In this collection of writing tips, you will find rare gems for both fiction and non-fiction writing from the finest writers, who have over the years mastered, refined, and taught the art of writing.
I have presented the tips as it is, without paraphrasing, without subjectivising them.
The tips cover many aspects related to the art of writing: creative writing, copywriting, digital writing, form & substance, creativity, style, storytelling, grammar, methods of writing, etc.
I have used 21 writing manuals to compile the list. Check out the list, if you wish to explore more in detail. The list of manuals is given below:
- Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
- The Elements of Style by William Strunk
- The Portable MFA in Creative Writing
- Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande
- The Gotham Writer’s Workshop
- Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Writer’s Workbook by Newman, Cusick & La Tourette
- The New Oxford Guide to Writing by Thomas S. Kane
- Stein on Writing
- The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing
- The Creative Writing Course Book by Julia Bell and Paul Magrs
- On writing — by Stephen King
- Ernest Hemingway on Writing
- On writing well — by William Zinsser
- Bird by Bird — by Anne Lamott
- Nobody wants to read your shit by Steven Pressfield
- Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday
- This book will teach you how to write better by Neville Medhora
- Writing Tools — by Roy Peter Clark
- The boron letters by Gary Halbert
- Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer
Let’s start!
101. Contractions:
Your style will be warmer and truer to your personality if you use contractions like “I’ll” and “won’t” and “can’t” when they fit comfortably into what you’re writing.
I only suggest avoiding one form — “I’d”, “he’d”, “we’d”, etc. — because “I’d” can mean both “I had” and “I would”, and readers can get well into a sentence before learning which meaning it is.
102. That and which:
Always use “that” unless it makes your meaning ambiguous.
103. The quickest fix:
Surprisingly often a difficult problem in a sentence can be solved by simply getting rid of it.
104. Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it’s where the game is won or lost.
105. No area of life is stupid to someone who takes it seriously. If you follow your affections you will write well and will engage your readers.
106. Write about your hobbies: cooking, gardening, photography, knitting, antiques, jogging, sailing, scuba diving, tropical birds, tropical fish.
107. Write about your work: teaching, nursing, running a business, running a store.
108. Write about a field you enjoyed in college and always meant to get back to: history, biography, art, archaeology.
109. No subject is too specialized or too quirky if you make an honest connection with it when you write about it.
110. Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does — in his own words.
111. The Travel Article:
Next to knowing how to write about people, you should know how to write about a place. People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like.
112. How can you overcome such fearful odds and write well about a place? My advice can be reduced to two principles — one of style, the other of substance.
113. First, choose your words with unusual care. If a phrase comes to you easily, look at it with deep suspicion; it’s probably one of the countless clichés that have woven their way so tightly into the fabric of travel writing that you have to make a special effort not to use them.
114. As for substance, be intensely selective. If you are describing a beach, don’t write that “the shore was scattered with rocks” or that “occasionally a seagull flew over.” Shores have a tendency to be scattered with rocks and to be flown over by seagulls. Eliminate every such fact that is a known attribute: don’t tell us that the sea had waves and the sand was white.
115. Your main task as a travel writer is to find the central idea of the place you’re dealing with.
116. Finally, however, what brings a place alive is human activity: people doing the things that give a locale its character.
117. Never be afraid to write about a place that you think has had every last word written about it. It’s not your place until you write about it.
118. Living is the trick. Writers who write interestingly tend to be men and women who keep themselves interested.
119. If you write about subjects you think you would enjoy knowing about, your enjoyment will show in what you write. Learning is a tonic.
120. If you want your writing to convey enjoyment, write about people you respect.
121. The moral for nonfiction writers is: think broadly about your assignment.
122. I mention this to give confidence to all nonfiction writers: a point of craft. If you master the tools of the trade — the fundamentals of interviewing and of orderly construction — and if you bring to the assignment your general intelligence and your humanity, you can write about any subject. That’s your ticket to an interesting life.
123. The hardest decision about any article is how to begin it. The lead must grab the reader with a provocative idea and continue with each paragraph to hold him or her in a tight grip, gradually adding information.
124. Now, what do your readers want to know next? Ask yourself that question after every sentence.
125. At such moments I ask myself one very helpful question: “What is the piece really about?” (Not just “What is the piece about?”) Fondness for the material you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to gather isn’t a good enough reason to include it if it’s not central to the story you’ve chosen to tell. Self-discipline bordering on masochism is required.
126. Where, then, is the edge? Ninety percent of the answer lies in the hard work of mastering the tools discussed in this book. Add a few points for such natural gifts as a good musical ear, a sense of rhythm and a feeling for words. But the final advantage is the same one that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like to write better than everybody else, you have to want to write better than everybody else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft.
127. But finally, the purposes that writers serve must be their own. What you write is yours and nobody else’s. Take your talent as far as you can and guard it with your life. Only you know how far that is; no editor knows. Writing well means believing in your writing and believing in yourself, taking risks, daring to be different, pushing yourself to excel. You will write only as well as you make yourself write.
128. The essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they’re writing fluently doesn’t mean they’re writing well.
129. Establish a daily schedule and stick to it.
130. Examine every word: a surprising number don’t serve any purpose.
131. Please yourself, and you will also entertain the readers.
132. The Thesaurus is to the writer what a rhyming dictionary is to the songwriter — a reminder of all the choices.
133. The Elements of Style, a book every writer should read once a year.
134. Read everything aloud before letting it go out into the world.
135. All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
136. Unity is the anchor of good writing. Unity of pronoun. Unity of tense. Unity of mood.
137. Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two thoughts, or five — just one.
138. Take special care with the last sentence of each paragraph — it’s the crucial springboard to the next paragraph. Try to give that sentence an extra twist of humour or surprise.
139. Make the reader smile and you’ve got him for at least one more paragraph.
140. Make active verbs activate your sentences, and avoid the kind that needs an appended preposition to complete their work. Don’t set up a business that you can start or launch. Don’t say that the president of the company stepped down. Did he resign? Did he retire? Did he gets fired? Be precise. Use precise verbs.
141. Good nonfiction writers think in paragraph units, not in sentence units.
142. Don’t annoy your readers by over-explaining — by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like “surprisingly,” “predictably” and “of course,” which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Trust your material.
143. Find the best writers and read their work aloud.
144. Plain declarative sentences, not a comma in sight. Each sentence contains one thought — and only one.
145. Much of the trouble that writers get into comes from trying to make one sentence do too much work.
146. Readers should always feel that you know more about your subject than you’ve put in writing.
147. Writers should think of themselves as part entertainers.
148. “I then said that rewriting is the essence of writing. I pointed out that professional writers rewrite their sentences over and over and then rewrite what they have rewritten.”
149. “The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds — a person assailed by many forces competing for attention. At one time those forces were relatively few: newspapers, magazines, radio, spouse, children, pets. Today they also include a galaxy of electronic devices for receiving entertainment and information — television, VCRs, DVDs, CDs, video games, the Internet, e-mail, cell phones, Blackberries, iPods — as well as a fitness program, a pool, a lawn and that most potent of competitors, sleep.”
150. “Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.”
151. “Most first drafts can be cut by 50 percent without losing any information or losing the author’s voice.”
152. “You are writing for yourself. Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience — every reader is a different person. Don’t try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don’t know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they’re always looking for something new.”
153. “Learn to alert the reader as soon as possible to any change in mood from the previous sentence. At least a dozen words will do this job for you: “but,” “yet,” “however,” “nevertheless,” “still,” “instead,” “thus,” “therefore,” “meanwhile,” “now,” “later,” “today,” “subsequently” and several more. I can’t overstate how much easier it is for readers to process a sentence if you start with “but” when you’re shifting direction. Or, conversely, how much harder it is if they must wait until the end to realize that you have shifted. Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with “but.” If that’s what you learned, unlearn it — there’s no stronger word at the start. It announces total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is thereby primed for the change.”
154. “You won’t write well until you understand that writing is an evolving process, not a finished product. Nobody expects you to get it right the first time, or even the second time.”
155. “Actually a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking; a muddled style reflects a muddled thinker or a person too arrogant, or too dumb, or too lazy to organize his thoughts.”
156. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.
157. I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months, the length of a season. Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel.
158. I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost if the tale is done well and stays fresh.
159. You can read anywhere, almost, but when it comes to writing, library carrels, park benches, and rented flats should be courts of last resort — Truman Capote said he did his best work in motel rooms, but he is an exception; most of us do our best in a place of our own.
160. I suggest a thousand words a day, and because I’m feeling magnanimous, I’ll also suggest that you can take one day a week off, at least to begin with. No more; you’ll lose the urgency and immediacy of your story if you do.
161. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. Anything at all … as long as you tell the truth.
162. Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do.
163. In my view, stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, which moves the story from point A to point B and finally to point Z; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech.
164. I’m not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they’re wearing.
165. I think locale and texture are much more important to the reader’s sense of actually being in the story than any physical description of the players. Nor do I think that physical description should be a shortcut to character.
166. The key to good description begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing, the kind of writing that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary.
167. Your job is to say what you see, and then to get on with your story.
168. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft — 10%
169. You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself. These lessons almost always occur with the study door closed.
170. The most important thing you can do for yourself is read the market.
171. Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.
172. The rest of it — and perhaps the best of it — is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.
173. “We are writers, and we never ask one another where we get our ideas; we know we don’t know.”
174. Good ideas appear out of nowhere, from seemingly unrelated concepts coming together and creating a new thought in your head. You can’t force this process, your job is to recognize when they show up and take advantage of them.
175. When you first write something, you should write it for yourself. When you rewrite it, write it for everyone else. Take out everything that isn’t the story.
176. Build a toolbox of your writing skills and keep refining the tools in your toolbox.
177. Common tools go on top, the more specialized tools go on bottom. You should only have three or four levels to it.
178. You can learn what not to do by reading bad prose, and later, mediocre prose.
179. “If possible, there should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall. For any writer, but for the beginning writer in particular, it’s wise to eliminate every possible distraction.”
180. Never tell something you can show.
181. “Try any goddamn thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, toss it. Toss it even if you love it. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch once said, “Murder your darlings,” and he was right.”
182. If you’re a beginner, though, let me urge that you take your story through at least two drafts; the one you do with the study door closed and the one you do with it open.
183. “I think that every novelist has a single ideal reader; that at various points during the composition of a story, the writer is thinking, “I wonder what he/ she will think when he/ she reads this part?” For me that first reader is my wife, Tabitha.”
184. “The most important things to remember about back stories are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest.”
185. Writing is telepathy: We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room. Except we are together. We’re close. We’re having a meeting of the minds.
186. All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation.
187. Writing is refined thinking.
188. Writing has always been best when it’s intimate, as sexy as skin on skin.
189. Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
190. When I use adverbs, it’s usually for the same reason any writer does it: because I am afraid the reader won’t understand me if I don’t. I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.
191. To write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.
192. Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story — to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all. The single-sentence paragraph more closely resembles talk than writing, and that’s good. Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.
193. One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose — one novel like Asteroid Miners (or Valley of the Dolls, Flowers in the Attic, and The Bridges of Madison County, to name just a few) is worth a semester at a good writing school.
194. Good writing, on the other hand, teaches the learning writer about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of believable characters, and truth-telling.
195. Thin description leaves the reader feeling bewildered and nearsighted. Over description buries him or her in details and images. The trick is to find a happy medium.
196. Good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.
197. When a reader puts a story aside because it “got boring,” the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.
198. When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.
199. Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.
200. Every book — at least every one worth reading — is about something. Your job during or just after the first draft is to decide what something or somethings yours is about. Your job in the second draft — one of them, anyway — is to make that something even more clear.
Shivam Pandey is a professional content & copywriter with 6+ years of experience. He specializes in writing on technology, business, digital marketing, lifestyle, travel, etc. He works closely with B2C and B2B businesses providing web content & copywriting services.