Avoid flat, uninteresting characters. If they are dull, the story will be
dull as well. Give your characters quirks and problems and bad habits and
friends. Nobody wants to read about a woman who goes home from work, makes
dinner, watches TV, and goes to bed. Boring! Instead, let her go home from
work, walk in the door to find her water heater has broken, house flooded, bits
of important paperwork floating everywhere, dog swimming somewhere back in the
hall, etc. There has to be action in your character’s life.
If you are basing your character on a real person (don’t - you could get
sued), then exaggerate the qualities of that person until the character is
almost a caricature. Go off on enough tangents, add strange obsessions or rude
behavior or crippling anxiety. Give your character a bad haircut and ripped
stockings or a big zit. Make the people as colorful as possible.
4. Lecturing
In real life we can learn a lot from lectures. In your writing, however, let
the information come through the action and dialogue rather than a lecture. For
example, if you need your reader to understand how your character has a flashy
and complicated job as a lawyer, don’t write long descriptions (there’s that
description problem again) about what he does each day at the office. Instead,
let the character get frazzled, frustrated, annoyed. Have his customers
complain or let him get yelled at by his boss. Use action instead of lecture.
5. Making up the Facts
Even if you are writing fiction, it’s important to pepper your story with
real facts. Say, for example, you are still working on your story about a
lawyer. If you don’t know what a tort is, either look it up or don’t use that
word in your writing. Using the word incorrectly will irritate your readers who
actually know what it means. If there’s going to be a courtroom scene, you
might want to hoof it down to an actual courtroom and watch the proceedings. Do
your research and you will have a better story.