Beyond 'Once Upon a Time'

Your Guide to Writing Fiction People Can’t Put Down

There’s a unique magic to getting lost in a good story. You turn the pages, and the world around you disappears, replaced by characters you feel you know and places that feel real. If you’re here, chances are you’ve felt that magic and thought, “I want to do that.” But sitting down to start writing fiction can feel less like magic and more like staring into a void.

How do you build a world from scratch? How do you make readers care about people who don’t exist? It’s a tall order, and many new writers get stuck on the very first page.

This guide is here to demystify the process. We’re going to tackle the three biggest roadblocks that trip up aspiring novelists and short story writers and provide the practical fixes you need to bring your story to life.

How Do I Stop Telling and Start Showing?

The Problem

You write a sentence like, “She was very sad.” The reader understands the information, but they don’t feel it. Your prose feels distant and report-like, explaining emotions and events instead of immersing the reader in the experience.

The Fix

This is the classic writer’s mantra: “Show, don’t tell.” The goal is to create what author John Gardner called a “vivid and continuous dream” in the reader’s mind (Gardner 20). You break that dream every time you pull the reader out of the scene to explain something to them. Instead, you need to translate abstract emotions and ideas into concrete, sensory details.

• Engage the five senses. What does your character see, hear, smell, taste, and touch? Grounding the scene in sensory detail makes it feel immediate and real.
• Use strong, active verbs. Instead of saying someone “walked quickly,” you could say they scurried, bolted, or marched. Each word paints a different picture.
• Describe the effect, not the emotion. Instead of saying a character is nervous, show them fidgeting with their shirt cuff, their voice catching in their throat, or a bead of sweat tracing a path down their temple.
• Let actions reveal character. Don’t tell us someone is kind; show them stopping to help a stranger.

Before:

Tom was devastated after his dog ran away. He felt a deep sense of loss and loneliness as he sat in his empty house.

After:

The leash hung by the door, unused. Tom ran his thumb over the worn leather, his throat tight. He sank onto the sofa, the silence of the house pressing in on him, broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock.

Why Do My Characters Feel So Lifeless?

The Problem

Your characters exist only to move the plot forward. They say and do the things your story needs them to, but they lack an inner life. They feel like cardboard cutouts, predictable and without the spark of humanity.

The Fix

Your characters are the heart of your story. The plot is just the series of events that happens to them. To make them feel real, they need the same things real people have: desires, fears, contradictions, and flaws. The novelist E.M. Forster famously categorized characters as “flat” or “round.” A flat character is one-dimensional, but a “round” character is complex and capable of surprising the reader in a convincing way (Forster 78).

• Give them a clear motivation. What does your protagonist want more than anything else in the world? And just as importantly, why?
• Give them a fatal flaw. Perfect characters are boring. A character’s internal weakness or flaw is often what makes their journey compelling and relatable.
• Let them have contradictions. A tough-as-nails detective who is secretly terrified of spiders. A brilliant scientist who believes in ghosts. These details make characters feel layered and human.
• Listen to their unique voice. How does your character speak? Their dialogue should reflect their background, personality, and mood, not just serve as an information dump.

Before:

Captain Eva Rostova was the best pilot in the fleet. She was brave, smart, and always followed orders. She was determined to win the war.

After:

Captain Eva Rostova had a reputation for being made of ice and steel. Her flight records were flawless, her orders followed to the letter. But every night, she pulled out a faded photograph of a small boy, a secret she’d carry to the grave if it meant he stayed safe.

I Have a Cool Idea, But Where’s the Story?

The Problem

You have a great concept—a city powered by magic, a detective who can read minds, a family curse—but you have no idea what happens. You write a few pages describing the world or the characters, but the story has no momentum and quickly grinds to a halt.

The Fix

A premise is not a plot. A plot is born from conflict. As Stephen King puts it, “The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a What-if question” (King 167). The key is to take your big idea and boil it down to a specific, character-driven problem. Story is about a character in a situation.

• Find the “inciting incident.” This is the moment the character’s world is turned upside down. It’s the knock on the door, the mysterious letter, the day things stop being normal.
• Create a tangible goal. Don’t just have your character “survive.” Give them an immediate, actionable goal. Find the stolen artifact. Clear my name. Get my family to safety before the storm hits.
• Raise the stakes. What are the consequences of failure? The higher the stakes, the more tension you create. The reader needs to know what your character stands to lose.

Before:

The world is run by a corporation that controls the water supply. A young woman named Elara lives in the dusty outer zones and dislikes the corporation.

After:

Elara’s younger sister is sick with the Dust Lung, and the only clean water is the rationed supply sold by the Hydro-Corp. Today, for the first time in a month, the water truck didn’t arrive. Elara looks at her sister’s pale face and knows she has to get to the city, no matter the cost.

Putting It All Together

The Problem

You understand the concepts of showing, character depth, and plot, but weaving them all together into a single, compelling opening feels impossible.

The Fix

Start a scene with an action that reveals character and kicks off a problem simultaneously. Don’t waste time with backstory or lengthy descriptions. Throw your newly-rounded character into a specific, troublesome situation and show the reader how they react.

• Start in the middle of things (in media res). Open your story with an action already in progress.
• Combine sensory details with a character’s desire. What does the character see, and what does it make them want?
• Make the first line pose a question. “The safe was empty.” This immediately creates a problem and a goal.

Before:

My name is Jack, and I’m a thief. I’m good at what I do. Tonight, my job was to steal a famous diamond called the Serpent’s Eye from a rich man’s mansion. I was nervous as I approached the safe.

After:

The tumblers clicked into place with a sound only Jack could hear. A whisper of metal on metal. He peeled the stethoscope from his ear, a grin touching his lips. Three minutes. A new record. He swung the heavy steel door open.

The velvet pedestal was empty.

A floorboard creaked behind him.

Your World Awaits Its Architect

Writing fiction is an act of creation, and it’s one of the most challenging and rewarding things you can do. It’s a skill built over time, through trial, error, and a lot of revision. Don’t aim for perfection on your first draft. Aim for a living, breathing story.

Focus on showing the world through your character’s eyes, give them a problem to solve, and don’t be afraid to let them fail. Now go build that world.

This article was developed through an iterative collaboration between our Editor-in-Chief and multiple AI language models. Various LLMs contributed at different stages—from initial ideation and drafting to refinement and technical review. Each AI served as a creative and analytical partner, while human editors maintained final oversight, ensuring accuracy, quality, and alignment with AuthZ's editorial standards.