How great would it be if we could gather all the great authors in one room to talk about the best writing tips available out there?

It would be glorious! 

But, since we don’t have the luxury to have these successful authors around us, we took advantage of writing manuals and author interviews and gathered the best pieces of advice on writing. 

While we were digging the web for writing tips, we came across completely odd (sometimes contradictory) pieces of advice — apparently because different authors have different stories to tell about the writing process.

However, some of the tips overlapped too. After all, there are a few fundamental truths that most authors agree on — particularly when it comes to the process of writing and approaching the first drafts.

So, what are those writing tips amateur authors should swear by?

Well, let’s take a look at some of the time-tested writing advices from bestselling authors. Grab a notebook, sit comfortably, and take a look at what these writing wizards have to say: 

 

 

• If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favour you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. 

          – Dorothy Parker

 

 

• If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools — to write. Simple as that. 

         – Stephen King

 

• Write drunk, edit sober.

– Ernest Hemingway

 

• “Never use a long word where a short one will do.”

-George Orwell

 

 

• Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that — but you are the only you.  

          ― Neil Gaiman

 

• “This is how you do it : You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.”

– Neil Gaiman

 

• Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page. 

—Margaret Atwood

 

 

• Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. … Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue. 

          —Elmore Leonard

 

 

• Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something and breathe life into it, they’ll know it too.

—Esther Freud

 

 

• “Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man.”

― E.B. White

 

 

• “My advice for aspiring writers is to go to New York. And if you can’t go to New York, go to the place that represents New York to you, where the standards for writing are high, there are other people who share your dreams, and where you can talk, talk, talk about your interests. Writing books begins in talking about it, like most human projects, and in being close to those who have already done what you propose to do.”                 

― Walter Kirn

 

• “Don’t assume you must follow a predetermined writer’s path, that you will be a novelist or a poet or a playwright or a journalist, and you will concentrate on this form of writing only. Try all forms of writing, don’t pre-type yourself, produce fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, play scripts, essays, profiles, humour, memoir, and biography. Eventually, the shape of your talent will emerge from how you have tested yourself.”

― William Noble

 

Bottom Line 

So what did we learn from gathering writing advice from bestselling authors, critically acclaimed storytellers, and experts who’ve been writing compelling stories for years?

We learnt that there’s no defined way to succeed in novel/fiction writing and that amateur authors should read, read, read everything — classics, good, bad, and trash. Then, they should write, write, and write everything — mystery, horror, romance, thriller, poem, and find what they’re good at. 

Let us know if this advice helped and if you are following any of this advice already. Or maybe, you have a new advice on writing that you want to share with us…Feel free to post it in our comments section below.