This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
1. Write about what you want to know. Consider questions you have, and then write to work out the answers. You’ll keep both yourself and your readers engaged.
2. Write every day. As an English teacher with five classes and 150 students, this is a tip I rarely follow myself, but during the rare stretches when I do, the writing comes more easily and the end results are better. Writing is like a muscle, so the more you work it out the stronger it becomes. Plus, it’s a wonderful way to spend a piece of each day.
3. For potent writing, cut out adjectives and adverbs, and instead use strong nouns and verbs. Again, I break this rule all the time, but I still think it’s a valuable one.
4. Edit, edit, edit. Most of writing for me is editing. Usually I first come up with an okay string of sentences, and with each successive edit, I hone in more precisely on what it is I’m aiming to say and how I can best say it.
5. Write your own way. There are a few writing books I love (Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Stephen King’s On Writing), but I think it’s easy to fall down a black hole of advice about the best ways to write. The reality is, everyone does it their own way, and at a certain point you have to strike out on your own and figure out what works for you. Write a lot and you’ll eventually develop your own style and approach and voice – these are things I’m still working on, but it’s fun to keep figuring out.
Lindsey’s new novel, Pretty in Ink, is out now.