General Tips for Writing Fiction

Are you writing fiction? Here are some ideas for making your book one that readers will want to read. These are general tips. At the bottom of the page you'll find links to further helpful tips from successful authors.

Create curiosity. Curiosity keeps your reader turning the pages. Make them keep wondering what's going to happen.

Help your readers identify with the characters. Give the reader a reason to like the character and to care what happens to him or her. A character that has some characteristics that are like me is one that will interest me more than one who seems totally unlike me. Once you have a reader concerned about the character and afraid for him or her, that reader is hooked.

Your protagonist needs to have a goal that will keep the reader interested. He or she wants something that they intend to accomplish by the end of the book. It could be an adopted child who wants to find her real mother, a man falsely accused who wants to find out who really committed the crime, etc. You get the idea. Whatever the goal, state it early in the book. This will keep the reader involved until the reader finds out if your protagonist achieves his or her goal. Then set up short term goals in each scene that carry this same interest throughout the book.

Dialog that faithfully reproduces normal social interaction will be boring. In real life, a lot of our conversation begins with pleasantries that have little meaning: "How are you today?" "Surely is a nice day today, don't you think?" If you put these phrases into your dialog, you'll put readers to sleep. So eliminate these pleasant redundancies and get right to the point. The trick is to do this and still make your dialog sound natural. Keep every word essential to the flow of the story and you'll keep your readers' interest.

Keep momentum going in your manuscript by continuing to raise questions in the mind of the reader and not answering them too soon. It's a balancing act. Don't frustrate the reader by raising too many questions before they start getting some answers. On the other hand, don't give away so much that you lose the readers' interest.

Keep your point of view clear. In your work, you will need to choose a point of view. If the story is told through the eyes of one of your characters, your problem is solved. At any point in the book, your reader will understand the point of view because it will always be the same. When you write in the third person you can get into trouble. The best tip here is to keep the point of view consistent in each scene. Don't jump from one mind to another—that will make it difficult for the reader to become emotionally attached to any one character. Stay with one point of view through the entire scene.