1 ) BE REALISTIC IN YOUR WRITING:
Drawing ideas from your personal life experiences is the best thing you can do to improve your writing. People enjoy reading what they can relate to; whether it’s an experience, feelings and thoughts. Writing from your life experiences helps you create realistic characters and dialogue.
As a writer, you should be a good observer. Watch how people interact; how they react to each other and situations.
Consciously study human behaviour.
Be interested in other people’s lives. This way, you will not be boxed into your own world when writing.
Instead, you will have a broad view of life around you and will be able to write something that can resonate with different kinds of people.
2) DON’T STOP WRITING:
The only thing that can stop you from being a good writer is ‘ not writing at all ’. As far as you keep writing, there is room for improvement.
Write until you make sense, and even if the writing doesn’t make sense in the end, what’s important is that you have put one word in front of another; give yourself credit for that.
When you feel like there is nothing to write, then make it a habit to write about the fact that there is nothing to write. It will be amusing!
Express your frustration in words. Write that you have sat for three hours staring at your blank computer screen / notebook without being able to think of a single idea to make a story.
You learn how to be expressive by writing about your own feelings.
There is nothing like writer’s block for a person who sees everything that happens to him as something worth writing about. Be that person.
3) LET OTHERS READ YOUR WORK:
Don’t keep your stories on the pages of your diary alone. Let the world know what you can do. Doing this will help in many ways:
- You will draw a crowd of readers and writers to yourself.
- You’ll communicate with people who may be better than you. These people will give you honest opinions about your writing and they’ll share ideas with you.
- You can never know if you are improving if others don’t read your work. You need more people to read what you write. When you put your work out there, be open to criticism, that’s a way to improve.
- Go ahead to publish on Medium, Quora, LinkedIn, Vocal, etc
4 ) USE GOOD WRITING TOOLS:
There are a lot of tools out there that can make writing a lot easier. Make use of them. They include:
- Google Docs
- Scrivener
- Final Draft
- Zoho Writer, etc.
In one of my previous articles, I talked about the features of these tools and how you can use them to your advantage.
Read about tools to help in fiction writing here. Most of these tools are free, so you don’t have to worry about money.
5 ) READ:
This point is vital. A good writer reads consciously. Read enough books on the genre you want to write in; know enough about your subject matter; do research on what you want to write about.
If you want to write about war and you are not a soldier nor have you ever experienced war, read documentaries, novels, poems, newspapers, anything that will make you have a feel of what a War can feel like, read.
You’ll write a terrible story, if you don’t have a good knowledge of what you want to write about.
These are facts that have helped a lot of people become better writers. They will go a long way to help you in your writing career.
My name is Racheal Asikpo. As a Memoir and Autobiography ghostwriter with a decade of experience, I am passionate about how stories impact lives and change futures. When I work with aspiring authors, I seek to immerse myself in the writing process to realize the best delivery of their voice in their story.
As a science fiction and fantasy ghostwriter, I enjoy plunging into challenges of unboxed imagination, creating thought-provoking journeys for readers.
You can learn more about me from my Linktree.
I also write episodic shorts on Medium and my Substack, you can subscribe for more!
I look forward to hearing from you.