From John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction

-55- Having analyzed what he must dramatically show to make his climax meaningful and convincing, the writer introduces fictional elements each of which carries its burden of meaning. Like any good liar, the writer makes up the most convincing explanation he can think of for why the things that did not really happen might have happened.

-56- To be shown, we must be shown by action; the proof must appear in plot.

-57- If Helen’s motive is to be perfectly convincing, we must be shown its origins; and that too means plot… All these events, the authenticating proofs for every significant element of the story, the writer must weave it into a smoothly flowing, inevitable-seeming plot.

-58- It is partly in this way that the fictional process forced the writer to say more than he thought he could; that is, to make discoveries.

This is one of my fav things about writing-learning about the characters and their lives.

-59- At some point the writer stops planning and starts writing, fleshing out the skeleton that is his plan. Here too he is partly in control of and partly controlled by the fictional process. Again and again, in the process of writing, he will find himself forced to new discoveries. He must create, stroke by stroke, powerfully convincing characters and settings; he must more and more clearly define for himself what his overall there or idea is; and he must choose and aesthetically justify his genre and style.

-60- Symbolic association: associating metaphors with the character they most describe, e.g. a gloomy character in a scene of fog and rain.

-61- I fleshing out his characters, the writer does not ordinarily think out every implication of every image he introduces at the time he introduces it. He writes by feel, intuitively, imagining the scene vividly and copying down its most significant details…drawing on his unconscious, trusting his instincts.

I’ve had this happen in my writing and it can make one feel as though one’s brain is keeping something to itself.

-62- At some point, perhaps when he’s finished the first draft, the writer begins to work in another way. He begins to brood over what he’s written, reading it over and over, patiently, endlessly.