Top 20 Tips for Beginning Writers

They say the journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step. Your journey to successful writing will be more work than 1,000 miles of walking, but it also has a beginning. Every writer, no matter how successful, had their first writing session. Finished their first chapter. Completed their first book. Cried for the first time over editorial feedback. Sold their first novel. 

This post is for people just beginning, or even considering the possibility of maybe, someday soon, contemplating the possibility of beginning. 

Every author’s story starts someplace. Here’s what the experts will tell you about it. 

20 Top Tips for Beginning Writers

1. Read Like You’re Going Blind Tomorrow

The best inspiration to keep writing is to feel what good books do to your mind. The best way to learn how to write well is to experience well-written books. The best way to understand your genre, and why people buy books in it, is to be immersed in what people write there. 

Read. Read lots. If you want to write, but can’t be bothered to read, you won’t succeed. And you won’t deserve to.

2. Improve Your Craft Strategically

Even the most talented wordsmith in the world wasn’t born a great writer. They became great by identifying their weaknesses, then working to improve them. Find editors and beta readers whose opinions you can trust, then use those opinions to identify your weak points for improvement. 

Once you have good advice, the rest of this tip is pretty simple. The hardest part is usually finding somebody close enough to do you this favor, but not so close they’ll try to sugarcoat things. (Nothing beats a good human editor, but you can always start with software, if you have to.)

3. Don’t Chase the Market

If you see that vampire novels, or historical fiction, or rite of passage stories, are making big sales and getting lots of media attention, it can be tempting to write something in that genre so you can catch the wave and cash in. This is usually a mistake for two reasons. 

First, you should write what excites you to write. If you write something you’re lukewarm about just to make money, the writing will be lukewarm…and probably won’t make any money.

Second, it takes time to write a book, edit it, and publish it. Usually it takes so much time that the trend you wanted to chase has faded, and something new is all the rage. 

4. Try Lots of Different Styles

Although what I just said about chasing the market is true, you should write in all kinds of different styles. Some will be a one-time experiment you never try again. Some others though, will let you discover a whole new way to write that you love and are good at. 

Lots of beginning writers first set out to essentially imitate the books they love most. That’s great, but let yourself branch out and find the books you most love to write.

5. Never Write for Exposure

Various businesses and publications will encourage you to write for “exposure.” That is, write for free so they’ll publish you and people will find out that you write. This is bad for two reasons. 

First, you can’t eat exposure or pay your rent with it. That business will make money from your writing, and you deserve some of that money. Asking you to write for exposure is how bad people identify themselves to writers as bad. 

Second, it drives down what people perceive as the value of writing. If you write for free, professional writers make less, meaning you’ll make less when you become a professional. 

6. Treat it Like a Job

If you want to write for a living, you have to approach it like a job. Have a writing schedule. Set goals. Tell your friends and family you can’t come out when you’re working. Be your own boss, and be a real stickler. 

Treating your writing casually or without discipline means it will forever stay a sideline of your life. If you’re happy with that, that’s okay. Embrace that level of writing and focus on other ways to make money. If you want to earn a living from your words, though, only professionals rise to that level.

7. Create a Routine

If you set times to write, even different times to write different kinds of things, you set yourself up for success as a writer. This not only sets you up mentally for success and productivity, but also sends signals to your friends and family. By writing regularly and in a routine, you show them that your writing is to be taken seriously. They will respect your writing time, and your writing career, more. And so will you.

8. Eat the Elephant a Bite at a Time

Writing a novel is a huge project. Marketing your writing is a different, even bigger project. Managing a writing career is a task on par with finishing a graduate degree. Don’t let any of that intimidate you.

Instead, break every large project into small, doable tasks. Don’t sit down to write your novel. Sit down to finish one scene in a chapter. Don’t sit down to become a bestseller. Sit down to put the finishing touches on the opt-in ad for your newsletter. Don’t try to manage your writing career all at once. Send a query a day to an agent until you land one. 

No matter how big and ambitious a project is, you can break it down into simple steps and focus on those in sequence until it’s done.

9. Finish Mid-Sentence

Beat writer's block by leaving a sentence unfinished at the end of each writing session. 

Thing is, the first minutes of writing – when a block strikes – happen when you’re staring at the blank page or new line and wondering what to write next. If you have half a sentence there instead, you know exactly what you’re going to type. You begin the session with momentum, and most of the time you’ll build upward from there. 

10. Submit Early, Submit Often

Legendary detective writer Robert B. Parker once said that if you don’t submit you’re not a writer — you’re a typist. It’s a little harsh, but submitting your writing is an important step in the career of any writer. 

Submit before you feel ready. Chances are you’re closer than you think, and when you get those initial rejections some of them will come with the best writing advice you’ve ever received. Submit, submit, and keep submitting. 

11. Write Now, Edit Later

One of the quickest ways to turn writing into a slog is to keep rewriting the same sentence over and over again. You do a lot of mental work, and come out with only a few sentences to show for it. 

Editing and writing require different mindsets. When you write your first draft, kick your editor out. See how long you can go without hitting the backspace key, even if you make obvious mistakes. 

Come back later to perfect the sentences. They’ll still be there when it’s time to edit. 

12. Go to a Writing Conference

Attend one writing conference every year. It’s one of the few places adults can get spot-on instruction about how to become better writers and marketers of their writing.

It’s also somewhere you can visit with other writers. In a profession this lonely, it’s good to meet and hang out with people who experience the same joys and hardships, challenges and exhilarations. Writing conferences are great places to do that. 

13. Go to a Different Conference

Also go to a conference about the things you write about. Writing conferences are great, but they don’t put you in touch with the people who buy what you write. Industry conferences and fan conventions do. 

This is especially important if you write nonfiction. Going to the right industry convention can mean you’re the only writer on the topic in an arena full of people who need things written about what you write. It’s a potential gold mine. 

14. It’s Okay to Skim Over Tough Parts

Sometimes you’re writing merrily along and you come to a scene that just kicks your butt. Novices struggle with it for hours, even days. It’s one of the hardest things in the writing experience. 

Professionals don’t do that. Instead, they make a note like **here Suzi confesses her love**, **something about cracking a safe, i need to look up some details**, or **big car chase goes here**, and they move on. They keep their momentum going, then come back to that part in a special session where their only goal is to get it written. 

Use a note like ** or @@ before and after each time you do this. That way you can do an easy search on your word processor and never accidentally forget one. 

15. Find Some Peers

Make some in real life or online friends among people at the same place as you in your writing journey. Maybe you can find some at a writing conference. These are the folks who are most likely to work with you to write and sell your work. You can grow together and help each other, forming a cohort that elevates you all.

16. Adverbs are a Trap

Adverbs are words that modify verbs, the same way adjectives are words that modify nouns. Most of the time, a sentence is better if you ditch the adverb and instead use a stronger verb. Check it out:

• She ate hungrily vs. she devoured
• He ran quickly vs. he sprinted
• She looked angrily vs. she glared

Early on, it’s even worth doing a search for “ly” and finding ways to eliminate 80 to 90 percent of them. 

17. Vary Your Length and Rhythm

Good writing sometimes fails to become great because the sentences are fine, but too similar to one another. Instead, make your writing more musical. Vary the sentence length. This creates tempo and rhythm to keep your reader interested.

Even better, make that variation match the action in the story. Slow passages get long, luxurious sentences that reflect the exploration of that moment on the page, slowing the pace of reading and the reader’s experience. But fast scenes demand sharp sentences. Make them bold. Make them tight. 

18. Get a Mentor

Peers are great, but tours are better with a guide. Find somebody who was where you are ten years ago, and who is willing to help you move forward with the benefit of their own experience. 

In every profession, people who find a mentor are significantly more likely to succeed than those who try to go it alone. Even better, many experts enjoy mentoring. It gives them a chance to give back to their community while nerding out about something they love. It’s a win-win.

19. Choose Names With Care

The Lord of the Rings is a classic, but everybody knows at least two people who had trouble telling the difference between Sauron and Saruman because their names are so much alike. 

This is a small detail, but can make a surprising difference. Make sure the names of your characters are wildly different while not becoming inappropriate or jarring. Doing otherwise asks the reader to work harder to enjoy your story. Most readers don’t like to do that. 

20. You Have to Write a Terrible Book…

…before you can write a good one. If you’re very, very, very lucky it will be the same book before and after rewriting. 

Relax. Expect what’s reasonable of yourself. Beginners aren’t as good as veterans because they haven’t had the practice. You have to get your practice in, which means you have to write poorly for a while. 

Get Your Juices Flowing

Ze Frank created the world’s best video about starting something new. It has a little bit of swearing, so be warned. But seriously; give it a look. It will pump you up.