All Write - Fiction Advice

Pace is like the heartbeat of your story - sometimes it’s steady and relaxed, sometimes it races at breakneck speed. Pace dictates the speed at which your reader moves through your story. Skilfully done, it can speed things up and slow them down with equal measure, all without the reader really noticing, so getting the pacing right really is a fine art. Do it correctly and it could heighten your reader’s experience, but if you get it wrong, your reader won’t want to read any further. Pace isn’t just about the rate at which your story is told, but it’s also a clever way of blending action, emotion and tension. And the way to achieve that is to choose the right words for the right scene. Pace is all about momentum – whether fast, slow or steady. Whichever way, your reader wants to feel that rate, to feel swept along or to feel a gentle lull. The idea is to vary that momentum, to move along steadily, then ramp up the action and pace, then slow things down to allow the reader to ...

Not unlike painting by numbers, writing by numbers - writing to special creative writing programs – is just one of the ways to help writers pen their bestselling blockbusters, but therein lies a problem, because many of these software programs often claim it’s a sure fire way to publication and success. The reality, however, can be quite different. Writing experience, and the quality of that writing gets you published, not a computer program.  It’s better to do the work yourself because you’ll feel much better about your accomplishments, and you’ll learn so much more about the writing processes. But does creative writing software actually work?  It can be useful to a degree – they provide an overview of novel writing methods and they help writers understand some of the writing processes. Their selling point is that they offer the framework for which to create your novel; however, not one of them will tell you how you apply some of the most important aspects when it ...

As previously mentioned, our favourite authors play an important part in our development as writers, especially for those who are just starting out. Everyone is different; everyone has something different to offer. By reading different authors and genres, you will get a feel for the kind of writing that is established and successful, so by reflect on differing styles of writing helps us to nurture our own style of writing.  We’ve previously touched on the reasons why we shouldn’t copy other authors, but we can learn a great deal from them by finding and developing our own inspiration and creativity. Studying other writers allows us to see how they develop the structure of their stories. In other words, they show us how a balance of description, narrative and dialogue is used, how they bring in conflict and resolution, how they quicken and shorten the pace, how they draw out our emotions. It also allows us to see the voice of different writers – it could be soft and liter...

We all have favourite authors and poets. We all enjoy the way they create and weave their literary magic. They inspire us, motivate us and help us grow as writers; however, that’s where writers should draw a line because it’s easy when you start out fresh to writing to want to be just like your favourite authors, and that can lead to all sorts of problems.  The main drawback is that many writers tend to copy favourite authors thinking that this will bring published success. But is copying them such a bad thing? There are several problems with copying, or trying to be too much like the authors we admire. Here are some of the pitfalls: Lack of voice Lack of style Nothing is learned Their mistakes become your mistakes Bad writing habits Many new writers read the likes of Stephen King or JK Rowling or David Baldacci et al, and are immediately predisposed to that style of writing, they want to be like those writers, but they forget that for years, these authors have develo...

At the risk of sounding contrary, this is actually good advice. But what does it mean? And aren’t writers supposed to give the reader what they want, rather than the other way around? Well, no, not always. You need to give the reader what they want in terms of delivering the complete story – watertight plot, rounded and believable characters, background and pacing, lots of conflict and tension, atmosphere and emotion etc - but when a writer deliberately doesn’t give the reader what they want, it’s because they are teasing the reader and prompting them to want to know more.  The story is a two-way connection between you, the writer, and your reader. You lay the foundations and paint the background, you indulge them with information and description, but they also have to do some of the work too by trying to figure out what might happen next, what the characters might do and how the story might end etc. That’s precisely what keeps the reader turning the page. The true art ...

Dialogue versus description – or in simple terms – how much of each should you aim for in your fiction? This is a common question asked by many writers, and more often than not, if you ask a question like this you will get a hundred different answers, simply because there are no absolutes in fiction. Some people say lots of description is preferable, others say lots of dialogue is better. This can leave writers understandably confused. The one thing to remember is that fiction is about balance. The dialogue to description ratio doesn’t have to be an exact science, but a healthy amount of both is better than a story that relies heavily on one and not the other, which may leave the whole thing lacking. This then begs the question - why does there need to be a balance? Dialogue and description depend on each other; they co-exist, rather like strawberries and cream. One without the other just isn’t the same and sometimes it doesn’t work so well. One element imparts vital inform...

Often I’m asked how many characters are too many for a story, but the honest answer would be to assess the story or novel and make an informed decision on how many characters are central to the story. In truth, there is no definitive right or wrong. Some novels have many characters, like the Harry Potter novels, and Lord of the Rings, while others have a bare minimum. Firstly, too few characters are not necessarily a bad thing. Many novels have just a few main and secondary characters and they work well because the main focus is constantly on them throughout the novel. That means there aren’t less important characters stealing some of that limelight, and thus fewer subplots to write and to keep an eye on. In short stories it’s somewhat different – the fewer the characters, the better. That’s because you may only have between 1000 and 10,000 words to tell the story and having too many characters may complicate the whole thing and make it difficult for the reader to keep track ...