Writing Better Faster

     I know a lot of people ask this question, and I thought that I'd address it since the last two posts were about art. And before you get too excited, this won't make your writing blossom into something truly amazing and gifted overnight, though that is every author's dream come true. This will simply help you to get better at writing with practice.  Like everything else, if you want to become a master, you'll have to practice! But I know that these tips will help you to at least become a better storyteller by just making you pause and realize, you can do simple things to make your story jump off the page at readers!   

    Tip #1- Synonyms

    So, this first tip, which is something that I love to do when I'm writing or editing one of my stories, is synonyms. Readers find it tedious to have the same word, no matter how good it might sound, continue to pop up through the same sentence. For example, "Jackie dashed toward the door, feet dashing against the stones as she raced to make it out of the building." First of all, that sentence repeated unnecessary details several times and had the same word in two different places. It's confusing, and uninteresting, for your readers to sort out this sentence, and takes away from the intensity of the scene as well. 

    So when you're looking for amazing words that leap off the page and are different than what you might see in other books, look up synonyms. They can help you in actually making action scenes faster-paced, help you draw out a character's desperate feelings, and even simply describe landscapes. 

    I also have a warning with this tip.

    Since you'll be using a lot of different words, you might not notice that you are repeating the same idea. You don't want to unintentionally write, "The character was running" in two different ways in one sentence after another. It adds too much to the story and takes away from your reader's experience with the character, so be careful to use these synonyms moderately. 

    Tip #2- Reading

    Reading is one of the biggest things that you can do to help your writing improve. This might seem counterintuitive to some of you, but really, it's a master tip that many published authors recommend. Reading can open your mind to new ideas and different styles of writing, and studying how some of your favorite authors write will help you develop your own style tremendously. 

    I remember when I first started to write more seriously, it was when I read Brian Jaques, the author of a series called Redwall. His writing style and the ingenuity of his ideas gave me the inspiration to become a better writer and base some of my stories off of his books. When you combine your favorite author's writing styles into something unique and your own, it makes you stand apart from the crowd, not because you create something totally off the rails and against all logic, but because you used existing ideas and styles to make your own. And reading is what will get you to a new level. 

    Tip #3- Character sheets

    Character sheets were a foreign thing to me about two years ago, and maybe even less time than that. They were introduced to me by my art teacher, who said that if you flesh out your character's traits and physically defining features, you can draw them better. The same goes for writing your characters. 

    You can absolutely define all their physical features, but more importantly than that when you're writing, is to define their emotional features. You want characters that are set apart from the stereotypical culture around us, and to make these interesting people, (or creatures) you need to base them off of real people. 

    Real people are the people that will read your books, and they want to find common ground with your characters to connect with them. So, if you want to create real, raw characters, base them off of the people around you. They don't have to be exactly like them, and then can even be a mix of several different people, but you want them to be real and touchable. Find out what their fears, hopes, dreams, and hurts are, write them down, and flush out your main characters!

    There is a warning for this as well though. You don't want to flesh out all of your characters. Sometimes people make too many people that aren't the main character, yet they feel much more involved than they should be. Be careful to only attract attention to the main characters, and to let the extras blend into the background until needed.

    Tip #4- Find inspiration

    This tip I find is the most fun to do, and sometimes the hardest. When you have an amazing story plot and idea, you might write for days at a time, and then suddenly, the amazing, heart-swelling idea, runs dry. You have no more inspiration for your story and it slowly gathers dust on a shelf because you simply couldn't connect with the characters and the setting. I've been here more times than I care to count. But that's how I've learned to overcome the dry spots and push through writer's block. 

    One of the many fun things to do when you hit a wall on your book is to make a Pinterest page or download images of what your characters look like and printed them out to place in a folder. It can be very fun to figure out just what your character's house looks like, or if they might have a tail and cat ears to photoshop some pictures for your own inspiration. Trust me on this, when you get more involved in your story, the better your writing will be. 

    Tip #5- Be realistic and paced

    Too often I find that good authors are writing books that are too fast, and don't have enough structure to catch a reader's attention. Most often the cause of this is that they are too excited to realize that they are making this mistake. The best remedy for this is to make sure to re-read your work every once in a while. 

    You don't want to jump into a cool story, only to have someone say, "I didn't think the characters were very realistic, and they all seemed too calm when the world was suddenly getting destroyed." 

    Not that this has ever happened to you, but it when you hear something like that, you realize, hey, it is unrealistic and REALLY fast-paced. When you write a book and don't draw out the scenes, making them longer and more interesting, you lose your reader quickly, and soon no one will read your books because they were all too quickly thrown together and unorganized. So be sure to re-read your work, maybe compare it with how another author paces their work, and then fix your books. This has helped me so much and I find it incredibly rewarding when you put in a little extra work, and get a lot more praise out of it. 

    Tip #6- Get feedback from readers and writers

    This is probably the most important tip of all, and I have to warn you, it might hurt the worst as well. 

    Feedback is a huge part of improving your writing style and will give you insight into what readers think you could do better in your stories. If you need the truth blunted with nice words and kind-hearted understanding, then I'd suggest getting other writers to read your work, because they understand what it takes to write a book and get possibly hurtful reviews. 

    On the other hand, if you really want to make your writing better, and the blunt truth of what people think of your book, get some non-writers to read it. 

    Now, be extremely careful when you do this because non-writers don't always know what is best for the story. You're still the author, and you know what you want your book to turn out like. You also don't want to get discouraged by their negative feedback, because you are going to improve and get better, so don't give up! But above all of this, your reader will have some amazing insight, and you want to take into consideration what they think of your story and what you write, carefully mulling over exactly what you want to do with their information. 

    And that's it for the tips today, if you liked this blog please fill out the form below and I'll notify you when there's a new post! If you have any suggestions for new posts let me know in the comments below, thank you and God bless!