What Is Your Favorite Writing Tip?

Adjectives are important, but too many are like leeches that draw the life out of your story. My own advice is to use verbs that can "describe" for you. For example, why say something as generic as walk when you can say, stroll or strut?

This is my favorite advice ever!:
Write what disturbs you,what you fear,what you have not been willing to speak about.Be willing to be split open1

-This is my fav piece because I use writing as an emotional outlet for me where I write all of my problems and then secrets and then I rip the page and throw it in the trash but it really truly helps and calms me down!

Vierce wrote:sorry, but i'm going against the 101 tips for writers in the resource section, which says, "Always know your ending before you start."

Whenever i write (at least if i have developed my charecters as well as i should), i sometimes find myself thinking that a story will go one way, and then i find out that the charecter would not LET it end that way, or they would do something else that would result in another ending. I believe (and so does Stephen King in "On Writing, a Memoir of the Craft," a great book definately worth reading) that your characters should determine the direction that the story goes.

So i guess my tip would be, "Listen to your characters!"

sure ... same here

This is a really common one, but it's one that my step-dad tells me relentlessly, and I'll probably never forget it: "Write every single day. The more you write, the better you'll get."

This is from Maggie Stiefvater's blog, and I think it's a very good writing tip.
http://maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/89808836036/eyes-up-writers

Imagine yourself a reader: would you read the story you are writing right now?

This is especially for NaNoWriMo:

If you get to a point where you introduce a name of a person or place or want to put in an epithet but can't think of a good one off the top of your head, you could put in [name], [name of name], and such in place, perhaps in red or colorful text so that when you come back later you can replace them with a name you have decided upon.

Never talk about the idea before you write. All you'll find is that people will be completely brutal, and that will discourage you immensely. I know from experience.

Read.

This one's common but it helps. I first write down the main plot of the story first in a paper. I usually just write down random words connected by arrows. Which is why my sketch book is a total mess.

Never think too much about a sentence and how to make it better while you're writing it. Just write what you have in mind so that you won't stuck at the middle of the story. You can always fix it after the story's finished.

The main point of writing a short story is to form a complete story. No matter how fancy your writing is with high vocabulary, you need to focus on the story line and the characters.

If you're afraid you're going to stop at the middle of the story because of lack of ideas to continue it, make a short draft so that when writing, you can refer to it to make the storytelling flows.

Nate wrote:What is the best writing tip you have ever received?

Well I got from many people and it is the popular ones for almost story or chapter I wrote is GRAMMAR and Sentence Structure. Like seriously i hate it so much and i know i have to practice it. BUT TO lazy!

People don't like to be told what to see, they like to be shown what to imagine.

The greatest stories are the ones you can sum up in less than fifteen words.

My current favourite is the one @Rydia mentioned in her YWLJ article: if you write 165 words per day, at the end of the year you have 60,000 words.

The procrastinator that I am, I find this so inspiring and it helps me to remember that every little bit helps.