Greatest writing tips

depends on the setting by the choices of words. i like to word play my alliteration. making them into poems with assonance & consonance to be vocal without the music but with sound. if that makes sense. 

When stuck.  

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

"You are your own worst critic."

I learned this when writing my first novel. I thought it wasn't good enough and that people would end up hating my work. I'm glad I hadn't talked myself out of publishing because they loved it.

- Make your characters emotions relatable even if the scenario isn't. 

"Write drunk, edit sober."

The rough draft is you telling yourself the story - so don't worry about it being "good." That'll probably take a few revisions. 

I think it helps to really understand the characters in the story. 

You improve with mileage.

Don't write to please someone else, please yourself.  By doing so you will find an appreciative audiance who will actually get and understand your writing.

Ex. 

You could use all of these in place of "she."

Princess Natalia: the queen's daughter; the daughter of house Devreaux; the night-crowned girl; the young woman; Talia; the noble; the royal young lady; the shorter woman; the other...

DON'T write what you know, as the old wisdom suggests. START with what you know, if you must, but by all means, get outside your comfort zone. Stretch yourself (both in life and in your writing), challenge yourself, because if you aren't doing this, you likely won't challenge your reader very much.

The best piece of advice I have is to try and make time every day for writing, especially if you're working on a bigger project.

Might sound stupid, but if you feel stuck try switching to writing in comic sans.

You don't have to explain everything that happens.

Often, I find that it comes down to the confidence. lack of makes you overthink instead of being your-authentic-self. 

Use your emotions, let out all your feelings and burdens onto paper. Dont stop to think about what youre writing, itll all just come naturally

keep it simple. just as simple as that

you can make an entire sentence go from:

"Dazai felt as if his way of living was so out-of-this-wordly, he was so scared of himself and who he was as a person that he destroyed any chances of socialization or interactiong"

to

"Dazai felt as if his way of living was too surreal, where he was mortified enough at his own character that he shut himself out"

wordy sentences are fun to write but aren't that fun to read

Write whatever you want the way you want it, and don't be afraid to share it with others. Writing can be scary at first, but in order to make room for improvement you have to get out of your comfort zone. 

Don't expect your story to be perfect the first time you write it. Make drafts, edit, edit and edit. And don't hesitate to show your work to the world, doubt and hesitation is your worst enemy.

Focus on the big picture. Also, dialogue will almost always sound awkward when you read it out loud so you don't need to spend all your time trying to make it sound "natural" because natural sounding dialogue often reads really badly (in my experience). 

   If you're writing for a specific time period, watch a show that's based around it, it'll help you get in tune with rhythm, dialect, and slang form that period. 

1. Plan your story; plan the characters, the settings and all the chapters

1. the thesaurus is your friend
2. no shame in using grammarly or other apps. 
3. try try again
4. follow your creative impluses
5. anything can trigger creativty. (you dont have to spend alot just to get a new perspective)
6. say yes more often.
7. challenge yourself 
8. refresh your skills 
9. its okay to take a break and comeback
10. always read your stuff outloud before closing it off. 

it’s a good idea to get ideas from songs and books! 

You need to be able to really feel what you write. For example, I'm writing a piece titled "Reflections on Life by the Wife of an Addict" about exactly that, a drug-addicted rockstar's wife reflecting on her life (with him) 30 years on from his death. A few days before I started writing it, my boyfriend (a her*in addict) was sent to rehab for a year, and I could really put myself in the wife's shoes and thoroughly explain how she felt, having been in that situation myself. If you're writing intense emotions, you need to be able to know how those emotions actually feel and impact a person. Never try to depict and emotion (in detail) that you have never felt. You can ask someone else who HAS felt that way for a description, but if either you haven't felt it or you don't have a description of how it truly feels, find another emotion to use.

a good writer is a good observer. 

The only one I really have is one that's a bit difficult to explain... but I'll try my best!

Envision the story you're writing... is a show/movie in your head. What naturally happens next? What feels like the "show" is going in the right direction?
 
The way I analyze TV shows for plot holes... helped me analyze my writing for plot holes, too. That improved my skill quite a bit. I hope it makes sense, because I, a skilled writer, have no other words to explain this! :'D

One of my tricks that works for me, i don't always do this when I have a solid idea in my head, i listen to sad music if i want a sad scene or happy upbeat music for a similar mood, then again a random playlist sometimes directs my flow of emotions of my characters in the up and down.

I've been doing 100words dot com (you can type it in if you want, I'm already sick of all the spam on here and don't want to look like part of the problem) for a few months now, and writing every day has been so powerful for me. I have previously written and self-published a short work (novelette, maybe?) but that was written in spurts. I had an idea that wouldn't go away, so I started writing it down and that felt good. But since then, I find it hard to consistently write. I'll go months without writing anything and then I'll spend an afternoon writing a story. I'll get in a mood and write eight thousand words. And then nothing.

Writing one hundred words every day has been huge. There's no prompts, just a requirement. I decided to tinker with flash fiction and have written a good number of those. This month I'm trying to write a three thousand word story across the thirty entries. It's given me a forced pacing that I'm curious to see how it turns out.

So just write every day is what I'm saying. It really does matter. And I kind of hate that.

This is an excellent thread on improving our writing skills, and I thank everyone who contributed. There are a few things I would like to add to strengthen anyone's writing. 

• Start with a catchy headline. 
• Write in a clear, concise style.
• Engage your readers.
• Write about topics

However, writing is a kind of art it depends on lots of practice. I love to write, and sometimes I need an assistant. Therefore I use different writing assistance services. The service could have gotten you the perfect writer you want, but it helps to minimize your time & where you could generate more knowledge. I used to take 3-5 services. You can check it out here. 

But we should keep in mind that the best help is our imagination. Let me know if you find any other writing service that helps you. I could test it out and share my opinion too.

If you need ideas for a story, I recommend making a list of things you really enjoyed about the last few books you read. For example, my list includes stuff like, "the clumsy character wasn't just comic relief" or "the 'oh' moment". That can generate some sick prompts pretty quickly, and even help you tailor your story specifically to your tastes.

The best advice from me writing is:

to write down every thought that passes by in your brain. 

The amount of poetry and heartfelt things people think about in a day is very large, I think that if you want to write then you have to understand what your saying not just writing down gibberish.

Write consistently, write as often as you can.

Write what your heart desires to write about. 

DONT QUIT. 

one piece of advice I feel like everyone should keep in mind is giving information via narration at the appropriate time, even if the information is given in the narration it's important to set up and i see people give out information at random times a lot 

Structure is key and knowing what idea of you want to write is also key. Know where you are starting and what you want the piece of writing to finish.

I personally like to write the title of the story first and then let it change as the story progresses. It's a really easy way to get inspiration!

• If you're stuck, try changing the weather of the scene.
• If you're still stuck, look ten sentences back. You might find your problem there.
• Write what you enjoy, you're going to be rereading it a lot when editing. Make sure it's something you won't get sick of.
• Have a comfy drink/water bottle, and/or snack nearby. It helps when you get distracted and want to procrastinate by digging through the fridge/cabinet.
• Have somewhere that you can just safely and comfortably dump ideas and brainstorm rapidly. Even if it's a non-responsive source (i.e. even if it's a private post, a diary app, or a discord server all to yourself, a friend, etc.). None of the ideas have to make it into your writing, but it's good to just throw those things out of your brain and you might get something to go off of/an idea for later!
  

when talking about a topic, don't reuse the same word too closely. if you do this it comes off as unprofessional and I personally dislike it. use synonyms or refer to the subject as 'it' or just don't use anything at all.

Always, always, always make a bulletpoint list of key events in your story to help you keep on track, these can obviously be chopped and changed but it helps a lot. Also adding notes of any possible ideas for ways to lead from one event to another, key details you want to spread throughout the story and just general notes of details you want to remember continuously or even later on in the story.

When writing in google docs or something, i tend to colour-code my text with a key at the top. One colour for important details, another for descriptions (to ensure info does not conflict), and another for sections you wanna come back to and rewrite, etc.

Pretty basic ideas but it helps! Especially when I take long breaks between writing sessions.

listen to music similar to the style that you want to project, it honestly works wonders without even trying :P

hmmm i'd say my favourite piece of advice right now is that when smth big happens, write abt smth small. like if a city is on fire, write abt a child's burnt socks on the street. if a big hero was defeated, write abt the inner world of their partner, etc etc. i saw this advice on tumblr and it works well for me! hope it works for everyone too <3

hmmm i'd say my favourite piece of advice right now is that when smth big happens, write abt smth small. like if a city is on fire, write abt a child's burnt socks on the street. if a big hero was defeated, write abt the inner world of their partner, etc etc. i saw this advice on tumblr and it works well for me! hope it works for everyone too <3

These are just a couple tips I learned from my English classes the past two years that helped to improve my writing a little bit, still improving on it tho (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

- When you finish writing a piece, go back and highlight all of the common verbs you can find and make half of those more descriptive and detailed verbs. It doesn't have to be much

- Don't be afraid to use synonyms

Idk that's just me tho, but this helps me write along as I go, so maybe it helps some of you \_(´ー`)_/

Plan out your story before writing it

Whenever i write a story, i just write whatever i can think of and then expand on it, i also write it in alot of detail to expand the word count but also get more ideas

I'm a daydreamer, so I imagine a lot of things throughout the day. Before I start writing, I think about the concept first and 'role play' to see if it's something interesting. I put myself in the shoes of the characters and adjust their aspects.

For messy thinkers and writers like me, I suggest brainstorming. I put a bunch of keywords and loose dialogues on a piece of paper and then refine them to create what I want. Like moulding clay.

I also try to use vivid imagery to convey all sorts of things, in a poetic sense, even if it's not poetry.

Figures of speech help you create an interesting narrative. In poetry I like to use metaphor, personification (to increase the impact of certain emotions by giving human qualities to non-human entities) and alliteration (gives the poem a musical approach).

Don't force yourself to write and writers block is perfectly normal. 

If you agonize over writing, whatever you've managed to create will probably be bad. Just relax, get your thoughts together, and come back to your desk later.

Constantly consume forms of artistic endeavors. 

What almost always inspires me is literature, music, and art. Surround yourself with these things.

Get out more (if able).

Even just going to festivals with friends could give you some ideas. Plus, it's good to see and do new things.

write what feels real to you