Meet Catherine Misener, a one-time graduate student and a current fiction writer. This month, Catherine will be blogging about how fiction writers can can benefit from writing non-fiction. Connect with Catherine on her blog, Just Write Cat, or by following her on Twitter.

3 Non-fiction Tips for Fiction Writers

A couple of months ago I got the wacky idea in my head (these things happen) to try my hand at writing articles. I blog for a local family magazine, so I started by querying the editor. She loved my idea and bought the article! Filled with confidence (which never lasts long), I queried and sold other articles to a local newspaper and to a parenting magazine.

Crafting those articles helped improve my fiction writing by reinforcing a few good practices:

1. Keep it short

Here’s the deal – when you’re assigned a six-hundred word piece, you can’t go over the word count by much. Editors don’t like that. It wreaks havoc with their dummy (the layout of the page), or, if you’re paid by the word, it screws up their budget.

Neither one makes editors happy. And an unhappy editor is not likely to buy another article from you. So when you’re tasked with writing to a specific word count, you learn to pare things down real quick. Unnecessary words are killed without hesitation, tangents are stopped short, and the essence of the story is placed front and center. You include only what you need to include, and nothing more. Sound like familiar advice?

The same applies to writing fiction. Just enough setting, only characters that need to be included, focused and tight dialog – nothing that doesn’t move the story forward, nothing you don’t need.

2. Know Your Audience

The second thing writing articles taught me was the importance of knowing my target audience. Prior to querying any of the magazines or newspapers, I read back issues. I scoured for favorite themes and specific stories, but mainly tried to get a handle on overall style of each periodical.

Was the writing short and punchy, or flowery and drawn out? What things seemed to matter to their readers – finding love, finding personal enlightenment, finding a job?

The same approach can be applied to writing fiction.

Writing for the young adult reader? You’d better get that audience – language, dress, just why are they so angst-ridden. This might seem like common sense, but more than one agent blog (and I read several) covers this very thing. Get to know your intended age group. Read similar works (like the back issues of magazines, read in your genre), study the market, listen to readers.

3. Manage your time

That first newspaper article – I was given a generous six day turnaround time. And no, I’m not being sarcastic. From what I gather, the usual expectation is a day or even that afternoon.

Fortunately, it turns out I can write to deadline. In fact, I work well with that extra bit of stress. If you don’t (or if you do), here’s what you can learn by writing articles:

Don’t play around. Don’t spend all your time thinking about what you’re going to write. Yes, research is important. Crucial, even. But it’s not everything. It’s only part of the start. Establish a writing schedule and sincerely try to stick to it. Treat your writing time as sacred. Heck, set deadlines for yourself.

I don’t write an article a week by any means, but when I have one due, I need a schedule. I quickly set up a routine for my freelance writing that looks like this:

• Queries/brainstorm on Sundays – I’m more relaxed on Sundays which helps the creative juices or something;
• Research/phone calls on Monday;
• Write draft of article on Tuesday;
• Set aside for one day;
• Revise on Thursday;
• Submit on Friday;
• Celebrate Saturday (usually by writing something else and eating chocolate).

Fiction writers can benefit from the same type of routine. Here’s what I do when I’m revising a draft:

• Revisions, chapter by chapter on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I’m able to get through one to two chapters a day of rather thorough revisions.
• Let the revisions sit on Thursday. I’ll often write a short outline of what I need to change in upcoming chapters.
• Back to revisions on Friday. I usually pull a longer day and make sure I get at least two to three chapters done.
• On Saturdays I don’t work on my novel. Instead I focus on writing something else – a short story, an article, maybe a contest entry–and on Sunday, I read anything but my own work!

5 Responses to “Guest Blogger: 3 Non-fiction Tips for Fiction Writers”

1. Kim Kircher
   November 8th, 2010 @ 9:37 am

   Great advice Cat. I agree that writing to deadline is an important skill. Managing writing time is all about planning. Thanks!
   Kim

2. bridgid
   November 10th, 2010 @ 8:14 am

   Thanks for the comment, Kim!

3. Guest Blogger: So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer? : Inky Fresh Press
   November 15th, 2010 @ 8:13 am

   [...] tips for fiction writers looking to make money writing magazine articles. Read Cat’s first post here. You can also connect with Cat on Twitter or on her blog, Just Write [...]

4. Brittany Roshelle
   November 19th, 2010 @ 11:48 am

   This is such a wonderful article and extremely informative for those of us who publish freelance!

5. I’m a winner! : Inky Fresh Press
   December 1st, 2010 @ 12:09 am

   [...] Cat shared her tips for fiction writers looking to make money writing articles. (Click here for post one, post two and post three.) Be sure to stop by Cat’s blog to show your appreciation or comment [...]

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