What are some great tips to becoming a better writer. What has helped you?
Avoid cliches and try your best never to use the word "it" or the phrase "a lot."
Develop interesting characters; give them flaws equal to their greatness.
Make your story unique. You can write about anything as long as you put your own realistic spin on it. Or, if you'd rather, make your story unique by making it highly surreal.
Some of the best tips I ever received was from an author friend of mine, Linda Alexander. Her latest best seller is A Maverick Life: The Jack Kelly Story. Linda told me a writer must have a very thick skin. In other words don't take everyone's opinion to heart when they criticize your work. A writer is only as good as their last written piece. We learn by mistakes, so never give up the goal you have set for yourself. Tips from successful published writers are worth paying attention to. I said to Rod Thompson (author of The Black Hills) that, I wish I could write a great western novel such as his. He said, "Just do it."
Read what you like to write about, and then just read a bunch period. All the best writers I know are also great readers.
Try not to fall in love with everything you have written; it can always be better. But don't hate in all either. Balance is always important.
Practice your art, and don't give up. Your talent might be rough in the beginning but it will soon get better.
Let other people read it. Especially people who you trust to give it to you straight.
And gain real life experiences. As many as you can. Because you can only write about what you understand.
Writers write. Successful writers write more. Published writers find the connection between what what they want to write and what the public fancies to read. The odd ball writer writes their own version of reality anyhow and sifts through tons of different publishers for someone to care about their work and then publish it anyhow. Every now and again, their work changes what people fancy and then everyone copies their form.
I follow a lot of different writers and look at their style and how they use language.
I read a lot. I find that the more I read, the more my writing improves.
Reading allows you to see how language flows and that subsequently, gets carried over into your writing.
You can also study the craft of writing: grammar, spelling, how to develop your ideas and stuff like that, but there's this editor-- the first I'd ever heard, but rather well-known in writing circles-- who some even call legendary-- Alan Rinzler, who suggests something just as easy: keep reading and writing!
by Recipe Gal 12 years ago
What is some good advice to becoming a better writer?I would love for my writing to flow better, be more natural and entertaining, and feel less contrived.
by Rochelle Frank 9 years ago
Does living a hard or troubled life make one a better writer?Do people who have lived a rather easy life have less of an inclination to be writers?
by SheliaKay 7 years ago
Who is the better writer, the one with the college Degree, or the dropout who writes with passion.With so much talent on here did you graduate from college?
by Mashyack 14 years ago
How do i become a better writer
by Krzysztof Willman 9 years ago
Would you still want to become a writer if everyone told you to do something else?Imagine everyone being against you as wanting to be a writer. Would you still pursue it?
by Delaney Boling 15 years ago
What makes a better writer - Perfect grammer & punctuation or creativity & journalistic integrity?There are those who dwell on typos and perfectly placed puncuation, and there are those who write from the heart. Many of the best authors ever never completed college, and many of the most...
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |