Stages of a Fiction Writer: Know Where You Stand on the Path to Writing: WMG Writer's Guides, #8

By Dean Wesley Smith

With more than a hundred published novels and more than seventeen million copies of his books in print, USA Today bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith knows how to write fiction. And he has traversed every stage of writing along the way.

In this WMG Writer's Guide, Dean takes you step-by-step through the stages most fiction writers go through and how not to lose hope along the way.

Want to enjoy your writing more and let your storytelling evolve in its own time? Then learn from Dean's experience and discover what to expect at each stage of a fiction writer's career.

"Dean Wesley Smith's blog gives both a slightly different view of the publishing world than I'd seen before and detailed hands-on 'here's how to get from A to B' instruction."
—Erin M. Hartshorn, Vision: A Resource for Writers

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Oct 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519959584

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

About twenty-five years ago, I was struggling to figure out where I was on the path to becoming a fiction writer.

I had sold novels, lots of short stories, been an editor, owned a publishing company, and had readers buying my books.

But honestly, none of that mattered to me. I liked it, sure, but my goal was to be a better writer, a better storyteller, actually. And I had no idea at all where I was at on the road to that goal.

Not clue one.

For the previous twenty years, as my skills grew, I had also been studying other writers and trying to understand how they did what they did.

I was typing in other writers’ work to try to learn their tricks and their craft.

I was reading every how-to-write book I could find.

But I still felt flat lost. I felt I had advanced, that I was past the basics, but what world did I have ahead of me with storytelling that I couldn’t see?

I am the type that likes to look out ahead. But with storytelling, it was just a wall of mist.

So for my own use, I started to put this Stages of a Fiction Writer together.

I made the mistake, early on, of presenting some of this at a writer’s workshop. Some of the members got very angry. And I do mean very.

I was kicked out because of my attitude and putting others down.

I had no intention of putting anyone down.

Seemed I had presented this wrong. But it was a work in progress.

And it wasn’t until almost ten years later, about fifteen years ago now, that it all finally came together and made sense to me.

So a few years back, I did this as a lecture through WMG Publishing and put it up. It is still up as a lecture. But now I thought it might be time to get this into a book.

Knowing where I was at in learning storytelling, and where I could go if I kept practicing and learning, for me was very freeing.

Where Are You Going as a Writer?

Not a lot of writers give this much thought beyond the I want to sell more and make a living.

Or… I want a lot of people to read my books and be read in a hundred years.

Great hopes and dreams.

We all have those.

Nothing at all wrong with them.

But they sure don’t help me in trying to figure out in general, where each of us stand as a storyteller.

Now, there are basics in all this that I am going to state and more than likely repeat numbers of times.

First… Continued learning of craft is critical.

I can’t even begin to count the hundreds, maybe thousands of great writers who started to sell, thought they had it made, that they knew it all, and stopped learning. Now they are Whatever Happened To writers.

Learning can never stop. And if you have that attitude of learning is critical, then you can learn what it will take to move up stages.

Second… You can never learn it all when it comes to the craft of fiction writing.

This is sort of a shadow of the first point. The moment you think you have learned it all, that’s where you freeze down. And that’s where your career will remain until the craft of storytelling passing you by and no one buys your work anymore.

So where are you going as a writer?

That question assumes an end goal.

There is no end goal.

My answer is always, Forward, to keep learning, and become a better storyteller.

My real end goal is to be challenging myself with a new story and a new way of telling it when I fall over dead.

A Poker Metaphor

In this book, I’m going to use poker playing as a metaphor to help be clear on some of the areas I am talking about. It is a very clear metaphor to how writers work.

Don’t worry, I will make sure I explain poker clearly all the way. You do not need to be

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