As an aspiring author who has just started their writing journey, there are many things that you can do to improve your writing, such as improving your dialogue, plot, and characters. The fact that there are so many things to improve can almost be overwhelming.
But – if you have a strategy, you can simplify the process and see progress and improvement.
Adopt a Learner’s Mindset
Understandably, if you are new on your writing journey, it might be a bit difficult for you to follow all sorts of advice that you see on the internet if you don’t know what level that person is at. On that note, if you are brand new in the world of writing, you should start with the easiest strategy, which is to change the way you think about your writing.
The thing is that your mindset and your thought process matter just as much, if not more, than your actual skills. How, you may ask? Well, the answer is as simple as this: Adopting a learner’s mindset is the key to constant improvement and progress.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Practice is not a particularly attractive word, and before you start getting frustrated, we encourage you to remember the importance of having the right mindset or a learner’s attitude. Writing is a skill that you can get better at with consistent practice.
Also, the reason why you are interested in this article is because you want to get better at creative writing, which means that you enjoy creative writing or at least you are just interested in it. If you think about it, you will see that this is all about doing what you enjoy.
Even if it is just for a little while, you like to live in that luxurious little world that you have created in your head and want to share with others. The reason why you should practice is so that you can write the stories that you want to read.
Always Write About Something You Enjoy
On that note, it is incredibly important to choose a subject that you are passionate about. If you don’t enjoy what you are writing, your readers will sense it and see it through in your book. Also, if you are stuck and aren’t particularly enjoying the progress, we recommend introducing something new in your story.
It is important to mention here that when we ask you to introduce something new, we don’t mean you should start a new book. On the contrary, you can introduce a new character or a plot twist.
The thing is that when you really enjoy what you are writing in your story, not only will it help you stay motivated to keep writing, but if you truly enjoy it – it most likely guarantees that others will like it, too.
The key is that as long as you enjoy it – your flaws don’t really matter. You can always fix these flaws later at the time of editing your first draft. No matter what flaws are there in your first draft, they can never be worse than having a book that the author did not really enjoy writing.
Seek Inspiration from Real-Life Events to Convey Emotions
Regardless of your chosen genre, one of the most important aspects of writing is the aspect of emotion. Emotion is what makes stories interesting, more personal, and essentially captivating to the readers. So, another tip to improve your writing is to seek emotion from real-life events and convey them on steroids.
Speaking of writing steroids, you should know that you can leverage the size of your sentences to convey the mood or vibe that you want to establish in the various scenes of the book. For instance, if you want to convey a sense of urgency, you should write in shorter sentences.
On the other hand, you can use longer sentences if you want to break the reading pace of your readers and want them to get immersed or imagine descriptive sceneries. Speaking of sentences, you might want to learn how many sentences make up a paragraph and how the lengths of the sentences and their structure can affect the overall mood of your narrative.
Avoid Getting Overly Technical
Getting overly technical with your writing can cause unnecessary harm and distress. There is a great chance that if you are inspired to write something, you might have started it for fun. So, when you are writing, and you want to maintain a sense of enjoyment, you should trust your gut instead of getting too technical with the entire writing project.
On that note, you may read through pages of your story and think that your style is awful compared to other writers. But – the truth is that we as humans can be our worst critics, which is why your writing might not be as horrible as you think.
So, it is crucial to trust your gut and go with your own writing style until you complete your first draft. Believe us when we tell you that trusting your gut and going with the flow of your story will be absolutely worth it.
Let Go of Rules when Working on Your First Draft
Since you are new to writing, we recommend avoiding being too hard on yourself and letting go of the rules. The thing about rules is that there are so many rules that different people or blogs might try to tell you. For instance, some people believe that the ideal length of a book is at least fifty thousand words. Someone else might say that your story must follow a perfect plot structure.
Now, as an aspiring writer, we encourage you not to worry about those rules and focus on completing the story instead. So, you might want to make your entire story a chapter long or add too many commas if that makes sense to you. Do what you want to do for your first story as long as it keeps you motivated to continue writing and completing what you so eagerly started.
