Here are 10 easy ways to improve your fiction. Or in the immortal words of Depeche Mode, “Everything counts in large amounts.”
1/ Know your central conflict.
Understanding your central conflict helps you understand your genre, what you want to write about, and what you care about. You don’t have to know the conflict before you start writing; you can start writing on vibes first. But you should figure out the central big issue before long, because that’s what your book will be about.
2/ Decide what your character wants.
Bonus points if you know this before you even write the scene (although some of us like to let the writing show us just as long as we do figure it out). What motivation or want does your character have? Is it big or small? Or both? For example, your character wants to buy a cake for her sister’s birthday. There. Now you have a character, a woman in her 30s, and she works in an office. Today she wants to leave work and buy a cake for her sister’s birthday.
3/ Every scene should have a conflict.
That cake your character is going to buy? Yeah, she’s never going to get to the bakery because the bakery blows up before she can get there. Conflict! But that’s an external conflict, so how about an internal one? Your character goes to buy the cake, but her ex-boyfriend stops her and begs her for one more chance. Now he’s delaying her AND he’s either irritating her or tugging on her undecided heart strings. She hasn’t bought the cake yet because he’s out here telling her he loves her. Should she take him back? Does she love him? The bakery is going to close in five minutes, but if she DOES love him, how can she walk inside and away from him?
4/ Learn to edit yourself.
Editing your own work is a whole skillset and a very necessary one. Many beginning writers, myself included, think “Oh, an editor will take care of that.” No, they will not. You need to have polished work before an editor ever sees it! So start now by:
- Edit on a macro level. Look at every scene and ask if it’s needed. What’s the point of it? Does it help the story? Does it move your characters along? If you’re afraid to delete a whole scene, save it to a new file.
- Edit on a micro level. Ask yourself whether every paragraph, sentence, and word is essential to your story. Delete it if not.
5/ End each chapter on a different emotional beat than where you started it.
In our example, you start with a woman who is leaving work to go buy a cake for her sister. She’s feeling really excited about her sister’s birthday. The party is going to be great and her sister is going to love the cake–and be surprised! But by the time her ex-boyfriend stops her and asks her to take him back, she’s forgotten about the party. She’s now feeling really sad because the breakup was so bad and if she takes him back, she might be in for more pain. Or, if the example is of the bakery blowing up, she might be scratched up, and the handsome paramedic says “You look so familiar! Ah yes, you’re my mother’s long-lots daughter, stolen from the hospital when you were a baby!” Now your character isn’t even thinking about the party or the cake, and she’s like WHAT.
Depeche Mode song: Get the Balance Right
6/ Find the flaw in your villain.
The best characters are nuanced and layered. Every villain has more to them — and they usually think they’re the hero of their own story.
Depeche Mode song: People are People
7/ Introduce your main character first.
You will lose your reader’s interest immediately if you describe something that isn’t your main character. This should seem fairly obvious, but it isn’t because we often get mired in how to set a scene or a chapter. Don’t worry about setting. Worry about what your character is doing. Start with that and build in scene setting around it.
Depeche Mode song: New Life
8/ Know your genre.
There are rules to some genres, like romance. For example, romances have a few thing sto them to that make it clear to readers that it’s a romance (and this is fine! Readers want this) For examokem a HEA and introducing the love nterest as the first other character (unless relative or ex)
9/ Begin in the middle of things.
Most novels start in the wrong place—truth! If you’ve written a few scenes but you’re not sure if they’re hooky enough, step back and thing about the general action. Has your character started by thinking about the cake earlier in the day? Is the first several pages about her leaving her job, putting on her coat, and walking out of the door? Start with her already half way down the block near the bakery, which then explodes. Better yet, start with her stepping into the street to cross it and then the bakery explodes.
10/ Ask yourself if your character is a cliché.
If you’re written about a professor, is he absent-minded? Hair fluttering all over the place? I’m definitely guilty of writing cliched characters—we all are. Take a moment to sketch out (write a Wikipedia entry for your character, for example) who they are and try to make sure there’s something unexpected about them.
If any of these tips resonated with you, you might like:
- Ten Tips for Writing Your First Novel by Sara Read
- How to write fiction: Mark Billingham on creating suspense