Writing Tips - Part I

I found these tips incredibly useful when writing. These tips helped me, but they won't necessarily be the gold some people are looking for. If you want a more complete list, I plucked these pieces of writing wisdom from this thread.

General Tips

1. Read your story aloud - Your ears will catch bullshit that your eyes never will.

2. Specificity. ‘The bus ran over the man’ is vague. Instead, make it ‘The silver bus ran over the man in the black suit.’ Be specific.

3. The goal of a sentence is clarity above all else.

4. If a scene just grinds the story to a halt, before you go chucking the whole damn thing, try deleting the first and last paragraphs of that scene. I’ll bet you it reads better that way.

5. Each scene must have a purpose. Does it push the plot forward? Does it reveal something new about the characters? Does it tell us something we didn’t know before? If you can’t find its purpose, kill it.

6. Look at the actual construction of language upon the page. Do you see lots of description? Great heaving tsunamis of text? Cut that down, break it up, and add liberal helpings of dialogue.

7. To speed up the pacing of a story to get readers interested, use shorter paragraphs and sentences. Get to the action quicker. Keep things moving — boom boom boom boom. Second, cut out plot fat. Anything that the audience does not absolutely need to know should not be told. Third, chop out heavy description and exposition.

8. What’s essential for the novel is also essential for the chapter, episode, even scene. Every single one of them needs a Climax, Hook, and some type of events leading from one to the other. Read that again. Every single one.

9. Every novel needs a focus. What’s your point? What is it that you want the reader to know? That focus is your Climax, the one part your story simply could not do without.

10. Characters. You need to know their mannerisms, gestures, and expressions. You need to know their foibles, misconceptions, paradoxical needs. And, most of all, you need to know what they’re hiding from themselves. Because how that comes to light is your story.

11. Have someone read your shit.

12. If you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don’t ever bother finishing…it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care passionately.

Writing the First Chapter

1. Open big. Open strong. Open your story in a way that commands the reader’s interest.

2. The first chapter is not the place to tell us everything. Give us a reason to care about that stuff before you start droning on and on about it. Keep it tight. Keep it short.

3. If I get to the end of