Tips for Writing Great Fiction

So you want to write fiction? Wonderful! Fiction writing can be a fun hobby for anyone with a creative mind. But if you are serious about your writing and want to be noticed by a publisher, there are a few easy tricks of the trade that will make your manuscript stand out to an editor.

1) It doesn't have to start at the beginning.

All stories have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But they don't have to come in that order. Your first job as an author is to draw your reader in within the first paragraph of your story, and gain their attention so that they will want to keep reading. However, the beginning of the story isn't always the most interesting part. So you can mix things up a little. Try taking an exciting scene from the middle of the end of your story and making it happen first. A few paragraphs of action or suspense should be enough to draw the reader in. When you reach a break in the action, take your story back to the beginning, and write it as if the main character is remembering the events leading up to where the story starts off. Later in the story, the reader will come back to the beginning sequence, thus bringing the story full circle.

You can also write a catch intro to your story (this works best if the story is told in first person) full of foreshadowing and perhaps a cliffhanger or two to draw in your reader.

2) Establish motive and objective.