Be instructed, and be inspired!
1. Beginnings
Write a section or scene that comes before the place where your piece will begin, to help you become familiar with your characters, plot or setting.—Scott Edelstein
(Click here for more tips on writing great beginnings.)
2. Characters
Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.—Ray Bradbury
(Click here for more tips on crafting your characters.)
3. Description
One shouldn’t explain beyond what’s necessary.—William of Occam
(Click here for more tips on writing evocative descriptions.)
4. Dialogue
…let the emotional weight of a scene rest on the dialogue wherever possible. This is the easy way to avoid overinterpretation, which seems to be what turns a scene from sympathetic to sentimental.—Judith Guest
(Click here for more tips on writing realistic dialogue.)
5. Editing
An author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.—Colette
(Click here for more tips on editing your fiction.)
6. Endings
I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms 39 times before I was satisfied.—Ernest Hemingway
(Click here for more tips on finding the right ending for your story.)
7. Inspiration
…most of the time that which we call inspiration is just a dry, academic process: a brutal, unromantic exercise in patience. Some of us weather it, some of us don’t.—Lee Adams
(Click here for more tips on hacking your best inspiration.)
8. Originality
The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.—Richard Harding Davis
(Click here for more tips on finding originality.)
9. Plot
Often I’ll find clues to where the story might go by figuring out where the characters would rather not go.—Doug Lawson
(Click here for more tips on plotting your novel.)
10. Rewriting
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.—Mark Twain
(Click here for more tips on rewriting.)
11. Show and Tell
If you tell me, it’s an essay. If you show me, it’s a story.—Barbara Greene
(Click here for more tips on the difference between shoring and telling.)
12. Style
The best style is the style you don’t notice.—Somerset Maugham
(Click here for tips on polishing your writing style.)
13. Subtlety
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.—Logan Pearsall Smith
(Click here for more tips on writing with subtlety.)
14. Title
A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.—Walker Percy
(Click here for more tips on finding the best title for your story.)
15. Voice
A writer’s voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer’s voice is the stroke of an artist’s brush—is the thumbprint of her whole person—her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms.—Patricia Lee Gauch
(Click here for more tips on finding your voice.)
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