How To Improve Your Writing In 10 Simple Steps

1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome to my Skillshare class. How to improve your writing in ten pretty easy steps. If you've never seen any of my Skillshare classes before, let me introduce myself. My name is Tasman Tasman Huntsman, to be exact, and I am an author. These are the books that I have published so far, but I also have a memoir in the works and potentially also a fantasy clifi crossover, nature writing, fiction world but I can't say Too much about these two things just yet. But yeah, writing is my entire life, and it has always been this way. Outside of being an author, I'm also a freelancer, and I have moved from Germany where I am originally from to the Azores Archipelago, which is an island group in the middle of the Atlantic that belongs to Portugal. So I've moved to a very extreme place. And I'm very happy here. If you want to follow that journey in particular, you can follow me on YouTube because I also have a YouTube channel is always linked in my profile, or if you just search for my name, it should come up. I've also been a skill share teacher now for a couple of years. I have five previously published skill share classes. And with that memoir book coming up, I will have published six books very soon. But there's always more to learn, of course. I do not believe that I am perfect or that I'm well rounded. I do not believe that this exists, and neither do you. Otherwise, you wouldn't here. If you didn't think that there was more to learn and more to evolve and how to get better and better and better by learning from the experiences of others, you wouldn't be here on Skillshare watching this class. So I'm glad we already have something in common, and I hope that the tips that I have learned along the way over the last ten, 15 years are going to help you on your writing journey. In today's class, I'm going to walk you through the ten most important lessons that I have learned on how to improve your writing, no matter what you write. Is it non fiction? Is it fiction? Is it poetry? Is it articles? It doesn't matter. It's just ten tips, how to improve your writing. And we are also going to do a few exercises along the way so you can implement those tips right away. So, we have a lot to do. Let's get going. 2. Class Project: Just like with every skill share class, there is a class project for you to fulfill in order to truly implement what you've learned in this course. It's, of course, up to you if you're going to do it, but I would love for you to participate in the class projects. I love the conversations we can have in those projects, and I can give you feedback or I can answer any questions if you have a so for this class project, I want you to follow the exercises that we are going to discuss throughout this course. There's a few exercises that we are going to do in between the lessons that I'm teaching you, and I would like you to write down what you have learned from those exercises. Like, put it into your own personal words. What are the lessons you have learned for your own writing based on the lessons I teach and the exercises that we are going to do? Then you're going to go down below, and you're going to share it under projects and resources. And if you'd like any feedback, if you have any questions, you can either also leave it there. You can leave me a piece of your writing, and I can look over it and maybe give you some personalized tips, what could be improved potentially, or you just tell me what your weak spots are, and we're going to talk about it. Or if you want more generalized advice, and you might want more advice also from other people doing this course or more feedback from other people, feel free to leave it in the discussions board that you also find down below. The discussion sport, I will also leave a question for all of you that I would love for you guys to answer. And that is, what is the best writing advice you've ever received? A writing advice that has completely changed your way of writing, maybe even your entire life. So please join me in the discussions tab down below. Now, let's get to lesson. Number one, identify your weak spots. 3. Lesson 1: Weak Spots: And number one, identify your weak spots. So you want to become a better writer, be it in non fiction, fiction, poetry, whatever it is that you are writing, you want to improve your writing. That's already great because we can always learn, we can always improve. But in order to do that, we first need to find out where even are those weak spots that we should be working on. Writing consists of many, many layers that are all interwoven and interconnected with each other. Grammar and vocabulary are one layer, but so is storytelling, plotting, creating tension or interest, character building, world building, relationships between characters, dialogue, subplot, potentially things like a mystery. Also depending on the genre that you write in, different challenges and different aspects of writing may rise to the surface that need more or less work. Of course, as writers or artists, creatives in general, we can always improve because our art grows with us as people. As we grow, grow older, we gain more experience both in the creative field, but also just in our life in general, we evolve also as artists, as people and as artists, and our experiences, lives deeply, deeply shape and influence how we work and how we write or how we create. We all grow and change over time, and each book, story, poem is its own journey. But I'm pretty sure you already have something specific in mind. Otherwise, you wouldn't have clicked on this class. You are already a published author, it might be helpful to look into reviews of your work. I know it's a big discussion for published authors, whether or not we should look into the reviews of readers and what we do with them. But I do believe that especially negative critique sometimes can be very constructive and can be very helpful because it shows us what readers did not connect with, and maybe we can then take it and not take it as the truth because tastes, of course, are very different. But we can take it and reflect back on our own work and see if we personally agree with the sentiment and the problems that other people have seen or encountered while reading. If you've not published anything yet, feel free to ask for help down in the project. Share your project, maybe and ask for help either from me or from fellow classmates, or ask your friends, family members, whoever you have available, who would be willing to read what you've written and give you feedback on what they think could be improved. If you have none of this available or if you don't have it available right right right now, just take a look at the list that I've already shared. Which points would you think you might need to improve? What does your gut tell you or maybe your experience already tells you which points are a little bit of weak spots for you? This might be a little bit painful at first, because none of us enjoy being confronted with things that we're not good at. We just want to be good at everything immediately all the time. Especially if somebody struggles with impostor syndrome, it's not very pleasant, of course, but it is a very, very important step. And I'm not saying this that you end up being very harsh on yourself. I'm saying this as a baseline, so we have something that we can work with. Don't be too harsh on yourself. Don't say, Oh, my God, I'm bad at everything. You're not bad at everything, and you're also not the worst in whatever it is that you might need some improvement in but we do need to reflect and we do need to find out which areas we can potentially get better at. Do not let impostor syndrome take over the wheel, but also be honest with yourself. Sit with this for a little while, look at the list, maybe write it down yourself, circle the things that resonate with you, maybe even take the list, sit with it for a couple of days, and then come back to this class if you need to take all the time you need and then we continue talking. Once you've identified your weak spots, either write them down or keep them in your head because we are going to come back to those in a bit. But first, we're going to look into a few more lessons before we come back to 4. Lesson 2: Immerse yourself: Lesson number two, immerse yourself. I'm 100% sure that you've heard this piece of advice before because many, many writers have given this advice before. In order to be a good writer, you need to be an avid reader. However, I would like to split this advice into three parts because that's a very vague piece of advice. You should read within your own genre. That is the genre that you are writing in, or maybe it's plural, the genres that you are writing in to understand them and get a feeling for them. To understand what you personally like and also what you do not like, what you would like to do differently than other maybe popular authors. I also think that you should read in any genre and look for patterns, writing styles, word choices, and themes that you enjoy and would like to implement into your own work or that you simply enjoy to read about. This way, you also passively learn more ways how to use the language that you're writing in. For me, for example, I write in two languages because I'm German. I do write in German, but I also write in English. So for me, it is absolutely crucial to read books in both languages, especially in English, because English is not my mother tongue. So there is always more for me to learn more ways to find expression within words and within the way we speak and write and tell stories that I've not been familiar with before. And that is really, really crucial that we just passively subconsciously learn how to use the language we have available and the language that we use to create. I also believe that you should read outside of your comfort zone and your own genre to understand the differences between them and maybe also find new interesting ways to improve your own writing. It doesn't even matter if you are planning on writing a genre bending book, but there are always elements within other genres and books that you maybe usually wouldn't pick up or that are very, very far removed from what you are writing that you can learn from even if that is just what you do not want to do. Truly immerse yourself within the literary world around you, not just the classics, not just within a certain type of book, read broadly, read widely, read a lot, and pay attention to what you enjoy and what you do not. This is true for all kinds of writing. Again, if it's non fiction, fiction, poetry, it doesn't matter, even if you are someone who literally just writes articles or writes for academia, it is still true. You do need to read broadly to realize what works and what doesn't, both for the popular audience, if that is what you're trying to reach, as well as yourself. What does align with you, your mission, your art? 5. Lesson 3: Patterns: Lesson number three, find the patterns. Just these first two pieces of advice of finding your weak spots and reading broadly, immersing yourself in books and stories and texts that align with you and don't align with you, then you already have a great foundation to improve your writing because subconsciously already, a lot of things are going to start happening, not from one day to the other, not from one night. It's not a one night change, but it is something that will gradually work. In the back of your head and will automatically make you a better writer with time. However, to speed up the process a little bit, we can try to find patterns. What do I mean by that? With patterns, I mean things that, for example, you do a lot in your writing. For example, let's take a random example. For example, you are a fiction writer, and you have figured out that you are always writing in first person only. Every story you start is me, I. Everything is in first person. That is a pattern, that is something that you do. And I want you to pause and stop and ask if these patterns that you do have if you have identified them, maybe they even align with your weak spots if they serve you. Is the first person narrative truly serving the story you're trying to tell? Or is it just really something that you love because you know you are good. You are the master of writing in first person, and you never want to write in any other perspective or in any other form of narration, because you know this is your path. Feel, listen how your heart reacts to these questions when you think about the patterns in your own writing. But finding patterns cannot only happen with our own work, but also with the work that we immerse ourselves in. As I've just mentioned in the second lesson, you need to read. You need to immerse yourself in books and stories and media in order and also in your own life, to be honest, in order to create good stories yourself. If you are someone who wants to speed up this natural process of things working in the back of your head, or you might be someone who just loves structures or a good list. I know there are very different types of writers out there. So that just go with the flow. That's more my personal approach and other people that really go with lists and hard plotting and planning. And for those people, is, I think, very beneficial to really look for the patterns within the works that you read. For example, if you do want to become a mainstream fiction author, let's say you want to write mysteries or thrillers, then you need to read, as I said, both outside and inside of your own genre and find the patterns of different genres of different authors. What are the beats of their story? What are the things that are recognizable? What are the things that really make a pop or really make a book really, really popular. You can write it down on a list. You can just think about it. Whatever works for you, personally, how you learn best and how you can implement those things best. But you can really find patterns. There is some authors out there that have the same beats of their story in pretty much every single book that they write, and it works for them. But maybe sometimes it also works against them because sometimes having the same story structure, for example, it's a great example. A lot of romance books get this same critique that they are built in the exact same way over and over, that the story structure is always the same with the third act, breakup, et cetera, et cetera. That sometimes this works against a genre, or it works against what you want to do in your writing, what you want to achieve. For example, if you want to be a romance author, let's say, and you want to become really, really popular, it might make sense for you to follow this structure because it has worked before it works for popular writers out there it is something that readers really enjoy. But if you say, Okay, I love romance books, I want to write romance books, but I want to do something different, you still need to identify the patterns and the beats and the things that work and the things that you see a lot and then decide, What am I going to switch up from that pattern? Because you cannot break up a whole genre because then you're suddenly outside of that genre. But you can change certain aspects of the patterns within genres, within stories. And that is true for both your own writing as well as the genres that you write in. Okay. Alrighty. The lessons in time for our first exercise. 6. First Exercise: Exercise number one. Let's be honest. It is time to put the first three lessons that we've discussed into practice. I want you to take a piece of your own writing. Go ahead, find a piece of your own writing. Be it something that you've written in the past or your current project. It doesn't really matter. Whatever sits right with you, maybe a thing where you know you have those weak spots that you know you would really work on, maybe take that piece of writing and come back. Maybe you've already identified the potential flaws in this piece of writing. Maybe you have not. You can do that as a first step in this exercise if you haven't done it already, or if you feel like that's something you need to do. It is not crucial. But it is something you can optionally do first. And now, I want you to go ahead and compare your writing or your project that you're working on with your favorite piece of storytelling, both within your own genre or type of text that you're writing. And outside of that, maybe you have a favorite book, a favorite short story, a favorite poem, and compare those two people. I know we usually always say, Don't compare yourself to others, and I do agree. However, for the sake of improving your own writing, comparison can be a powerful tool if it is done the right way. You do not want to carbon copy something that you love in order to become a good writer, because you need to find your own journey, your own words, your own stories. But it can be just super interesting to, for example, find the patterns. Go back to the list from the first lesson. I'm going to put it up here again and ask yourself which of these points are different between your writing and the piece of writing that you really enjoy both inside and outside of your genre. Now make a list of the differences. What is different between your story and the other story. Write it down. Once you're done, look at this list and look at the different points you've written down. Do you like the difference? Do you like that these things are different? Do you enjoy that your story sounds like this, but your favorite book sounds like that? Do you like that they are different? If, yes, that's amazing. Congratulations. You're on the best way of creating your own personal style and you're finding your own confidence as a writer, which is also very, very important along the way. If you do not like that they are different, if you realize, Ah, man, I wish my text was more like this in terms of, for example, subplot, mystery, whatever it may be, whatever things come up from the list, then you have identified your weakness and you know where to start. And you also have already a good example to work with the direction you want to go to, and then you can identify how can you transform your flaws into the direction of it becoming your strength. If by any chance, you find yourself in a situation where you realize, there's actually quite a few of these things from the list that I would really like to work on don't stress out, don't overwhelm yourself. You cannot work on everything at once. Also, maybe you're just having a bad day. Maybe you just need to take a step back from the Internet and your laptop and your writing and go outside on a walk and just let the day pass. Because sometimes we're just not in the right head space to review our own writing, and we just need to be honest with ourselves here. But even if you come back and you're having a good day and you're still like, mm, there's like five different things that I would really like to get better in, I would advise you that at least for this skill share class, circle one or two that you're going to focus on moving forward. Can always come back to this class. This class is always going to be here if you want to continue improving in the future, but you cannot work on everything all at once at the same time, especially because all of these things are interwoven and interconnected. So once you change one thing, the other things immediately follow suit. But for this class and moving forward into the next couple of lessons, I want you to focus on one or two of those weak spots. 7. Lesson 4: Words and Grammar: Lesson number four, grammar and vocabulary. One area that most of us can always, always improve on, no matter if you've just circled it or not, is grammar and vocabulary, especially if you're someone like me who has more than one language in their life, maybe even writes in more than one language. This is a crucial thing. And even if you're a native speaker of the language that you write and even if your grammar is on point because you're just fantastic with it. I know there's people like that out there. I'm not one of those people. But even if that is the case, that's amazing, first of all. And second of all, there's still always new words to learn. Nobody knows all the words that there are even in their own language. Of course, these kinds of things come with time, come with practice, come with reading, come with immersing yourself, come also with having conversations with other people, being open minded about different things and immersing yourself with the world around you, both the fictional and the nonfictional in books and outside of books. However, you could also consider doing online courses or specific training sessions for things like grammar or finding better vocabulary. Vocabulary, you don't even need to do any courses or you don't need a teacher to necessarily teach you because, again, a lot of it comes with reading widely anyway, but you can also actively seek out different words. An absolutely fantastic way to do that is looking up synonyms. Whenever you're trying to use a word that you think might put a little bit more of Look up synonyms. It's a great way. It is my personal favorite way of improving my vocabulary is looking up synonyms and looking up different possibilities of describing a situation or something. Here, you have a great example. For example, you want to describe that somebody is angry. But there are so many other different words that could describe this anger, even in a more specific and context based way. Is this person feeling let down? Is this person feeling bitter or mad or aggressive or frustrated? These are all words that still carry a bigger message than just the word angry. Angry is very bland and says very little about a situation. That doesn't mean that the word cannot be used or shouldn't be used. That's not what I'm saying here. I'm just saying that if you want to get more specific, or you want to mix things up because maybe you use the same words over and over again or you're just, like, lacking that little bit of m, it is very interesting to look deeper into it. You can also, for example, look further and think, Oh, is this person feeling aggressive, okay? But does that mean they're provoked? Are they provoked or are they just aggressive because they're, for example, sleep deprived? Do they feel disrespected? Do they feel betrayed? Do they feel numb in their anger? Do they just feel skeptical or annoyed, infuriated? There are so many amazing words out there. This graph here is a perfect example for this, how you can take emotions. And it's not only true for emotions. This works for a lot of words, specifically adjectives, but also verbs. It works very, very well to look into alternatives to describe something deeper. I've said, you don't only have this for adjectives. You can also use this for verbs. For example, if you wanted to use the word walking, very standard work. He walked to the shop. Did he walk or did he hike to the shop? Is it a very long way? Uneven road? Maybe up the hill? Is he marching? Maybe he's a soldier. Is he strolling? Is he frolicking? Is he traveling, running, trotting, bouncing, prancing, striding, limping, pacing? There's so many options here of how you can describe someone's walk by simply changing up the verb and you're immediately improving your writing because not only are you conveying more message in less words and being more precise with what you use, but also you've just polished up your vocabulary repertoire. This way, your writing immediately becomes better and more powerful. And another way to do that is looking at the wonderful golden thing of show and tell, which will discuss in the next 8. Lesson 5: Show AND Tell: Lesson number five, show and tell. A very, very common, well known rule in writing is show don't tell. This means that, for example, the adjectives that we have just looked at in the past lesson, shouldn't exist at all. Don't use adjectives like angry or anything like that. What this rule means is to describe something without being too direct with showing what a person is doing, which implies how they're feeling or which implies whatever else is going on, what you are trying to convey. An example would be, instead of writing, she was relieved, you could write. And without another word, she opened the door, stepped out into the rain and began to dance a white smile on her face. However, is this really the golden rule? Let's talk about it. Show Don't tell can be an absolutely fantastic role to improve your writing, especially while editing and especially when you're just getting started on a text, be it the first draft or you're just starting out with writing in general? Because it really challenges you to use different ways of expression of finding new and creative ways to describe something. It also is a great lesson in trusting your readers, which is something that a lot of writers struggle with, myself included, is to trust that the reader is able to puzzle and piece things together without it being served on a silver platter. So, in a way, it is also an exercise of trust. And again, it is a fantastic rule to just improve your writing. If you reread something that you've written before when you're in the editing stage and you are trying to look at it with the lens of Show Don't tell. It's a great way to immediately find some spots or, like, for example, find repetitions of words and all of these kinds of things. However, I personally believe that you shouldn't follow this rule all of the time. I do believe that the rule should be show and tell, not show don't tell. Show and tell. You need to find a healthy balance. Because if you only show, the writing style gets very, very flowery and convoluted. And in some genres, non fiction and fantasy, for example, this simply does not always work. Sometimes when you, for example, invite the reader into a fantastical fictional world, you need to explain things to them. You don't have to info dump everything at once. You can do that within dialogue or reveal things bit by bit over time, but only showing will only confuse the reader. These are just examples. I do believe that in whatever genre you write, you should find a balance. I don't think there's anything wrong with using, for example, the word angry or the word happy. As long as it is not the only way you describe someone's emotions, and you do have moments of showing how somebody feels like or using more specific adjectives to describe the situation, the context, and the actual emotion they're feeling, you are good to go. Depending on what genre you write in and also on your personal writing style that you want to craft and that you want to practice, you need to find your own very personal balance between show and tell. Don't feel pressured to only show because of that big rule of show don't tell. I don't think that is very healthy because we also don't want all the books to sound the same, right? We do not want to have all the books follow all the same rules and written in the exact same way. So whatever writing advice, that's not even true, only true for show, Don't tell. Whatever writing advice you come across, listen to it, reflect on it, see if there's something you can take from it, and leave the rest. For show and tell, play with both, experiment with both, and find your own personal balance for the story that you want to tell. 9. Lesson 6: Reduce, delete, kill: Lesson number six, reduce, delete, kill. A very important step of becoming a better writer, regardless or genre is to edit your writing. But what exactly does that actually mean? Oftentimes, we tend to overexplain things to our readers. This can make a text boring, and it can drag a story and even an article out. If you're an aspiring book author who's seeking to be traditionally published, this can even be one of the reasons you might struggle to find an agent or a publisher because debut authors are usually ones that have shorter, more concise texts because that's what publishers prefer. The less pages, the less cost, less risk with a brand new author. So it's very important to edit your story down. Also keep in mind that your readers invest the most precious resource that they have for your work, and that is their lifetime. Make it worth it. But what does this mean exactly? That means that sometimes you need to be a little harsh to your manuscript. I know this can be difficult. I know our texts are our babies, especially if we've been working and writing them for a very long time, this can be very difficult. But sometimes you just need to delete or at least rewrite or rephrase certain aspects of the book. This might be just unnecessary words. It might be whole paragraphs. It might even be a whole chapter. And sometimes it can even mean to kill one of your characters if you're writing fiction. If you're writing non fiction, please do not. Do such a thing. Even though you can't do it in the metaphorical sense, we will get to that. There's this very, very popular saying slash piece of writing advice that is called Kill Your darlings. It is often referred to as a tool in storytelling to make a story more interesting and unexpected and to rise tension. It is also often used as a plot twist device in fictional stories. The probably most popular and most extreme example of this is, of course, Game of Thrones. How many characters were first introduced as the new hero, the new main character to then suddenly be ended off in an unexpected way. However, you can also see this piece of writing advice as a way to describe that sometimes as writers, we need to kill off certain parts of a book that might be dear to us, that might be our personal darlings, but that are hindering the full potential of our story. I can use my own personal example here very, very well. As I've mentioned in the beginning, I'm currently in the process of making a memoir of me moving from Germany to the Azores a thing and make that into a book. And I'm in the middle of this process, and I've been working on this particular book for five years, ever since I first came. To the Azores. So it's been a very, very long time in the making. It is truly my baby. The whole book really means a lot to me. And in the first draft, I described every detail. Every little detail, every person I met, every situation I was in. But recently, I took a step back from the manuscript for a while, and when I came back, I realized I had to edit it down. I had to kill my darlings, and I had to delete huge parts of the book or rewrite certain parts of the book. I completely rewrote, actually, the entire book because I realized that I had basically written a diary. And while there is a certain charm to that, my life in those years that I'm describing in the book has been really chaotic. And while a lot of situations and also some people have been really dear to me and have really changed my life and my journey, they're not always relevant to the reader. They might have been relevant to me, and they might even be relevant in the sense that I've made decisions based on this and this and that. But if I were to explain every single situation and every single person in excruciating detail, the reader would just be bored because they are picking up this specific book to hear my story and how I ended up from Germany on the Azores on these islands. That's what the readers are going to want to read about. They don't need to know that I was on a trip somewhere completely different at sometime in the middle of it, and then I had a realization there that slightly changed the outcome of a decision I would have probably made regardless. Do you understand what I mean when I describe this? I needed to make some choices, and I needed to see my story from the lens of the reader of what would confuse a reader? What would a reader feel like might have been unnecessary. And what would have diverted the focus of the book away? What would have influenced the message of the book in a negative way? And how can I still write an authentic story, in this case, also, of course, because it's memoir, it's non fiction. It's my own personal story. It still needs to be authentic. It still needs to make sense. It still needs to be truthful. So I really needed to find a balance between those two things. But I did realize that I had to delete some things because they just don't belong into the book. They belong into my life, but they don't belong into the book. So I had to kill my darlings. What I'm trying to say here is do not be afraid to reduce or delete your writing. If it's easier for you, do it like me, keep your first draft untouched somewhere. So you can always revert back to them and always reread them if you have to or could potentially take those paragraphs back into the story if one day you decide, Ah, I would have liked to include it anyway. So save your first draft somewhere. It's very, very valuable, both for you also to look back on to see how far you've come, but also sometimes to just have like a file saved somewhere in case you regret deleting something or changing something. But in your new draft in the edited drafts, do not be afraid to reduce the amount of words, to reduce the amount of characters to kill off characters or parts of the story that are dear to you or that might even be dear to the reader in order to propel the story forward and to really get the reader hooked and excited and not bore them to death. Again, they're gifting you their most important resource in life. Their time. You really need to value the reader's time. 10. Lesson 7: Build up: Lesson seven, build up. This is probably going to be the most unpopular of these lessons today. And because we all hate to hear it. But practice makes perfect. The only way to become a good writer is to write. The more you write, the more you immerse yourself. The more you learn. The more you try, the more you fail, the better you will become with time. Writing good stories is like building up some muscles. You might take protein powders. You might follow a specific regime. You might change your nutrition, but that does not spare you from actually training and working out again and again and again and again and again. You need to build that muscle. You need to build that writing potential again and again, piece by piece, day by day, word by word. That is why so many writers will tell you to write every single day. Even if it's just ten words or if it's 10 minutes, but there's a lot of writing advice out there that says you need to write every single day of your life. I personally slightly disagree with this sentiment. I personally like to write very often, but I also like to do other things to get more creativity, but that is a different discussion. But you need to find what works for you. Maybe you're one of those people who needs to write literally every single day at dot 7:00 A.M. And that is your routine, and that's what you stick to, and that is what works for you. You're someone who has, like, writing bursts, for example. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that you write often and a lot as much as you can in whatever way works for you. As long as you consume media mindfully, just like we've discussed in the previous lessons, and you do write as often as you can, you are all good. You will build up your writing muscle with time and practice, and sometimes it will make you feel good, and sometimes it will make you feel horrible afterwards. And that is all very, very, very normal. But you need to keep on pushing. You need to keep showing up to build up to being a good writer. So let's do the first step, which is always the hardest together. Let's practice. 11. Second Exercise: Exercise too. Let's do better. Okay, what have we learned so far? We've identified our weak spots. We have realized that we need to engage with other forms of media and storytelling. We've also improved our vocabulary. We've talked about show and tell, and we have discussed that sometimes we just need to delete some of those things that we've written before, even when it hurts. But now I want you to put these tips into practice. I want you to take a piece of your own writing. This can be a chapter of a book you're working on. This can be a short story, a poem, an article, whatever it may be, whatever you have at hand. If you have it digitally, don't forget to, you know, save the original draft somewhere and take this piece of writing. Now, I want you to keep the things in mind that we've just discussed, and I want you to let go of the manuscript. Let go of that attachment. I know it's your baby. I know you've put a lot of work into it, and it's really hard to let go of the attachment. But you need to detach yourself from the manuscript. Become the reader. This has been written by somebody else. What do you notice? Put some words use rephrasing, maybe? Is there a stronger, more meaningful word you could use? Is there anything that you might be able to delete without hurting the story or maybe even to improve your story? For example, do you have a sentence like this? The florist went into the back of her shop to look at the flower delivery she had received. The customers were waiting upfront, but she needed a moment to calm herself down. She was really angry. How could her sister, her own flesh and blood, do this to her? It's a solid sentence, but I think we can do better. As you can see, I've deleted some things and I've rewritten a tiny bit. And now the sentence goes like this. The florist went into the back of her shop to look at the newest delivery. Her customers were waiting, but she needed a moment to calm herself down. How could her sister do this to her? This is already a lot shorter and a lot more concise, and you still got the same message than you did with the first one. You don't need to say that it is a flower delivery because, of course, she is a florist in her florist shop. Of course, the newest delivery is probably going to be flowers. You do not need to have the word flower in there. It's basically a word repetition almost. And that she has received the order, you can just change it into the newest delivery because she probably gets flowers delivered every single day because it's a florist shop. Then her customers were waiting. It is her shop, and they are, of course, waiting for her to come back in front of the shop because it's her flower shop. But you can make that a lot shorter with her customers are waiting. And you don't need to say that she was angry because you already said that she needs to calm down. And by saying, how could her sister do this to her you are already golden. You are already showing that she is upset with her sister for doing something bad. You do not need those extra words. It's already much more concise. You're still having the same message. I want you to take some time for this exercise. This might take a little while. This might take a few read throughs. What helps me a lot is to print out something and really do it by hand. I personally see things in a new perspective when I have it in paper in front of me, maybe you're different, do whatever works for you, try different things, sit with this a little bit, go through it a few times. And see what you come up with. Correct the things you stumble upon, delete, rephrase, change things. Don't worry about it. You have your backup file safe. You're all good. If you regret this choice later, you have that backup file. You're all good. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Delete the things, cross them out. You have the backup. It's all good. Let go. Delete it. You are the master of your own craft. I can give you nothing but ideas how to refine it, but in the end, you are the one in control. You are the one making decisions. Make good ones. 12. Lesson 8: Habits: And number eight, develop habits. Now that you've worked on your manuscript, you've already improved your writing, you might be wondering, how can I keep this up? I want to continuously improve my writing. We've already discussed that you do need to train that writing muscle. You always need to improve. You always need to work on your writing. But how do you keep that up? The best way of implementing this into your writing life is to develop habits. As I've already mentioned, there's this big famous writing advice to write every single day, which I don't fully subscribe to because most writers cannot live off of writing alone. We have a lot going on in our lives, and sometimes you just need to, you know, take care of other things before you're writing. I'm also not a big fan of evoking guilt in someone for missing a day, which is another reason why I'm not a huge fan of this advice or this, like, rule to follow. But unless this is something that really works for you. If you are someone who just needs a very, very strict daily routine, forget what I just said, right every single day. If you are not that person, if you are a bit different, for example, like me, you need to find a way to implement habits that work for you. Because you write because it gives you joy. Don't forget that. You need to keep the joy while improving yourself. Instead of following this very, very rigid rule, I would urge you to develop a writing habit that really, really works for you and your life and your circumstances and what you want to achieve with your writing, because, of course, some of us really just write for fun, and others of us write because they want to become writers or because they already are writers because it's a part of their career or because it's their full career. Finding this habit might take some trial and error, but that's okay. You still have time. It's all good. Just try out what works for you. Maybe you're also someone who needs one month of writing, one month of editing, one month of resting, for example, or you make a schedule that you write 1,000 words every single weekend, or you write at least three days a week. That's your goal. At least three days a week, I'm going to work whenever those three days are whenever I have the time to mingle it into my week, but three days a week, I'm going to write. Choose whatever works for you that combines discipline and also reduces the pressure of feeling of having to perform. What I will say, though, that you should be writing every single day, not actually writing writing, but doing something that is related to writing. Read a few pages in the book. Journal, write a diary, hear a song, really listen to the lyrics, choose the next book you want to read. Think about different words. Here, when somebody's having a conversation, open yourself up to the world and do something related to writing, even if it's very abstract and very far removed. But allow yourself to have writing in your head at all times and every single day. This way, you're already working and improving your writing by just listening to the world around you and being open to it and thinking about. 13. Lesson 9: Creativity: Lesson number nine, stay creative. Staying creative is probably the most crucial part of being a writer and maybe also the trickiest one because you do want to create something unique while also sticking to what you know and staying creative sometimes can be really difficult, especially when you're trying to develop a habit or you're trying to find success, trying to replicate success. It can be very difficult to really stay creative and to also keep the personally, I found two things that really helped me stay creative, but please feel free to leave your suggestions of staying creative throughout your life, both in writing and just in life in general, down in the discussion boards below. The first thing that really helps me is to live an authentic life, and the other one is to try new things. Let's talk about the first point. What do I mean by saying live an authentic life? I have found that you really need to live in order to tell good stories. That doesn't mean that you need to be an extroverted adventurer out there. It's great if you are, but if you aren't, that's not a problem. That's not what I mean. I mean that you truly invest in living a life that is good to you and a life that feels right and authentic to you and that does invite creativity into your life, maintain relationships, have conversations about life and love and pain. Listen to others when they tell their story. Be mindful of what is going on around you, both in the human and non human spaces. Notice the little details like how your one friend loves or how your favorite tree is twisted. Go outside into nature or interact with the city if you live urban. Watch people on the subway and notice how the sand feels different on every beach. Do things that make you feel alive in the best way. These observations and experiences will lay the foundation of good writing. If you have experienced something that immediately means that you are better prepared to write about it. However, I will say though, if you are a horror crime author, this is not true for you, do not go out of your way to actually experience those things. You guys have to make do with research. But even for crime horror authors, it is important to notice how, for example, the light in a room changes the mood, how fear actually feels like, where it sits in the body, what it does to your body. How do goose bumps actually feel like? And how does the wind sound in certain areas in certain circumstances? You still need to be aware and go outside and live a good life. Just please don't try to experiment with those horror elements, but I trust that you won't. The second point to try new things is also really important. This is both true again for just life in general, but also for your writing. Try to write in a new genre. Try to write in a different narrative tone, for example. Not every piece of writing that you create needs to be published. I know we all live in this age where everything is content or everything needs to be monetized, but that's not true. That's not actually true that you need to do that. You can just write something for yourself just to experiment with something. Maybe take inspiration from other writers or look of what you've been missing in the literary world and go from there as a stepping stone. I know trying new things sometimes takes a bit of courage, but we're going to talk about that in the next lesson. 14. Lesson 10: Don't be afraid: Lesson number ten, don't be afraid. The last lesson I would like to talk about today to become a good writer is to not be afraid. I know putting your work out there can be so scary sometimes, especially when you realize that there are certain areas that you can still grow in that you can still improve. But you cannot let fear step into the way of your success. Cannot stick to the same way of writing the same story over and over again just because you're afraid of stepping outside of your comfort zone or maybe making a mistake or maybe not being great at something at first. If you are afraid of showing your work to the world, if you're afraid of making mistakes, if you're afraid of not being the best at it right from the get go, you will never be a good writer because the only way to be a good writer is to put yourself out there and to improve as you go and to be courageous. But how do you overcome the fear if it just sits inside your chest? First, remember that you can write for yourself and yourself only. There might be a lot of reasons like social media or writing being your job that make it harder to remember that not every single piece you write needs to be published or shared and be good enough. You can just write for yourself. Even with a pen and paper or your Notes app on your phone or on a typewriter or whatever works for you, nobody needs to see but yourself. You can of course also participate in writing challenges or for example, writing classes like this one here on Skillshare. You're already doing the right thing. Places like Skillshare are a great place for having low stakes for your writing and still sharing and still getting feedback and still learning if you want to dabble in nature writing specifically or poetry, actually specialized classes for those two. Alternatively, if you do not want to experiment with new genres or new forms of writing, you can still stay in your lane and simply refuse to get comfortable in it. You can always challenge yourself to get better with the tools that we've discussed today and improve what you have and get better, refine it more and more and more. As long as you don't get lazy, you're good to go. So let's not get lazy. Let's have one more exercise before we wrap this up. Let's go. 15. Third Exercise: Size three, let's grow. We've just talked about how fear can really hold you back or you cannot be afraid, but also how habits really, really are beneficial for improving your writing. Let's not just put this off for another day. Let's start today. For ten days, be it ten days in a row or ten days within the next month. I want you to do something writing related outside of your comfort zone. This can be to delete unnecessary parts of a manuscript, read a book in a genre you usually don't pick up, write a short story about that unusual idea spooking around in your head for a while already that you've been too afraid to really explore. Let's be honest, we all have those. You can write an unlikable main character, whatever you feel called to do, I want you to work on this for ten days and you're starting today. You're going to finish this class and then you're going to start those ten days. 16. Final Thoughts: Oh, final thoughts. Wow. We have covered a lot today. I'm very proud of you guys for sticking to the end and for sticking with this class and doing the exercises and starting to improve your writing. I hope you found some good tips. Again, whatever works for you, take it, whatever doesn't leave it. That's the best writing advice actually out there is when you encounter writing advice from me or from anybody else, take what works for you, leave what. I hope that there were some good tips for you, be it to identify your weak spots to truly immerse yourself in ways to get better in finding a balance between show and tell in killing off and reducing things in your story, I just really, really hope that you found some of these tips today helpful for you in your writing journey. I hope that you stepped out of your comfort zone, even just a don't forget to leave your thoughts on the exercises and the lessons that you've learned for your personal journey in projects and resources and to join the discussions in the discussion board. I'm also available for any questions if you want to see more of me, I have multiple other skill share classes. Most of them are about writing, please feel free to follow my profile and check out my other classes. Also, if you liked this class, I would be more than happy to receive a review from you guys. I always love to see those. If you want to see more of me outside of writing classes, you are, of course, very welcome to check out my YouTube, my Instagram, and of course, my books. If you want to check out my books, that's always amazing. I hope we see each other in my next class. Goodbye.