Fiction writing becomes more complicated and multi-layered as you explore it. When you go through the process of brainstorming, outlining, researching, writing, and revising several times, you discover countless details about fiction writing. The creative writing and technical aspects of writing fiction novels are particularly educative when you take time to think about them. The following are some tips you should learn about writing fiction.

1. Read more fiction than you write. When you read what other fiction authors are writing, you will be able to expand your imagination.

2. Don’t limit yourself to one genre. If your comfort zone is in one genre, you should occasionally step out of that genre so that you don’t get weighed down by constantly having to write about things that revolve around one genre. When you write outside your preferred genre, you might also find abilities that you never knew you had.

3. Analyze your favorite stories from movies, books, and TV. Analyzing stories by other people will help you figure out things that work in storytelling and ones that don’t.

4. Don’t be sucked into the craze of writing for the market. Instead, you should write the story that you have in your mind. Write the best story possible and rest assured that you will find the market for it. If you try to make the story conform to the needs of the market, it might lose some or all of its originality.

5. Make several outlines over the course of writing a draft. You should write an outline before writing a draft, when writing it, and after finishing it. Although you can write a rough draft without an outline, it is important to guide you through the writing process. If you feel up to it, you can try discovery writing. This is when you write without making an outline.

6. Real life events have inspired some of the best fiction works. When you are looking for inspiration for your novel, you should not ignore the stories you have heard from friends and family. In fact you should maintain a collection of interesting stories you have heard.

7. Add more detail to make characters more believable. The characters in a novel are just as important as the plot. If readers do not feel a connection to the characters, the story will lose its appeal. You should make an effort to develop characters that readers can identify with. Even fictional characters can have traits that people can associate with.

8. The best characters are often flawed. You cannot expect people to relate to characters if they are perfect. Instead, you should give characters some weaknesses that real life people struggle with. You will often find that people like these characters most.

9. Don’t tell people about the characters’ personalities. You should show their personalities through their interactions with other people as well as their actions.

10. You should create difficult challenges for your characters to overcome. When you make very difficult obstacles for the characters, the conclusion will be more satisfying.

11. Enjoy yourself. Your emotions are very important when writing. It usually seeps into your writing and a keen reader can sense it. You should take time off from writing whenever you are not in the right frame of mind.