Top 5 tips for writing, GO!
1. Vary your sentence structures and length. Something that reads: ‘He did this and then that. He was cold. He looked over at her and then he did this…‘ is boring (obviously it’s massively oversimplified too). It’s boring because it starts with the subject of the verb each time ‘He’, and it’s repetitive. Use participles, shake up your clauses, and vary your sentence lengths. (Also, please use paragraphs - New action? New paragraph. New speaker? New paragraph. No one wants a wall of text, and no one wants to remove themselves from the narrative to figure out who the fuck is saying what).
2. Brush up on your grammar. Bad grammar (and typos) break the immersion in the story and the reader’s faith in the author. No one is perfect, of course, but make it as tight as possible. Google ‘ten most common grammatical errors’ or something and just brush up on your rules. It’ll help tightnen up your writing no end. Try this one for starters. I guarantee there’s probably something on there you weren’t 100% sure about.
3. Enjoy it. If you’re not feeling the story, it’ll show and come across flat.
4. EDIT. For the love of god, please edit your work before you post it anywhere. Finish writing your first draft, put it away for at least an hour and go and do something completely unconnected, then come back and edit it. If you have trouble reading it with fresh eyes, change the font (Comic Sans is actually super good for editing, trust me!!) and the size so that you trick your brain in to thinking it’s a new piece of text.
5. Read other people’s work, and be critical. Be an active reader. If you like something about their work, figure out exactly what it is that makes it so good - is it internal rhyme in a powerful sentence, is it the meter of a sentence, the pacing of a paragraph, the evocation of place, the dialogue…?
Hope that helps? I’ve definitely answered similar questions before, so check out the ‘writing advice’ tag on my blog.
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