In-Depth Articles About ... Fiction

Procrastination is the bane of many writers … or would-be writers. It can affect you at any stage of your writing life. And it’s one of the top problems I hear about (along with “time management” more generally) from Aliventures newsletter readers, Writers’ Cafe...

When you’re reworking your first or second draft, you’ll likely be making some changes relating to your characters and their characterisation (how they come across on the page). If you didn’t quite nail your characters’ personalities or their character arcs during the...

This post was first published in March 2021 and most recently updated in June 2024. A  lot of writers worry that they may not be good enough to be successful. The truth is that however “good” or “bad” your writing is, you can improve with practice and with careful...

Are you looking to raise the levels of tension in your story?  A high level of tension keeps your story taut, like a wire: it means your reader will be on the edge of their seat as they wait to find out what happens next. It ramps up their emotional investment in...

Whether you’re new to writing fiction or you’ve already written a bunch of stories, it often feels like there’s a lot to learn. There’s tons of great advice out there – but some of it can seem confusing (should you always stick to “show, don’t tell”) or even contradictory (like whether you…

Thinking of writing a novel? You might be wondering about how best to plan it … but before you figure that out, you need to decide how much planning you’ll want to do in advance. Some novelists like to plan out every chapter before they begin. Others pick up a blank…

One of the most common pieces of writing advice is show, don’t tell. It’s a neat little phrase. But you might wonder what exactly the “show don’t tell” rule means, and why it matters. After all, you’re telling a story…

The stories that stick with me are ones where the characters feel like real people, with lives before the story begins … and lives that continue after the final page. These characters don’t…

This post was originally published in February 2016 and updated in March 2024. Whether you’re writing a short story or an epic novel series, fictional time is going to pass during it. Obviously enough, fictional time is not the same thing as real time (unless you’re...

What grips readers and keeps them reading? As a reader, there are lots of reasons why I might get really into a book … but one big factor is unanswered questions. One of the times I notice this most is when I’m reading…

Have you ever started reading a novel and given up within the first few pages? Unless you’re a particularly tenacious (or stubborn!) reader, you probably have. It’s often clear early on that a book simply isn’t working for you. While…

If you’re working on a novel, some scenes will likely flow easily – they’ll be straightforward to write and not too much of a challenge. But other scenes will be a lot tougher. There are plenty of reasons why certain scenes…

Your friend recommends a thriller to you and tells you it’s “a fantastic page-turner”. Another friend tells you about a sweet romance novel that’s a “gentle, slow burn”. Both your friends are describing something to do with the pace…

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at internal conflict in detail: when a character is facing a struggle that’s taking place within their own mind. Today, we’re going to look at some examples of different kinds of external conflict. You’ll…

Stories are built on conflict. Without any conflict, there’s not really any story. If Jane Doe gets everything she wanted, without any difficulties, and lives happily ever after, then that’s lovely for Jane, but not very interesting to read…

All stories, however short, need conflict: a clash between two (or more) people, ideas, or even motivations. Conflict is the engine that powers your story, driving it forward. Without conflict, there’s not much of a story. Your main character…

Whatever stage of the process you’re at, writing a novel can be a whole lot of fun. But it also takes a lot of time. None of us have unlimited time to write (and chances are, your writing time has to fit in around everything else in life) – so how can you best move...

Stories have a beginning, middle, and end … but they don’t necessarily need to be told in that order. Plenty of stories follow the advice given to Alice by the King in Alice in Wonderland: “Begin at the beginning […] and go on …

Scenes are the building blocks of your novel. When you plan (if you plan!), you’re thinking in scenes: individual little chunks of story that build on one another as they work towards the conclusion. Like me, you probably feel you have an intuitive…

Is your novel’s plot complex enough? If you’ve drafted a novel and you’re done in 50,000 words when you were aiming for 80,000, or if the pacing feels wrong – perhaps not much happens and you’ve dragged out simple scenes…

Writing the first scene of a novel is tricky. Perhaps you’ve been slowly developing an idea for weeks, months, or even years. You might have written pages of notes or created a full outline. And now you’ve opened up the document to start … but how do you actually...

Who’s telling your story? Perhaps the choice is easy and obvious: you’re writing from a particular character’s viewpoint in the first person (“I”) and the whole story is from their perspective. Or perhaps it’s trickier than that. You’ve got…

Is it ever okay to repeat the same word or phrase in your writing Absolutely! Unintentional repetition is something that authors are (quite rightly) warned to watch out for, particularly in fiction. And that may have given…

This post was first published in April 2019 and updated in April 2022. Whether you consider plot to be more important than character or you believe they’re just two sides of the same coin, it’s clear that character matters. Readers want characters who are engaging and...

There are several perfectly good ways to structure a story in terms of viewpoint, but (probably) the more common ones are: A single first-person narrator, as in Florence and Giles or 600 Hours of Edward. A main third-person narrator…

Maybe you’ve heard that your characters “should” have flaws. Or maybe you’ve come across terms like “tragic flaw” or “fatal flaw” in literature. So what exactly is a character flaw … and why’s it important to your story?

This post was first published in March 2012 and updated in November 2021. A lot of fiction-writers struggle with dialogue. It’s tough to make fictional people sound convincing. And on an even more basic level, it's tricky just to punctuate dialogue correctly. But...

This post was inspired by an email conversation with Emma from the brilliant blog Science at Your Doorstep and by a question from an Aliventures reader. It was first published in April 2018 and updated in October 2021. Pick up the nearest book. Whether it’s fiction or...

One theme’s come through already in the survey responses: procrastination. It’s the bane of many writers … or would-be writers. Some people spend months, even years, trying to get round to writing, but never quite manage to…

This post was originally published in April 2016 and updated in July 2021. Dialogue is vital to your story. It helps reveal and develop character – and it drives the plot forward. Dialogue-heavy scenes tend to be fast-paced, helping to keep the reader moving. This...

For some writers, the question “how long should a novel be?” sounds a bit like “how long is a piece of string?” They feel that their novel should be long enough to get the job done – even if that means it falls outside the bounds of what readers and publishers are used to. However, if you’ve written something that’s…

All stories are, at one level, a collection of scenes. It can be tough to get scenes right. Maybe the action and surroundings were so vivid in your head, but they just haven’t translated well to the page. We’re going to take a look at how to write stronger scenes by adding more depth and detail. Before we dig in, I want to…

If your story doesn’t have strong, compelling characters … you’ll struggle to get readers. However intricate your plotting or however exotic your setting, if your characters are flat and uninteresting, there’s nothing for the reader to invest in. We read stories because we’re interested in…

This post was originally published in April 2016 and updated in July 2020. You’d like to write a novel ... but how do you even begin? I’m not thinking here about ways to write a great opening (if that’s what you’re after, check out this excellent article from The...

Most stories, these days, don’t have flawless heroes and evil cackling villains. Readers – and writers! – enjoy more complex characters. At what stage, though, does a dark hero (aka “anti-hero”) turn into…

Sometimes, you feel like your story hangs together pretty well ... until you re-read your whole draft. That’s when you notice all the places where it’s not quite working. If there’s a tiny inconsistency (like a character changing eye colour half way), that’s pretty...

In screenwriting, there are commonly agreed "plot points" that movies are expected to follow. With novels, you've got more flexibility – but many writers and theorists would argue that you should hit specific plot points at specific stages in your novel. These are the...

This is the second post in our series on "Developing Better Plots". If you missed last week's post, you can find it here: What is Plot ... and is it the Same Thing as Story or Narrative?  Confession time: research is definitely not my favourite part of writing. The...

What exactly is plot? While many elements of storytelling – like dialogue – are easy to point to, plot can be trickier to pin down.Here are a few definitions: A plot is a sequence of events in which every cause has an effect, pulling the story…

It’s a familiar situation for most novelists: you get a few chapters in (or if you’re unlucky, a few pages) … and for one reason or another, you find yourself stuck. Maybe your initial enthusiasm for the project didn’t last. Maybe you had the first few chapters...

You’ve probably come across the idea of a “character arc” before now ... but what is it, and why’s it called that? A character arc isn’t the same thing as your plot. It’s the progression of your character as a person throughout your story. You might also think of it...

Most writers love creating characters and writing about them – but it can be a struggle to get characters right. If you’re normally quite plot-focused, you might find yourself creating characters who are lifeless “pegs” that fit into the right-shaped spaces in your...

Do you have a hard time hurting your characters? Maybe it’s pretty easy with some of them. (For me, villains are fair game, and Woobies seem to invite a fair amount of suffering.) But chances are, you’ve either got characters who you hate to hurt…

If you’re a fiction writer, unless you’re writing a very short story or something decidedly experimental, you’re going to have to write dialogue. For some writers (me included), dialogue comes easily. It may even be a little too easy – sometimes, the first words you think of aren’t necessarily the best…

An unreliable narrator is a first person narrator who doesn’t entirely tell the truth. That might be because they’re biased or deluded – or it could be because they’re outright lying to us (or, at the very least, deliberately omitting the truth). We could argue that...

I’m doing NaNoWriMo this month – maybe you are too? (For the uninitiated, “NaNoWriMo” stands for National Novel Writing Month. It happens every November, where people all over the world try to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.) This is the eight book-length piece of fiction I’ve

Novels are tricky. There’s so much to juggle that no-one gets it quite right the first time round … and most authors end up doing wholesale rewrites, rather than just making a few editorial tweaks. I’ve come to accept that rewriting is just part…

Note: This post was originally published in 2016, and was updated in June 2018. Do your characters suffer enough? Even if you’re writing a light and fluffy romance, at some point, someone in your novel is going to need to get hurt. I’m not suggesting all-out graphic...

If you’ve been in any writing groups, read any writing books or blogs, or hung out in any writing-related forums online ... you’ve probably come across these three words of advice: “Show, don’t tell.” It’s a very commonly quoted writing “rule”. There’s...

You’re probably known by several different names in your life. I’m “Alison Luke” when I fill in a form. I’m “Mrs Luke” to my bank and to cold-callers. I’m “Mummy” to my kids, occasionally “Mum” (they’re not convinced that I even have another name). I’m...

Last week, I gave you four pieces of bad – even dangerous – advice that writers all too often hear. Today, I’ve got even more bad advice! Most of this is aimed at fiction writers, though the final two could apply to any type of writing. Bad Advice #1:...

Any writing-related advice that says you should always or never do something can generally be taken with a very large pinch of salt! I’m sure you’ve heard lots of poor writing advice over the months, years or even decades that you’ve been writing. Here are some that I...

Over the years, I’ve entered a fair few short stories into competitions. I’m a novelist by inclination, and so most of my fiction writing has been on much longer projects ... but I’ve found short stories a great way to try out different techniques, to...

I’ve got a particularly bad writing habit – and I suspect I’m not the only person who does this... All too often, I leap straight into the next scene with very little thought about where exactly my characters are located. If I was writing something...

Sometimes, it’s obvious who the POV (point of view) character(s) will be for a particular story. Maybe you’re writing a first-person romance novella, for instance, with the heroine as the only viewpoint character. Often, though, there isn’t a completely clear-cut...

A couple of weekends ago, I headed off on an overnight writing retreat and started work on a new fiction project. This is the first time in more years than I care to count (nine, yikes) that I’ve been working on a long piece of fiction other than my...

I’ve written a fair amount about dialogue over the past few years ... partly because I love writing dialogue! And I figured it was about time I collated those posts in one place. Whether you enjoy dialogue too (and want to make yours even better) or whether it’s...

If you’re writing fiction, at some point, you’ll probably want to describe the people populating your story. (This isn’t absolutely essential, mind. I’ve just written a short story that consists entirely of dialogue – no dialogue tags, no action beats,...