job done. The aim is to understand the work well enough to choose what fits, rather than make every writing difficulty a judgment about you.
Fiction Writer’s Toolshed: Practical Tools for Authors is a Make Exist podcast hosted by Tim Kearney. It offers hands-on training for fiction writers to diagnose writing problems, build their skills, and finish more work.