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 of serial fiction?
Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born American author and biochemist, best known for his prolific career as a science-fiction writer. He was the author of I, Robot and the Foundation series. Many of his early stories were published in monthly Science Fiction Magazines.
Here are fourteen elements from Asimov’s writing approach that may help improve your own writing practice.
First things first, the ending
Do you start with a question, a character, or is it straight into the action?
Does that become the first scene or somewhere further on in the story?
Asimov wrote a first draft, writing at 90 words per minute at one of his typewriters. First came the ending. Then the beginning.
Then let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it
Keep candy-store hours
Work long + type fast = Big Output
But is this for everyone?
The overriding factor in my life between the ages of six and twenty-two was my father’s candy store. I have kept the candy-store hours all my life. I wake at five in the morning and get to work as early as I can. I work as longs I can. I do this every day in the week, including holidays. In other words I am still and forever in the candy-store.
Watching the words take shape like magic
Would you rather be writing than, well, anything?
The only thing about myself that I consider to be severe enough to warrant psychoanalytic treatment is my compulsion to write ... That means that my idea of a pleasant time is to go up to my attic, sit at my electric typewriter (as I am doing right now), and bang away, watching the words take shape like magic before my eyes.
Psychoanalysis is defined as a set of psychological theories and therapeutic methods which have their origin in the work and theories of Sigmund Freud. The primary assumption of psychoanalysis is the belief that all people possess unconscious thoughts, feelings, desires, and memories.
Find your happy
When your work doesn’t feel like work
Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.
Keep Going
Talent will certainly help you but on its own its never enough
If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.
Think it so
Some people can touch-type but some writers prefer to use two fingers only!
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
Time is finite
Six minutes left, can you finish it?
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.
Keep it simple
Simple certainly suits me
I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing: to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize.
I have an informal style, which means I tend to use short words and simple sentence structure, to say nothing of occasional colloquialisms. This grates on people who like things that are poetic, weighty, complex, and, above all, obscure. On the other hand, the informal style pleases people who enjoy the sensation of reading an essay without being aware that they are reading and of feeling that ideas are flowing from the writer's brain into their own without mental friction.
Deviate from the plan
By all means have it all planned out if that works for you but its okay to change it!
To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.
All by myself
But you can have a cat, or a dog, or fish …
Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his typewriter or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.
Those that can, write
If you really know so much then let me see what you’ve written lately!
I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing—to be 'clear'. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics—Well, they can do whatever they wish.
Facts are not alternative
Even when you spend your time making things up it is always good to know the truth
Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don’t know what they are
How many is too many?
One more for the road or do you know your own limit?
If you want to be a prolific writer, you have to be a single-minded, driven, non-stop person. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? Well, then, concentrate on being a good writer, and leave prolific for those poor souls who can't help it.
Inspire the Future
A noble sentiment
It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.