Tips to Improve Your Creative Writing

Sometimes, even when you enjoy writing, you can’t help but feel you’ve hit a creative wall. You can still write, but everything looks the same without a hint of improvement. Well, it happens so don’t worry about it much. We have some simple tips to help you improve.

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How To Improve Your Creative Writing

Although there are no hard rules on what you must do to start creative writing and improve it, there are some useful tips you can follow. Here are some of them:

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#1. Read, learn, and ask

Widening your horizon is non-negotiable when you wish to improve your creative writing. Try to write about something you have no knowledge about. Read books and watch movies as you research new stuff. Ask around in online forums when you have questions.

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Learning new things will enrich your existing knowledge and let you see things from different points of views.

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#2. Step out of the box

People tend to do things following the same pattern repeatedly. It’s subconscious so the person himself rarely realizes it. The bad thing is that your audience may get bored with the pattern. Your story becomes predictable too.

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The easiest way to break from one’s shell is to write a short story while strictly following other writer’s style. It’s challenging but stick to it. Doing things differently improves your versatility as a writer. Your writing will be richer with this exercise.

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#3. Use metaphors and analogies

Stop using the old and tired metaphors and analogies you learned in school. You can take a hint or two from the winners of the Washington Post Style Invitational Bad Simile and Metaphor Contest. Here are some examples:

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• The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
• He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
• The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
• John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

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#4. Take advantage of dialogs

Dialogs can reveal a character’s traits and dispositions while advancing the plot at the same time. But sloppy dialogs only adds clutter. To avoid such a problem make sure the readers know who’s talking. You can do that by giving speakers their own paragraphs and using appropriate speech tag use.

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Be sure to make the dialogs believable too. Some people stutter, use broken English, use slangs, or even speak in fragments.

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#5. Make a scene

Every scene in your writing must have a purpose. Why does the main character cry? Does he miss his dog? Or is it because he can’t take back what he just said? As you describe the scene, keep the purpose on top of your mind at all times.

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Be sure to show the readers how the scene adds to the character development. After all, if a scene doesn’t add anything then why bother making it in the first place, right?

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That’s all for our simple tips on improving your creative writing. Keep on practicing and perhaps one day you’ll win a creative writing competition with your work. Just keep on pushing forward!

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When you do enter a writing competition please proofread your work thoroughly before submitting it. Don’t let get your work get to waste because you’re too lazy to polish it one last time.