What Is Your Favorite Writing Tip?

Write what you'd like to read.

Okay, that's actually a tip I gave someone else.

That's one of my own when I write, but I find it exceptionally useful and it might help others =)

Everytime you're about to write your chapter, listen to an appropriate music according to the scene.

Let me explain. For example I'm writing a comedy scene, I find a cheerful song on my PC and listen to it while I write. The song gives me cheerful mood and in that mood I have appropriate thoughts for the scene. Same for serious scenes, I just turn on music that makes me get serious, and so on. I just found that it's easier to get a grasp over all the words for the specific description and make it sound ... exceptional? No real idea, but I know that some of the descriptions that I wrote while listening to music were quite liked =).

Do us a favor and stop writing,

Not really,

I suppose the tip 'Be Your Characters' Characterization is my weakest point.

Take a break from reading or writing for an extended period of time to cleanse your mind of outside influence; when you return to both, write from your voice, in a manner as original to your particular perspective as possible.

Always, always, always avoid using the passive voice.
And write about what you know; how're you going to publish a novel on the war in Afghanistan if you've never even been?

cannibalcorpse3 wrote:Always, always, always avoid using the passive voice.
And write about what you know; how're you going to publish a novel on the war in Afghanistan if you've never even been?

Research.

Actually, depending on what aspect you are talking about, I say either "Write what you know," or "Write what you want to know." Of course, these can both apply to the same novel, just different parts of it.

Actually, depending on what aspect you are talking about, I say either "Write what you know," or "Write what you want to know." Of course, these can both apply to the same novel, just different parts of it.

While I'm sure your view will be a source of great inspiration to many an aspiring novelist, I still think (and this is just my personal opinion of course) that you should always write about what you know; however, knowing something in your heart will suffice just well as knowing something in your head will Of course nobody knows what it's like to get abducted by aliens, but I'm sure there are lots of great novels about precisely that, happily enough

Just write. Write, write, write. Sprawl it all onto paper, documents, your blog, whatever. Write until your brain falls into itty, bitty pieces. Write because you can't stand to NOT write.

and then later go back and proofread it and pull your hair out and think about why you ever wrote something this awful in the first place, blah, blah, blah.

The important thing is that you wrote something at all. Best advice I ever got.

Show, don't tell.

Honestly. That simple tip allowed me to expand on my writing significantly. I used to tell, tell, tell...now I just show my readers what I want them to see. Plain and simple.

Make your work quotable.

Write what you know.

What you know is not limited to just first-hand experiences.

All writing tips should be considered warily, taken skeptically, followed wisely, and/or flatly ignored, in the name of art.

Including this one.

"Don't mention fish if there isn't an ocean nearby... seriously."

That was something a classmate of mine in seventh grade told me. I've since abandoned that story, but it was good experience for me-- it was where most of my writing skill developed.

Write with humanity.