Five Tips to Becoming a Better Writer

Writing is about putting one word after another, in such a way that the reader will be drawn into the text. But as with all endeavors, becoming a better writer comes with frustrations. Here are five things that I have found helpful on my writing journey.

1. Spend time reading books by other authors

In his memoir, On Writing, Stephen King suggests that the real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing. This ease and intimacy occur on the level of sentence structure, vocabulary and rhythm. The more you read, the more you sharpen your skills and discover the creative strategies of other writers. The more things you feed your brain, the richer the pool of creativity you will be able to draw from.

When reading others put in the active effort of taking apart passages that impress or move you, dissecting another writer’s style or methodology. This is most helpful if you focus on the genre or form you are desiring to write in. Pay attention to the words chosen, the repetition avoided and the sentence length that creates the flow. Ask yourself how incorporating some of those skills could  help you in developing your own style and skills as a writer.

2. Be you—create your own voice

Though reading others, learning their rhythm and techniques are valuable tools for becoming a better writer, the real secret sauce is taking what you have gleaned and developing your personal style around your own voice. Guard against copy-cat or cookie cutter writing. This is especially important as Christian authors because we don’t want our work to seem cliché rather than creative.

That said, if you have a sense of humor, special interests or anything unique, you can use your unique personality in writing to lift the text from mundane to a buoyancy that comes from your authentic personality shining through.

3. Outline your book

Creating an outline before you even begin the creative process of writing a book is probably one of the most important ways to improve your skills, side step frustration and keep you moving along a clearly thought out path. Determine the genre and then move to determine how many chapters you will include. Will the book or story have sub-parts and sections? Think that through and include that in the  outline. Develop working titles for your chapters and a word count for the entire book and each chapter. Think through the flow of stories to include. Add a note by each chapter title reminding you which story you will include in the chapter and for those in the Christian Living genre—jot down the scripture and take away that goes in that chapter.

Now you have a guide to begin writing with. It will go much easier and you will quickly find that outlines are not just important for your proposal, but extremely important to finish a full length work. Don’t forget that openings and endings don’t just matter with fiction writing, but all good writing is story and narrative and must start and end upon notes that make sense and add value to what is being written.

4. Less is  more

Repetition is natural when we speak but makes written communication clunky and  unnecessarily lengthy. This is why it is hard for a speaker to become a writer. It takes work to learn how to cut the fluff and watch the repeated words, cutesy phrases and other things that work for public speaking but not with writing.

I was first a speaker before writing. It was a challenge to find a rhythm to the written word. As a story-teller I had crafted messages around Scripture and story. In person I could exclaim, repeat for effect and expound on the smallest detail in a story. I quickly learned that this doesn’t work in professional writing. No one wants to read my verbal processing. Some writers have a “conversational” style  but will still have to cut and chop much of their first draft to keep the content and lose the fluff.

Avoid cliched language as they become boring for the reader. Every time you use a cliché or are lazy with your word choices you are missing the opportunity to be original. Fillers are another bad habit to actively resist. Fillers are short words that may come easy to you but distract from your point.

Here’s two  examples:

#1

“Dan went over to the far end of the park to see if there was anything that he could use to clean up all the leaves that had fallen over night.” (sentence  word count 31)

 #2

“Piles of leaves had fallen overnight, so Dan looked for a way to clean up the mess.” (  sentence word count 17)

 Look at the word count difference in one sentence change. Changing the wording saved 14 words.

If you are writing devotionals or articles mining your sentences to see how they could be reshaped, cut or rearranged to cut the word count is very important. You might start out a 500 word devotional that you are pleased with and have to cut it to  350 words. It’s like a game or puzzle. Examine every sentence for different ways to say the same thing, identifying cliché or fluff words and move past the familiar of repeated words.

5. Keep company with other writers

Writing, though done alone, can be lifted to new heights when shared in community. Join a local writing group, a critique group or an online writer’s community. You will be able to share ideas, get honest feedback and have support when you are discouraged with writing. This can be daunting to an insecure writer, but push past the fear and find a space to grow as a better writer. Everyone started somewhere. Published authors were not always where they are today, they began from scratch and still need to grow and stretch themselves as writers too. Guard yourself from thinking critique is negative or something to be avoided. It is not rejection but rather helping you become the best  you can be at the craft.

I remember my first trade book after three bible studies. I kept sending in proposals and finally one editor told me that to get published my writing had to have a rhythm to it and that each sentence had to sing. I was discouraged because I didn’t understand what that meant. So, I began dissecting other authors  in my genre—sure enough they all had a unique flow. I began to see it and then edited my proposal chapters to make them sing—or have a  flow. That ended up being a four book contract. Keep in mind, it was first rejected, but I listened to the criticism of why and worked at it, praying God would teach me how to do what I needed to do. That critique was life changing.

Finally, let me close with this piece of advice—Don’t give up! Your ideas will be exciting but they won’t all stick. Not every idea will be a masterpiece. Accept this and keep moving forward. All of us have to embrace some criticism and failure to become better writers. But whatever you do, if God has called you to writing, don’t quit, embrace growth and continue on the road of obedience.

What do you need to apply to work towards becoming a better writer?