3 Tips To Improve Your Writing

All creative writers strive to produce the very best they can. Every time you sit at the keyboard your goal should be to write a little better than you did yesterday. There are many factors that go into producing a really good piece of creative writing: The story line, the correct use of grammar and punctuation, characters that are neither all good nor all bad and are not one-dimensional. I’d like to share three things that I always keep in mind when I sit down to write – and especially when I sit down to edit.
ONE: Kurt Vonnegut stated this as one of his 8 rules for writing fiction, and I try to adhere to it almost religiously. “Start as close to the end as possible.”
Okay, so what does that really mean? Every character you have in a story will also have a back story… a history of his life before the scenes you’re rolling out in your book. Don’t try to encompass all of it from the beginning. You can reveal bits and pieces as you move through your story, but keep the present story at the front of the reader’s attention. I’ll use my genre as an example (although the concept fits all genres.)
If I’m writing about a vampire that comes to plague New York, the last thing I want to do is devote the first three chapters to his rise in Europe two centuries ago. That may be important, but putting it at the beginning only slows the pace of the story. It can be revealed later. What I want to do in the fist few chapters is introduce the main characters and what they’re doing at the moment.
TWO: All creative writers know this, but it’s a reminder worth hearing again. Shy away from adverbs. They detract from the story. Stop telling about your characters and show. Compare these two sentences: Willows waited patiently for the doctor’s arrival. Willow reclined with his legs crossed, thumbing through a magazine. They essentially relate the same thing, but one tells and the other shows. The second is much more powerful.
THREE: This is important! Always stay in viewpoint. A cardinal sin in creative writing is to shift character viewpoints within a single scene. If you’re seeing the scene through John’s eyes, don’t suddenly start telling what Edna is thinking about John’s attitude. This is very distracting to the reader. Always stay focused with a single character in a single scene.
In short: Start near the end of the story; eliminate as many adverbs as possible (Show don’t tell); Stay in viewpoint. If you apply these concepts when writing, and especially when you start editing, you creative works will flow more smoothly and keep the reader’s attention longer.