Fiction Writing Top Ten

Top Ten fictionwriting Articles

Here are the top ten articles for the Fiction Writing Site! These rankings are live and get reset at the beginning of each month, so check back often to see what your fellow visitors are most interested in!

1. Beware the Mary Sue Character

The Mary Sue character reads like a too-perfect version of the author. With no faults, she has no depth or complexity, and therefore no story worth caring about. She drags down the strongest plot, but if you know her characteristics, you can transform her into someone real on the rewrite.

2. Memory Versus Flashback

In fiction, what is the difference between a memory and a flashback? A memory summarizes the past, but a flashback shows an actual scene from the past which is integrated into the present-day story.

3. House of Sleds Writing Prompt

It isn't just people photos that can suggest a story. Often a landscape can suggest a mood or tug at a writer's childhood memories. Look at this house of sleds and see what you think.

4. Communicating With Your Beta Reader

Your working relationship with your beta reader is based on trust. That starts with understanding each other’s expectations and communication style.

5. Know the Unwritten Rules of Your Genre

In order to write successfully in a certain genre, you must know the unwritten rules – in short, what the readers in that genre want to see. This is overlooked by countless writers who either jump eagerly into a specific genre without researching it first, or knowingly try to break the rules.

6. Word Count and Fiction Lengths

Why worry about word count? After you finish writing your fiction project to whatever length it needs to be, you must know its approximate length category to market it.

7. Describe a Character Struggling Back from Defeat

Here is a text writing prompt for you. Describe a character struggling back from defeat. You never know who has the right stuff to overcome adversity.

8. Man Lost in Thought Photo Prompt

Here is another photo writing prompt for you, which illustrates the power of an ambiguous expression. What is this young man thinking? What emotion is he feeling? You could interpret his story a million different ways to fit several different genres.

9. The Near-Death Experience of the Classic Western

There are three types of story in the western fiction genre. They are Classic, New, and Modern. Here is the near-death experience of the Classic Western at the hands of the Big Five Publishers of New York City, and its miraculous recovery.

10. What is a Classic Western

There are three types of story in the western fiction genre – what I call Classic, New, and Modern. "Classic" means a Wild West story with heroism.