In academic writing, implicit expressions that reflect your opinion are generally preferred, but in some cases, it may be useful to overtly state your view by using phrases with personal pronouns “I” and “my”. Writing styles are an important aspect that differentiates you from other writers. Understanding the four main types of writing styles can help you grow as a writer and connect better with your audience.
Writing in first-person point of view is essential for conveying your thoughts, arguments, and ideas clearly and effectively. Keep a journal to record your thoughts, ideas, and observations. Writers can showcase their unique writing style by using distinct words that emphasize the unique features of their work.
To develop your writing style, be original, use your life experiences, be present in your writing, and have an adaptable approach. Start by allowing yourself to write and let the words flow without worrying about whether your style is engaging or smart. Practice, experiment, and try new things by taking parts you like from others and discarding what doesn’t work for you.
A writer’s style often manifests in their tone, word choice, sentence structure, figurative language, sensory details, and other aspects. To write a successful piece, understand your true self and allow your writing to flow as you write about familiar places and people or experiences that stand out in your mind. Pay attention to the first person narrator, which is the most used style.
In summary, developing a writing style that fits who you are and the stories you want to tell is crucial for success. By understanding your true self and practicing, you can create a successful piece that resonates with your audience.
📹 How-To Force ChatGPT To Write In Your Style
Today we look at how to use chatGPT to replicate your very own style.
How do you create a personal style?
The article provides seven tips for developing a great sense of personal style, emphasizing the importance of knowing colors, coordinating them, investing in timeless neutral pieces, being objective about body shape, taking creative risks, combining outfits with accessories, and becoming attuned to personal preferences. It also mentions the style of famous women like Audrey Hepburn, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and Coco Chanel, who emphasized personal interpretation of their style through selecting colors, cuts, fabrics, and shapes that celebrated their best features and spirit.
What are examples of personal writing?
Personal narratives are short, creative nonfiction pieces that tell a story from the writer’s own experiences. They can be memoirs, thinkpieces, or polemics, as long as they are grounded in the writer’s beliefs and experiences. There is no single approach to personal narratives, and they can be as creative as fiction. Here are ten examples of personal narratives from recent years to inspire and reveal the diversity of this type of essay. One example is a thousand-word piece from the NYT book review, which echoes fears surrounding technology and its distance from reality.
What is my style of writing?
Writing styles are crucial in conveying an author’s narrative to readers, influencing sentence structure, syntax, and overall voice. Each writer has their unique style, which can vary from project to project. However, some authors maintain a cohesive style. Writing styles can be recognized from work to work and can be categorized into various types. Some common types of writing styles include:
- Sentence structure
- Syntax
- Voice
- Overall tone
- Cohesion
In summary, writing styles are essential for a writer’s overall communication and tone.
What is personal type of writing?
Personal writing is a form of writing that narrates the writer’s experiences in an entertaining and informative manner, acting as a lesson. It can be in various forms, such as essays, memoirs, and chronicles. Memoirs impart wisdom, advice, or lessons about specific life experiences, while autobiographies cover a person’s entire life. Examples of personal essays include college admission essays, job application statements, and blogs. The writing should have a compelling hook, strong story, and a meaningful point.
How can I describe my style?
In order to establish a personal style, it is recommended that you combine the elements that resonate with you most, prioritize comfort, and select casual outfits with simple lines and designs. Given your easygoing nature, you may find that less detailed or fussy options are more suitable for you.
How do I describe my personal style?
An individual’s personal style can be classified into one of the following categories: A (Natural/Relaxed), B (Classic/Traditional), C (Artistic/Creative), D (Dramatic/Edgy), E (Romantic/Feminine), F (Alluring/Sexy), and G (Modern/Chic). The ability to dress in a manner that is both comfortable and relaxed is of great importance to you.
How do I describe my writing style?
Defining your writing style involves considering your audience, choosing appropriate adjectives to describe your content, considering your point of view, outlining grammar and punctuation rules, and being serious about formatting. Style is a distinctive and distinctive way of doing something, and it stands out when used in website copy. It communicates who you are to visitors, and it’s crucial to have a writing style that conveys your message clearly.
Style and voice are interchangeable terms, but they are distinct concepts that should be considered when writing website copy for your business. Both should come through clearly, as they are essential aspects of your writing style.
How can I define my personal style?
The process of discovering one’s personal style can be achieved in five steps. The first step is to explore one’s closet, the second is to find fashion inspiration, the third is to create a fashion mood board, the fourth is to create a capsule wardrobe, and the fifth is to experiment with unique style choices in order to find one’s personal style.
How to find personal writing style?
The article presents eight strategies for developing a writing style, including originality, focus on the main point, incorporation of life experiences, maintaining presence, developing an adaptable voice, challenging oneself, reading other authors, regular writing practice, and refining one’s writing skills.
What is the personal way of writing?
“Dear Diary” is a famous line often used in personal writing, a form of written expression originating from the author’s experiences, thoughts, feelings, or opinions. Personal writing is often subjective and less formal, focusing more on personal expression and storytelling. The StudySmarter Editorial Team and Team Personal Writing Teachers are dedicated to helping individuals create successful personal writing.
What is personal style in writing?
Personal writing style is a unique way for authors to present themselves and their work. It is influenced by tone, word choice, sentence structure, figurative language, sensory details, and other elements found in prose. Authors can adapt their writing style to various content, such as stories, business letters, or academic papers. To become a prolific writer, one must first understand their audience and develop their own writing style.
This process is influenced by innate characteristics but can also be influenced by personal choice of writing style, personal preferences, and experiences. Great writers like Agatha Christi and Dan Brown have followed similar paths to greatness. Ultimately, the choice to evolve one’s writing style is up to the individual.
📹 My Top 12 Writing Tips! | Advice That Changed How I Write
TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 – Intro 0:50 – Skip scenes the reader can imagine 2:11 – Use strong verbs 3:33 – Avoid ‘-ing’ and ‘to be’ verbs …
My favorite piece of writing advice came from a screenwriting teacher of mine and he said, to paraphrase, “Write the first draft for yourself. It’s where you tell yourself the story for the first time.” I would always get so hung up on making things perfect, that I wouldn’t even be able to get the words down at all. That bit of advice, to allow for that safe space, knowing no one else would ever see that first draft other than myself, helped so much. I know now that that has been said in many different ways by others, too, but that was the first time I heard it and it made such a difference.
1. If a reader can imagine it happening without being told, you don’t need to tell them. 2. Use strong verbs. 3. Cut “ing” and “to be ” verbs 4. Describe, don’t explain. (Show, don’t tell.) 5. If your story is boring, slow it down instead of speeding it up. 6. Be specific 7.Find the despair in the hope, and the hope in the despair. 8. What does your character yearns for? 9. A character’s contradictions are what makes them interesting. 10. Use the fewest words possible. 11. Artistic incongruity. 12. How can this be more interesting?
“Slow it down…” I really wish I got to have this discussion with someone lol… This phrasing really clicked just now. This happened to me in my first project and I tried reducing the pacing and looking at the story from a much wider lens. I began adding things like back stories, flashbacks, more intense scenes, and it actually seemed very much more interesting
I think the main difference between goal and yearning is that a goal is something the character is necessarily conscious of and has thought about and defined, while yearning needn’t be. A character (or a real person) can have implicit and unconscious yearnings. So yearnings go deeper in a way, it’s what you truly want, while goals can be mistaken or based on what your parents want or whatever. Perhaps they’ve made you set a goal to become a doctor, while you actually want to be a painter, or whatever.
Once my teacher told me – your writing missed the “smell” – actually I wrote about villagers who lived near the jungle – while my emotions and story were right but staying in a metropolitan I just painted a story missing the essence of their day to day life. It was quite an eye opener. Just loved your advice – definitely it will help me in my writings 😊
The best writing advice is something I tell myself now after I noticed that not enough authors do in fast-paced books: make your characters sit down and have a conversation. Even if the conversation doesn’t make a lot of sense for the plot at the time, it can work wonders for your story with character development. I’ve read many books that were action packed and kept me on the edge of my seat, but I didn’t end up caring what happened in the end to the characters because the author never gave us a chance to see who they were. The conversation could reveal a yearning or an interesting part of their personality. It’s a fatal flaw that even the best books have, like The Maze Runner and The Hunger Games. I think I would’ve cared more about the deaths of some characters in both those series if they had been better developed.
About the slowing it down: I agree so much. I noticed you can get really fast paced with short descriptions of everything, but it’s very easy for it all to feel the same and become dull, even though it’s “shorter”. But, if you slow it down, you can really home true on a scene and almost completely skip the superficial stuff with a sentence or two, and this can give way more energy to the story when you have this narrative push and pull.
You can’t fix a blank page! Also, read this in an article somewhere: Quantity over quality A pottery teacher split their class into two groups. A were assigned to make one perfect pot; B were to make as many pots as they could. In the end, guess who made the better pots? If us writers keep tinkering our one ‘pot’, we won’t gain much experience for becoming better writers, is what I firmly believe :3 So go forth and write. Have fun with it
Hi everyone! I’m sorry there aren’t examples for all the points here. I made this article more as a summary of advice I’d talked about in other articles, so I didn’t want the article to get too long or tread ground I’d covered before, but to my surprise this article ended up getting a lot of views and reaching people beyond my usual audience. You can check out these articles for examples of many of the points covered in this article! -18 Hacks for Stronger Prose: youtube.com/watch?v=v45sfrLhLm4&t=243s -Creating Complex Characters: youtube.com/watch?v=IdA8DjiQ6us&t=477s -Show, Don’t Tell: youtube.com/watch?v=zM1lfA_Frgc&t=384s -Word Choice: youtube.com/watch?v=jKoOxrcVnHM -Specificity and Concrete Language: youtube.com/watch?v=xgNW3EgtT1E -Description: youtube.com/watch?v=q5H8oPyQaPQ -Creating Verbs: youtube.com/watch?v=iTBwgW-i1zU ALSO I am aware that -ing verbs are the present participle, not the past participle like I said in the article – I often just say the wrong word when filming and didn’t catch it this time.
This was a really useful list of tips. The one that resonated with me the most was the first one. I vividly remember discovering that myself in a scene. I had first written: ‘She took the coin from her pouch and extended her hand with it and he reached out and took the coin from her.’ Which read so ponderously. So I changed it to: ‘She handed him the coin.’ And doing that was like slamming a door open, and I realised I could do this with not merely sentences, but whole scenes, simply cutting away all the ‘step-by-step’ details.
“Despair in hope, hope in despair.” Brilliant. I’m a painter and sculptor, attempting to expand my creative world by tackling the art of writing. As in my paintings, where I simply start with some nondescript brushstroke and let the subject reveal itself, I find writing to be the same. I create a character and then sit back and enjoy the ride. To my surprise, these characters all have keys to rooms I had no idea I owned. The emotional roller coaster has me laughing and crying and sometimes walking away to digest it all. I’m entering the final chapter of my life which has taken me to many places. Now it is time to travel within. Your tips in this article are helpful and will surely add to the honesty of what has been held captive until now. Thank you Shaelin and keep enjoying life in a creative mind.
My best advice is to think about the negative aspects of submitting to contests or showing the work before I finish it. I’ve been derailed twice, once not writing for two years because of scathing judge comments. Before the story is birthed into at least a second draft protect it, nurture and feed it frequently. Next advice fits me, not everyone but stop taking writing or author classes as that eats up my writing time and is a way to procrastinate. Learn by writing and getting a developmental editor.
As a retired Producer, one of the things I really like about screenplays is that the story can be told only through action and dialogue. Characters don’t think – because we can’t film that. They can only speak or do things. And all scripts are in the present tense; even flashbacks and flash forwards, because in the film, we are always in the “now”.
The yearning one. Got this in Script Writing. Our teacher talkes about wants and needs. What the character wants is usually a tangable. But then you have the need, which is the root yearning desire that drives that want. And some of the best stories are when the want and the need are in conflict. Like, the character wants love and acceptance, but they think they need power so they’ll never be hurt again. #writingGoodVillains
I remember when I’d watch articles about writing advice, and absolutely everything would hit me like a truck, constant realizations everywhere, but more and more lately, I’ve been finding that I’ve naturally discovered on my own a lot of the advice out there, and more often than not, articles about writer’s advice have been serving as more of a reminder than a lesson. It’s a surreal feeling to have come this far. That said, thank you for the reminders, sometimes it can take a few repetitions to know the advice in your heart as well as you know it in your mind.
Great advice. I couldn’t read until I was 18 (bad parenting basically). I plucked up the courage to write my first book/short story, later in life which I self published on Amazon. It’s a journey that has allowed me to shake the illusions and dig deeper into reality. Many of my characters were also instrumental in challenging my egotistic tendencies, profoundly.
I really appreciate the re-phrasings of advice so often said–it helped me see things in different ways. Especially the “Describe, don’t explain” and “skip scenes the reader can imagine.” I feel like the “slow down” advice is really helpful in cases where a story is going too fast or just doesn’t have much depth yet. It really lends itself to the advice about specificity and looking closer at a story.
I have a question for the readers out there: Would you rather read a longer book series where all the main characters get a whole book to express their feelings about events throughout a certain timeline or would you rather read a shorter book series where one main character describes an important event by themselves Basically the difference is that one character will tell the experience from their point of view instead of having all of the characters tell the story in their unique and different views. I really don’t want to use third person because I want my ideas to be in a series, but I am tied between the two. If you have any questions don’t be afraid to ask; I know this can be confusing 🙂
Thanks. Used your advice to write this: Empower the reader through imaginative description. Nail it with a strong verb. Sidestep passive verbs and nominalization. Pace your story with specifics. Find despair in hope, and hope in despair. Expose character yearnings. Paint character contradictions. Wield few words. Fashion artistic incongruities. Compel with interest.
This is such good advice! Regarding characters, I found that basing them off the 16 different personality types (ex, I’m INFJ) and dropping them into situations helps with writers block; what would this character do in this situation based on their personality? It makes the writing experience more enjoyable in that it seems the characters are writing the story for you. If anyone wants feedback on their work, I just started providing beta reading on the side as a freelance activity. If anyone’s interested I’ll be happy to drop my link.
I am new to writing but I am working on my first science fiction novel. These tips are really helpful and intimidating at the same time. I’ve been hacking away at it for a year ( periods of procrastination, lol) but I am determined. I glanced at some of my earlier chapters and realized I was doing a lot of telling and not showing. These are some things I will fix when I do my proof reads after I am done writing. For now I don’t want to lose my Ideas by trying to edit while writing. Thanks for the tips.
I enjoy most about this article, that you never used never. So many other writing tubers that I watch try to tell me what I can’t or shouldn’t do. This is one of the few articles where I felt validated in my choices so far. You are genuinely trying to help others improve, not to groom a generation of writers to your tastes. hats off to your authenticity.
I think this is probably the most useful article I have ever stumbled across on YouTube. I think everything you mentioned here was tremendously helpful but as someone terribly guilty of the purpliest prose, I’ll be taking care to rigorously prune my sentences of unnecessary words going forward. I’m currently writing book number three, so I will be implementing this straight away!
Hey Shaelin. I very much enjoyed your tips you’ve given in this article. I’d like to give just 1 tip I use, that you might find interesting. This may be a less common tip, but I’ve found that KEEPING A JOURNAL has actually improved my writing quite a lot. And it’s for these reasons: 1 – It helped me be more ‘real’ with who I am as a character in this life, and this is important for creating relatable characters. What do I mean by real? Well, I become aware of what I react to, how I respond to what things, how I used to do that…I see my own character development, and after 24 years a person tends to have had plenty of “aha” moments that developed one’s personal character. Moments that you can use to put into a story. Great writers like J.R.R. Tolkien have done exactly that! 2 – Doing the writing has allowed me to sharpen the skill of writing. Since I do not edit what I wrote yesterday, I can go back to it and see what progress I might have made. This comparison actually makes me more aware of how I write my stories, and helps pin-point how I might improve the structure of my sentences. To give an example: Version A: “The archer had gathered his ranger-like equipment with a lot of haste; his bow which he had inherited from his father, the quiver that his mother used before, his arrows which a friend made for him the day before, his recently sharpened knives, and a cloak that has such patterns that it blends in well with almost any kind of surrounding.” Version B: “The archer had gathered his ranger equipment speedily; his father’s bow, his mother’s quiver, the arrows a friend had made for him, his sharpened knives, and a patterned cloak that made him blend in with almost any environment.
I’ve never seen such a great article on tips about how to improve in writing. I am struggling with my english studies and essays, but after seeing this article i’m so motivated and confident that i believe to score well in my tests too. Thank you Shaelin for making such a helpful and informative article for students like me.
I would like to add something to this excellent article. I’ve come to realize that a book and a movie are two sides of the same coin. The difference is that music sets the tone, and the camera is a silent narrator, often in 3rd person point of view (pov), while in a book, the narration’s tone is set by adverbs and adjectives, and pov is often the same, 3rd person; both in the forms of limited and omniscient. Anyone wanting to write gripping novels or even vivid short stories, would greatly benefit from studying movie making and script writing. Here are some movie techniques that surprised me when I read them, and I want to share them with you because they might be applied to writing, maybe… 1. When characters or vehicles in a movie go from left to right, we assume they are leaving and travelling away from home. When they move from right to left, we emotionally associate that to people going home. Why? I don’t know, either it became common in movie making, or it just feels correct, either way, the author of the movie techniques book did not know why either, as I recall. 2. A low camera angle pov will make the viewer feel shorter and psychologically will activate childhood emotions and memories and a feeling of being either young or insecure, as we were when we were toddlers. Camera angles that are closer to a character and looking up to them are meant to make us feel insecure and inadequate, or looked down upon. It is also a way to increase a character’s arrogance or evilness. A common way writers use this device is when we say, “He towered over him/her.
I remember a professor saying this when I was in a screenwriter course: “if you are stuck on a plot-hole, leave it & keep on to the next thing. It will fill itself, eventually.” Its weird bc you wont get it until you are actually in that situation. I took longer trying to finish my first short bc I woyldnt allow myelf to keep going without taking care of the plot holes first but when I moved back and foward in between chapters the ideas came in faster than on my 1st short. The ideas just came flowing like a waterfall everything made sense.
1 – Intro 2 – Skip scenes the reader can imagine 3 – Use strong verbs 4 – Avoid ‘-ing’ and ‘to be’ verbs 5 – Describe, don’t explain 6 – If your story is boring, slow it down 7 – Be specific 8 – The push and pull of hope and despair 9 – Character yearning 10 – Character contradictions 11 – Use the fewest words possible 12 – Artistic incongruity 13 – How can this be more interesting? your welcome atb for your book and wish me luck too.
You got a subscriber. I’m a writer who kind of lost a lot of her motivation to write, but not her passion. Sometimes I look for blog posts or articles on youtube for advice that commonly just not help at all. Most of the advice in your article I’m hearing for the first time and really gave me a new perspective. I wanna try them and see if I can bring myself to enjoy again some of the things I write. Thank you =) (Your article was the first one that actually had me writing notes on it, so I thought it deserved leaving a comment ;))
“If the reader can imagine it…” — That’s good advice in one way, but ultimately it’s still a judgment call, isn’t it? After all, when you get down to it, our stories can truthfully be told in a couple of paragraphs… “Once upon a time, there was this guy, he did this, he did that. He slew the dragon and he and his friends had delicious dragon-steaks for dinner. The end.” But that isn’t writing, that’s reporting (at best). So the adage that “readers can imagine it”, is really kind of missing the point, IMO. I think what the advice is ultimately hinting at is “limiting the mundane” and remembering WHY the reader is here. Readers are here to be entertained. They want to escape their lives for a while and live in your world. To see, hear and experience life through your lens and your guidance– to live vicariously through the essence of your characters. Sure, they want to hear (know) the story, but most of the time the “story” is simply a stage upon which to experience your characters– in that setting, that place, and in that universe. But most of all– I think, my opinion– readers want to FEEL*. They want to *EMOTE*. The “deal” between writer and reader is one of shared experience and mutual feeling. The author tells the story and leaves “SLOTS” for you, the reader, to insert your emotions. The author “promises” that he will give you a “nice ride” so you can step off at the end **FEELING LIKE* it meant something. So it isn’t about what your reader can *IMAGINE*, it’s about what your reader can *FEEL*.
These are great! There’s a caveat for that first one: cut to the chase and leave out less relevant parts of a scene, but be careful where you end dialogue. I think we’ve all read a chapter where the dialogue ended on a bit of a cliffhanger or some such, only to be picked up again two chapters later. Sometimes it’s fine. Oher times, the reader is left to wonder “well, how did that conversation actually end? Who exited and how?” when the answer is important connective tissue.
I like how she said some of these writing tips came from a “period of time” in her life as a writer. Its a good reminder that you can’t become a the writer you want to be overnight. It takes time and practice to grasp even one concept! So get practicing and keep at it. My film teacher said you can’t have one good idea without having a bunch of bad ideas first. I think the same applies to writing pieces
I wrote an 82000 page ms and I had used ‘was’ about 2000 times. I did a key word search and got rid of as many was’s as possible. It really does force you to write better. The tree was tall becomes The tree towered into the sky. He was tired becomes Sweat dribbled down his temple. She was angry becomes she threw the notebook at him. I got my was count down to about 600.
4:00 “…to cut as many ‘to be’ verbs as possible, to cut as many ‘ing’ verbs as possible.” Yes on “to be” verbs and yes on the present participles of “ing” verbs — but a hard no on other the gerund in most cases. We need these other forms to enhance sentence structure. We should embrace these as reduced relative clauses, nouns, adjectives… what else? I know there are other forms I’m not recalling at the moment. And now having said that, I bet that’s what you meant. (Also, I should finish the article before leaving this comment.) I loved your comment at 3:29: “It is now, my guy. Let today be the first day of the rest of your life.” 😂 Your tone and attitude made it.
Excellent advice here! I’ve seen a lot of unhelpful stuff around YouTube lately, but this article was absolutely brimming with dollops of wisdom I couldn’t help but find myself nodding along to. You have put into words so many ideas I have always struggled to articulate about what makes a piece of writing truly engaging. Thank you!
A writing advice I could give, even though I don’t know if it’s good advice because it’s not a tip someone told me but something I took the habit to do whenever I edit my writing: put yourself in your readers’ shoes and read your text as if you were discovering it for the first time. Also, reading your writing out loud can help to see if the flow and pacing is easy and natural. If when reading aloud you are stumbling on some lines, your sentence might be overly complicated and could be simplified
Thanks for the tips! Very helpful for sure! I believe this quote has impacted my writing quite a bit: “No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.” C.S. Lewis
Funny that you talk about slowing down when it’s boring. Because I learned the exact same lesson as an actor when I studied acting at the theater academy. They based it on the exact same principle; “the audience isn’t invested in you, so speeding up because you feel it’s boring and you wanna add ‘energy’ doesn’t solve it. Take a step back, come to yourself, you can even take a moment to stop talking during your performance, and then continue.” And it really works. Fun similarity
Interesting… I have only just started writing my book. Actually thats a lie, I have been writing it now for four years. Or at the very least procrastinating over it feeling frustrated and inadequate. In the last two months I have turned to Ai. What I find interesting is that when I ask the Ai to check my prose for readability, flow, pacing and tone, it has suggested changes which are exactly in line with everything you have mentioned in this article.
The first is a major struggle. I find that I can’t finish books that are over-detailed. It’s incredibly annoying when an author stops to describe every piece of scenery, especially in the beginning. While figurative language and description is absolutely important, too much is really boring. Please actually move forward in the story instead of being stuck in one spot, describing a wall that will never be seen again for the rest of the story.
Did you take any courses or lessons to achieve good writing? I’m about 14 now and I’ve been trying to improve my writing better, but I’m not sure how. This article is helpful to me now, and I’ll try to follow the steps. But I still want to get to know more if there are any courses out there to help. Love your content by the way ^^
Something I struggled with a lot early on was listening to peers when they commented on my writing. I was soooo arrogant and thought “what do you know about writing?” But they knew about reading. They knew what they liked to read and what other people liked to read. So I learned to listen to them as well as other writers my age because if I think other writers my age range can’t be great than how the fuck would I be? In short, I needed to lose my oversized ego.
One of my main rules of thumb is “always do more than one thing at at time.” Don’t JUST develop character. Don’t JUST move the plot forward. Don’t JUST describe the world–try to write sentences and phrases that do two or three of these things together. I really liked Shaelin’s first tip–I struggle with this too, but I’ve also found, as I write, that tips 1 and 4 can cancel each other out. That is, you can use otherwise banal scenes to illustrate some aspect of your character or world, and doing that through an action, no matter how prosaic, is better than pausing the action to spell it all out through some internal reflection of the character or long narrative explanation. I guess that method also feeds into tip 5.
I’ll admit I didn’t expect much when I clicked on your article, but these bits of advice are not only useful but fresh! Even the ones I’d heard before were described in some unusual way, and there were many I hadn’t heard before. I look forward to implementing them and perusal more of your articles. Thanks!
Thanks for these amazing tips! And I’m glad you pointed out these tips may not work for everyone; usually when I watch these articles I feel like these are rules for writing and it usually end up with me feeling like my writing isn’t good enough. I write in English and it’s not my mother tongue, so it can be quite challenging. I’m learning to accept it, though, and just embrace my own style of writing. Regardless, some of these tips were really useful to me, especially the last one.
Say what you mean and mean what you say is my favorite advice. When you mean that a character said something, make that notation. Do not go on and on with a physical description of their cocked eyebrows or other things. If a dialogue tag is needed, do not distract from what is being said. Wondered and supposed and all those other “weak” verbs are correct when the MC is wondering or supposing.
With rule 1 I would handle it by giving the maximum of a page to the car ride/ everything in between the injury event and arriving at the hospital probably make the injury a chapter end with something like the main character blacking out and have flickers of consciousness for the journey with the start of a chapter easily being able to shorten it to half a page or 2/3rds a page (I like to use a lot of first person point of views when it comes to anything involving the protagonist limiting the writing but also placing a creativity tool of perspective into it such as describing an object as the protagonist/main character sees it
Good ideas. I enjoyed listening to your epiphanies. Two thoughts: 1) This would be infinitely better if you included examples from your writing to illustrate your points. 2.) While I realize you don’t know the source of all this advice, in the places you DO know, cite the name of the teacher who shared that advice with you. Instead of just saying, “my professor gave me this advice” or my professor “great guy” it would be kind to share their name, when you know it.
I have a writing tip which might make people go what? But if you’re doing writing on Google docs then use the tools of changing the writing colour and font when you might be showing say a side character’s diary and if a character is not around at the time of the story do not show them flashbacks should be as few as possible and as short as possible and make sure to give them a clear personality while not showing anything about where they are if the character doesn’t have an idea and if the character is meaningful to the main character then you probably should make them learn something from that character that pushes them on it should help them with their path or journey which is critical it must be like this if the character is important to the main
I’m trying to improve my writing I’m not a well experience writer but I believe my experience in life would help? Hopefully, I want to catch the attention of the audience you probably hear or see that a lot . I don’t know where I’m going to go with writing I am learning a new language but I wanted to expand my vocabulary and through that journey I started trying to tell stories through writing . I find myself going into a different world when reading and I want to give that experience to my readers. It’s gets difficult because I want to explain the minor details, or there’s to much going on in my story. Is there any tips like where there’s discipline, like something to help with getting off track in my story’s? Hope you see this when you can., Thanks
Marvellous article. My favourite piece of writing advice is to get a typewriter. This is because it is easier with a typewriter to implement David Bowie’s trick, in idea-generation, of combining two unrelated concepts to create a third. You simply buy a typewriter, reverse-vacuum the dust, lubricate the moving parts, replace the ribbon, type out a list of randomly chosen sentences from disparate sources, snip them out into equal-length strands, shuffle them, bundle them, and pull out two strands.
My biggest pet peeve with bad writing from various authors is not grammar or style, or the excellent stuff mentioned here—it’s getting the Weaving of metaphors wrong. The stories wrong. Lol. Yes it is possible to not fully understand the story you are telling at some level—that is the single largest difference between an all-time classic and just a good yarn. An angora sweater vs polyester yarn. One is sweetly woven and sensual. The other is a toy for cats. So if you want to “Save the cat” so to speak, do it by having the firemen hold a stretched-out angora sweater. 🤔🤷♀️😂
Your content must be really good, because I find your delivery really difficult, yet I’m still perusal. Please, please could you go slower, lower and less shouty in future. These are generally good rules to get people to listen better anyway. Right now I’m going to think twice before perusal more of your articles
I know you said these are not universal but here’s a weird thing I do. I write my prose rhythmically, and a big part of how I like to write prose is by how it sounds to read, so I’ll sometimes add fluff words that don’t do anything but give the sentence a dance-like flow. Adding words may be a no-no but as I like to say, rules should be broken if you have a good reason why.
Personally, I feel as if symbolism and metaphors have made my writing elevate from the ‘describe don’t explain’ phase. How do you make fear tangible and something that the readers can feel? Personification or attach fear to something meaningful. Like for example: Fear is a snake that coils in the bottom of your stomach. It’s something that readers can imagine like ‘butterflies in your stomach’.
4:49 – or better yet – don’t describe at all. Your reader and or audience have a far more powerful imagination than the author. Describe ONLY what is essential to the story. Not because you want to dictate how someone must think. 5:48 – this is completely WRONG. If you’re story is boring its because your characters are not proactive – don’t slow it down and make it WORSE. 8:43 – yearn is to vague. What is your character OBSESSION – and focus that obsession to drive their super objectives. Many more I could add, but most importantly: no conflict = no drama. Golden rule.
Hi Shaelin, I hope you’d further clarify your points – 2. Use strong verbs – what are strong/stronger/strongest words? Examples please. And where do you find them? Any handy tools online or off the shelf? 5. If your story is boring, slow it down instead of speeding it up. How do you slow down a boring story? Examples, please! More descriptions? More strong verbs? 7.Find the despair in the hope, and the hope in the despair in every scene. I can see the hope in despair in well known stories, like Cinderella, but how do you see the “despair in hope” in the “Happily Ever After” ending scene? 12. How can this be more interesting… does this practice “destroy” a boring story and speed it up? So, a lengthy boring story ends up morphing into an interesting short story? Many thanks!
Hello everyone. You all don’t know me and I don’t know you but I was wondering if you could give me some advice. I’m writing a book and one of the main side characters is part of the LGBTQ community. (He’s gay.) I’m not part of the LGBTQ community myself but I don’t want to offend anyone while writing it. Is there any tips anyone can give?
I may have the opposite problem. When do we cross the line into too hard verbs? I’m afraid of sounding pedantic… is it a valid concern? Oh, by the way: You are lovely. Oh my god, this is becoming absurd! What about too specific? This is a paragraph before the delivery line: By the time I jumped on the field, a billion Viewers, a hundred thousand fans, a thousand staffers, a hundred players, fifty coaches, twenty officials and an unknown number of secret service agents had become witnesses for life. Your advice is deeply appreciated.
I write, and the best advice I can give any writer is to KNOW their character. They SAY ” Write what you know”. That starts with the characters. I base the concept on the Actors Studio teachings and “The Method”, or Method acting. When I write, I produce a “Bible” of background information on places, events and people. Every one of my characters has a full bio from birth to story-present. Family history is included for many as well, By knowing how a person grew as a person, i can tailor their responses, I KNOW how they would react in any given situation, their thoughts, words and actions flow from an established source. Little to none of this background info ever makes it directly into my story, in any but a brief sketch IF it comes up, and if it does it’s usually in the characters own words and only as much as THEY would be comfortable revealing in the moment. If your character is a stranger to you, How can you know what IS and IS NOT in character for them? How can you know how stressed or relaxed they are with any circumstance.? I find this makes the difference between cut-out or stereotype characters and Dimensional ones. If I know the minds of all my characters i can rehearse conversations between two of them, and sometimes the results surprise even me as they begin to relate to each other as themselves and not just as a vehicle for MY words and thoughts.
No author sticks to the show don’t tell rule. Make a claim and I’ll shoot it right down using their own books to do it. It’s the most overused “rule” that’s never followed. They always tell you what the character think, how she or he feels etc. They ALL do it. Name me one who doesn’t. JW Rowling? She does it. Stephen King? He does it. This rule in my opinion based on every single book I’ve ever read is false. They all tell you. Why? Because you need to know. What if I wrote about a character who wakes up and has a very bad head ache. A sensitivity for light and sounds. And the character feels like sombody had run over them with a car. What does that sound like without an explanation? A hangover. That’s what is sounds like. You know what else have the same symptoms? On the dot? Coming down after cocaine! Now how would you know that? Unless you’re told? You wouldn’t. So to everybody who reads this, the show don’t tell rule. Bullshit. Even when the best authors tells you to use it, because they themselves don’t use it. Ironic as it is.
Like the way you put all that.. There’s a book, Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg about her Midwest life in Minnesota and her yearning to be a better Buddhist but her Zen teacher always tells her Your writing is your practice. The book is easy to read, it’s funny, has all kinds of tips to help you along. I’d recommend it to anybody who wants to write. The advice to read is the most important I think. Read Shakespeare – it’s like having a conversation with the man. The best rappers have Brilliant lines equal to Shakespeare. Listen to some great rap. Listen to the lyrics until you understand the stories they tell. Read The Pillowbook by Sei Shonagon, about the Palace where she served as courtier one thousand years ago. Read Cervantes & Proust. Toni Morrison. Read pulp fiction. Why is it trash? Read more poetry. Find a poet you love. Find a poem by this poet you didn’t know. Copy it neatly in calligraphy til you can recite it.
Hi, amazing article, love the tips. However, I feel like it would’ve been perfect if you also provided some examples to illustrate how to utilize the tips in practice (like you did with the hospital visit.) For example, I think I understand the one about contradictions but I feel like it would be tremendously easier to conceptualize if you provided an example. That’s not a nitpick or anything, I’d just love to see that.
That boring comment and slow it down. Never heard that one, but that makes sense. That’s a great tip. Makes me think of unpacking a scene and even now I’m learning to slow moments down. Instead of skipping certain times and doing “jumps,” I’ve been forcing my brain to sllooooowwww down, really write and unpack those moments, and discovered new scenes that came from doing so. It can be helpful.
I read a book of writing advice and the most helpful advice was “rewrite dont edit.” Basically when you have completed your first draft, dont just edit. You may have to rewrite entire chapters or section. Dont be afraid to start over. I was 90 pages into writing a book and realized it wasnt working. Like it just wasnt clicking with me. So i scrapped it, changed the role of certain characters, basically made it entirely different and it helped so much!
As someone for whom English is a second language, I don’t understand the “avoid -ing and to be”. Could anyone give me an example? I was kind of bummed out there wasn’t one in the article. -ing is a specific time of conjugation, it’s needed when the “temporality” of the sentence calls for it. So what exactly are you supposed to do to avoid them? Doesn’t changing it mean you’re using the wrong time, then?
Thank you nice job on the YouTube article. My favorite part of the article centers around the advice you teach about finding alternatives for the ing, and things, the to be’s and not to be’s. In future striving I will try to be thinking looking striving to be more discerning when choosing and including words and writing when creating. I will be more selecting when it comes to ings and things to be included when literarying…Lol… Tee he Hee hee he heeeeeee… seriously though, nicely done presentation, I found value in your insights… word
I think the idea of ‘artistic incongruity’ really stinks. To me it hits on what is going seriously wrong with modern ‘high’ literature. This is simply a vacuous gimmick. Today high literature is saturated with such ‘gimmicks’. We see it in the overuse of ‘magical realism’ for example. The truth is that modern ‘high’ literature is bankrupt. The people writing do not really have anything to say. Instead they concentrate on superficial artfulness. When you write, if it is not just a commission to fill copy, say you are writing a novel, you should be driven by the need to express something. Like some pressure building up inside you. You feel if you don’t find a way to express it you will explode. It must be something important to you which you want to explore in front of others, to show why you are concerned about it. The truth is modern writers have just got nothing to write about.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:27 📚 If the reader can imagine something happening without needing to be told, you don’t need to show it. Avoid unnecessary scenes and descriptions. 01:49 ✍️ Use strong verbs to make your writing more vivid and engaging. 03:40 🚫 Avoid excessive use of “ing” verbs and “to be” verbs to improve language control and clarity. 05:28 📖 Instead of “show don’t tell,” think of it as “describe don’t explain” for more accessible guidance. 06:51 📝 Make your writing more interesting by prioritizing specificity in your descriptions and details. Made with HARPA AI
Hey, I know that there’s articles of your old and you’re not like we just see this but I came across this as a recommendation from a novelist website through YouTube. Just wanted you to know I love what you’re putting down. Certainly got a subscribe in a lake as I head into November, which is a rider you know what I’m talking about laugh out loud. Keep it up please
The twist on show don’t tell that made it click for me was “dialogue can show, and action can tell”. The goal is not to replace all dialogue with action. The goal is to avoid giving omniscient meta-facts that people in-universe shouldn’t know. It’s to encourage filtering facts through the lens of your character’s perspective.
Learning to shorten our sentences is good practice, but if you want to show the ego of a character keep their dialogue long. You can see this in social media post where people just go on for pages talking about something that could be said in a paragraph or two. Also more can be said in a quote then pages of prose. Try making your own quotes.
An interesting collection of advice. If I may offer some of my own to you with regard to your article’s, please try to slow down your speech and eliminate the high pitch tones. I think it would add some gravitas to your efforts especially as you are relatively youthful. I changed the playback speed to 0.75 and it made a huge difference – try it? Purely constructive, no offence intended.
My favorite bit of advice: understand the arcs of your major characters before you write a single paragraph. Understand where they’re starting and where they need to get to; then work on the outline of the story; and then finally you can think about a rough draft. There are those who hold that you can go back later and fix if you’re changing the main characters’ motives. Well, you probably CAN, but it will mean a lot of work, and maybe it would have been better to work that out first. Not that anyone can really plan an entire story and expect that there won’t be any changes along the way; but the more you work out before you’ve started writing, the less seismic those shifts are likely to be.
About fewest words: we had a high school English teacher who would ding you if anything you wrote could possibly be expressed in fewer words. Didn’t matter how stupid or inhuman it sounded; extra words meant a bad grade. In retrospect, I think she was just trying to teach us to not pad our prose, but she overdid it. Sometimes, words that are not strictly necessary to communicate meaning will still communicate mood or intention. If it were up to me, I would say that every word needs to contribute to what you’re trying to say; and if there is a more concise way to express an idea without losing nuance, go for concise.
I struggle with my descriptive phrases. I am a beginner and english isn’t my first language, that’s why there are so many things that I don’t know what they’re called. For example, if I want to describe a setting, I don’t know what somw of it called, like that concrete that doesn’t actually separate the walls, but it just stands there like a support or something, I don’t know. What advice can you give me?
Over the years and pondering deeply I eventually discovered the obvious. If you want people to read what you write, and you want people to spend their time engaged with your writing, the only thing that really matters is the characters. The characters have to entertain the readers, like a hostess entertains guests at her dinner party. If people enjoy spending time with your characters they will read what you write. How are these characters entertaining? Some are intriguing, some are funny, some are wicked, some are pitiful. As long as they are interesting people to be with, readers will stay with them. Think of all the success stories in literature. They are mostly about some popular character. I wonder how many people know that the only reason we have even heard of Charles Dickens today is because of Sam Weller. Probably most people who have read Dickens don’t even know who he is, but it was his appearance in the Pickwick papers which rocketed Dickens to success in his day and saved him from obscurity.
If you’re writing and you use “like normal”, “generally”, “like most”, “as expected”, or just words and sentences that feel present to say this is normal and logical to humans from earth, who live, breath, and work like a normal human, your writing is not going to be as interesting. People aren’t going to be excited reading “Like most humans, xxxx got coffee and headed to work.”, instead, focus on the parts of your story that aren’t normal, because no-one is interested in knowing how normal your characters’ life is, they only care about the parts that show how abnormal it is. This might be biased, since I’m writing from the perspective of a hobbyist fiction author, but I feel that it’s impossible to find someone who wants to know about details that happen in everyday life to the vast majority of humans. Aside from this, I’ll also say that if you’re worried about your story being logical, you can’t think about it from earth’s logic. Instead, you have to worry about it from the perspective of the logic of that world, so for example, if you’re worried that your character from a world which has vampires, werewolves, and witches in it is unrealistic because he’s crazy yet successful and respected for example, look at your world. Vampires drink blood, turn others into themselves through bites, and are feared greatly, alongside anything else you add to them. Werewolves turn into half wolves or full wolves at full moon, becoming incredibly strong, and are feared and respected. Witches conduct inhumane and crazy experiments for the sake of power, and the most successful are generally the ones who do the craziest experiments, which them become respected.