The Ten Most Common Fiction-Writing Errors and How to Avoid Them by Sol Stein

Error #1: Having a Hero or Heroine Who is Totally "Nice."

For reader acceptance, your main character has to come alive, seem real, and be vulnerable in some respect. What is difficult for new fiction writers is to give their main players negative characteristics such as aggression, impatience, selfish or rude behavior, being bossy, and so on. You can still give them an important positive characteristic such as intelligence, politeness, kindness, etc.

Error #2: Coming Up With a Plot and Then Putting in the Characters
[A MAJOR game story creation error, sometimes done as create visual characters with no insides who must go to this locale we drew and use these weapons we made or find stuff we lumped together. Oh, really, why...? _NS]

Your plot should come out of some deep thought about what your main character wants badly. Every distinguished creative writing teacher in the country will tell you that characters come first and plots should be derived from what your main character wants.

Error #3: Telling the Reader What Happened Off Stage

We call that "narrative summary." In the 19th century, fiction was full of narrative summary. What changed everything was the advent of movies and television early in the 20th century. Readers are now used to seeing what's happening in front of their eyes. We call that "immediate scene." The ideal novel today has immediate scenes and little else.

Error #4: Avoiding Scenes of Conflict

Most writers are nice people who avoid conflict in their private lives. But conflict is the essence of drama in every medium. Readers become involved in personal conflict and rivalry more than in the melodrama that infects action movies.

Error #5: Using Flashbacks

Barnaby Conrad, the one-time director of the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference and the author of many books including the three-million-copy novel Matador, worked for Sinclair Lewis as a young man. He once asked Lewis about the use of flashbacks. Lewis answered, "Don't." Techniques have been developed over the years for bringing flashback material into the present.