15 Writing Tips To Improve Your Writing

1. Keep Your Outline In Mind

Once you’ve prepared that outline, it’s important to actually use it. This may seem obvious, but it’s one of the hardest-to-remember writing tips out there! Many writers find themselves led astray by subplots and secondary characters, wandering into rambling chapters that don’t go anywhere. When they try to get back to the main plot, they find they’re already too far gone.

2. Introduce Conflict Early

Of all the core elements in your story, conflict is perhaps the most important to emphasize. Conflict lies at the heart of every good narrative, so make sure readers know what your conflict is within the first few chapters! The best way to do this is through an early inciting incident. The main character has a revelation and/or becomes involved in something big. For example, in The Hunger Games, the inciting incident is Katniss volunteering for the Games — which kicks off her personal and political conflict with the Capitol.

3. Control The Pacing

Nothing ruins a good book like poor pacing. So control the pacing in your story, lest readers lose interest and put down your book in frustration! To combat slow pacing, you must increase the tempo by:

A) Cutting down lengthy sentences and descriptions, and
B) Increasing action and dialogue.

The first strategy works for one simple reason: it gets rid of filler and fluff.

4. Fine-tune Your Dialogue

Speaking of dialogue, it’s pretty critical to most stories, both in plot and drawing in readers. A conversation between characters is usually much more impactful than a narrator relaying similar information. But dialogue loses its impact if the conversation goes on for too long — so for better, sharper dialogue, be concise.

5. Show, Don’t Tell

While you may have heard this advice in a similar vein, it bears repeating “show, don’t tell” often. For those who aren’t sure what that means, it’s easiest for us to, well, show you! Here’s a passage from Sally Rooney’s Normal People that exemplifies this rule:

He wakes up just after eight. It’s bright outside the window and the carriage is warming up, a heavy warmth of breath and sweat. Minor train stations with unreadable names flash past… Connell rubs his left eye with his knuckles and sits up. Elaine is reading the one novel she has brought with her on the journey, a novel with a glossy cover and the words “Now a Major Motion Picture” along the top.

As you can see, it’s pretty hard to completely eliminate telling from your prose — the first sentence in this passage could qualify as “telling.” But the rest is “showing,” as it paints an evocative picture of the scene.

6. But Don’t Reveal TOO Much

While you want your scene-by-scene descriptions to be as “showy” as possible, don’t reveal too much to readers about your plot and characters. This is the idea behind Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory,” which posits you should provide readers only with “the tip of the iceberg” — the most essential part of the story.

Many writers create elaborate histories for their characters or have long-reaching plans for them beyond their current works. But readers only need to know the “here and now,” so to speak. Giving them too much information will overwhelm them, and likely cause them to put your book down for something simpler.

7. Consider Your Themes

On a related note, the underwater part of the “Hemingway iceberg” consists of backstory and important themes. This is another aspect to contemplate during the writing process: what are you trying to say about society and/or the human condition? And how can you convey those themes in a subtle yet effective way? Common literary themes include love, loss, and the importance of doing the right thing. Your themes will depend on your genre and subject material. Still, they may also relate closely to your beliefs and experiences.

8. Be Careful With POV

Your narrator is your reader’s gateway into the story, so be careful with viewpoint. Don’t make your narrator’s voice too specific, as they need to speak in an accessible and relatable way for readers — and a non-stereotypical way if they speak in a certain dialect. Remember that, while omniscient narration is the most flexible way to tell your story, it also requires the most discipline as an author. An omniscient narrator can easily move too rapidly among storylines, causing mental whiplash for readers.

9. Write As Often As You Can

Now we’re getting into the more process-based writing tips. Write as much as possible is one tip you’re surely tired of hearing, but the reason it’s so common is because it works! The only way you will ever finish writing a book is by sitting down and writing it, so work on your story as often as you can. Write whenever and wherever you have downtime — on the bus, in a long line at the grocery store, waiting for your laundry, etc.

10. Ask Yourself Questions

One way to ensure you’re doing your best, most creative work is to question yourself constantly. It’s easy to get complacent with your writing, even if you’re technically meeting your word count goals. But if you’re always challenging yourself, you’ll see every bit of potential in your story and fulfill it as you progress.

11. Write Now, Edit Later

However, don’t challenge yourself so much you become too paralyzed to write. When in doubt, just skip over it, or write a crappy version of it for now. Write now, edit later is the approach of countless authors, and if it works for them, it can work for you too!

12. Get Rid Of Distractions

Yes, this is probably one of the hardest writing tips to follow — especially for those of us who enjoy working from noisy coffee shops and taking frequent Netflix breaks. But the more you eliminate distractions, the better your writing will become. Here are ideas on how to enter deep focus mode:

• Write on a computer with no WiFi
• Set your phone to airplane mode or put it in a different room
• Work in a quiet space, like your local library
• Avoid working alongside friends, unless they increase your accountability (but be honest with yourself about this!)

13. Listen To Feedback

Now for another one of those writing tips that we all struggle with. Throughout writing, and after you’re finished, share your work with other people: your friends, family, writers’ groups (both in person and on the Internet), and your editor(s).

14. Kill Your Darlings

Sometimes you’ll pen a passage that’s so beautiful, so nuanced, so masterfully constructed that you want to frame it — but it doesn’t contribute anything to the larger work. It’s a distraction, and you know in your heart that your book would be better off without it. What to do now? You probably know the answer, even if you don’t want to admit it: you have to kill your darlings. 

15. Just keep writing

How do prolific, successful authors turn out so many books? Basically, by keeping calm and carrying on. Stephen King writes 2,000 words every single day, even on holidays. Jane Austen wrote each day just after breakfast without fail. Kafka wrote in the wee hours of the morning, barely sleeping. This is one of the best writing tips we can give any author, fiction or non-fiction, short-form or long. Remember that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and keep your head down until you hit that final blessed page.