How to Craft Fiction with Purpose

“It’s not so much a formula as it is a reminder when you’re doing this, don’t get too complicated. The whole purpose is just capturing the stories before they’re lost.” —Steve Vannoy

The concept for a three-book fiction series came about during FaceTime visits with our parents in West Virginia. We always kept in touch this way even as we traveled around the world, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, we talked more frequently.

Steve Vannoy, my husband and partner in “Authors Who Lead,” says of those conversations, “It always seemed like my dad would want to tell a story.” We felt like we could honor his stories and his storytelling by writing a series of fiction books memorializing his life and the place he grew up in.

If you haven’t already heard and of “Authors Who Lead,” you should go back and listen to the start of our fiction journey. On today’s episode of “Authors Who Lead,” Steve and I talk about how the series is going now that we are starting to write book three and about the new Fiction with Purpose group program we designed to take others through the journey of writing a fiction book.

Why Fiction with Purpose?
What is fiction with purpose? And why might you consider writing a fiction book yourself? Fiction with purpose is writing something that means a lot to you. Maybe you want to tell your story, but don’t feel comfortable sharing it in a memoir. Or it could be for your own creative transformation, or to leave a legacy and capture the fictionalized stories of your family.

Writing fiction with purpose can also be important to preserve times and places in the world that will be forgotten if we don’t capture their essence from actual people who have been there. Teaching history isn’t enough. There are few people who will read a book about history, especially of a place they don’t know about. They can just Google information about new places. But this kind of research doesn’t capture the stories and relationships of the era.

Another reason to write fiction with purpose is to create something bigger than yourself. One of the authors who will be joining our Fiction with Purpose group is a doctor who wants to write stories that help other doctors see their patients as people and not as their diseases or illness. Through his novels, he wants to inform, inspire, and encourage doctors to be more empathetic toward their patients.

Click here to read/listen to the full podcast episode on the Authors Who Lead Podcast.

-Azul Terronez – Co-Author of the Adventure in Cinder Bottom Series