I am by no means the greatest author who has ever written. I am however, a person who cannot help but write, and I am continuously, consciously working on improving my writing. As I discover various tips and methods, I will add them here so that everyone with access to the internet will have access to these tips, methods, and ideas as well.
First, I give you three tips to live by as an author. I find that this is the bare minimum that helps your writing to grow and blossom:
- Read a lot.
- Write as much as possible.
- Critique everything.
Most people who give advice to writers share only the first two things on that list. For most of my short life, I have focused on those two things, not because I wanted to write better, but because I enjoyed them. Consequently, my writing improved slowly but steadily with examples of better writing and constant practice. However, when I began critiquing the things I was reading for grammar, plot devices, character development, etc., it helped me better critique and edit my own writing. Because of this, my writing seems to be growing exponentially.
Second, I offer a list of strategies and exercises that have worked well for me and may work well for others:
- Rewrite your favorite story – Take the best book you ever read, and tweak it into something of your own style. You can also do this with short stories and poetry themes. It’s easy to take something you hate and turn it into something you love. It’s harder to take something you already think of as fantastic and turn it into something that is your own. Change the setting, twist the characters, treat the plot like movable pieces of a collage. Do whatever it takes to make that story into something you would have written. This method will give you an opportunity to practice using techniques, styles, characters, settings, plots, and other devices that are not already in your writing repertoire.
- Rewrite one sentence as many ways as possible – This one is a simple, but truly effective grammar and creativity exercise. Take any single sentence from any work and find as many ways to communicate that same idea as possible. Try to expand it into a full paragraph or a page. Try to shrink it into only one or two words. Embellish it, dissect it, take all the fun out of it and then insert it backwards. Be creative, but above all, be grammatically correct.
- Use randomness to spark your creativity – I have discovered an absolutely wonderful website: “Creativity Tools” (http://watchout4snakes.com/CreativityTools/Main/Main.aspx). There, you will find random word and sentence generators, random name generators, and many other tools to help jump start your creativity when you’re having a case of mental dullness. My favorite thing to do is crank up the random word generator and compose a poem or a paragraph or a story or something based on the words it spits out, no substitutions or “re-rolls” allowed.
This is not the end of the list! As I discover more tips and tricks, I will add them here. Please add your own ideas in the comments below!
