Let’s face it, writing can be tricky. There’s first coming up with an idea for a story or piece that is interesting enough for you to dedicate the next several hours/weeks/months/years to. There’s then the process of developing the idea, coming up with scenarios or arguments or characters (depending upon your project) to support the idea. Then there’s the writing. And the rewriting. And yet more rewriting. Editing while writing and reminding yourself you’re still wearing the writer’s hat and would Mrs. Editor kindly wait outside until summoned?
Sometimes the writing doesn’t measure up to the stuff you love to read or to the ideas you had in your head. There’s a lot to balance and a lot that can go wrong. And there’s no sure-fire way to get better at any of this but simply writing–for hours and hours, mind.
There are, however, some ways to speed up the process.
Here are eleven less obvious ways to become a better writer:
1. Read blogs for writers
There are probably thousands of them out there, but I will offer some criteria that has helped me. Find blogs that offer content that both encourage and assure you as a writer and gives good advice on things such as craft and the process of writing. A good one I have found very useful over the years is the Writer Practice, but I also enjoy Live Write Thrive. Definitely check those out if you can. They have wonderful advice and resources, as well as contest, communities, and classes.
2. Don’t just read literature, study it!
This holds for classics, of course, but it also holds for any other reading material out there. It is very important to read the sort of stuff you want to write, but it can be equally valuable to read things that don’t have much to do with what you write about, so long as they interest you and can add to your perspective (I’ve used psychology books, as an example, to aid in my understanding of my characters). The best way to study such things is to read slowly and to absorb every detail: how is/are the book/chapters/paragraphs formatted? how does the author’s voice or POV character add to the events of the story? what narrative devices are being used to enhance the drama of the events being told? Ask a lot of questions, don’t be afraid to reread sections both that you didn’t understand and that you loved, and constantly reflect on ways you could use these finding to better your own writing. You want to find out how this particular author pulled off what they did by peeking behind the curtain, peering into the folds that they have craftily (or maybe not-so-craftily) hidden.
3. Brush up on your mythology
This may seem strange, but many of you fantasy writers may already be familiar with a little something called the Hero’s Journey which is based off of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of myths from all over the world that the late, great Joseph Campbell compiled to highlight the patterns in each of them. Even if you’re not a fantasy writer, or someone similar (sci-fi, horror), you may benefit from knowing a bit more mythology. These sorts of tales, which tell of fantastical, sometimes illogical, instances without a lot of explanation, convey something that all writers must do well in order to pull off a good story: touch upon the awe that is story; it is the same awe of childhood, in fact, that made many of you want to be writers in the first place. Plus, it pays homage to our roots as writers. Every writer is a storyteller, no matter what kind. At the end of the day, that is all we are doing, telling a tale, spinning a yarn.
4. Read books on writing by other authors who are better than you
This one may seem obvious, but I have met many other writers who don’t do this very useful thing. At all. These same writers are the ones that complain to me about how no one understands the message they were trying to convey through the death of that one character or how they aren’t winning writing contests; well, my answer to them, if they were to listen, would be to read authors who have successfully done both of those things; better yet, to read books they’ve written about writing. There’s not much else to say (except that Stephen King has a very good one called On Writing and you should check it out).
5. Develop a habit of writing daily and experiment until you have discovered your own rhythms
This is another more obvious one, but again, I know a lot of writers that don’t do this. I get it, we all have busy lives. There’s jobs and kids and cat barf that need tending to. But if you are serious about writing, you will want to do this for yourself. In fact, it may be the only thing you can do consistently in the beginning when you can’t afford classes or expensive conferences, even if you can only sit down to do it for fifteen minutes a day. Obviously, shoot for a daily word count if you can (my personal amount is 1500 words and can sometimes be a real challenge), or some other type of goal (finish one scene a day or figure out your deuteragonist’s motive in the first half of the book). But the most important thing is consistency. If you show up each day around the same time, you are actually training yourself to be creative, even on days you don’t want to be, and that fickle Muse is much more likely to turn up because it knows exactly where you’ll be. You’ll want to play around with different times at first to see when you work best. Maybe it’s early in the morning, maybe late at night. Maybe you like to work at different times on different days, or have to out of necessity. Finding your personal rhythm is as important as finding and developing your voice as a writer. And all great writers have them.
6. Challenge yourself with strange practices
There are many of them out there, some just a google search away. But you can come up with them yourself as I have: write a story backward (that is, from the end to the beginning); make a story generator by writing different settings (i.e. dessert, royal court, haunted space station) and concepts (i.e. orphan told he’s a wizard) on separate pieces of paper and put them into a hat or bowl and draw at random (keep the setting and concept separate so you can draw one of each), then write a story based off of the draw (i.e. a detective story in a submarine); write a story using the first sentence you see while walking around somewhere in your town as the first sentence. The point with all of this isn’t necessarily to write an entire novel or what-have-you based on these practices (some of them would probably be pretty terrible) but to see how they take you away from your normal patterns and force you to try new things as a writer, which is something you always want to be doing.
7. Learn about story structure (this is mostly for you fiction writers, but there are some structures out there—setup, response, attack, resolution—that could help you other writers build intrigue in non-fiction pieces)
There are dozens of supposed story structures and, depending upon your preferences or beliefs as a writer, they can be very useful to you as you are drafting and crafting your piece. None of them are the “right” way to write a story. Some people will say that the three-act structure is the only way or that a pinch point absolutely must come at the twenty-five percent mark, but this is all hogwash in my opinion. I believe that the story itself dictates the structure. So experiment with different kinds, forgo them altogether and see what you get, but most of all, listen to your story, it will tell you what you need to do.
Also, The Story Grid Podcast, for those of you who don’t know, is a great place to begin exploring story structure.
8. Learn from stories in other mediums
Dance, film, music, fine art, video games, anecdotes your uncle tells at Thanksgiving dinner are all filled with story. Sure, there may not be words there in some cases, but there is definitely some sort of narrative flow, a beginning, middle, and end. You will have to step out of your writing box to find it. You will have to develop other perspectives. But it is a great way to invite some creativity into your storytelling methods that may have gotten lost while you were writing through a bout of writer’s block or editing a particularly terrible first draft. It could give you ideas, too, on ways to break the mold of story structure and write something entirely new. Who knows.
9. Follow a favorite author on their website and keep up with their content
This is a great way to see how a paid author does everything from running a website to conducting their own meet-and-greets. You can learn so much more than just craft and writing routines from them. It’s best to pick an author (or several) that updates often, or at least sends out a newsletter or blog every once in a while. The best one I have found is Brandon Sanderson who has written dozens of books, including several very fat, very in-depth, series, and also updates his fans on his writing projects with progress bars (I mean, how dedicated do you have to be). He even has a whole page of resources for people like me who want to learn about writing specifics (like magic systems) and has a video series on Youtube of him teaching classes at a real university that’s completely free!).
10. Watch Youtube channels geared specifically by writers for writers
Again, there are a bunch of them out there. You’re going to have to be discerning here, because some of them can waste your time. I like to watch ones that focus not so much on craft as on the mechanics going into the story, i.e. magic system techniques, writing about war or characters that are not human. A lot of these youtubers focus on things like writing about race or varied sexual orientation or how best to portray mental health problems in characters. The millennial generation has gotten really good at inclusivity in their writing and portraying a wide variety of characters (and it’s about time we have more of that), but there are ways that this can be done not so well and, well, downright terribly. It’s good to study up on such techniques as often as possible so as to do right by the types of people you are trying to include, and the visuals such media as Youtube utilizes can be particularly helpful in aiding you here. Two Youtube channels I am keen on myself are Hello Future Me, which focuses on fantasy and sci-fi writing tactics, and JustWrite, which breaks down film and television stories and to aid in understanding storytelling.
11. Whatever you’re inclined to do as writer, do the opposite
This doesn’t have to be all of the time, but if you are having a particularly hard time some days, why not try writing in a genre or style that is the complete opposite of yours? That way, if you’re bad, you know it’s because you never writer this way and can blame something other than yourself. If you write non-fiction, for example, maybe you could try writing fiction. If you are a panster, maybe you could try outlining a piece before writing it. And if you only write novels, maybe you could try writing a flash fiction piece. It’s good to try new things and even better to get good a various styles and modalities of writing.
12. (surprise!) Here’s an additional tip that bears repeating—write, write, write, if nothing else. It’s not unconventional (unless all you ever do is talk about writing), but it is the single most important thing any writer can do. More important even than reading a classic or taking a class. Because it is here that you must find your own footing. It is here that you learn what type of writer you really are and struggle and fight and yes, sometimes cry, write on the page, no training wheels, no more dreaming and wishing and thinking about. Just plain old-fashioned writing. Writing when you’re not yet a good writer because, guess what, it doesn’t matter. You took the time to sit down and write. That’s the difference between a writer and, well, not a writer.
K.G. Wiles 