6 tips for improving your creative writing

Hey, everyone.

I'm Alex.

Thanks for clicking, and welcome to my tips for improving your creative writing.

If you are an experienced writer who has already been writing for several years, maybe even

a few months, you might already be familiar with many of the tips that I provide in this

video from other sources, other YouTube videos, or books.

This video is really intended for that person who is at the beginning of their creative

writing journey, or it could be someone who is just learning the language and wanting

to improve it, explore ways to express themselves in a different way or a clearer, more precise

way.

So, before I begin, I want to let everyone know I am not a published author.

I am just someone who, number one, teaches English, and number two, I also enjoy creative

writing, and I've been writing short stories and things like that for a couple of years,

and I've tried incorporating these tips into my own work, and I found that it has helped

inch by inch, so hopefully it can help you, too.

Before we begin, what is good writing?

Now, this is a question with different answers depending on the person you speak to.

So, what is good writing for me is going to be different or might be different than what

is good writing for someone else.

It's why people like different books, it's why people like different movies.

I am only telling you about my experience and my feeling about what good writing is,

and again, my opinion might evolve in the next six months or maybe even next week, but

for now, I believe, in general, that good writing clearly conveys ideas, so you need

to worry about the precision of your language when you are writing, whether it is creative

writing, if you're writing a short story in a fantasy land, or if you are writing a report

or an email to someone, precision of language, the verb choice, the adjective choice, the

ability to clearly say what you want to say, bring the pictures in your mind into focus

for the reader.

So, next, it engages the reader.

It is interesting, exciting, something catches the reader's attention about your work, and

this can happen if you have this, clarity of precision of language, clarity of ideas.

Yes.

Next, good writing is relatable.

You want the person reading it to have some kind of connection, to have some kind of emotional

reaction to your words, so I use the term emotional resonance, right, to resonate.

It has some kind of impact on your heart or on your mind where, you know, you really feel

like this is speaking to me.

I can relate to this person's experience.

Something is speaking to me in these words, and next, I think most good writing challenges

ideas or explores ideas that you have already, you know, seen in the world, so if you're

talking about ideas and themes like power or justice or sexism or any number of themes,

good writing is going to challenge those things, is going to explore them in interesting ways

that are relatable, that engage you, that clearly convey the messages that they want

to transmit.

And finally, just good writing is enjoyable to read, and what is enjoyable for you might

be different than what is enjoyable for me.

I like books with wizards and magic and centaurs and, you know, fantasy creatures.

For many people, that's not their stuff, and that's cool.

If you prefer reading stuff like The Fault in Our Stars, for example, that's totally

fine.

What is enjoyable for me is not necessarily what's going to be enjoyable for you.

So, let's look at some of my tips for improving your creative writing.

I'm going to give you some technical skills.

I'm also going to give you some habits that you can develop to help you become a better

creative writer, and creative writing is not only something that you do for other people,

although ideally you should be doing it for other people if you want to make a career

out of it, but it is something that can just be something you do to help you express yourself,

express your ideas, and something that you do just because you want to become a better

writer.

You want to practice a skill.

So, writing is a craft.

Writing is an art.

And today, my goal is to hopefully help you to become a better artist as well as a better

English writer.

So, let's not waste any time, and we're going to walk over here and look at my first tip.

Limit your adverbs.

Use precise verbs or adjectives instead.

Now, Stephen King once said in his very famous writing manual called On Writing, "The road

to hell is paved with adverbs."

So, this is something that I have tried to incorporate into my own writing, and you know,

there's nothing really wrong with using adverbs.

You will probably use them in your writing.

You will most definitely use them in your writing.

The problem is abusing them, overusing them.

So, I like using the term to limit them, and instead of using, you know, words like "very"

or "really" or "she ran quickly", use more precise verbs or adjectives instead if you

can.

If those words exist, use those verbs.

Precision of language, like I mentioned at the beginning of the lesson, is one of the

things that helps define good writing.

So, "She ran quickly to the store", "ran quickly", "quickly" is the adverb here.

Another way to say "She ran quickly", why not say "She rushed", right?

It sounds more impactful, fires your imagination.

More precise, "She rushed to the store."

The buildings looked very big, so "very", "very", "very", "very".

This is the sign of bad writing.

It doesn't even matter who you ask.

Almost every writer will tell you, like, "Stop using'very', just use a better word that

means what you want to say."

Okay?

So, instead of "very big", "The buildings looked enormous", a more precise adjective.

You can even get creative, use more descriptive language, "The buildings towered over the

city."

So, get rid of "very", get rid of "quickly".

Just use more precise verbs, use more precise adjectives, use more descriptive language,

get creative.

Now, if you like this tip, and I recommended the book On Writing by Stephen King, he's

got a ton of amazing advice in that book, especially if you're interested in popular

fiction and you just want to, you know, know what goes on in the mind of Stephen King.

You can actually listen to it on Audible, and yes, I'm doing an advertisement for Audible

right now.

Check out the link attached to the video, and you can get a free audiobook, such as

On Writing by Stephen King, if you want to, you know, get a good writer's manual and learn

about his life and everything like that.

All right, so, Stephen King, how do you argue with, like, the most successful author, one

of the most successful authors in all of history?

You don't.

Limit your adverbs.

What's going on in that room?

Limit relative pronouns in adjective clauses.

Blah, blah, blah, grammar language, basically this means get rid of words like "that" or

"when" or "where" or "who" or "whom" in the middle of your sentences.

Not every time, sometimes it sounds good, so you have to think about the musicality

of the language as well, what sounds good to the ear, to you, but in most cases, these

relative pronouns, they just add fat to your writing.

If you want to make your writing leaner, tighter, smoother, I really recommend getting rid of

them.

So, no one knew the reason that she was there.

What sounds better?

No one knew the reason that she was there, no one knew the reason she was there.

It's just shorter, tighter, more compact.

He was not the person whom she had fallen in love with.

Perfectly fine sentence.

Good.

Now, if you want to make it sound a little tighter, he was not the person she had fallen

in love with.

Okay?

Next, was this the place that she had heard about?

Was this the place she had heard about?

And finally, Dinara recalled the day that they had met.

Okay?

Dinara recalled the day they had met.

She recalled the day they had met.

So, this is a way of making your writing tighter, basically, if you can eliminate these superfluous

words.

Usually, that is the main culprit, the main bad guy here.

So, this is something that some people agree with, others don't.

Think about the sentence, think about what sounds good to you, but in most cases, especially

if you are editing your writing in the end, getting rid of little words like this can

help to make your writing a lot smoother, clearer, and more precise.

So, what's going on in that room?

Ah, this one's one of my favourites, show, don't tell.

So, I'm going to give you one sentence here.

Aidan felt nervous as he reached for the jar.

When you are just trying to describe the emotions of a character, if you're trying to describe

the feeling, whether it's nervousness, happiness, sadness, whatever it is, don't just say they

felt sad, okay?

Show me, show me that they feel sad, show me that they feel nervous, show me that they

feel happy.

So, instead of saying Aidan felt nervous as he reached for the jar, why not say Aidan's

hand trembled, right?

In nervousness, you understand, oh, his hand is trembling, I wonder how he feels.

Aidan's hand trembled as he reached for the jar.

Aidan's chest tightened as he reached for the jar, okay?

Maybe he's having a heart attack here, you could argue that too, but his chest tightened.

Aidan felt short of breath, okay?

Like his breathing is labored, Aidan felt short of breath as he reached for the jar.

Or Aidan let out a shaky breath, right?

Think of a shaky breath, like he's reaching, his breath is shaking.

You can tell he's nervous, he's not comfortable, or he has clammy hands, right?

Or you know, he's sweating, whatever it is to show that he's nervous, he's not comfortable

with reaching for this jar, whatever is in that jar, all right?

So, Aidan let out a shaky breath.

There's more than one way to just say a character felt something.

Don't tell me they feel this way, show me that they feel this way, show your reader

that they feel this way.

There's more rooms down this way, huh?

Ah, okay.

Use a variety of sentence structures.

So, what do we have here?

Carol saw a star.

It was shining.

She was desperate to reach it.

She wanted to escape this world.

Carol knew she couldn't.

So, here we have just simple sentence, simple sentence, simple sentence, simple sentence.

A simple sentence basically has one subject, one verb, that's it.

You also have compound sentences and complex sentences that you can play with.

Now, again, it's not up to me to help you decide whether or not you think this is bad

writing or good writing.

I'm telling you that if you just read the same sentence structure again and again and

again and again and again and again and again and again and again, it can be kind of boring

for your reader.

So, let's look at a different way to say this.

Carol looked out her window and saw a star shining in the distance.

Basically we have a compound sentence with Carol looked out her window, and you're connecting

it to and saw a star shining in the distance.

It was a beacon of hope.

Simple sentence, but it's fine.

You're allowed to use simple sentences.

Yet, despite her longing to reach the star, Carol knew she was trapped.

So, here we have a complex sentence where we start with despite her longing to reach

the star, Carol knew she was trapped.

You can start a complex sentence with words like "while" or "when" or "during" or, you

know, hoping to reach the star, she whispered a prayer to the sky.

Something like that.

Okay?

So, use a variety of sentence structures, and that way you're keeping the reader on

their toes a little bit.

But if you're not comfortable playing with a variety of sentence structures, start simple.

You know, work on the things that I mentioned at the beginning of this lesson where you

are just focusing on precision of language, limiting your adverbs, etc.

Once you get comfortable with those things, you can kind of move on to this and decide

what, you know, sentence structures work better for you.

So, man, this hallway just keeps going.

There's more stuff over there.

Come on.

Just start, defer judgment, okay, okay, I can work with this.

So, when you are writing, one of the most difficult things to do is to start, honestly,

because you have so much ideas in your mind, and you think, "Oh, man, my ideas are terrible",

or "I don't know how to make these ideas come to life.

No one will ever want to read my work.

No one is ever going to find my stuff interesting."

Well, you need to get past those feelings.

It's very difficult sometimes, I understand, but you need to basically just put your fingers

on the keyboard, put your pen or pencil on the page, and just go, and defer judgment.

So, this means don't just, you know, write two sentences and say, "This is garbage.

I'm done", unless, you know, you really have a magical idea for your second idea, and you

want to go with that.

Make sure you finish it, though.

So, don't be so hard on yourself.

You know, there is this kind of idea of the writer, and sometimes people have this image

of someone sitting in a cafe, and, you know, writing their masterwork, and suffering, and

struggling, and everything, and it doesn't have to be that way, but there are also people

who just love the image or the idea of being a writer instead of actually putting in the

work, the practice, into the craft itself to actually, you know, become better at what

they do.

So, don't be hard on yourself, and remember that a bad finished story is always better,

okay, than no story at all, even if you write the worst story ever.

You can laugh at yourself when you look at it in five years, if you continue writing

every day, and say, "Okay, I've come a long way", and remember that everyone's first draft

is terrible.

Now, I put a star there because I'm sure there are some first drafts out there that were,

like, almost ready to go.

This is as close to the finished product as I'm going to get, but just remember, you know,

no one is perfect.

When you first start doing this, it is tough.

Just like learning anything, it requires practice, it requires commitment, but don't be so hard

on yourself.

Just start.

Just finish it, even if you think it's bad.

Get to the end, and, you know, then we go to, I think that's the final room.

We're going to go to the final room, guys.

We made it.

Edit.

Yep.

So, once you are finished writing whatever piece you are currently working on, whatever

story, first draft you've finished, it's really good to step away for a few days so you can

view it more objectively with fresh eyes when you look at it again, and then you can really

make, you know, a better assessment of whether what you wrote or not is good, is enjoyable,

uses the precision of language that we discussed, connects emotionally, has emotional resonance.

Because the real miracle of the writing process happens in editing.

No one, you know, there's some writers that took ten years to write a book, five years

to write a book.

I'm not saying you're going to write a book and take five years to do it, ten years to

do it, but I'm saying it's a process, and if you just think, "This is it.

This is my story."

After your first draft, chances are, I'm 90% confident, it's probably not good.

So, you need to go back, take a look at it, realize what works, what doesn't work, maybe

get a second set of eyes on it, and edit after getting some feedback.

And really, don't give up.

This is probably the best advice that I can give, the best tip of all.

I know it's hard.

Because you, like I said, you're writing a story, you're in the middle of it, I don't

know where this is going.

Instead of, you know, throwing it away, don't give up, just keep going, keep pushing.

Frozen 2, do the next right thing, okay?

That's what you need to do, figure out what the next step is.

And maybe it's not going to come to you that day, maybe it'll come two days later, three

days later, and you realize, "I know what needs to happen next in my story."

Whatever that thing is, don't give up, okay?

Edit.

And finally, get inspired.

Sometimes, you know, your creative juice is really low, and if you found this video inspiring

or helpful at all, another way to keep things going is Audible, because there are tons and

tons and tons of amazing writing, you know, writing tip resources in books like On Writing

by Stephen King, for example.

So, if you want to get inspired, and I know I'm pushing On Writing by Stephen King, that's

really the big one that a lot of people go for, because I really enjoyed it, it's read

by the author himself, and if you want to hear him talk about his life, his process,

how he views writing and everything like that, check out On Writing by Stephen King, read

by the author at Audible by clicking the link attached to this video.

All right, that's it.

So, if you want to test your understanding of this, if you want to review it, and maybe

do a little bit of practice, as always, you can check out the quiz on www.engvid.com.

While you're there, check out the wide range of English lessons that we offer, and if you

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Till next time, thanks for clicking.

How do I get out of here?

I need to write a story, figure that out, I'm trapped.