Five Tips To Better Your Writing

 

 

Good writing is simple writing. I don't mean dumbed down, I mean basic and clear. I think most experienced writers and readers will agree. Readers from the viewpoint of story flow and involvement and writers from virtually the same viewpoint.

Here’s the thing, when writing it’s easy to fall into old (and new) traps. Easy to get flowery, unnatural and fall back on clichés (I won't elaborate on it below, but catch the cliches and kill them).

So here are a few tips to do some quick fixes to that writing of yours and get past the tank traps.

1.  First, let’s keep things natural, shall we? When we talk with friends, business associates, family or simply think in our heads things are pretty straight forward. You don’t want to use a ton of words to describe what a handful will do. You don’t want to get so lyrical your reader says, “huh?”  For example, from a book I read (well tried to read) in which there’s a thunderstorm and the lights suddenly go out. Could be a scary scene if done right, or humorous, or any number of other things. Not, however, when the writer says “an ebony abyss claimed the den”. 

Really?

Okay, it can be tempting to create sentences like that. Might even feel good in the moment, but that’s something that the writer needs to reconsider at edit time. Don’t make your reader translate your more flowery writing into the simple, such as, “the room went dark”.  It just throws them out of their reader’s trance and probably tempts them to throw your book. The experienced and very good writer doesn’t call attention to the actual writing, rather he or she keeps it focused on the story. If you read your writing aloud it’ll be easier for you to pick out sentences that are contrived and unnatural with flowery elements you wouldn’t consider saying to a friend.

2.  Second, don’t throw information at the reader in huge doses.  Am I right readers? It’s hard to swallow large amounts of information. Sometimes we can be unaware of how much information we throw out there in one sentence. So go through at edit time and look for sentences that contain more than two or three pieces of information about a setting or a character. Break it up into smaller sentences, maybe even spread them out a bit more over the page. Do background in small doses, not a flood.

3.  And speaking of sentences, keep them short, or at least shorter. Plainly I’m not talking about a staccato delivery, and sentence length must vary, but you don’t want to pack many ideas into a single sentence. A simple guideline is to keep sentences below twenty or thirty words. So while you write wild and free for the first draft and keep moving to finish that story, remember at edit time to get rid of the extra, unnecessary words. Check where you’ve put a comma and think about whether it should be the end of a sentence. Reword a sentence that’s taken off without you. Tighten things up.

4.  And here’s one I’ve come across lately that has struck me sideways. Color.  Yes, color. It’s a trap many new writers fall into. Lots of color, meaning their descriptions are loaded with it.  You know, “The sunshine yellow school bus climbed the sage green hills on a dusty rust colored road lined with the white rivulets of downpours past.” (I didn’t get that sentence from a book though I’ve seen some lately that are close.)  Color is good. It sets a stage, but make it really count, use it sparingly and appropriately.

Oh, and one more thing. Yes, this is number 5. Don’t forget that old writer’s trick of letting your work sit for a day or two or maybe a week (whatever feels right to you) before you dive into your editing. Sort of like dough rising, it takes a bit of time for some of those over-dones to come to the top. 

Hope these little short-cuts are a help; new info for the new writer or reminder for the more experienced. 

Go forth and write - and readers, tell us what your pet peeves are, what makes you want to toss a book aside or what just irritates you as you read. 

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Four Simple Successful Writer's Suggestions

Many times I've heard the questions, how do you write? How do you learn to write? How can I learn to write (or write better)?

Good questions, and believe it or not there are some pretty simple answers. Much easier than finding your way through a maze.

One way to improve your writing or to just begin writing is to write. Yep, that simple, that direct. Write something every day. Whatever your writing interest, make sure you put words up on a computer screen every day. Some days you'll love what you other days you'll hate it, but hey, that's what revision and rewriting is for - curing that hate. All that writing keeps you primed to write some more. And you'll be amazed at how your brain begins to work, how you begin to compose in your head when you're doing other things. Something else to write - notes on all those great thoughts. But don't let keeping notes throw you off track. Remember your goal is to actually write.

Number two. This one is important (well, so are the others, but this one really is important). Finish what you start. Your Mom undoubtedly told you this on subjects other than writing, but it applies here just as well. Insert a bit of discipline and do it. Yes, there will be the occasional time when it just isn't worth the angst to finish a particular project, but that is extremely (let me repeat that - extremely) rare. The simple fact is you can't give up each time the writing gets tough and you can't quite figure out where to take the story next. And, you can't quit one project every time a new idea crops up.  If you do, you'll never finish any story you begin whether it's a novel, a short story, a script, or a non-fiction book. (see discipline above). Make it your goal to finish everything. No one reads unfinished anything.

For my third offering I suggest learn the rules. Writing is amazing really. Once you have the basic skills of language writing can be greatly self taught. Read - a lot. Read fiction if you write it, non-fiction, books on writing, blogs, author's sites, whatever you can. Pick up tips and information. Learn more, always learn. Maybe find a mentor, though I admit great mentor relationships are usually stumbled on by chance. But if you don't look for that exposure you won't stumble on that chance. So, sometimes get away from your computer and maybe take a class at a local college or join a reader or writer group. I do have a shop at Amazon where I continue to accumulate good books for writers along with software suggestions; things I've read, used or had highly recommended to me. Yes, I do get a commission on a sale there, but you can find many of those books at your local library too if your budget is tight. Or with the holiday season approaching you might ask for a book you want as a gift purchased at a local book store (especially if you have independent book stores in your town). So read, learn, write.

And my fourth and final suggestion for today is break the rules. Well, hell, you have to know what they are to break them, that's why I mentioned the learn the rules idea first. Once you have a solid understanding of what it is you want to write, the basics of fiction, the innards of non-fiction, the form of scriptwriting, don't be so locked in that you're afraid to go beyond their present confines. Style, format, method, it all changes over time. It evolves because if it didn't, if it stagnated, writing would die. Just look back at the 'classics' of fiction. Stuff written by H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, Leo Tolstoy - you get the idea. The writing was different, the style much different. The basic rules have been proven to work but that doesn't mean they can't be changed, broken, stretched.

So have at it boys and girls - go forth, learn, create, break, finish, create again. These four basic  habits will take you far. Tell me which ones you stick to and, though I like to keep things simple, which ones you use I haven't mentioned.