Fiction Writing Overview
About 2 min read
(updated 11 January 2022)
Fiction writing consists of documenting a story or event that you have fabricated. It is not a true story, as opposed to some factual occurrence. If the fictional story is well-told, the listener, reader, or audience can be entranced by the story, characters, and events.
Before your start writing fiction, you should know your motivations for being a fiction writer.
Then you need to know the craft of writing fiction and write out your story. Next, you need to know how to get your stories published, and finally you must promote your work in order to sell the stories.
Questions you may have include:
- How do you write good fiction?
- How can you get your fiction stories published?
- How do you promote and sell your work?
This lesson will answer those questions.
Writing good fiction
Writing good fiction requires having an interesting story to tell and writing it in a manner that is easy and compelling to read. This means you must not only have a good imagination, but you must also be well organized in your writing. Plus, you need to have a “way with words” to make the story appealing.
Getting work published
You need to know about outlets for having your work published.
Short stories can be published in magazines and online in blogs and e-zines. Longer works are published in hardcopy books and e-books.
For magazines and books, you need to approach the appropriate publisher with a query letter and proposal. Often for book-length work, you must go through a literary agent.
You can also self-publish your stories online. This can be done in a blog, as an e-book, or as a hardcopy book. Self-publishing fiction is becoming a popular method these days.
(See Self-Publishing for more information.)
Promotion
Once you get published or self-publish, you still need to do your own promotion.
If you have magazine articles or books published, you can use them to get speaking engagements. You can also use speaking engagements to sell your books.
It is worthwhile to have your own website, blog, and Facebook presence to help promote your works.
Summary
Fiction writing is documenting a fabricated story or event. If the story is well-told, the listener, reader, or audience can be entranced.
To be a successful fiction writer, you need to know how to write a good story, get your stories published, and promote your work.
Write every day