How to Be a Good Writer: A Young Author’s Guide
A person’s life is made up of many stories. Some of them are real, some of them over time and under the influence of imagination grow fictional details. Some you want to keep, others you want to tell. There are people who can’t help but tell stories, and the need grows into a desire to become a writer. It doesn’t matter what age you started writing. The path of a writer is made up of steps, which we’ll talk about in this article.
Who is a writer: features of the profession
A writer is someone who writes. It is not at all necessary to write only literary fiction, as the dictionary of the Russian language S. I. Ozhegov suggests to do. There are other ways to express yourself as a writer, such as non-fiction – non-fiction, autofiction – a literary movement that combines facts with fiction, copywriting or commercial writing, screenwriting, journalism. Whichever authoring path you choose, you’ll have to pump up the necessary knowledge and skills so that any writing distances are up to you. We’ll tell you how to become a good writer.Hard and soft skills of the modern author
Today, to become a truly readable author and stay afloat, it’s not enough just to know how to write. You need to be aware of trends, continually educate yourself, take into account the demands of publishers, the topics readers care about, the agenda. In our checklist, we’ve tried to take into account the main qualities and skills you need to pay attention to:
- Education and development
To fully immerse yourself in the profession, you can get higher education at the Literary Institute of A. M. Gorky, majoring in Literary Creativity, or at the Moscow State Institute of Culture, majoring in Literary Work. Every provincial institute of higher education teaches a degree in philology. This will help you understand the means of artistic expression, understand what stylistics, vocabulary, phraseology are, and how to properly formalize thoughts into words and create images. If you don’t want to go that far, writing courses can help, where you get basic knowledge and can practice different genres. Books for writers will help keep your knowledge level up. Learn what to read for the aspiring author. - Literacy and Vocabulary
There is an opinion that a writer doesn’t need to be literate, that there are proofreaders and editors to correct mistakes. We don’t share that approach. A writer is a word person; you have to be literate to own a word. Literacy is like a muscle, a pumpable skill. In addition, before you put the text on display, you can check yourself with useful services, such as Spelling and Text.ru.
Reading books, whether fiction, non-fiction or encyclopedias, helps you to enrich your vocabulary. The richer the vocabulary, the easier it is to express thoughts through writing.
- hard work and discipline
First, talent is not enough to become a writer. Second, procrastination is just around the corner-even famous writers suffer from it. If writing is a job for you, not a hobby that you can give up without regret, treat it accordingly. Any job requires effort and diligence. Develop writing discipline by developing a habit of writing a certain number of words every day. What it will be is up to you. Stephen King, for example, writes at least 2,000 words every day. Daily practice will help you sign and turn writing into a skill. - patience and stress tolerance
Writing is a long-distance race. It takes patience to get to the finish line. Especially since after the next finish line a new start awaits. Patience comes in handy not only in the process of working on the work. The road to fame and reader acclaim can also be long.
Stress tolerance will come in handy when dealing with critics and getting your first rejections from publishers. Unfortunately, that’s part of writing. Clive Staples Lewis received 37 rejections before the first book of The Chronicles of Narnia was published. Stephen King and Carrie was rejected 30 times by publishers, and Joan Rowling managed to find a publisher for Harry Potter on her fifteenth attempt.
How to take the first step
You sense potential and are ready to start telling stories. Maybe you’ve read a few books or taken a couple of courses, but you’re still at a loss.
To take the first step, you need to understand:
What genre do you want to work in?
Read our articles on how to write a children’s book, science fiction, detective, fantasy, and fantasy story. You may be able to juggle genres later on, but it’s best to pick something basic for the first time.
How much time are you willing to devote to writing
If writing books is not your main job – learn how to build writing into your daily schedule. If you’re ready to do only writing – develop a work discipline, plan your workload, and make a schedule to stick to as you work on your manuscript.
How not to quit in the middle
It often happens that an author starts a manuscript with excitement, in a hurry to put to paper everything he has fantasized about, in the heat of the moment he reaches the middle. That’s where the test awaits novice writers. Routine work exhausts, the book does not seem interesting, the author begins to torment doubts and wants to quit. And at the same time, try to implement another story that comes to mind. Do not let the work become just another drop in the ocean of unfinished manuscripts. Make an effort to finish what you started. If all authors left books unfinished, we’d have nothing left to read.