I've been writing all my life, have 3 published novels, 2 collections of short stories, and 3 non-fiction books (under another pseudonym). And I still strive to improve my writing with every stroke of the pen and each tap of the keyboard. There are all kinds of things you can try in an attempt to improve your writing, but I have a few favorites. I do most of these things daily and I firmly believe that they make me a better writer. Try them out for yourself and see if any of them can help you improve the form and function of your written work.
Create Writing Exercises
Writing exercises can be just the thing to help you improve those things that need to be improved. Perhaps you're fictionalizing non-fictional events while writing your novel. You can practice this with writing exercises designed to create fiction from non-fiction. If you're like me, you don't write a lot from the first person point of view. I'm on the verge of tackling my first novel written in the first person, so I've been practicing by reading works by other authors, picking a character, and writing a chapter or so from the viewpoint of the character I've chosen. Pick another book and repeat.
Maybe your problem is the excessive use of passive voice ("to be" and its derivatives generally tell you that you've slipped into passive voice). If this is your problem, practice writing passages with no passive voice at all.
Many young authors rely on adverbs and adjectives to tell their story. If you're overusing these words (watch for words ending in -ly; they're the biggest culprits), you should practicing writing without them. Write a passage that appeals to you, one that is at least 500 words long. Then go through that passage and eliminate all the adjectives and adverbs. Now strengthen the remaining language so that you don't need the words you took out. I'm not saying that adverbs and adjectives are bad. I use them all the time. But I use them with care, inserting them where they'll have the greatest effect. Using them too often weakens your writing, so practice until you no longer rely on them. Then they become a tool rather than a crutch.
Practice your weaknesses. If you're not very good at dialogue, if all your dialogue sounds the same, practice distinctive dialogue. If you've never written a novel and find yourself a little intimidated, practice writing short stories first. I start every day with a writing exercise to get the juices flowing. Try it and see how it works for you.
Brainstorming to Improve Your Fiction Writing
If you're writing a novel, you have to have a seemingly-endless stream of ideas. This can be difficult as you progress and the word count grows. But when you're having trouble with a scene or don't know where to go with your plot, try brainstorming, sometimes called word association.
Sit down with a pen and paper and write down a word or phrase that represents the scene or plot you're working on. Then let other words and phrases come to you, writing them down without regard to how they might apply to your story. You never know what will come of it.
As an example, I had a young woman chained in a cave. This young woman has magick, but she's so injured that she has not the strength to use it. She's good with a sword, but she's chained and doesn't have a sword at the moment. Where's the guy with the lock picks when you need him? Oh, that's right. He's 1000 miles away. And anyone else who might have been able to help her was either captured themselves, too far away, or unaware of her plight. How, exactly, am I going to get her out of this one? I could go back and rewrite parts of the story, but I'm happy with what I've written.
Time to brainstorm. Since the problem is those damned chains, that's the word I started with. Chains. Trapped. Cold. Metal. Sharp. Blood. Blood magick.
There it was. Just a few words in and I'd come across what I needed. What if the chains had cut into her ankles? She's now bleeding. She's a creature of magick. Magick flows in her blood. What's a little blood magick between friends?
It took some ironing out, but I managed to get my heroine free without having to alter the story too much. She was rather the worse for wear, but she was at least in one piece. Mostly.
You can use this same technique when you run into problems. This will help you improve your story telling and come up with new ideas. Or perhaps draw out that idea that was hiding in the back of your mind just waiting to be set free.
Timed Writing as an Exercise
Have you got a timer of some kind? A stopwatch? A microwave (these all have timers on them these day)? An egg timer? Then you can do this little exercise. If you're being plagued by writer's block or find yourself procrastinating, you should grab a pen and paper and sit next to your timer. Give yourself about 10 minutes and just write. Write anything, but write constantly.
Don't worry about grammar, spelling, or punctuation. In fact, don't worry about anything that's appearing on the paper before you. Just let things flow. If you can't think of anything to write, start with a single word. Repeat that word on the page until other words come to your mind. Eventually, you'll be writing something intelligible, though not necessarily something good. But, over time, you'll learn to sit down and write, and the stuff you write will get better.
Is it important to be able to write on command? It is for me. I'm a novelist by profession. This means that I made all my income from writing books. Royalties are my bread and butter. And I have two small children to support all by myself. So if I can't write, I'm taking food out of my childrens' mouths. Not literally, but every day I waste is another day that I could be working on a project that will put food on the table when the royalties come in.
If you're hoping to be able to actually make some money writing, you have to write on command, and you have to do it well. The only way to do this is to practice.
Believe in Your Story
If you really want to write well and continue to improve, then you need to have some faith. You have to believe that you are writing a story to the best of your ability. You have to convince yourself that you are perfectly capable of writing a story that others will want to read if you just try a little harder.
You also have to banish those little thoughts that bog writers down. "Why can't I write anything decent?" "This is garbage!" "No one will want to read this!" "I am a terrible writer." All of these thoughts are detrimental to your work as a writer.
Every time you catch yourself thinking these things, change the thought to something positive. "My writing is getting better every day." "People will love this!" "I am a writer." These thoughts will slowly change the way you think and improve you ability to write and tell a story. It works, but only if you truly believe in what you're telling yourself.
You do create your own reality, especially as a novelist, so practice and believe in yourself and you'll find your own writing improving daily.
Procrastination is the bane of a fiction writer. It's worse than writer's block, it's worse than running out of ideas, and it's worse than random visitors when you're trying to finish a chapter. And, since fiction writers tend not to be accountable to anyone but themselves, it's so easy to procrastinate. There's no one to tell you to get back to your desk and work, so it's easy enough to not get any work done. But procrastination will only get in your way and prevent you from finishing your novel (or short story, or whatever). So, as a writer, you have to learn how to get over procrastination.
Why Do We Procrastinate?
In order to stop procrastinating, we have to figure out why we procrastinate. For everyone the reason is different. Perhaps you're tired, or overscheduled, or perhaps you just forgot. Yes, these are excuses for not writing, ways of justifying your own procrastination, but you have to understand what your own unique excuse is.
In my case, procrastination tends to occur when I'm overwhelmed. I'm a natural introvert and get more than a little stressed if I've been exposed to too many people over too many days. I'm so stressed that getting anything done seems like a pipe dream.
But ultimately all of these excuses are just a mask. For the part, the underlying reason is the fear of failure. Failure is no fun. It makes us feel terrible about ourselves and it sets us back (though failure can teach us as much as success if we're paying attention).
So if your bouts of procrastination stem from fear of failure, try believing in yourself and your work. Maybe you're not the best novelist in the world and maybe the story you're working on isn't perfect, but even the most famous writer was there once. You can learn and hone your craft. Believing in yourself can help overcome procrastination.
If you're procrastinating for other reason, you'll have to do what I do when I think I'm so overwhelmed that I'll get nothing done: Place butt in chair and write anyway.
What to do About Procrastination
Most people who suffer from procrastination need more than the above statement to get things done. If you're one of those people who need a plan for everything, start by setting some goals. Get a piece of paper (don't do this on the computer) and jot down all your goals for the year. All of them. Not just writing goals, though I focus on writing goals. If one of these goals has a specific end date (such as getting your son ready for kindergarten), write the date beside the goal.
Now that you have your list, go through it carefully. Pick the top 3 or 5 things you'd really like to get done in the next year. Hopefully, that novel is pretty close to the top. You are going to make a committment to finish these top 3 or 5 things. The rest may or may not get done depending on your ability to procrastinate.
Take a look at those things on the top of your list. Break them down into smaller tasks. If you're looking at a novel, you might break it down into chapters. Perhaps you can complete each chapter in a week. I can tell you from experience that a chapter is less intimidating than an entire novel. When you break the novel down into smaller chunks, you stand a better chance of getting the nagging voice in your head that tells you you'll never get it done to shut up for a little while.
Scheduling Writing Dates
Once you've broken your novel down into smaller tasks, assign each task a deadline. Don't do this arbitrarily. Truly think about how much time you'll need to complete each chapter (if you've divided your novel into chapters). If it's going to take you 2 weeks to complete a chapter, then that should be your deadline for each chapter. Don't try to squeeze in more than that, at least on paper. If you can get ahead of schedule, great. If not, you can at least stay on schedule by being realistic.
Now here's the real trick: You have to stick to your deadlines. Schedule time to write. Make a writing date (or several writing dates) with yourself and keep it. And none of this "I can only write when I'm feeling creative" nonsense. That's one of the greatest excuses for a fiction writer to procrastinate that I've ever heard. If you're making a schedule, then you already have the idea for the novel. If you don't have the idea, you're getting ahead of yourself and need to spend some time coming up with the plot and the characters before you can schedule your work.
Deadlines are the difference between a novelist and a wanna-be-novelist. And in case you wonder if I practice what I preach, I wrote the day after major surgery. I might have written the day of major surgery, but I was under general anastetic for most of the day. The rest of the day I was having hallucinations. But, 18 hours after surgery, I was writing again, though from the bed instead of at the desk. I had deadlines and I stuck to them. This is why, as of this post, I have completed 3 novels, 2 short story collections, and 3 non-fiction books in the past 18 months. Deadlines and writing dates. Got to love them.
Most of my posts these days are based on e-mails I receive or questions asked at book signings and other events. Lately I've been asked mainly about the different genres and how to tell them apart. Hence the many posts about fiction genres in the past few weeks. The other day, however, I received an e-mail asking me a question I never thought I'd see.
"I was reading your site the other day and saw the post about reading a lot. I'm hoping to write adventure novels, but I don't have many in my collection and my town doesn't even have a bookstore. Where can I find good fiction so that I read more books in my genre and study other great writers?"
At first I thought it was a silly question, but upon reflection I decided it wasn't. In this world of computers and digital technology, I think perhaps we overlook some things. So if you don't have a local bookstore and you don't have a credit card (so ordering books from Amazon is out of the question) what exactly can you do? The answer will either surprise you or appear frightenly obvious.
Before giving you the answer, I'll tell you a quick story that will illustrate part of the problem. I an often asked to speak to young students at the local university. Most of these students are English majors, usually with a focus in creative writing. So recently I was asked to speak to a class and we got to talking about the books everyone is reading. So I posed a question: Where do you get your books? In a group of 50 students the answers varied. Bookstore. Mom's house. Borrowed from a friend. E-book on my e-reader. But out of 50 students, one answer was conspicuously absent.
Library. Why did no one say the library? The library is your greatest resource, so find your local library and get to know it. Not only do they have many books, but they can usually get books on loan from other libraries. There are very few books that cannot be attained through a library. Not only do they have a wide variety of book available, but they come with a resource your local bookstore and Amazon simply do not have -- a librarian. Librarians know what is in their collection and they have read many of the books they acquire. A librarian can help you locate the genre your looking for and even pick out the best and the brightest from that genre. Not to mention that you can simply borrow the books instead of shelling out thousands of dollars and cluttering up your own home. A good librarian is your best resource.
But not your only resource. Don't ignore the Internet. Search engines such as Google can help you find the books you're looking for. Try a search for "best romance novels" or "best adventure fiction" or whatever genre you're looking for. Be specific or you'll get lists of books without any specific genre. Of course, this might be what you're looking for. Either way, you'll have lists of books that you might want to read. You can probably get most of them from your local library if you don't want to purchase them.
And then there's Amazon. Amazon has its own lists and even allow users to create lists using Listmania. Browse these lists to see recommendations and read reviews for the books you're interested in. You don't have to order from Amazon in order to use it to your advantage.
If you're looking for popular fiction, check out the New York Times Bestseller List. You can see what other people are enjoying and maybe find something that you'd like to indulge yourelf in. Almost all of these bestselling books can be found at your local library or bookstore. And it's likely that someone you know has at least some of the books on this list, so you can probably borrow them from family and friends.
If you're still in school, you can try asking teachers and professors. English professors especially are well read and will have a long list of books they recommend to students. If you're looking for a specific genre, mention that. They can probably steer you in the right direction.
The bottom line is this: there is plenty of good fiction in all genres out there. You just have to look for it. Use the resources you have and remember that the computer is not always the best solution. Some of the best fiction you'll ever read will come at the recommendation of family, friends, professors, and even librarians.
I've had a remarkable number of e-mails lately about epics and how to write them. There is certainly an interest in epics of all kinds, from historical novels such as War and Peace to fantasy epics such as The Lord of the Rings. And writers are constantly penning their own epics, so the epic novel isn't going away any time soon.
But writing an epic is a monumental task, mostly because it's easy to think you're writing an epic and then end up not doing so. So if you're going to write an epic novel of any kind, you have to start by understanding exactly what an epic is. And of course, you have to understand what it is not.
First of all, an epic, whether it is fantasy, adventure, or any other genre, focuses on heroic characters. The characters don't necessarily start out as heroic, but they do have to develop a sense of heroism as the story progresses. Accidental heroes are fine. Characters who are simply forced to go along with the story are not heroes. They might be protagonists, but they're not heroes.
You also have to have some idea of scope before you begin writing an epic novel. An epic is not a story that happens in a small down at the edge of the ocean, with the characters never leaving their own little town. The action in an epic must take place on a grand scale. Across an entire world or at least across an entire country is best. Science fiction epics tend to take place across galaxies. Your epic should capture struggles that are almost majestic in their scope and take place across vast stretches of time. An epic cannot take place in just a few days. Months, at the very least. Sometimes years, as is the case with Pillars of the Earth.
Now you come to the meat of your story, the question of what to write. Many epic stories focus on tales of war or the struggle against good and evil, but this doesn't necessarily have to be the case. You could write an epic about the struggles of a traveling minstrel in medieval times, and war certainly doesn't have to be the focus here. Adventure should be a part of any epic, but it doesn't have to be adventure associated with war.
An epic novel can be of any genre. Fantasy, science fiction, horror, literary fiction, or really any genre you want can serve you well. Just make sure that the genre fits your story. Or better yet, write your epic without worrying about genre and let the genre come from the story itself.
When attempting to write an epic, keep in mind both the heroism expected of your characters and the general scope of your novel. Don't lose sight of these basic principles and you'll be well on your way to creating an epic story.
