The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes Read Online Free PDF

with a goal . He is committed. Attainment of his goal is essential to his happiness.
    All well and good. Having come this far, you have started to build your story as a quest. Virtually all contemporary fiction, at some level, is the record of such a quest. The "Indiana Jones" thrillers worked on the big screen because they were pure quest (in the third such adventure, it was literally a quest for the Holy Grail). Your story may involve a lesser goal, literally speaking, but it can be no less vital to your character.
    •  Something has changed .
    •  Your character is threatened .
    •  He vows to struggle .
    •  He selects a goal and starts taking action toward it .
    And you have a story under way.
    It sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Then why do so many writers make it so hard?
    Why, for example, do they let themselves get so tangled up in background information that the character has to sit around for page after page, while the author does a core dump of old information? Why do they let the character worry and fume for page after page instead of doing something . Why do they plunge into Freudian analysis of the poor guy instead of letting him get off the couch and get after it?
    Confusion of confusions, all is confusion when you forget, even briefly, and allow your character to act like a wimp. Male or female, young or old, lovelorn or treasure-bound, your central story person has to act . And he has to confront at least one other story person who is also decidedly un-wimpy, so there can be a struggle. The minute somebody quits or retires from the action even temporarily, your story dies on the vine.
    We're talking here mainly about major characters in your story. But even minor characters may suffer from passivity. You should examine all your characters to see if making them stronger-acting might make them also more vivid and interesting. For the wimpy character usually tends to fade into the woodwork and be dull.
    Now, this may sound like I'm arguing for only one kind of story, an action/adventure. Nothing could be further from the truth. While a strong, goal-motivated character is easier seen in such a yarn, the effective character in even the quietest modern story will almost always be a person capable of action. In a romance novel, for example, the young woman may seem unwilling to face the man to whom she is attracted and may even deny her own feelings and actively avoid him. But please note that she is taking action, even if it is sometimes negative. In a psychological story about a man assailed by self-doubt and uncertainty, he will realize that he has a problem and see a doctor or take a pill or discuss it with a friend or write a letter or do something .
    So that—to repeat for emphasis—every story is the record of a quest. An active character worth writing about will form some goal, based on his plight and his motives. He will work toward that goal, not sit back passively. And—wonder to behold—his active selection of a goal will be picked up by the reader and used as a basis for suspense.
    Any time a character forms a goal-oriented intention in fiction, the reader will turn the goal statement around and make it into a story question —and then begin worrying about it! This is an activity at which the reader is wonderfully adept. You give your un-wimpy character the goal of finding his lost sister, and the reader instantly worries, Will he find his lost sister? Or you give your character the specific goal of winning a better job, and your reader immediately worries, Will she get the better job?
    From this process of reader-translation—character goal to story question—comes reader worry, or to give it another name, suspense.
    Let me suggest that you look hard and long at the kind of characters you typically tend to write about. Are any of them wimps? Do they whine or sit around passively or "wait and see"? If so, they may be at the heart of your problems as a writer of fiction.
    How do you get