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During the years spent exploring fiction writing, I realized that it is indeed multi-layered and complex. If an author dreams of writing a piece that is worth reading, he/she should pay attention to the details that are important in fiction, for example, brainstorming, planning, researching, writing, formatting and revising.
I have also collected a great number of tips that will be useful for both novices and more experienced fiction writers. These ideas came from different sources: my own experiences, books, interviews with popular novelists, etc. These pieces of advice are intended to boost your creativity and provoke the need for development in writing.
Best Writing Tips for Novelists
- Do not limit yourself to one genre when you are reading or writing. You may have your favorite genre, but do not forget to step outside from time to time and let some fresh ideas come into your mind.
- Find out what works best in storytelling by analyzing stories you read or watch.
- Create an outline of your story before or after you write a rough draft. The outline is your road map that will help you to move smoothly from one part of the story to another.
- Stories that are based on real-life experiences make up fascinating fiction works. Keep this in mind and jot down interesting stories from your life or the life of your close people.
- When you are describing characters, make them real by adding details. Complement physical descriptions of characters with some unique psychological features that make your fictional heroes stand out of the rest.
- The most realistic characters are imperfect people. So, even if your main hero has many positive features, add some dark characteristics that make him/her more relatable.
- Interactions between characters as well as their actions should tell more to the readers about their real personalities than your descriptions.
- If you want your characters triumph in the end of the story, let them suffer and overcome serious obstacles during the course of action.
- Choose a distinct voice for your story. It must be consistent and appropriate for the content.
- Decide whether the first or the third person narration is more suitable for the story.
- Be careful about pacing. Do not tell the story too fast or slow, because the readers will skip paragraphs searching for action.
- Surprise your readers. Create an unexpected turn of events and provoke different emotions in your readers.
- Add sub-plots to the main plot of the story. This will make the story more interesting and will show the readers that many actions can happen at once.
- Blurring the lines is rather beneficial. Add funny moments into a horror story or romance into a thriller.
- Provoke thoughts in your readers. Such stories have more chances to be remembered.
Keep these key ideas for novelists handy and write your next story based on them. I am sure you will see progress in your writing style. Good luck!
