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It’s certainly exciting to think about all the different options that could be explored in a story. But where to begin?

Every writer works in a different way. Some writers work straight through from beginning to end. Others work in pieces they arrange later, while others work from sentence to sentence.

Whether you’re writing a novel, novella, short story, or flash fiction, don’t be afraid to try out different voices, and styles. Experiment with different story writing techniques, story ideas, and story structures. Keep what works for you and discard the rest. Your material and process will guide you to your own set of rules.

Follow this step-by-step guide and writing tips to polish your creative writing skills.

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Step 1: Determine Your Setting

Location is an enormously useful tool in novel-building. You should treat it as you would treat a character, allowing it to convey mood and letting it reveal more of itself over time. By selecting locations that excite you, you can transform relatively mundane scenes into more compelling ones. Your enthusiasm will come through in your writing, and your characters will view and interact with your locales in a more engaged way.

Location can also provide the inspiration for scenes and can even shape the course of your story. All the research you conducted in the first phase of writing will come in handy during your first draft, when you find yourself needing to describe a particular street, park, or other scene set somewhere previously unfamiliar to you.

To weave setting into your story, ask yourself the following questions, then answer them in your prose.

What season is your novel set in? What is the weather like in your location at that time?
What are the elements of your setting like during this time? For example, was that business closed fifteen years ago? Did that street have a different name then? Was that statue erected before your characters arrived there?
Does your novel center around a major world event, like war or natural disaster? How does this limit or define your time frame and impact your setting?
What cultural details belong to this time and location? Consider music, literature, entertainment, clothing styles, food trends, lifestyle trends, and big national events or crises that shape public sentiments.

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Step 2: Make Memorable Characters

Character and event are inseparable, because a person is what happens to them. You might think of this as a distinction from films, where actors are cast into pre-existing roles. But a novel is a character interacting with events over time.

Your job as a writer is to learn about your character by observing how they interact with the world around them. Characters—like real people—have hobbies, pets, histories, ruminations, and obsessions. It’s essential to your novel that you understand these aspects of your character so that you are equipped to understand how they may react under the pressures of events they encounter.

If you’re feeling stuck or are seeking a direction to take your characters in, consult this guide on character development.

Step 3: Understand the 2 Types of Conflict

Every story is made up of both events and characters. A story happens because a pattern is interrupted. If you are writing about a day that is like any other day, it is most likely a routine, not a story. In order to be a story, something has to happen. We call what happens in a novel the plot.

There are two types of conflict:

Internal conflict (a threat from within)
External conflict (a threat from outside)

Both types of conflict create tension in a narrative and help move the story forward. Conflict drives character development as well as plot. Conflict also adds layers to your story. Your main character can face an external conflict like destroying a sworn enemy while also battling a more subtle, internal conflict: her vow towards pacifism. Your plot will develop naturally if you give your character a motivation, then throw obstacles in her way.

It might be a good idea to test out both types of conflict before you settle on one. Why not write a short story that uses both types of conflict, and then decide which one works best for you?

No matter what combination of events you knit together to make the plot, each should be compelling and significant enough to pull your reader into the story and make them wonder what will happen next.

To understand more about conflict, visit this handy guide.

Step 4: Give Your Plot a Twist

Any good story will include a few plot twists and red herrings. Read on to find out more.

Include at least two or three twists in your story. These help keep readers engaged, especially in the middle of your book when your plot might otherwise start to drag. Carrying readers through the middle of a story is challenging, and there needs to be enough excitement to keep them reading to the end. A great twist will surprise the reader and turn their whole understanding of the story on its head. For more tips on story plot, check out this comprehensive guide to plot here.
Trick your readers by planting “false leads.” Also known as “red herrings,” these are details added to purposefully mislead people and prevent them from predicting an outcome. While adult mysteries are filled with carefully hidden clues, children’s horror novels should be packed with tricks to lead kids astray and thereby surprise them even more when something (like the true identity of a monster) is revealed. Read more about red herrings and false leads here.
A “cliffhanger” is a device that compels readers to find out what happens next in a story. Writing great cliffhangers is key to making your book a page-turner and it’s one of the easiest ways to make your writing more suspenseful. Some writers might feel it to be a “cheap trick” or an easy gimmick, but it’s a tried and true way to get people to read—and keep them reading. Read more about cliffhangers and how to write them in this guide.

Step 5: Recreate Natural Dialogue

In real life, speech has lots of padding or “stuffing”: words like umms and yeahs. But dialogue in fiction must be both more incisive and selective. It is shorn down to reveal what people want from one another, reveal character, and dramatize power struggles.

When your characters are speaking, they should be trying to get something from one another, or make a power play. (Seduction is one form of power play.) As you draft each scene, ask yourself what your characters are trying to get. What are they trying to avoid? How do these wants inflect their speech and guide what they say—or don’t say?
There are often wide gaps between what people say and what they are thinking, between what one understands and what one refuses to hear. These gaps can collectively be referred to as subtext, and they are valuable territory for the fiction writer. Stay alert to a character’s thoughts, and let them generate drama in the scenes you write.
To get dialogue right, you must understand how your characters speak. This is likely influenced by where they come from, their social class, upbringing, and myriad other factors. Speech and tone are always bound up in what has happened and is happening to a character.
If you are setting your story in the past, your dialogue should accurately reflect idioms and speech patterns of the period. Words, like clothes, go in and out of style. Conversations need to be specific to the time you’re writing in without seeming contrived.

Dialogue is one of the more difficult challenges a writer faces. Learn more about how to write great dialogue here.

Step 6: Articulate Voice Through Point of View

One way to determine what point of view strategy to use in your novel is to ask: whose voice is telling the story? To whom are they telling it, and why? Common point of view strategies include:

First person point of view. This is the “I.”
Third person limited point of view. This is the “he” or “she.”
Third person omniscient point of view, in which a narrator who is not a character and who knows more than the characters relays the events to the reader.
Second person point of view, which is structured around the “you” pronoun, and is less common in novel-length work but can work well for short stories.

You don’t have to be tied to one point of view throughout your short story or your novel; some bestselling novels move from first to third or first to second. Let your material guide your decision.

The only way to decide the best point of view strategy for your novel is to try different ones. Likely, you’ll know the right one for your story because the writing will begin to move more quickly, and you’ll feel momentum.

Point of view strategy is deeply bound up with what story you want to tell and will guide how that story unspools. So no matter where you are in the drafting process, devote some time to thinking through the risks and rewards of different POV strategies and consider who in your story may be best suited to hold the narrative reins. Learn more about point of view strategy here.

There’s no right or wrong way to write a story. Good fiction writing takes a lot of imagination, time, and practice on your part as a writer. Even the best writers practice writing different stories, just like athletes are constantly training at the gym. The first time can be hard, but it gets easier with practice. Work steadily, and if getting published is your goal, stay focused and keep developing your skills. You’ll get there!

Want to Become a Better Writer?

Whether you’re writing as an artistic exercise or trying to get the attention of publishing houses, learning how to craft a good mystery takes time and patience. Master of suspense and bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown has spent decades honing his craft. In Dan Brown’s MasterClass on the art of the thriller, he unveils his step-by-step process for turning ideas into gripping narratives and reveals his methods for researching like a pro, crafting characters, and sustaining suspense all the way to a dramatic surprise ending.

Want to become a better writer? The MasterClass Annual Membership provides exclusive video lessons on plot, character development, creating suspense, and more, all taught by literary masters, including Dan Brown, R.L. Stine, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, and more.

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