16/July/2026 Hello aspiring writers. Here is a very brief guide to writing fiction, you won’t find anywhere else. I wrote it because I found many publsihed authors somehow do not measure up to the standards set by the greats that came before. It is going to be in 5 short sections, over just a few pages so get ready!
I’m not saying your story is not compelling, has no emotional conflict, but that you’re not the one to tell it -not at the moment of writing at least.
If I may ramble, I once wrote an entire universe you may call Maelstrom (if you ever meet me). But no matter how much I developed Maelstrom, it was just not me. I’m not a person so cruel to his characters, so sadistic as to put them under constant stress and danger.
Stories are nothing without what I call ‘anchors’, which are both tangible, intangible, portable, immovable -objects.
Why do we need things? It’s because we are human. Think of starting off a story without things. Just emotions, and you will find it wraps up very quickly and leaves you no plot or continuation. For example, two people in love can be in love -sure, but when you introduce an object / asset / an intangible thing like a promise or a vow, it becomes interesting and branches into multiple subplots.
You cannot tell of something that is not poetically connected with everything else. You have to restructure or do away with it altogether.
I once thought of writing a war scene, like Tolkien’s LoTR final battle. It was indeed on a mega scale. It was an invasion of the USA by Spice Islanders. This is when I realized that in a battle, the best things to highlight are not the strategy but the blood, the violence, the heartache, the loss, and the regret. So I separated the strategy in the first part, neatly and only alluded to it in the action scenes. I kept distance in mind. There was action near and far, and it worked quite well.
Distance yourself and read it again. What you fantasize of is often what drives you, but fantasies are rarely in correct sequence or of proper expressed form.
The tendency to write yourself and experiences into your story is a strong and sometimes unconscious one. So if you’re like me, and not Jack Kerouac, then you’d better edit yourself out of those scenes you’d fitted into. For example, aspects of me are in certain characters in my novel (I only wrote one). None of my aspects dominate any one character but are split and spliced through the whole cast. It is vital not to hog your own limelight.
If you love your characters it will show. If you don’t the readers will know and detach.
This is a well-known weakness -writing a character that you don’t fully agree with. Imagine waking him up every day and making him do the story. It would be dull. Don’t write a character that’s conveniently a stereotype necessary to tell a tale. Write a character you like who’s thrown into the conflict and let the story shape him. Naturally, he must not crash your plot / outline, nor any other character. I like my MC to be somewhat blander than the supporting cast. It’s like music. Sometimes other lines shine through the harmony. But in the end, everyone loves the MC -it’s good practice. ‘Good ol’ Charlie Brown -how I hate him’ -Peanuts, Shultz.
The rest of this guide you can probably ignore. Trust your feelings / common sense. Come on, it’s a book -a BOOK, or if you’re nervous, just another book, dude.
So there are a couple of minor things most people get wrong or off center. Sometimes things break in your story. If you want a chance at fame and fortune, don’t be like me and just put band aids on everything -it’s all about the plot, baby. Do take the time to sculpt each paragraph, each line of dialogue so it fits. Trim jagged edges. Edit, dammit. The most important thing you should pin to your wallboard is your bank balance.
And when you edit, you should look at your outline. Don’t write a bad outline or you won’t edit well -it will become another story (a different beast). Editing should close discoveries, not open new ones.
When you write your outline, be general at the top level and specific at the lowest levels. Don’t worry if you wrote it wrong, let it drift a bit, sure, but generally keep to the topmost storyline.
When you edit. Try to edit it just one time. Just read it over and patch the obvious faults. If you find yourself editing an MS 6 times or more, it probably isn’t you. I once advised a writer to write the sequel to her book since she was on her 7th draft and it still hadn’t set. Sometimes you have to move ahead. We want money, not victory. Then circle around just to spoon in the gravy when people respect your name more.
So your stories are bad, infantile, not worth a rejection letter. Maybe you aren’t a writer yet. I wasn’t a writer when I was in my 20s, but when I was in my 40s. I got good in my 50s. Why not tell you right away where I went wrong? Sure. I started writing based on the empty tube principle. You play with chemicals (emotions, twists, cleverness) but you don’t boil them in the test tube because you’re too immature or afraid of what you’ll get. You put words down, logical progressions, but the burner fire’s out and the tube is empty. Go out there and be somebody (it takes time), then write about something -anything. It will be better.