All Write - Fiction Advice

The whole purpose of any piece of writing is to grab your reader’s attention and maintain that attention all through the story.   It sounds easy, but it’s not always easy to accomplish, and that’s because the writer has to somehow make the reader want to keep reading. Maintaining interest for a reader is a fluid, continual process.   In order to captivate, a writer must continually create to avoid the story and the characters from becoming stale, boring and lacklustre. First and foremost, make sure the story starts at its most necessary point in order to grab their attention from the very start. Once you have done that, then you can build around it and maintain that momentum and attention. There are several ways to create, and therefore, captivate: ·          Create conflict ·          Create obstacles ·          Create tension ·          Create emotion ·          Create action The golden rule of any fiction writing is to create conflict with and around your

There are many things that make a writer stumble during writing, whether that’s plot development, characterisation, viewpoints etc, but a common stumbling block is how to deal with single character scenes. Most scenes in a story will involve two or more characters, which doesn’t present a problem because there will always be action, dialogue and description for these characters to fill your pages.   But what if you have a scene, an entire chapter, or an entire story with just one character and no dialogue? How do you write such scenes without being boring or repetitive?   How can you write them and still stimulate your reader? It sounds daunting, but with practise it comes easily, and isn’t as much as a stumbling block as perceived.   In order for single character scenes to be effective and interesting, you must have a fully developed character that you know extremely well.   If you don’t, the premise of single character scenes becomes problematic, because you won’t be abl

One of the questions writers often ask is how much of their character's point of view should be apparent within the narrative.   After all, the story should be from the protagonist’s viewpoint, and the majority of the scenes should concentrate on your main character. Of course there will be scenes or chapters from other character’ viewpoints, and these are absolutely fine, but one of the problems that can occur is that a secondary character gradually overshadows the main character.   This sometimes happens naturally through the writing process because first and second drafts are usually the ‘bare bones’ of a novel and the writer is, therefore, finding their way with it. The other problem is that viewpoints are not always clear during a chapter.   Is it the lead character’s chapter, or the secondary character’s chapter?   Or, as sometimes happens, is it a mix of all the characters? The other problem is that sometimes this imbalance isn’t always picked up by writers, which