Show it, don’t tell it. Grab the reader’s interest – the first sentence in every paragraph should both seduce the reader and continue the story. You can do this in a number of ways. You can start with dialogue, or a question, or in the middle of an action. The beginning of each paragraph should represent the main idea of that paragraph and make sense within your story. Clue your reader in with actual events or dialogue; don’t simply describe what you want them to know.

Your characters have to be believable, so make sure you understand your characters. Why do they do what they do? Your characters experience each event you describe – they must react to it and be changed by it. They have to grow, just as all human beings do. Build your characters right in front of the reader. Nothing kills a reader’s interest and throws them out of the story as much as feeling manipulated. If you think “but he wouldn’t do that!” you lose interest in the character, and in what happens to him or her.

The Most Important Hint: Keep your verbs active, not passive. This is so important that I am going to repeat this for each form of writing. It applies to ANY writing you ever do. For example, write “They argued” instead of “there was argument among them.”

Research: I believe it is right to tell a beginning writer to write about what you know, but I interpret that word “know” broadly. You may never have lived in the middle ages, but if you research it well enough and know your subject deeply, you can set stories in the middle ages. If you write about another culture or create a new one – you must first know how culture works and see the world through the eyes of someone raised in that culture. Your characters and the feelings that you invoke, however, should arise from your own experience. People who have been in love can tell when a “love scene” has been written by someone who has never been there.