Writing Better Fiction by Harvey Stanbrough

This is the kind of writing book that makes you want to open your manuscript again. Instead of burying you in theory, it gives you clear, usable guidance on the parts of fiction that actually shape a story: characters, openings, hooks, cliffhangers, scenes, setting, dialogue, point of view, and even pen names. Whether you are writing short stories, novellas, novels, or a full series, it helps you understand the craft without making the process feel stiff or overcomplicated.

What makes this book especially useful is its focus on how writers really work. It looks at the difference between the critical mind that second-guesses everything and the creative mind that knows how to tell a story. With examples, exercises, grammar notes, and advice from a professional writer’s own experience, it gives you the tools to write with more confidence, more momentum, and more trust in your own voice. If you want a practical guide that helps you stop circling the story and start writing it, this one belongs on your desk.

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Excerpt from Writing Better Fiction © Copyright 2026 Harvey Stanbrough

Chapter 1: I Almost Titled This Book Writing Character-Driven Fiction

Then I realized that was redundant, and just silly.

Staple it to the inside of your eyelids, folks. All good fiction is character-driven.

No matter the genre, fiction isn’t about the science or the problem or the threat. It isn’t about betrayal or addiction or romance or solving a crime.

No matter how perfect the science, the story is about how the characters REACT to the science. No matter how massive the problem, no matter how dark the threat, the story is about how the characters react to the problem or threat.

Perhaps there’s an unexpected betrayal, a devastating addiction, a horribly heinous crime. The story is about how the characters react to the betrayal, the addiction, the crime.

Fiction is about what happens, how the characters react, and what happens as a result of that reaction.

Writing a Romance? In every case, the story is about the characters’ reactions to the romantic entanglement and the problems that are keeping them apart. It’s about how the characters overcome those problems. And it’s about how they overcome the way those problems affect themselves and each other.

It’s also about their individual and collective resolve to be together and how that resolve affects themselves, each other, and maybe even their family members. Because maybe the family members are going to appear as the leads in the next novel in the series. Or even in a new series.

Writing a Mystery? It isn’t about the body you dropped on Page one. The body and the murder or other cause of death itself are only the catalyst that brings together the characters. The story is about how the various characters react to the crime, to each other, and to each other’s efforts to resolve it.

Writing Science Fiction? Not if you don’t have characters, you aren’t. Science fiction isn’t about the science, though readers of “hard” SF are sticklers for the science. And they should be. When I write about science, mechanics or any other specific thing in my stories, the data I convey is correct. The readers deserve that.

But the story is not about the science. The story is about how the human and-or alien characters react to the science, both when it goes right and when it goes wrong. And how they react to the other characters’ reactions.

Writing a Fantasy (High Fantasy, SF, or Other Fantasy)? (Broadly, fantasy is defined as anything that’s outside the realm of physics as we know it.) It isn’t about the magic or the fairy dust or the “beam” that can dissolve a human to the sub molecular level and reconstruct him elsewhere a few seconds later. It’s about the characters’ reactions to the magic or the fairy dust or the seems-like-science-but-isn’t-really stuff.

The Lord of the Rings wasn’t about a great quest. It wasn’t about dropping an all-powerful ring into a volcano. It was about how the quest revealed the strengths and weaknesses of the characters. It was about the ability of the characters to react to whatever threats or pleasures they encountered along the way. At times, it was even about how they reacted when the enemies they encountered were themselves.

Writing a Western? Again the story is about the characters, the good guys with their flaws and the bad guys with their beneficial qualities. In the Western more than in any other genre (in my opinion) whether a character is a good guy or a bad guy often depends on the setting and the circumstances.

For example, in the early part of my 22-volume Wes Crowley saga, a company of Texas Rangers is pitted against raiding Comanches in the Texas Panhandle. The Rangers, naturally, are the good guys. Right?

Or at least you think so, until you see a great Comanche warrior kneeling with tears in his eyes over the grave of his only son. Or until you see a vaunted old Comanche war chief leading a group of braves into an ambush because that one time he was less than wary as he strived to get home more quickly. Or until you hear a Ranger, with his final breath, admit to robbing a bank in years past.