As a writer, it is important that you constantly hone your craft to be the best one there is. Everyone starts at the bottom but those who have succeeded are those who keep on writing because this is the only way for you to expand your skills not to mention find the right audience for you. For those who are looking for ways to improve their creative writing skills, here are ten of the best tricks that you can use to become a better writer.
- Develop your characters. Every good story that you come across have characters that are quite interesting. Take the time to develop each character in your story such as giving them flaws, their uniqueness, and the like. How you develop them will play a role on how well you’ll be able to draft a good story.
- Write down the plot. If you ask established writers how they became good at their work, they will tell you that they always have the basic plot pinned down because this acts as a guide when writing their story.
- Your story should have a beginning, middle, and end. You will need to think of a good start for your story once you have jot down the basic plot of your story. Write down your concept so you can get an idea on how you’re going to complete your story.
- Build an outline. Having an outline of your story helps because it will help direct your thoughts during the writing process. You can simply jot down ideas on what you want to happen at the start, middle, and end and from there, build up the rest of the details.
- Choose your setting. Where will your story take place? What period, location, and so on. This helps the reader get an idea on what time your story is taking place so they can manage their expectations. They won’t be expecting aliens on a period literature, right?
- Show your readers rather than tell. Rather than telling your readers that one of your characters is angry, show them instead. Add as many details as you can to reflect how angry the character is, what prompted it, and so on. Make your readers follow your character’s footsteps so they can identify with them when they’re feeling emotional.
- Create interesting dialogues. Another way to improve your creative writing skills is to play with the dialogues of the characters in your story. Think of how you can make the conversations of your characters interesting to your readers. If you are out and about, pay attention to the conversations happening around you and try to apply the same feeling to your characters’ dialogues to make them realistic.
- Add a climax to your story. After making your readers relate to your characters, make sure that there is a climax to your work. Your story needs to have conflict that should be resolved by your characters so that the ending of your story will be to your satisfaction.
- Review your work. Once you have finished writing the first draft of your story, you need to go over it several times to see if there are any grammar errors that you have committed. Change them as soon as possible.
- Read out loud. If you want to know if you did you a good job with your story, read it out loud. You will easily spot flaws in your work from how you write the sentences or the dialogues of you characters.
As you can see, there are lots of ways for you to develop your creative writing skills. Just keep these tips in mind and you will see how better your writing skills have become.
