Just like a new year’s resolution, some stories can be dead before it begins. So, here are 5 ways to kill your story before it begins:
Exposition Overload
Instead of using a lot of colorful and creative words to describe your feelings, make stronger verbs the focus. This will help you move the reader from sentence to sentence quickly so that it’s more engaging for readers who may be bored easily with flowery language.
You are charged with making your readers love or hate the protagonist. It is important that they want something, and this desire motivates them to act in some way as well- either positively towards our main character (and thus find oneself rooting for their success) negative against their foes without any sympathy whatsoever! Either way, you only have a short amount of time to sway the reader (generally about 250 words) so do so quickly.
Slow hook
You don’t want to start your novel right as the main character wakes up in the morning and starts their normal routine. This is a common introduction that likely won’t draw readers into this story at all and they may be tempted off by another chapter or two before you’ve even gotten them hooked!
Dumping backstories is a great way to make your story more engaging for readers, but it’s not always necessary. A lot of people can understand what happened without knowing every tiny detail that happened before the beginning! So, give the reader just enough to keep wondering about more.
Unbalanced action
The perfect balance of action and dialogue is key to keeping your readers on their toes. Too much can be overwhelming, while too little can leave them feeling bored or obese with nowhere important-ish (or both!) in particular that you need to be addressed at any given time!
A story should have just enough detail so as not to seem sluggish when reading it carefully – but no more than necessary; otherwise, we’ll end up giving up halfway through because everything was happening. To help you get started with your next riveting tale check out our 5 tips for developing fictional characters.
Every writer wants to improve in their craft. These six tips for beginners will help you grow as a beginning writer.
1. Keep a notebook with details of your characters:
Keeping the essential details about your characters together in one place will help you think better and write faster. You can combine character sheets, timelines, and plot notes into one document that allows you to jot down what happens when while keeping track of who said what. This is known as writing organically.
2. Set a goal for daily writing
Before you know it, your imagination can take control and you find yourself spending hours at a time in front of your computer screen, even though there’s no real inspiration going on in your head. This is something which I have seen happen several times with newcomers – they just don’t know when to stop! You should ideally set a target word or page count each day and then try to complete that every day. Try not to go over this throughout the first draft of your novel.
3. Balancing dialogue throughout your story.
It is important to balance your dialogue so that it doesn’t feel like one side of the story has more weight than another. This can be difficult when you have a long stretch without any speech or thought-provoking moments in between characters’ lines, but this will help keep readers engaged with what they’re reading! The goal for every character in a story should be to make the reader feel what they’re going through. To do this, you need your audience’s imagination on full blast.
4. Don’t be a broken record.
Watch out for repetition because it will make you look like a broken record. Style is a vital part of any story, and each writer has their own unique way to tell the tale. The best way to make your writing more engaging and interesting for the reader is by adding some variety to how you describe things. Avoid using words or phrases that have been repetitively used before because this will only result in a lackluster experience from both sides: readers won’t be able to get sufficiently excited about what they’re reading while writers might feel like their work isn’t worth putting time into anymore due solely on sheer repetition.
5. Writing location.
When you are working on your story, it is important that the environment be one where there aren’t any distractions. A journal or piece of paper at hand can help with ideas for what comes next while also serving as an easy way to note down anything else going through your mind when writing them out later; however, if these things aren’t available then try using a napkin from a restaurant – just make sure not to scrawl over anything! A specific workspace will allow you more peace so don’t worry about getting creative- find something comfortable and cozy in whichever room suits you best.
6. Keep going
Sometimes the words won’t come. You’ll think of something brilliant then an hour later, it’s gone, and you have no idea what was wrong or how to fix it! This happens for many reasons: tiredness from waking early in order to start writing; distractions like social media popping up while trying desperately not to refresh your browser out of fear that this might stop any progress made so far…whatever reason applies – just keep going because eventually, things will improve (or at least I hope). The key here isn’t getting discouraged when faced with challenges such as writer’s block.
