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A title that is suitable for the story. This could be related to the main theme, an important character or an aspect of the story and is entirely up to you.
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An opening sentence that grabs the reader's attention.
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Building up suspense throughout the story to a climax.
To aid suspenseful reading, it helps to use time constraints or 'ticking bombs' to keep the reader reading.
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Having a surprising unpredictable ending. Endings should be satisfactory, but should not predictable. They may not please everyone.
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Having a suitable setting that was important in the story. It may help to think of setting as locale or where the story takes place. This should be appropriate to the story and preferably not exotic.
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Having a small number of important characters who each have strong personalities. It's important not to have too many characters. An average of three is all that is necessary.
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Describing the people and places in an interesting way. Important points in relation to style include, but are not limited to variety of sentence structure and clarity.
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Using dialogue appropriately and effectively to improve the story. Dialogue should resemble reality; the way people really speak; with hesitations and repetitions edited out.
Limiting to "he/she/name said" or "he/she/name asked", instead of various other speech tags (the phrases attached to dialogue), will make those tags 'invisible'.
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Keeping the reader excited. Plot is basically the series of events that uses anxiety or curiosity to hold interest.
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Having a purpose, such as to entertain or to deliver a message. The most interesting stories will have ambiguous moral behavior.
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