Creative Writing How to Write Better

Are you scouring the internet asking everyone from Reddit to Google ‘how to write better?’

Most of us have probably done it if we’ve ever aspired to be a writer at any level.

We’re stuck for inspiration, the blank page is melting our brains with its white-hot intensity, and our fingers are cramped from hours hovering at the ready over the keyboard, so we turn to trusty Google and type in, “Inspirational Quotes on Writing” (or something similar).

As you scroll down the page, you see endless examples of wisdom from the trenches of professional writing from those who’ve famously fought in them and emerged victoriously.

Many are humorous, all are well (or uniquely) phrased, inspiration oozes from each and every one of them until you’re literally punching the air with new-found enthusiasm for your craft. As you hurry back to your blank canvass, your mind is swimming with the promise of what may spring from the keyboard and onto the page.

And then you’re frozen once again by the icy white brightness of the screen.

What do all of those wonderful quotes mean? And how do they apply to me?

Tip 1 – Allen Ginsberg

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”

—Allen Ginsberg

One of the deadliest traps fallen into by beginning writers, or even those who’ve been at it for a while, is the act of giving any thought whatsoever to your audience as you write, or think about writing, or glance briefly at a blank page or computer screen, or sharpen a pencil for any reason whatsoever.

Don’t do it. The audience is an evil succubus.

The audience will drain your writing of any true creativity or original voice each and every time you pause to consider whether anyone will ever want to actually read this.

Good writing is necessarily an intrinsically selfish pursuit. Unless you’re writing something that appeals to you, in a voice that you find engaging, with a plot and characters that fire your imagination, what’s the point of writing at all?

OK, yes. There’s money.

And it’s true that sometimes you have to buck up and simply get something on the page for a paying client who wants to appeal to a particular audience. We’ll speak of this later.

Related Read: How To Write An Academic Essay?

But even under these circumstances, don’t sell your soul completely. Think of client guidelines as the framework or jungle gym on which you’ve been allowed to play. And then play. Your way. If your writing bores you, it’s likely to bore everybody. To the greatest extent possible, always write for an audience of one.

Yourself.

Tip 2 – Samuel Johnson

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

—Samuel Johnson

Writing may be a necessarily solitary pursuit, but it cannot exist in a vacuum. Writing is a ravenous beast. And, if you’re lucky, it will invade your brain, reach down through your heart, and take residence in your fingertips to carry out its bidding. But it’s a beast that must be fed.

If you want to be a writer, you must first be a reader. Read for inspiration. Read for pleasure. Read for the information that can then inform every detail of your work.

If you’re just starting out, you’ll no doubt find yourself copying the style of those whom you admire, and that’s alright. It’s all a part of the endless process of finding your own voice.

If ever you find that your writing is becoming forced or uninspired, stop and ask yourself when you last read someone else’s work.

The Beast must be fed. And it just might turn on you if it isn’t.

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Tip 3 – Stephen King

“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.”

—Stephen King

Anton Chekhov said, “My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.”

Hunter S. Thompson said “Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.”

You could probably find a similar quote from almost any other writer who’s ever put pen to paper, and while it may be self-explanatory, it’s worth repeating because it is such painful yet necessary advice to follow.

The best writing contains no fat. No unnecessary frills. No humorous backstory that doesn’t directly impact or move your story forward. But there’s no shortcut. You have to write the fat version first.

Writing is like sculpting, only writers must create their own block of granite before they can chip away all the unnecessary bits.

Tip 4 – Elmore Leonard

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”

—Elmore Leonard

As we’ve mentioned before, rules were meant to be broken. And nowhere is this more true than in writing. The trick is knowing which rules to break and when. A good piece of writing is very much like a piece of music.

It has its own sound and its own rhythm, and sometimes those pesky rules from our school days just get in the way.