5 Tips To Be A Better Fiction Writer

The challenges of writing good Fiction are many. Fiction writing, while it is perhaps the most creative type of writing, is often seen as the most difficult type. It requires a basic plot or storyline, a time line, past, present or future, and the creation of memorable characters to act out the incidents you will create to tell your story.
But, it is not as complicated or as difficult as you imagine.
You can learn to simplify the complexities by isolating the integrated parts and putting them back together.
We have always been told to start at the beginning and keep going to the end, let things develop as they go along. I would like to offer a new way of looking at the traditional process.
The all important ending.
1. Start with your story ending. Why? Because how you conclude your story will depend upon what you intend to write next, in the future.
Will you keep the same strong main character and have him or her resolve similar conflicts with different opponents? Creating sequels to your first story, if it is very popular and sells well, is one way to continue your writing in the same genre, like Ian Flemming’s “James Bond,” or you could keep the same or similar locations as Stephen King does in many of his novels, and create new characters.
Whatever your choice, your ending is crucial to your next beginning.
The destination and circumstances in which your characters and story line ends can have many alternatives and conclusions.
Visualize your ending first, then by creating a “backwards time line” you can easily see what has to take place to arrive at the proposed ending. Many good Authors have already discovered and use this secret to continue and increase their production.
Make the time line real.
2. Determine your story time line against the duration of time needed for each incident to take place in real-world time segments. For example, a sports game usually takes hours, a marathon can take days, and a cross country run will take months. Empires take years, decades, and often centuries to build. Keep your time line believable in the context of the story line.
Transport the reader to where the characters are living.
3. Fix the ideal location for your events and ending to take place. The more familiar you are with the locations, the towns, cities, States or Countries, the easier this will be for you to do. Otherwise, visit or do research on the locations so that your references to landmarks, events and people who live there, will also be believable. There are very different cultures, beliefs, and even traffic laws in different countries. Remember that your characters will be acting within the settings and backgrounds you create in your story.
Take your readers on an adventure they can only experience through your writing.
4. Your characters and settings will dictate where you will take your readers, and who they will identify with in your story. Real life can sometimes be commonplace, repetitive and boring. Your readers look to your writing to move them, even if only temporarily, out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary.
What emotional responses do you want your readers to feel? Joy, love, laughter, enthusiasm, compassion or fear?
We all experience a broad range of emotions in our everyday lives as we live, work and inter-act with others. Your characters should respond to their situations and conflicts with these emotions as well. Make both your endings and your characters believable.
Even the most perfect “superhero” has vulnerabilities and slams into a wall occasionally. Even the best detective misses an obvious clue, once in a while. Even the most romantic lover will bring flowers when his sweetheart is craving candy.
The human traits of both strength and weakness are present in every one of us. So it should be with your characters, keep them human as well.
Conflict and contrast create interest.
5. No one lives life without conflict. Contrast makes life more interesting. How your characters respond to and resolve conflicts in your story is important to keep your readers interested.
No matter how noble and beneficial your purpose is, there will always be someone, somewhere who will oppose it with their own contrasting purpose.
Your characters should come up with, and carry out, the actions necessary to implement their own creative solutions to the barriers posed by their opponents in the story.
Creating and resolving conflicts is the vehicle which will move your story line or plot along.
The final challenge.
You will develop your own style and should choose whatever works best for you. You must create curiosity, surprise, excitement, stimulation, and provoke thought in your readers.
Your creative fiction writing should leave the reader feeling as if the conflicts drawn out in your stories have ended in a satisfactory manner. Your story should leave him with something to think about and feel. Your creative fiction writing should enhance his life, entertain him and make him eager to read the next book you write.
I can almost promise the second book will be easier than the first, as you build your confidence and your competence.