How To Become A Better Writer In Three Simple Steps

One of the best and often most stressful things about being any kind of artist is that you can always get better. Every writer can hone their skills so that their work gets better and better, and a unique style develops and blossoms.

Sadly, the steps needed to become a better writer are not previously undiscovered secrets. That means they’re difficult, or everyone would be doing them.

But the good news is that there’s a definite correlation between how much you put in and how much you get back.

So, what’s the first step?

1. Practice

It’s a common piece of received wisdom that to become an expert you need to practice a task for 10,000 hours. Whether that’s true or not, it’s certainly the case that the more you write the better you’ll write. This is because storytelling, all the way down from the plot to the writer’s style, is about patterns.

We often talk about writing as if it’s a single task, but every writer knows that isn’t the case. Bad writers don’t all make the same mistakes, and great writers don’t fit into one ideal template.

What writers really practice is their own style, and it’s by practicing this style that they evolve. It’s frequently a subconscious process but most writers can tell you what they’re good at and what they’re not. Practice allows you first to learn your skillset and then to play to it.

A neophyte writer might write great dialogue, but the same writer with a few years of experience under their belt will be able to structure scenes so that the most important moments happen during dialogue, and therefore play to their strengths.

The most valuable reward of practice is an instinctive grasp of your strengths. Of course through trial and error most aspects of your writing will improve, but if you want to learn how to do something you’re not already good at, then…

2. Look around

It’s a sad truth that we can’t learn everything we need to know just from watching ourselves. If there’s an aspect of your writing you want to develop, and there should be, then you need to go find someone else who’s attempting the same thing.

Note that I don’t say someone who’s doing it well.

As I mentioned above, great writers are great because they’ve honed their skills to superhuman levels. There’s a reason ‘good writers borrow, great writers steal’ is such famous advice. Stealing something involves taking ownership of it; making it yours. You can’t read other writers and borrow their style or devices, because they’ll stick out like a sore thumb amidst the interlocking machine that is your own writing.

Because of this, you’re not looking for something to copy, you’re searching for the inspiration you need to do things your own way. The crucial difference is that you can cast your net much wider. Terrible books will tell you just as much, if not more, as great ones, and there’s no reason to be restrained by genre.

Since what you’re looking for are storytelling devices that arouse your own creativity, and since every form of media is in some way storytelling, almost all sources can teach you something. As strange as it sounds, television adverts are great lessons for writers. Think about how quickly advertisers need the audience to think something; to like, hate, or relate to a character, and then look for the devices they trust to get the job done in under a minute.

This shouldn’t be used as an excuse to read or watch anything and call it study, because it only works if you’re really engaging with the subject (and real engagement requires notes at some point in the process).

Identify what other storytellers want their audience to feel, and then pick apart how they go about inviting that reaction. Very quickly – almost immediately if you have familiarity with your own style from practicing it – you’ll realize there’s a way of inviting that same response in a way uniquely your own.

So you’re practicing your style, you’re frequently and consciously exploring other sources for things that will help you grow, and now it’s time to bring the two together.

How do you do that? The same way you create a pink banana…

3. Experiment

If you’re trying to incorporate new skills or behaviors into an established style then you need to try them out. See how far you can push them, what other techniques they work alongside. It’s no good to identify a new technique and save it for when it’s needed; you don’t save a new player for game day, you get them in training with the rest of the team so you can start to plan where they’re best utilized.

Write short stories or passages with the sole aim of experimenting with your style. The difference between this and practice is that practice is about writing the kind of thing you want to write, and learning how to do so better. Experimentation is about setting yourself challenges in order to explore and evoke new experiences, and give you new tools.

If you write action then try romance or horror. If you specialize in dialogue try to write a scene without any. If your characters are familiar and realistic then make a car the protagonist (or the antagonist, if you’re into Stephen King). Many writers avoid this kind of thing because it feels like a waste.

Why write the kind of content you have no interest in pursuing? For the same reason that boxers include skipping as part of their training: sometimes you have to focus all your attention on improving one skill so it’s already there when you need it.

The combo

Bringing these three behaviors together will improve your writing. The more you do so, the more actively you engage in each, the more impact they will have. Dedicate a few weeks to writing love stories, even if you hate them, and the rare tender moments in your dystopian space-car racing trilogy will be incredible. Dedicate an hour or so, every so often, and they’ll certainly be better than if you didn’t.

One thing this method certainly helps to create is a distinctive narrative voice, as it provides not just the knowledge of who ‘you’ are as an author, but also the confidence to sell that person to the reader. Or if you want to plan, look around, and experiment but don’t know how to get started, try joining a writing group. It’s easy exposure to genres and styles not your own, with a little quid pro quo thrown in for your time.

Do you have something to add to this method, or are you a budding author in the burgeoning dystopian space-car racing genre who’s worried that I’m going to steal their idea? Either way drop me a line in the comments and we’ll work something out.