Last spring, I took a break from my WIP and wrote a short story involving the novel’s antagonist. I submitted the story to my writers’ group and, while it received generally favorable comments, one member made a particularly trenchant criticism: he said that my writing was too academic.
What he meant was that I had unknowingly structured my story much like a paper. I started out with a ‘thesis’ and the rest of the story consisted of the ‘proofs.’ Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for suspense and, consequently, the story kind of plodded along.
That incident taught me that I’d have to unlearn (or at least ignore) a lot of the writing skills I’d picked up in grad school. In academia, you’re supposed to make your point as clearly and concisely as possible with a minimum of obfuscation (though I’ve read many articles where that wasn’t the case!). But in fiction writing, you must delight in deception in order to build a sense of suspense in the reader. Instead of giving them a road map, you’re often giving them vague or even misleading directions.
As I work through the revisions of my WIP, I’m on the lookout for any instances of ‘academic’ writing. Thankfully, I haven’t found any yet, so perhaps I learned my lesson.
Codex Lochianus 