Writing fiction requires creativity, imagination, research, and discipline. A writer’s craft is honed over time through practice, but some people are born with natural talent. The good news is that anyone can become a writer, regardless of age, gender, race, or background.

Fiction writing is a great way to express yourself creatively. Whether you’re writing short stories or novels, fiction is a powerful tool that allows you to explore new worlds and characters.

The process of becoming a good writer takes time and practice. The key to improving your skills lies in avoiding these common fiction writing mistakes.

1. Unlikable Characters

Unlikable characters are common in fiction writing. They often come across as unlikable because they lack depth or complexity and not necessarily because it does bad things. How can you create a character that readers will love?

When you write fiction, you want to create characters who are likable. This means that they should have some kind of interesting part that makes them unique from others.

You don’t have to focus only on the positive traits of your characters. Instead, look at their flaws and weaknesses. These can provide insight into their personality and give you ideas for interesting plot twists.

The reader will not care what happens to your main character if they are too unlikeable. They’ll just stop reading. To avoid this problem, try to make your characters as relatable as possible.

2. Predictability

Writing a book is a daunting task. Several factors need to be taken into consideration before starting. Knowing where to begin is the biggest challenge. If you don’t know how to write a novel, you might be thinking that writing a book is impossible.

The ability to publish a book doesn’t require you to be an experienced writer. Writing a book is in fact possible for anyone. All you need is a good idea and some determination without having to worry about the technical aspects.

It is important not to be predictable when creating fiction. This means that the story should follow a predictable path, with events unfolding in a logical manner.

However, this isn’t necessarily bad; it’s actually quite common in fiction. It’s also very easy to fall into this trap because we’re so used to seeing stories unfold in this way.

3. Unrealistic Characters

Characters in fiction are often very different from us, which is common in fiction book writing. This is called character development. Characters should be believable and realistic, but at the same time, they should also be unique.

This is why some authors struggle to write their stories because they don’t know how to develop their characters. Characters are often created in an unrealistic manner by them.

In order to avoid falling into this trap, it’s important to keep an eye out for unrealistic characters. If you notice that one of your characters has certain traits that aren’t realistic, then you need to adjust them accordingly. For instance, if you notice that your main character is too perfect, then you might want to add more flaws to him/her.

4. Not Editing As You Go

How often have you heard that editing as you go is a common fiction writing mistake you must avoid? Fortunately, that’s not true. The best way to improve your story is to edit as you go. In fact, it’s a very effective method for improving your writing skills.

The ability to write fiction requires time and practice. The good thing is that you don’t have to wait until you’ve finished writing before you start editing. Instead, you can edit as you write. This means you can read through your manuscript and make changes as you go along.

You’ll want to take notes as you go along because you’ll want to remember where you left off. If you’re using a word processing program, you can highlight text or draw arrows to mark sections of your story.

Putting this into practice means editing yourself as you write. It’s easy to get caught up in the story and forget to check for spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, and other issues.

5. Poor Handling of Dialogue

Writing fiction is a skill that takes time to develop. It requires practice, patience, and persistence. Storytelling is one of the most important elements of becoming a good writer.

There are a few parts of fiction that are as difficult to write as dialogue. If you’ve ever tried to write a scene where two characters talk to each other, you’ll know what we mean. In fact, dialogue is so hard to write that even professional authors struggle with it.

Dialogue is a crucial part of every novel. The way you handle dialogue is very important. Poorly written dialogue makes your readers cringe. And it can also ruin your book.

6. Forgetting to Include a Plot

How often do you write fiction stories without a plot? If you don’t include a plot, then you risk creating a story that lacks direction or purpose.

Perhaps you’ve heard, “A successful writer writes every day.” This means that writers should always be writing. The problem is that some writers forget to include a plot in their writing. They start writing a story and then they realize that they haven’t written anything coherent.

Writing a novel without a plot is a common fiction writing mistake. Prior to writing, you should plan out the events so you can create a compelling story. Additionally, writing sex scenes into your story could be an interesting challenge to navigate if it’s not something you have explored before, but this could be beneficial to the overall plot. 

Every event in a story has a plot point, which changes its direction. It might be something big, like a death, or something small, like an argument between two characters.

Conclusion

Writing fiction is a great way to express yourself creatively. It allows you to explore ideas, characters, and situations in ways that you couldn’t otherwise.

Whatever your goal might be, whether you’re looking to publish your work or simply get feedback from friends and family, you’ll need to know some basic rules of fiction writing. If you are struggling to come up with ideas, you should consider reading comic books because they are easy to digest, have super likable characters, and can teach you so much about fiction writing that you can’t even imagine!