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Reading a lot will make you a better writer. It will improve your writing techniques – not least concerning the use of synonyms. If you read often, it will help vary your writing and make your texts more interesting. Vary your reading, by choosing authors with different styles. This will broaden your knowledge and allow you to practice using different styles.
Learn from proven writers by reading their texts many times. Ask yourself the following questions:
• Why does this text engage you?
• What is the writer doing to capture your interest as a reader?
• How does the writer use the words in the context of the story?
Read genuinely bad texts, and reflect on what it is that makes this text bad.
• Why did the writer fail?
• If the subject matter is interesting, why couldn’t the writer capture your interest?
• Does the text lack structure or context? Is it difficult to read? Analyze and evaluate the text, then reflect on what changes would improve it.
When you finally start writing, try to stick to these guidelines:
• Practice makes perfect. Write over and over again. Let others read your texts. Keep in mind that negative criticism can also be constructive. The more you practice and write, the better you will become. All famous writers (with very few exceptions) have gone through this learning process. Gradually, over time, the quality of their texts and writing improved. Practice, amend and reflect on your texts, and you will see the quality of your work improve.
• Is it possible to rearrange the sentence (to make it more exciting and interesting to the reader) and still say what you meant?
• Perhaps the sentence is too long (it’s not necessarily better because it’s long)? If this is the case, can it be shortened?
• Can you give the sentence more depth and substance?
All writers are not good at writing about everything. Some are good at fictional writing (novels, short stories, detective stories etc) while others are good at writing children books, historical books and so on. In other words, it is important to find your own style.
• What are you best at?
• What suits you best?
• What genre would you like to work with (a thriller novel, children’s books, a travel log or maybe a book about cooking?) Keep in mind that there’s a need for all sorts of books. If you believe in your own text, there is a bigger chance your readers will as well.
It is a well-known fact, that your text will be better and more convincing if you are well read about your subject.
• Find out about details you do not know about (if it’s not a complete fantasy story). So for example, if you for write about a place you never been to, or know very little about; try to find out as much as you can about it. Then you can describe it more, which will make the story more reliable and convincing.
• To create a true character, you must be able to get ”under his or her skin”. In other words, you must identify yourself with the person, or your story won’t be believable. This is something that great writers do very well, and it makes their texts more interesting and engaging. If you’re aware of this, you will be able to write strong and realistic texts that your readers will believe.
Depending of what genre you have chosen, you must learn about its specific trademarks, its handcraft. If you, for example, write a thriller novel, you cannot take it to a level that makes the story totally unbelievable, or even laughable to your readers. But if you use your imagination in a more modest way, without pushing the genre’s limits, the reader will probably find your text incredibly exciting, instead of unbelievable or just laughable. At times you may want to do too much, and that’s when you tend to risk going beyond the genre’s boundaries, and the story will fall flat. Think of the following to keep inside the limits of the genre, and to create a good, reliable and exciting story (no matter if it’s a love story, a thriller novel or any other genre):
• Don’t let your text be pathetic. For example, a love story can easily be emotionally exaggerated.
• Don’t misuse pictures that are already overused. Phrases such as ”He was big as a house” have been used so many times that there is nothing left of the house to be found. Make efforts to find your own ways of expression, and your text will be more interesting.
• Don’t edit your text after every single sentence (then you won’t make any progress), but write down the whole paragraph first. Then you evaluate, remove and revise your text.
The many different episodes of your story are important, and you maintain the commitment and interest of your readers by varying your text during as the story progresses. Many novelists, for instance, alternate exciting chapters with others that are less intense. However, this does not mean that the latter should be less interesting than the more exciting chapters. These chapters should never, ever, feel like unnecessary ”padding” to the text. Vary your writing so that you don’t scratch your reader on the same spot too long. To make a comparison with popular music, in which a modest verse is often followed with a more intense chorus (the song would probably be less interesting, if it consisted of choruses from beginning to end).
• Don’t let any questions raised during the story remain unanswered. It’s easy to increase the excitement by asking questions (the reader is curious and wants to know more), but make sure these questions become answered before the end of the story.
• Don’t let characters disappear from the story without cause or explanation.
• It is of great importance that your fictional (or real) characters follow the personalities they were given in the beginning of the story. If, for example, the hero is described as an idle, honest and empathetic person, he can’t suddenly change his character and become dishonest, unrighteous and show a total lack of moral or empathy. This would make the story less realistic and it would disappoint the readers. Keep in mind, that the readers can embrace the story more easily if they can recognize the characters (there may be situations when character transformation is a key part of the story. This would be an obvious exception).
• If, at the beginning of the story, you allude to an important event, for example a heavy-weight match in boxing between the hero and the bad guy, you must let this happen before the story ends (if it never happens, you must comment on it later in the story, so that the reader understands why the scene mentioned in the beginning of the story never took place). Otherwise the reader will feel mislead, after having waited for this to happen throughout the story. |
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