As soon as I finished re-reading my novel, I wrote these notes so that the rewritten version would be better. However, the novel is still unpublished. Thus these tips haven't proven themselves yet, but they should still be useful.
These are the notes that have helped me in writing fiction: "1) Don't do anything you find unbearably cliché. 2) If you have some clever dialogue which does not belong, remove it: you are writing literature, not flaunting your wittiness. 3) Make your work one to remember--one that you are proud of. 4) Why would the reader care if anyone in your story died? Create some background for every key character so that the reader mourns, or perhaps welcomes, the death of a character who perishes. 5) Why does this character care about that other character? Present action shows us what two people are doing but not why they are where they are--why they are friends or enemies. 6) Give your readers a reason to care about your main character. Otherwise, they will likely lose interest and stop reading. (I stopped reading The Yearling for this exact reason, and I don't usually abandon books I'm reading.) 7) Don't throw emotion into inappropriate areas in the book because you're bored. 8) Try to make all your events feel necessary to the reader. In other words, at the end of the book, your reader should not say, 'Well, I think this subplot was just thrown in so that the book would have a hundred extra pages. It really bored me and didn't change the outcome of the book.' Rather, you want the reader to say, 'Wow! Look at how this is all connected and how not one event is a waste of time but impacts the whole story.' Finally, remember these expressions: "Never a dull moment," "You reap what you sow," and "All's well that ends well."
If I think of any other good tips, I'll post them; but I'd seem like a hypocrite if I did not post any of my own literary work first. Also, understand that these tips are based on my attempts to correct what was wrong with the first draft of my book Violet Arrow; my work has never been published. Anyway, I hope this will help someone. :wink:
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