The guide for aspiring fiction writers who want to improve, sharpen, review, and/or learn. Warning! This book encourages editing and contains many tips that often require revision. Practice makes perfect, and it's good to workout your mental muscles. The more you do now, the better your writing will be later (because you'll correct yourself *before* you get it on paper). If you think your writing is perfect or you're lazy or unwilling to try new shoes on your baby, just turn away now. You'll find this guide about as useful as hoarding frozen peas.

Clichés are fantastic. Clichés are terrible. Clichés are almost impossible to escape. So let's learn what they are, and how to write them better.

Most common characters in fiction. Learn them before it's too late! During my time as an editor there are several characters that I find myself reading about. Again. And again. And Again. I present them to you now in all their glory, with the hope that you might find this information useful. Stock characters can be good characters, if you can make them unique. What you have here is a field guide of common characters with their common traits. Use this to help you learn what's normal, and how to take that and make your favorite characters more unique!