I always knew I wanted to be a writer. A good one. I was not always sure of what I wanted to write, I just knew that eventually, I would be writing something.
I dream of becoming the next Suzanne Collins or Leigh Bardugo. But of course, I have a long road ahead of myself. The learning curve for writing is very steep. It requires tons of time, analysis, and brain-racking. And there’s no way around it. We just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, looking for ways to get better at this business. But how to do it? How can we be better writers?
Is this your case? Do you also want your books to land a good publishing deal and have millions read them? Do you want to be remembered for the worlds and characters you created?
Then, this article is for you!!
1. Show, don’t tell
This is probably the most common piece of advice you are going to get on how to be a better writer, but also one of the most useful ones. Showing, instead of telling is a basic rule of thumb you need to follow in order to make your writing more compelling, to get your readers immersed in it.
But, what is it about? Let’s start with an example. Take a look at these two sentences:
- The boy is afraid of spiders
- The morning of his interview, he was really nervous.
So, what do we have here? People. Yes, people having specific emotions. The first person is afraid and the second one is nervous. How do you know it? Simple. The text itself, the line itself tells you so, textually.
Let’s compare those two sentences to the next two:
3. Every time a spider got near him, the boy’s face would turn white and get covered with the coldest sweat.
4. The morning of the interview, he spent around 30 minutes pacing back and forth the hall, running one hand through his hair in an attempt to hide the slight trembling that had taken control of his right arm.
Did you notice the difference? In the second set of sentences, we can also identify the feelings, but only, because the author is showing. Showing is about painting a picture with your words and capturing the moment. Readers don’t want you to tell them what to feel, they want to figure that out by themselves. Give them the elements so they can get to their own conclusions. Let them decide what feelings your words can arise in them.
Telling is considered a sign of amateurish writing. This doesn’t mean that you need to avoid the one hundred percent of telling out of your novel. There are sometimes in which you certainly are going to need to tell. Some examples of this are when you have to make a jump in time and you just make a summary of the actions in that period because nothing really relevant to the plot happened there.
Let’s say that 90% of the time you need to show. Imagine that you have a movie camera in front of your eyes. Tell the readers what you see. Give them the elements, so they can interpret what they read in their own way. After all, reading is all about getting to picture these whole worlds authors have created in their own head with their own imagination.
2. Cut out Filter Words.
This is another piece of advice that goes hand-in-hand with the previous one. Filter words are all the words that we use to filter the world in the book to the reader.
Have you ever read a book and felt that you were alongside the characters, fighting the protagonist’s battle. Have you ever screamed to a character, because he was doing something wrong, or just not realizing what you just have? Or maybe you coughed because you were in an especially dusty scene? Well, in those cases, the author succeeded in providing a close, immersive experience to you as a reader.
But, what are filter words, and how avoiding them can help you improve as a writer? Let’s say you’re writing in the first-person point of view and you say things like:
“I see the fields stretching all around the house.”
You don’t really need to stay that the character “sees” something. Instead, you could just say:
“The fields stretch all around the house.”
It’s a more direct form of language and it will make your writing cleaner, more elegant, more sophisticated. At the same time, it will create an immersive feeling in your readers which will be receiving the data of the world at the same time your protagonist is doing so.
Filter words can detach readers from the story. Since, instead of feeling that they are part of the world, they will be reminded that they are actually outside of it. Now, you’d say… duh!! of course, they are outside. Yes. But that’s not what the readers like to be told or reminded of.
Some filter words you have to try to avoid are:
- see
- feel
- hear
- realize
- know
- hear
- watch
- decide
- look
- notice
- seem
- sound
- appear
- touch
- smell
Don’t say: “The fabric felt crispy.” Just say: “The crispy fabric slipped through my hands.” As you can see, this also gives you the opportunity of having a more active sentence, because in the second case you describe the action while avoiding the use of the filter word.
3. Study story structure
Yes. I know. I have said this a thousand times before, but if I have to repeat it other 1000 times more I’ll do it because it’s necessary. Your story needs structure. You cannot build if you don’t have beams, the human body, could not get by without bones. It would be a smushy bag of skin and organs… and I’m sure you don’t want that happening to your book.
Story structure is the first thing agents and publishers will look at when deciding if they want to work with you or not. If you are new to story structure, we have an article that can help you get started. Click right here.
Structures like the Three-act structure, the 27 chapter structure, Hero’s Journey structure are effective, successful methods of creating stories for movies, TV, novels, and have been successful a million times so, no matter the type of story you have, a structure will make it a thousand times better.
And I know some of you will say that you want something original, that you want to break the mold. But originality is in the personal mark you’ll give to the story, on the way you tell it, the characters you create… a good structure is the base of all of that and it’ll give a final round-up, polished look to your work. Look at human beings, they are all diverse and unique in their own way, yet we all have the same skeleton. Give that a thought.
If you have not studied story structure yet, save yourself some time of wandering around the island of all things nonsensical that lead nowhere and start studying structure today!! It can definitely make you a much better writer.
I don’t care if you are a pantser or plotter. Every story needs a structure.
4. Create a writing habit
Writing is a muscle and as every muscle in your body needs constant stimulus. That came out weird. Of course, you won’t get better overnight, you won’t get better without writing. If you want to be a better writer, then the first thing you have to do is write. Yes, I know. It sounds simple. I know it could be obvious but you would be surprised at the number of people that want the first draft they have ever written to be perfect. And that just doesn’t happen. Perfection comes with time and practice, and of course the creation of a good and consistent writing habit.
You learn to write by writing, analyzing what works, or not for your story. Some people only write when they feel inspired. But… you cannot wait for the inspiration to come to you. Go out there and bring that b*tch home. The inspiration, of course. You cannot trust that you wake up today feeling like writing because the day you don’t feel like it, that’s the day you’re not going to be producing, you’re not going to make progress in your work. If your imagination still needs a little push, check this article! and also this one.
I won’t get any further on this topic, because we have a full article on how to create a good writing habit and the benefits of it. You can check that right here.
5. Read
Do you think mechanics learn to fix cars without having seen a car in their lives? without having seen the pieces that form that car or having mastered the functions of every part?
Well, my dear, the answer is no. So, I’m just going to go ahead and say it. If you want to be a better writer, you first need to be an even better reader. When we read, we can analyze the stories from a different perspective and take notes on how other successful authors have done it before. That is why is so important to understand how the structures work. We are no longer readers, per se. Now we have a bigger purpose.
Now, we need to learn to read as writers, analyzing and comparing what resources, solutions, tropes other authors have used with good results. How much description do they use? In which way did they manage this particular plot point? How did they add urgency to a particular scene? And so on…
Read inside the genre you are writing. If it’s horror, what the heck are you doing that you’re not reading Stephen King or Lovecraft? or other great writers on the genre. How are you going to understand what you have to do if you have not consumed that genre and their best writers before?
Try to identify the elements that work for each story that you like. What made you feel drawn to it? Try to understand what is it that makes those stories so great. Crack their codes. Read between their lines and you’ll be a step closer to becoming a better writer.
6. Don’t compare yourself
Cut yourself some slack. You cannot compare yourself with writers that have been published. You cannot compare your first draft today to any final draft or to published books.
Those books have gone through several rounds of edits, maybe 10 rounds of edits, some of them done by professional editors that have put those books through many different processes. They have helped the author polished what once was a flawed, skinny, rough draft and that resulted in that final book you can see at bookstores. It’s not fair to compare your first draft to those books. Not fair to you. Not fair to the book you are writing.
Keep learning and let your craft grow and develop with you and your career as a writer. Give yourself time to grow. Overnight success doesn’t actually occur overnight. In fact, overnight success usually takes years.
So just remember to be nice to yourself and your writing. Remember we all have to start somewhere:
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.
Richard Bach
The journey is long, so make sure you enjoy it. Just don’t quit.
Summing up…
We are all learning here. No one was born with a writing diploma in their hands. That would just be weird. The good news is that there are ways for all of us to get better every day. Just don’t be lazy and get the work done.
If you want to be a better writer, cut out those filter words and study story structure. It’s the base of everything. Remember to show and not tell. Read as if your life or your writing career depended on it, and make sure you make the habit of writing every day.
So, it doesn’t matter if you are just a newbie trying to figure out where the heck to start. Or if you have a couple of stories behind you. The sky is the limit.
If you have any other piece of advice that could help any of us be a better writer, please share it in the comments.
