With the re-emergence of serialised fiction as a path for writers and readers to forge a new relationship what lessons can be learned from the best writers or the past?
Charles Dickens was an English writer who created some of the world's best-known works of fiction and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.
He rose to popularity writing serialised narrative fiction delivered weekly or monthly in affordable journals.
Here are twelve elements from Dickens’s writing approach that may help improve your own writing practice.
Have a Motto
Do you have one? Can you match this one from Dickens?
Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.
Think Audience
Do you write for yourself first?
Do you have an audience in mind - is it you again?
Dickens had a tremendous intellect and yet he always had his audience in mind.
Don't think that it is necessary to write down to any part of our audience. I always hold that to be as great a mistake as can be made.
Character Timing
Keeping the killer’s identity to the last chapter?
Was all the action really triggered by the wicked stepdad introduced on page 275?
Dickens wanted the villains up front and on display.
It is almost indispensable in a work of fiction that the characters who bring the catastrophes about, and play important parts, should belong to the Machinery of the Tale, -- and the introduction towards the end of a story where there is always a great deal to do, of new actors until then unheard of, is a thing to be avoided, if possible, in every case.
Fame
Are you really writing to improve the world through your art?
Or do you still think it might make you rich?
Dickens was one of the biggest celebrities of his time but even then, fame brought its baggage with it.
Fame’s Trumpet should blow a little more of the wealth arising from the circulation of my works, into the Booksellers’ pockets, and less into my own.
Serialisation
Are you exhausted pitching to agents?
Has your approach to publishers been met with measured silence?
Has Kindle lost its sparkle in a cut-price market?
Is serialisation an answer?
A pioneer of the serial publication of narrative fiction, Dickens wrote most of his major novels in monthly or weekly instalments in journals, later reprinted in book form. Serialisation was once the most popular form of novel publication.
Cliffhangers
I’m not really called Brian, my real name is Julie!
The last thing she saw were the waves crashing on the rocks below as her car hurtled over the cliff.
Dickens was a master at cliffhanger endings, often leaving a main character in danger or revealing a shocking revelation helped build audience demand for the next instalment to see how the story would develop.
A Feedback Loop
Do you want feedback on your writing from you audience?
Have you read, or seen, Misery?
The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback.
Social Commentary
Do you consider social commentary in your fiction?
Does this get in the way of the story?
A fierce critic of the poverty in Victorian society his stories highlighted the life of the forgotten poor and disadvantaged with settings showing poor social or working conditions reinforced with comically repulsive characters.
Style
Would adding another style to your writing improve it?
Dickens writing style mixed fantasy and realism, satire and melodrama.
Settings
Does the term Dickensian London conjure up images in your mind?
Are your settings as well drawn?
London inspired many of the places and people in his novels.
Dickens’s London is described throughout his work where he would incorporate Gothic imagery into contemporary urban environments.
Characters
Who is your most memorable character?
Could your readers describe them or remember their names?
Amongst the most memorable in English literature his characters took on a life of their own in readers minds with their vivid descriptions and memorable names including Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Oliver Twist, Fagan, Artful Dodger and Uriah Heep.
Autobiographical Elements
Write what you know, if it serves the story.
Dickens drew on his own life and experiences throughout his novels. His father was sent to prison for debt, his childhood experiences were marked with poverty and his work as a law clerk and court reporter were also drawn upon.
Check out this excellent animation about the writing of Charles Dickens.