How Deliberate Practice Can Improve Your Fiction Writing (With Tim Grahl)

Have you ever wondered why some writers seem to make rapid progress while others stay stuck in endless cycles of starting and abandoning manuscripts? If you've got multiple unfinished drafts gathering digital dust, you're not alone—and the solution isn't what most people think.

In a recent episode of the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast, I spoke with Tim Grahl, the CEO of Story Grid and author of six books, who has analyzed and provided feedback on over 2,000 scenes. What he's discovered about skill development might completely change how you approach your writing journey.

Rather than focusing on accumulating word count or finishing drafts, Tim advocates for something far more powerful: deliberate practice—a systematic approach to building writing skills that can transform your fiction writing more effectively than years of unfocused effort.

In this article, I'll share Tim's insights on how to implement deliberate practice in your writing routine, the surprising reasons why most writers struggle, and a practical exercise that can help you make meaningful progress in weeks rather than years. Let's dive in!

Why Most Writers Don't Improve (Even If They Write Every Day)

Many aspiring novelists diligently write every day but find themselves making the same mistakes year after year. According to Tim, there's a simple explanation: writing volume alone doesn't guarantee improvement.

"Most people are out here on their own trying to read books, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube channels, but we're doing it all by ourselves, and we can't tell if we're doing it right," Tim explains.

Sound familiar? If you're like most of my readers, you've probably accumulated a collection of writing books, bookmarked dozens of blog posts, and maybe even taken a course or two. But despite all that learning, you still find yourself staring at the same unfinished manuscript, wondering why you can't seem to make real progress.

This is where most writers get stuck in a frustrating loop. Without targeted practice and specific feedback, you might be reinforcing bad habits rather than developing good ones. For example, if you tend to include too much description in your scenes, writing forty scenes full of description only ingrains that problematic tendency.

The key difference between writers who improve and those who stay stuck lies in understanding that writing is a learnable skill—one that requires a strategic approach rather than mere repetition.

What Is Deliberate Practice (And Why It's Different)

Deliberate practice, popularized by researchers like Anders Ericsson and writers like James Clear, is fundamentally different from routine practice. Tim describes it this way:

"It's not just getting your thousand words in every day. It's breaking a complex skill down into individual skills, trying it, and then having somebody give you expert feedback on what you did right, what you did wrong, and then what you need to do to try again."

This approach has three essential components:

• Breaking down complex skills into specific, manageable components
• Focused practice on one component at a time
• Expert feedback on performance, followed by targeted improvement

When Story Grid started using this approach with the writers in their workshops, the results were remarkable. "People had made more progress than they made in six years on their own," Tim notes. This approach has now helped hundreds of writers break through persistent barriers in their fiction writing.

So, how exactly does the Story Grid’s approach to deliberate practice work? Let’s take a look!

3 Steps To Creating A Deliberate Writing Practice

Step 1: Learn How To Write A Scene That Works

In recent years, Story Grid has shifted its teaching from starting with the big picture to now focusing on the most fundamental unit of story: the scene.

"We realize now that starting at that macro level is really putting the cart before the horse," Tim explains. While many writing programs begin with genre considerations or story structure, Story Grid discovered that without mastering scene writing first, these larger elements can be challenging to master.

This shift to scene-level focus was revolutionary because most writers (maybe you included) get stuck trying to plot out their entire novel before they've mastered the building blocks. It's like trying to build a house when you haven't learned to lay a single brick properly.

So, according to Tim and Story Grid, here’s exactly how to do this: 

Start by writing extremely focused, constrained scenes. Aim for 800 words per scene because this forces you to eliminate fluff and focus on essential elements.

"Constraining it down forces you to cut out all of the fluff and get right to the point," Tim explains. "Once people can do that at 800 words and we start loosening up the word count, they get right to the point and the scenes actually become better and better."

Each of your scenes should include:

• A clear protagonist and antagonist with conflicting desires
• The five commandments of storytelling (inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis, climax, resolution)
• A definitive change where someone "wins" the scene

To simplify this exercise, Tim recommends starting by imagining a clear conflict: "Two characters that want different things. So if I come to you and I'm like, 'Savannah, I need to borrow $50,000,' and you're like, 'I don't want to let you borrow $50,000'—right there we have conflict."

Step 2: Avoid The Most Common Scene-Writing Mistakes

Once you've written your constrained scene with clear conflict, you'll likely notice certain patterns in your writing. This brings us to the second crucial step: identifying and avoiding the most common scene-writing mistakes that kill forward momentum.

Telling Instead of Showing

This mistake looks like writing "he was anxious" instead of showing the reader what anxiety looks like through observable behavior and/or interiority. Readers would rather pick up on a character's anxiety through body language and interiority than being told. Tim explains: "Our definition of 'showing' is simply describing what is observable. So whatever I can pick up with my five senses, that's what I'm allowed to put on the page."

Related: How to Reveal Your Character's Inner Life on the Page

Info Dumping

This happens when you front-load scenes with backstory or explain things readers don't need to know yet. You might think you're being helpful, but you're actually pulling the emergency brake on narrative drive. As Tim puts it: "If I have to know something as the reader, don't tell it to me until right before I need to know it." Most writers discover they can cut at least half their exposition when they follow this principle.

Related: 5 Common Scene Issues (and How to Fix Them)

Agreeable Dialogue

This mistake shows up as characters having pleasant conversations that go nowhere. For example, all those "Hello, how are you?" exchanges that feel realistic but kill your scene's energy. Real life may include agreeable dialogue, but fiction isn't real life. 

Tim notes: "Every action and every piece of dialogue your character says has to be them pursuing their object of desire, which will automatically create conflict if the other character's doing the same thing." So, cut the pleasantries and focus on moments where characters' desires clash.

Related: 10 Tips For Writing Better Dialogue

Now, most writers will stop here. They’ll learn what it means to write a scene. They learn what mistakes to avoid. And then they write in isolation, never knowing if they’re actually improving. This is the mistake Tim made for years, which brings us to the most important step.

Step 3: Get Feedback and Revise Based on What You Learn

This is what transforms deliberate practice from theory into real skill development. But here's the catch: you need the right kind of feedback. Vague comments like "I liked it" or "I didn't connect with the character" won't help you improve—they just leave you guessing.

Effective feedback identifies exactly what's working, what isn't, and why. As Tim explains: "Writers tend to fall on two ends of a spectrum. Their line-by-line is really beautiful, but nothing happens... Or they can figure out how to make something work in a scene, but the line-by-line is so unreadable you don't care by the time you get there."

This is exactly why targeted feedback is so crucial—it helps you identify which camp you fall into and provides specific advice for bridging that gap. Tim wished he'd had this insight during his years of writing what he calls "unreadable" scenes.

Once you receive quality feedback, apply the suggested changes and try again. This iterative process builds competence much faster than simply moving on to a new scene without addressing fundamental issues. With enough repetition of this practice-feedback-revision cycle, these skills become second nature, allowing you to focus on higher-level story concerns.

Related: What Kind of Editor Do You Need for Your Book?

How To Put This Into Practice Today

Ready to start your own deliberate writing practice? Here’s the exact exercise Story Grid uses with the students in their workshops:

• Set constraints: Write an 800-word scene with two characters who want opposing things. Start by imagining a simple conflict (like one character asking to borrow $50,000 for xyz reason).
• Include structure: Focus on writing a scene that has the five commandments of storytelling and shows a clear change from beginning to end.
• Prioritize craft: Pay special attention to showing vs. telling, including “just in time” exposition, and writing conflict-driven dialogue.
• Get feedback: Find a qualified beta reader, critique partner, or writing coach who can provide specific, actionable feedback
• Revise and repeat: Apply what you've learned and write another practice scene

You can also grab Story Grid’s scene writing checklist and video walkthrough here.

Final Thoughts

There you have it—deliberate practice can transform your writing in ways that simply hitting a daily word count never could. Remember that writing is a learnable skill, and you have everything you need to improve.

The beautiful thing about this approach is that it gives you immediate, manageable wins. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of writing an entire novel, you can celebrate completing one solid 800-word scene. Then another. Each scene you write using these principles builds your confidence and skills, creating momentum that carries you forward naturally.

So, whether you're staring at your first blank page or you've got a drawer full of unfinished manuscripts, you now have a proven roadmap. Start with one scene, focus on the craft elements that will make the biggest difference, and trust the process.

Want to see how deliberate practice fits into a bigger picture of writing a novel? I'd love to have you join me for my free masterclass: 3 Things You Need to Write A Novel in 2025. In just one hour together, I'll show you the exact roadmap my students use to go from scattered ideas to finished manuscripts in 3-6 months—plus we'll tackle those big challenges like finding time to write when life is crazy and quieting that perfectionist voice that keeps you stuck. Click here to register. Hope to see you there!