All Write - Fiction Advice

As another writing year draws to a close, it’s worth looking at the basic errors all writers make at some point, so that you ensure they don’t reoccur in your own writing. Learning about the most common ones will help you avoid them in future and thus make your writing better. The ones I’ve listed are very common mistakes that all writers have made during their writing. There are, of course, dozens and dozens more well-known writing mistakes – and certainly more complicated ones – but as an editor, the following five are the most common that I encounter: Lack of Planning One of the biggest mistakes to make is to not do any planning at all, especially if you’re embarking on something as complicated as a novel. No rule exists that writers must plan, but it’s a simple fact that even a small amount of planning – some characterisation, plot points and perhaps some themes etc. – will result in a better story than one thrown together without any real thought. Editors know when a w

In this part, we’ll look at how to construct subplots, but from the perspective of first person, which is much harder to get to grips with. The question here is: can subplots be constructed in a first person story? After all, there is only one perspective in first person – the protagonist.   And that’s it. It’s not like having the diversity of multiple viewpoints as with third person stories, but that’s not to say that subplots can’t be done in first person. They can, but they’re quite limited. Unlike third person stories, where the viewpoint can change from character to character, and the richness of different character views can come into play (and so subplots can weave around the main character), with first person, this just isn’t possible. First person stories have to involve the main character, since the story cannot be told from any other character other than ‘I’ of your main character. By being involved in a subplot, the main character gets to see different outlooks o