Fiction Writing FAQ
Everything you need to know about writing fiction
Straight answers about fiction writing from a working novelist. 22 published novels and dozens of short stories across science fiction, fantasy, thriller, and horror. Plus 113+ books total under my own name and 54+ ghostwritten for clients.
No pitch. No pressure.
What is fiction writing?
Fiction is invented storytelling: novels, short stories, novellas, flash fiction, and everything in between. The genres range from literary fiction to sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, thriller, romance, horror, and more. If you’re writing fiction or considering it, these are the questions that come up most often.
I’ve published 22 novels and dozens of short stories across genres, and I keep 320 free craft-based writing exercises available for writers at any level. If you need help with a fiction project, take a look at my professional writing services.
Foundations and elements
What is fiction writing?
Fiction is storytelling based on invented events, characters, and worlds. The story comes from the writer’s imagination rather than from factual reporting or personal experience (though fiction often draws on both). It covers a huge range of forms: novels, novellas, short stories, flash fiction, screenplays, and more. Within those forms, you’ve got dozens of genres and subgenres, each with its own conventions and reader expectations. The common thread is that the writer is making things up, even if the story feels completely real.
How do I start writing fiction?
Start with whatever grabbed you: a character you can’t stop thinking about, a situation that fascinates you, a “what if” question, an image, a voice, a first line. Some writers outline extensively before writing a word. Others start with a scene and discover the story as they go. Neither approach is wrong. What matters is getting words on the page. Your first draft exists to figure out what the story is. You’ll fix everything else in revision.
What makes a compelling character?
A compelling character wants something, and something stands in the way. That’s the engine. Beyond that, the character needs to feel specific rather than generic: they have contradictions, habits, blind spots, and a way of seeing the world that’s uniquely theirs. The reader doesn’t need to like them, but they need to understand them well enough to care what happens. Flat characters announce who they are. Complex characters reveal who they are through choices under pressure.
How important is setting?
Setting isn’t just a backdrop. It shapes how characters behave, what’s possible in the story, and how the reader feels. A murder mystery set in a small town where everyone knows each other works completely differently from one set in an anonymous city. The best settings function almost like characters themselves: they have moods, they create constraints, they change over time. Ground your setting in sensory detail (what does the place smell like, sound like, feel like?) rather than just visual description.
What does “show, don’t tell” actually mean?
It means giving the reader evidence and letting them draw conclusions, instead of handing them the conclusion directly. “Sarah was nervous” is telling. “Sarah picked at the label on her water bottle, peeling it off in thin strips” is showing. Showing is almost always more vivid and engaging. But “show, don’t tell” isn’t an absolute rule. Sometimes telling is more efficient, and a story that shows everything bogs down in unnecessary detail. The skill is knowing when each approach serves the story better.
How do I write realistic dialogue?
Listen to how people actually talk: they interrupt each other, trail off, avoid saying what they mean, and use different rhythms depending on who they’re talking to. Then edit out the boring parts. Real conversation is full of “um” and “well” and small talk. Fictional dialogue is compressed. Every line should do at least one of three things: reveal character, advance the plot, or create tension. Ideally two at once. Read your dialogue out loud. If it sounds like a speech instead of a conversation, rewrite it.
What is point of view, and which should I use?
Point of view (POV) is whose eyes the reader sees the story through. First person (“I walked into the room”) creates intimacy and voice but limits you to what that character knows and sees. Third person limited (“She walked into the room”) gives you a bit more flexibility while still filtering through one character’s perspective. Third person omniscient lets you dip into anyone’s thoughts, but it’s harder to control and can feel distant. Most contemporary fiction uses first person or third person limited. Pick the POV that gives you the best access to the emotions and information your story needs.
What is the role of conflict in fiction?
Conflict is what makes a story a story instead of a summary of events. Something has to be at stake. Your character wants something, and something prevents them from getting it: another person, the environment, society, their own flaws, fate, time. Without conflict, there’s no tension, and without tension, there’s no reason for the reader to turn the page. Conflict doesn’t have to mean fighting. A quiet conversation where two people want incompatible things is conflict. A character choosing between two loyalties is conflict.
How do I create suspense?
Make the reader care about the character first. Suspense only works when the reader is invested in the outcome. Then create uncertainty about what will happen. Delay the answer to a question the reader is desperate to have resolved. Give the character incomplete information while letting the reader know more (or less) than the character does. Raise the stakes gradually. And resist the urge to resolve tension too quickly. The longer you can sustain the question without losing the reader’s patience, the more powerful the payoff.
Structure, form, and voice
What is a plot twist, and how do I write one?
A plot twist is a revelation that changes the reader’s understanding of the story. The best twists feel surprising in the moment but inevitable in hindsight. That means planting clues early that the reader can look back on and think “I should have seen that coming.” A twist that comes out of nowhere feels like cheating. A twist that was foreshadowed feels earned. The key is misdirection: give the reader a plausible interpretation of those clues so they’re looking in the wrong direction when the truth arrives.
What is a subplot?
A subplot is a secondary storyline that runs alongside the main plot. It usually involves supporting characters or a different dimension of the protagonist’s life. Good subplots aren’t filler. They echo, contrast with, or complicate the main plot’s themes. A romance subplot in a thriller raises the personal stakes. A workplace conflict subplot in a family drama shows the character under different pressures. If a subplot doesn’t connect to the main story thematically or structurally, it’s dead weight.
How do I end a story effectively?
The ending should feel earned by everything that came before it. It resolves the central conflict (or deliberately refuses to, if ambiguity is the point). It answers the story’s driving question. The strongest endings resonate because they deliver something the reader wanted but not in the way they expected. Not every story needs a tidy resolution. Some of the most powerful endings leave things open, but they still close the emotional arc. If the reader finishes and feels like the story is complete, the ending worked.
How important is the opening?
The opening has to earn the reader’s decision to keep going. In a bookstore, that means the first page. Online, that means the first paragraph. You don’t need an explosion or a dead body. You need a voice the reader wants to spend time with, a question they want answered, or a situation that makes them curious about what happens next. Don’t start with backstory, weather, or a character waking up. Start as close to the action as possible. You can always fill in background later.
What’s the difference between a short story and a novel?
Beyond length (short stories are typically under 10,000 words, novels are 50,000+), the real difference is scope. A short story usually focuses on a single event, moment of change, or realization. It has fewer characters, a tighter timeframe, and one central tension. A novel has room for multiple storylines, deeper character development, subplots, and a more complex structure. Writing a good short story requires different skills than writing a good novel. A short story is a single strike. A novel is a sustained campaign.
What about novellas and flash fiction?
A novella falls between a short story and a novel, typically 17,000 to 40,000 words. It has more room than a short story for character development and plot complexity, but it still needs to stay focused. Flash fiction is extremely short, usually under 1,000 words (sometimes under 500). Flash fiction demands precision since every single word has to earn its place. Both forms are worth practicing because the constraints force you to make sharper choices about what to include and what to cut.
How do I find my voice as a fiction writer?
Voice develops through writing, not through thinking about writing. The more you write, the more your natural rhythms, word choices, and perspective emerge. Read widely to absorb different voices, but don’t try to imitate anyone. Voice is what’s left when you stop performing and start telling the story the way only you would tell it. If your writing sounds like it could have been written by anyone, you haven’t found your voice yet. Keep writing until it sounds like you.
How do I handle writer’s block?
Writer’s block usually means one of three things: you’re stuck on a story problem and need to think it through before writing more, you’re afraid of writing badly, or you’re burned out and need rest. For story problems, go back to the last point where the writing felt alive and take a different path. For fear, give yourself permission to write garbage, because you can fix bad writing but you can’t fix a blank page. For burnout, take a break without guilt. Forcing yourself to stare at a screen for hours produces nothing useful.
How long does it take to write a novel?
Most first novels take one to three years. Experienced authors writing full-time can produce a draft in three to six months. The variables are how much time you have to write each day, how much planning you do before starting, and how clean your first drafts tend to be. The writing itself is only part of the timeline. Revision, beta readers, editing, and (if you’re pursuing traditional publishing) querying agents all add months or years. Don’t measure your pace against anyone else’s. Finish the book.
AI and fiction writing
Can AI write a novel?
It can produce something novel-shaped. It cannot produce a novel worth reading, and the gap is not small. AI is useful for the scaffolding around fiction: brainstorming, naming, working through a plot snag, drafting a synopsis you’ll rewrite. But ask it to actually write the book and you get prose that’s competent sentence by sentence and hollow everywhere it counts. The stakes don’t pay off, the characters all sound like the same person, the structure repeats itself, and the whole thing reads like it was assembled rather than told. Fiction depends on exactly the things a prediction engine can’t do: genuine causality, real loss, a human voice that belongs to one person. Used as a tool under a writer who knows its failure modes, AI helps. Handed the keys, it writes the kind of book readers abandon by chapter three. For the publishing and copyright side, see my AI and Your Book FAQ, and I’ve written at length about working with these tools in my AI-Enhanced Writing handbook series.
Why is AI bad at the bones of a story?
Because it has no model of cause and effect, only of what tends to follow what. So AI plots move because the story needs them to, not because of what came before. The clue surfaces exactly when the protagonist is stuck. The right person walks in at the right moment. These are conveniences, and readers feel them even when they can’t name them. The deeper problem is that AI plots are safe: the protagonist faces obstacles but never truly loses anything that matters. Real stories make the character pay, something real is gone by the end that was there at the start, a relationship, a belief, an illusion about themselves. AI also defaults to a clean three-act shape at every level no matter what structure you asked for, so the story collapses toward setup, confrontation, tidy resolution even when the material wants something else. Strong fiction earns every turn and leaves some things broken. That’s the part AI can’t fake.
Why do AI characters feel flat?
A few specific reasons, and once you see them you can’t unsee them. AI gives every significant character a clean arc: they all learn something, change, and arrive somewhere, when real people often end exactly where they started and that’s the truer thing. AI secondary characters are purely functional, they show up to deliver information or opposition and vanish when the protagonist doesn’t need them, instead of having their own agendas and lives that continue offstage. AI antagonists are conveniently wrong, legible villains who confirm the hero is right, rather than people with a coherent worldview the reader could imagine holding. And worst of all, AI characters blur: different names and roles but they think alike, speak alike, notice the same things, because the model’s single voice leaks into all of them equally. Real characters are each a different person, you should be able to delete the dialogue tags and still know who’s talking. AI almost never clears that bar on its own.
Why do AI chapters and scenes feel the same?
AI builds to a template and repeats it. Scenes summarize instead of dramatize, telling you what happened rather than putting you in the room while it happens. They lack subtext, the characters say what they mean instead of maneuvering around it. And in a group scene, everyone is politely focused on the same topic, when a real scene has four people running four private agendas at once: one watching the door because they need to leave, one short-tempered because they woke up wrong, one throwing covert jabs to see what lands. AI also lets the middle sag, it pours attention into the hook and the ending and treats the middle as filler, which is exactly where most readers quit and exactly where character is actually built. The fix is rebuilding scenes so each one dramatizes, carries subtext, and does a job only it does. That’s hands-on structural work, not a prompt.
What are the prose-level tells that AI wrote it?
There’s a fingerprint at the sentence level, and it’s consistent. Cognitive process theater: “I noted this,” “I registered,” “I found myself,” “I was aware that,” narrating the act of noticing instead of just noticing. The computational tell of a character “filing it away,” which is how a machine describes its own memory, not how a person thinks. Stock body-language tics on repeat: the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, the quirked eyebrow, constant nodding, swallowing when nervous. Hedged gestures that won’t commit, the “almost smiled,” the “something like a laugh.” The relentless “this, then this, then this” cadence where every sentence runs the same length and shape until the prose flatlines. Triads everywhere because three feels complete to the model. Qualifier pileups, “very,” “just,” “somewhat,” softening every line. And em dashes scattered through the narration. Any one of these is a habit. All of them stacked at machine density, page after page, is a signature.
What about AI detectors like Originality.ai and GPTZero?
Treat them as a weak signal, never a verdict. The irony is built in: these tools use AI to detect AI, and they are wildly inaccurate in both directions. They flag human writing as machine-written and pass machine writing as human, routinely. A positive result does not prove a person used AI, and it should never be used to condemn a piece of work on its own. Plenty of people write in ways that happen to trip these detectors: clean, plain, well-organized prose, or writers who learned in a structured corporate or academic setting, or simply anyone whose natural style is tidy. Non-native English speakers get falsely flagged at especially high rates. There is some use in running a detector as one input among many, a prompt to look closer at a passage, but the moment you treat the score as proof you are trusting a tool that is wrong often enough to ruin someone unfairly. The reliable read on whether something was machine-drafted comes from a human who knows the actual tells and checks the facts, not from a number a detector spits out.
Can you tell when fiction was written by AI, and can you fix it?
Yes to both. I read for the fingerprint at both levels: the story bones (unpaid stakes, conveniences, clean arcs on every character, legible antagonists, the sagging middle, the default three-act collapse) and the prose (cognitive process theater, “filed it away,” the stock body-language tics, hedged gestures, the “this then this then this” rhythm, triads, qualifier pileups, em dashes). Then I rebuild: stakes that actually cost something, characters who each sound like a different person, scenes that dramatize instead of summarize, a middle that earns its pages, and prose with varied rhythm and a real voice. The goal isn’t to disguise that AI touched a draft. It’s to make the book read like a person wrote it, because in every way that reaches the reader, a person did. If you have a manuscript that came out of AI and feels off but you can’t say why, that off feeling is the fingerprint, and it’s fixable.
Process, feedback, and getting help
Do I need to outline before writing?
Some writers outline everything in detail before writing a word (plotters). Others start with a rough idea and discover the story as they draft (pantsers). Most fall somewhere in between. Outlining helps prevent structural problems and keeps you from writing yourself into corners. Discovery writing produces more surprising, organic prose. Neither method is superior. Try both and see what works for your brain. The “right” process is whatever consistently gets you to a finished manuscript.
How do I choose a genre?
Write the kind of book you love to read. Genre isn’t a cage. It’s a set of reader expectations that you can meet, subvert, or blend. If you read mostly thrillers, you probably understand thriller pacing and structure instinctively. If you love literary fiction, that’s where your sensibilities live. Don’t chase market trends because by the time your book is finished, the trend will have moved on. Write what excites you, then figure out where it fits on the shelf.
How important is revision?
Revision is where the real writing happens. The first draft gets the story down. Revision makes it good. Most published novels go through multiple rounds: a structural pass (does the plot work? are the characters consistent?), a line editing pass (is every sentence clear and necessary?), and a copyediting pass (grammar, spelling, punctuation). Many writers find that they cut 10-25% of their first draft during revision. If you hate revising, that’s a problem, because you’ll spend more time revising than drafting.
Should I join a writing group or get beta readers?
Outside feedback is valuable because you’re too close to your own work to see its problems. Writing groups give you regular deadlines and accountability. Beta readers give you a reader’s perspective on the finished (or near-finished) draft. Both work best when the people involved are honest rather than polite. Look for readers who can articulate what isn’t working and why, not just whether they liked it. Be selective about whose feedback you act on. Not all advice is good advice.
Should I hire a ghostwriter for my fiction project?
If you have a story you want told but writing isn’t your strength, a fiction ghostwriter can bring it to life. This is common for people who have a compelling concept, detailed world, or personal story they want fictionalized but need a skilled writer to handle the craft. A good fiction ghostwriter works closely with you on plot, characters, and voice to make sure the finished book reflects your vision. You own the story and your name goes on the cover.
How do I handle criticism and rejection?
Separate your ego from your work. Criticism of your manuscript is not criticism of you as a person. If multiple readers flag the same issue, they’re almost certainly right. If one person dislikes something everyone else loved, that’s taste, not a problem. Rejection from agents and publishers is part of the process. Most successful novels were rejected multiple times before finding a home. Keep a short memory for rejection and a long memory for useful feedback.
How can I improve my fiction writing?
Read more than you write, and read with attention to craft. When a scene grips you, go back and figure out how the author built it. Write regularly, even when you don’t feel inspired. Get feedback from people whose opinions you respect. Study the fundamentals: story structure, character arc, scene construction, pacing, dialogue. And finish things. Starting ten stories teaches you less than finishing one. The biggest skill gap between aspiring writers and published writers is the willingness to revise and complete. If you want targeted practice, I’ve put together 320 free craft-based writing exercises organized by genre and technique, each one built around a specific story mechanic, plus a library of articles on writing.
Do you have samples of your fiction work?
Yes. You can browse my published fiction, which spans multiple genres including science fiction, fantasy, thriller, and horror. I’ve published 22 novels and dozens of short stories. You can also read free short stories and serialized fiction on the Master of Worlds site.
Ready to talk about your novel?
A 30-minute conversation is the fastest way to find out if working with me is the right fit for your fiction project. No commitment, just a straight discussion of your story and what it would take to get it on the page.
No pitch. No pressure.