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Seven suggestions to make you a better writer

It is my belief that talent is plentiful, and that what is lacking is staying power.

– Doris Lessing, novelist and RLF Grant Beneficiary

1. Write on paper

Poet Garry MacKenzie begins on paper.

“When writing poetry, the first drafts are in pen and ink: the physicality of working this way appeals to me, and I’m convinced I think more freely in longhand. I frequently score out phrases, draw connecting arrows between ideas, and play around with the position of words on the page. I rewrite obsessively — every few lines I’ll start redrafting what I’ve written so far. Lines can go through dozens of cycles of this process before I’m happy with them.

Once I’ve got something resembling a poem down on paper, I type it up. This is rarely an exact copy — the action of transferring the words to a different medium exposes them to new pressures, and I make changes accordingly. I print this draft out, then attack the printout with a biro. Then I write out another draft and type it up. Sometimes a poem will travel a dozen times between page and screen.”

2. Create an outline

Wren James advises beginning with an outline:

“I can’t write a single word without a detailed plan — sometimes reaching lengths of ten or more pages. When I’m not trying to keep control of the entire plot in place in my head, it frees up mental space to think about what comes next, to consider what I can lose and what’s missing.

I pour every single thing I know about my story onto the page, explaining explicitly what I want the underlying message to be; how the characters will interact and how that changes over the course of the book; how and when I will foreshadow plot points; the reasons for my world-building choices, as well as how they will influence the plot. If specific scenes or conversations jump out to me as being particularly important, I recount these too. This is not the place to draw out tension and intrigue — this is the place for clear, simple explanations that cover the depth of the story in full.

An outline is absolutely vital for distilling what I want to do with a story down to its core essence.

It becomes a simple matter of changing a sentence or two in the outline to see if a plot change might work, rather than revising a bulky novel many times over.

Using my outline as a blueprint and a map, I can see what I need to keep — but also what is missing.”

3. Make sure your scenes have a point

Scenes are the building blocks of story, but how do you know what a scene is? Or does? Where does it start and end?

Thriller writer, William Ryan, and author of writing guides, Writing Crime Fiction (with co-author Matthew Hall), and Guide to How to Write: How to plan, structure and write your novel, published by Writers & Artists, has some solid advice:

“The starting point when writing a scene is to know its purpose within the overall story. Often a scene does one of three things — it reveals information that moves the story forward, it presents a challenge or danger to an important character that needs to be overcome, or it tells the reader something about a character or a character’s motivation that changes the reader’s perception of their role in the story, even if only slightly. Sometimes, it does all three and sometimes it does something else entirely.

Probably the best way to identify the purpose of a scene is to work out why your story needs this particular episode in order to be told properly.

If you know why a scene is important to the story, then you probably know what you need to achieve in the scene.

If a scene doesn’t have a purpose in your story, you probably need to give it one — or remove it.”

4. Create your own deadline

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.

– Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Novelist Menna van Praag says, “Perhaps, if I was a writer of Adams’ stature, I might be a little more cavalier towards deadlines but, as a jobbing writer, I can’t really afford to alienate those who keep me in gainful employ. Yet, even then, if I could flout deadlines, I doubt I would. Because I love deadlines. I love them so much that I create artificial deadlines for myself so that I can be ready before the actual deadline.

I’m not sure where my love of deadlines came from; perhaps it comes from my intrinsically competitive nature; not in a sportive sense or really against other people, but with myself. So, when my editor gives me a deadline, I give myself an earlier deadline and pretend it’s the original one. And, given my appalling memory, that trick usually works. Then, invariably, I try to better my own deadline and get the work finished a few weeks ahead of time. Achieving this gives me a ridiculous and utterly pointless thrill of accomplishment.”

5. Get outside

Anna Wilson, who mainly writes children’s fiction, and more recently, memoir, doesn’t believe in writer’s block. It’s a phase, simply part of the process, she says, where she often writes and writes and then deletes every word.

“Invariably, the cure is to get outside. I’ll either walk or run myself through a problem, recording my thoughts in a breathy voice note. Or I’ll simply let the movement of my body take over so that my brain shuts up. Cold water swimming is particularly good for this — while I’m swimming, I can think of nothing but surviving the cold. My writer’s brain gets a factory re-set, meaning I’m fresh and ready to write again once I’m home and dry.”

6. Be unique

The single most distinctive quality of great literature is strangeness.

– John Gardner, essayist, novelist and critic

Novelist Tim Pears says, “The great mistake most aspiring writers make is to imagine that what they need to do is to reproduce the world as others see it.

What entrances us, as readers, is the opposite. We want to see the world anew. A writer requires linguistic and grammatical competence sufficient to render the world recognisable to the rest of us, and then he or she needs the style to render the world unique.

So read, write, find your voice, edit.”

7. Enjoy Yourself

William Ryan again:

“This is perhaps the most important point. Writing should be imaginative, tricky, witty, moving, frightening and a host of other good things. Be adventurous and explore the unlikely, the unusual and even the impossible if you think that it will make your story more enjoyable to read. If you’re relishing the writing of a scene, then the likelihood is that the reader will relish reading it as well.”

This article originally appeared on our Substack channel.

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