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Quick Tips on How to Become a Great Writer

Quick Tips on How to Become a Great Writer

great writer

Many aspiring writers – and bloggers – dream of publishing a novel that will become a great hit. Lindsey Stone has put her creativity to work in this way, and you can too. Great writers aren’t born great. They get that way through practice and determination. Here is a compilation of other tips to help you get your creative juices flowing.

Generate Some Creative Ideas

There are a number of ways that aspiring writers can gather ideas. Watching the news, listening to gossip, reading the newspaper, eavesdropping, and observing the behaviors of various people in public settings are just some of the ways to get you thinking. When setting out to work on this part of the novel-writing process, it is important to write down ideas and thoughts in a journal as you go. Once you have brainstormed these ideas, turn them into stories.

Turn Your Ideas Into Stories

A story must have a setting. Maybe your idea would be best set in a creepy, abandoned house that the community believes to be haunted, or maybe it would be better in a dark and scary forest. Perhaps your idea is more appropriate for a peaceful river or an amusement park. Once the setting is chosen, you can imagine and develop characters and create relevant problems and conflicts for them to confront in the story.

Maybe you would rather start your story with a concept to appeal to those who think in abstractions. Examples of good concepts are religion, the workings of the creative mind or the corruption of power. Then characters can be imagined who will be affected by this particular concept, and situations where they will confront it can be created for them. Learn about creative ways to help you create engaging community through writings.

Write an Outline

To avoid writer’s block, it might be helpful to lay out your novel in outline form. You can jot down what will happen in each chapter. This might help your story to flow more smoothly and prevent it from hitting a dead end. You’d be surprised how many novice writers get hung up because they fail to write an outline.

A common mistake is to try to mentally form the idea completely. The fact is, it’s very difficult to house an entire story or project in vivid detail, within your head without having written it first. What’s more, “mental outline” writers miss out on the interesting phenomenon that happens when you put thoughts on paper.

Once written out, your brain is free to use the energy it spent remembering that thought to generate new ideas. Outlines are inspiration.

Create an Intriguing Beginning

The beginning is one of the most important parts of a novel. Because editors see thousands of publications that come across their desks, they will briefly scan the beginning of your novel to determine if it is worth publishing. If your novel starts with a hook that will grab the attention of an editor, it is much more likely to be published.

Complicate the Plot

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Many readers enjoy books that are not too predictable, so keep them in mind when creating your plot. Twists and turns keep readers on the edge of their seats and glued to your story until the end. If you look at your work and think “I’ve read this before”, it’s very likely that your potential reader has, too.

Take every opportunity to bring new ideas to your story. This can be as simple as asking yourself, “What wouldn’t I do, if I were this character?” By giving the character actions that wouldn’t occur to you in everyday life, you stand a much greater chance of coming up with unpredictable action for your story.

Write an Ending That Will Satisfy Readers

There is no one right way to end a story. You can experiment with different endings and choose the one that you like best. Stories can end with a conflict being totally resolved, or the ending may only hint at how things turned out. The story can even end in a cliff-hanger, creating opportunity for a sequel by leaving your readers wanting more. See how to build reader’s trust successfully.

Make sure to consider these tips if you want to create an exciting novel and see your name alongside well-known writers who have an established following of fans.

The greatest writers of our time have learned methods like this through trial and error. For every great novel on the newsstand, there are 5 unpublished, in the trash. Those unpublished failures are the foundation that great work is built upon. Give yourself the luxury of failure. Try until your get it right, and your writing will be better than ever, and better than most.

This post was written by Shah, a professional writer and blogger interested in writing about various aspect of SEO, marketing, tech, and design. You can join Shah at Google+ or Twitter.

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