On Writing Better: 43 Things I Learned from My Insane 2 Years of Study

If you’re totally lost on what to focus on getting better at, focus on braiding.

Narrative-style writing (fiction and nonfiction) has four major components:

1. Action: Things happening


2. Dialogue: What people are saying


3. Description: The environment around the people and events


4. Interiority: The characters internal reactions to the place and action

And you co... See more

Don't Edit Before You're Done with a Draft

On that note, don't waste time editing ANYTHING -- not even a misspelled word -- until you're done with a full draft.

When I finished the first draft it was about 100,000 words. The first thing I did was go back to the beginning and delete the first 30,000 of them. They were boring and unnecessary but I had... See more