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!
501. Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that’s the point to step back and fill in the details of their world. People don’t notice their everyday surroundings and daily routine, so when writers describe them it can sound as if they’re trying too hard to instruct the reader.
502. Description must work for its place. It can’t be simply ornamental. It usually works best if it has a human element; it is more effective if it comes from an implied viewpoint, rather than from the eye of God.
503. If description is coloured by the viewpoint of the character who is doing the noticing, it becomes, in effect, part of character definition and part of the action.
504. If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.
505. Be ready for anything. Each new story has different demands and may throw up reasons to break these and all other rules. Except number one: you can’t give your soul to literature if you’re thinking about income tax.
506. My first rule was given to me by T.H. White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies and was: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt.
507. Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.
508. Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel.
509. If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction.
510. Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development.
511. Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution.
512. For a good melodrama study the famous “Lester Dent master plot formula” which you can find online. It was written to show how to write a short story for the pulps, but can be adapted successfully for most stories of any length or genre.
513. If possible have something going on while you have your characters delivering exposition or philosophising. This helps retain dramatic tension.
514. Carrot and stick — have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery).
515. Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say.
516. Learn what criticism to accept.
517. Be persistent.
518. People, who think well, write well.
519. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.
520. Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well.
521. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
522. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
523. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
524. Never use jargon words like reconceptualise, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
525. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
526. Check your quotations.
527. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.
528. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
529. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
530. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.
531. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
532. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
533. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person — a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
534. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it — bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
535. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
536. If you are using dialogue — say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
537. “If there is magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”
538. The prerequisite for me is to keep my well of ideas full. This means living as full and varied a life as possible, to have my antennae out all the time.
539. Ted Hughes gave me this advice and it works wonders: record moments, fleeting impressions, overheard dialogue, your own sadnesses and bewilderments and joys.
540. A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.
541. It is the gestation time which counts.
542. Once the skeleton of the story is ready I begin talking about it, mostly to Clare, my wife, sounding her out.
543. By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I’m talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.
544. Once a chapter is scribbled down rough — I write very small so I don’t have to turn the page and face the next empty one — Clare puts it on the word processor, prints it out, sometimes with her own comments added.
545. When I’m deep inside a story, living it as I write, I honestly don’t know what will happen. I try not to dictate it, not to play God.
546. Once the book is finished in its first draft, I read it out loud to myself. How it sounds is hugely important.
547. With all editing, no matter how sensitive — and I’ve been very lucky here — I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand.
548. Decide when in the day (or night) it best suits you to write, and organise your life accordingly.
549. Think with your senses as well as your brain.
550. Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary.
551. Lock different characters/elements in a room and tell them to get on.
552. Remember there is no such thing as nonsense.
553. Bear in mind Wilde’s dictum that “only mediocrities develop” — and challenge it.
554. Let your work stand before deciding whether or not to serve.
555. Think big and stay particular.
556. Write for tomorrow, not for today.
557. Work hard.
558. Proceed slowly and take care.
559. To ensure that you proceed slowly, write by hand.
560. Write slowly and by hand only about subjects that interest you.
561. Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.
562. Rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.
563. Read like mad. But try to do it analytically — which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It’s worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work. I find watching films also instructive. Nearly every modern Hollywood blockbuster is hopelessly long and baggy. Trying to visualise the much better films they would have been with a few radical cuts is a great exercise in the art of story-telling. Which leads me on to . . .
564. Cut like crazy. Less is more. I’ve often read manuscripts — including my own — where I’ve got to the beginning of, say, chapter two and have thought: “This is where the novel should actually start.” A huge amount of information about character and backstory can be conveyed through small detail. The emotional attachment you feel to a scene or a chapter will fade as you move on to other stories. Be business-like about it. In fact . . Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined.
565. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day — which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I’ve got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward. Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish — they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better.
566. Writing fiction is not “self-expression” or “therapy”. Novels are for readers, and writing them means the crafty, patient, selfless construction of effects. I think of my novels as being something like fairground rides: my job is to strap the reader into their car at the start of chapter one, then trundle and whizz them through scenes and surprises, on a carefully planned route, and at a finely engineered pace.
567. Respect your characters, even the minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters’ stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist’s. At the same time . . .
568. Don’t overcrowd the narrative. Characters should be individualised, but functional — like figures in a painting. Think of Hieronymus Bosch’s Christ Mocked, in which a patiently suffering Jesus is closely surrounded by four threatening men. Each of the characters is unique, and yet each represents a type; and collectively they form a narrative that is all the more powerful for being so tightly and so economically constructed. On a similar theme . . .
569. Don’t overwrite. Avoid the redundant phrases, the distracting adjectives, the unnecessary adverbs. Beginners, especially, seem to think that writing fiction needs a special kind of flowery prose, completely unlike any sort of language one might encounter in day-to-day life. To read some of the work of Colm Tóibín or Cormac McCarthy, for example, is to discover how a deliberately limited vocabulary can produce an astonishing emotional punch.
570. Pace is crucial. Fine writing isn’t enough. Writing students can be great at producing a single page of well-crafted prose; what they sometimes lack is the ability to take the reader on a journey, with all the changes of terrain, speed and mood that a long journey involves. Again, I find that looking at films can help. Most novels will want to move close, linger, move back, move on, in pretty cinematic ways.
571. Don’t panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends’ embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help.
572. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there’s prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too.
573. Talent trumps all. If you’re a really great writer, none of these rules need apply. If James Baldwin had felt the need to whip up the pace a bit, he could never have achieved the extended lyrical intensity of Giovanni’s Room. Without “overwritten” prose, we would have none of the linguistic exuberance of a Dickens or an Angela Carter. If everyone was economical with their characters, there would be no Wolf Hall . . . For the rest of us, however, rules remain important. And, crucially, only by understanding what they’re for and how they work can you begin to experiment with breaking them.
574. When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
575. When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
576. Don’t romanticise your “vocation”. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle”. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
577. Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can’t do aren’t worth doing. Don’t mask self-doubt with contempt.
578. Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
579. Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is.
580. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.
581. Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
582. Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
583. Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.
584. Finish everything you start.
585. Get on with it.
586. Stay in your mental pajamas all day.
587. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
588. No alcohol, sex or drugs while you are working.
589. Work in the morning, a short break for lunch, work in the afternoon and then watch the six o’clock news and then go back to work until bed-time. Before bed, listen to Schubert, preferably some songs.
590. If you have to read, to cheer yourself up read biographies of writers who went insane.
591. On Saturdays, you can watch an old Bergman film, preferably Persona or Autumn Sonata.
592. No going to London.
593. No going anywhere else either.
594. Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than 10 or 12 words.
595. Each sentence should make a clear statement. It should add to the statement that went before. A good paragraph is a series of clear, linked statements.
596. Do not use big words. If your computer tells you that your average word is more than five letters long, there is something wrong. The use of small words compels you to think about what you are writing.
597. Even difficult ideas can be broken down into small words.
598. Never use words whose meanings you are not sure of. If you break this rule you should look for other work.
599. The beginner should avoid using adjectives, except those of color, size and number. Use as few adverbs as possible.
600. Avoid the abstract. Always go for the concrete.
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.