How to become an outstanding writer

This is a guest article by Nancy Lin. If you want to submit a guest article of your own be sure to read the guest article guidelines.

An outstanding writer strives to become a perfectionist and never settles for second best. For top writers, every paragraph, whether it’s part of a novel, a short story, a shorter literary piece or even a poem, must be perfect.

It’s not just the best use of grammar and vocabulary that a writer needs to pursue but it’s how the text unites to create a unique flow of words that captivates the reader.  Once the writer has achieved an individual style it will become easily recognisable by the writer’s followers.

There are many helpful writing improvement resources

Today, you can make your writing work for you far more easily than for past writers, as you have the advantages of the presence of online resources to read and understand and gain ideas to help you put pen to paper.

Famous writers like Robert Louis Stephenson travelled far and wide, even as far as the South Seas, to gain inspiration for his table top novel Treasure Island. You don’t need to do this as the internet provides all the inspiration you need to create a masterpiece.

All you have to do is focus and set targets.

Once you have your first short story, novel or book of poems published, you are on the road to success and fame and there will be no looking back. Your creativity might not just evolve through what you find but you may have this unique ability to be imaginative and create vivid situations which may be real or imagined.

Some of the skills of an outstanding writer are:

• Great ideas, theme and plot
• Appropriate use of vocabulary
• Perfect grammar
• Stringing together phrases and sentences in a perfectly crafted manner.

Never settle for less than your best

No writer ever settles for anything but the best and is continually on the move for novel ideas and ways of saying things, and this includes seeking out ideas to improve skills as well as finding new and exciting themes. For the creative writer a wealth of ideas can be found here. Besides, this article could add some inspiration too.

How to improve writing skills to become an outstanding writer

There are a number of ways to improve your writing skills, depending partly on what type of writing you like to write and who your intended readership is. Before you come up with your first masterpiece you should consistently practice your writing skills. One way of doing this is to access the types of novels that interest you, read them thoroughly and pick up the style that you feel comfortable with and are able to use to improve your own writing.

Developing theme and plot

If you are intending on publishing short stories or a novel, theme and plot development are important.

You have to try to perfect a plot that will attract your readers and urge them to continue reading. Suspense is often an attraction amongst readers too.

Once you have gone over and over your plot, you have to carefully choose your characters and develop vocabulary that will sharpen their personalities and behaviour so that your readers can truly imagine their appearance and roles in your plot and story. Try this useful resource for learning about theme and plot.

Produce a mini short story first

Experiment with short story writing first. Develop your introduction, plot and conclusion. Some skilled writers leave the ending open to the reader’s imagination. Some readers may even dwell over possible endings to a short story for days after they have finished reading. Think about that idea when you are writing your first short story.

Improving your vocabulary and grammar

There are many online tools available to help you improve your vocabulary. You may think you don’t have quite the right word and a handy way of looking for the word that fits is to use an online thesaurus. You simply punch in a word and out pops a string of possibilities that are similar to the original word. You may even find some words you haven’t used before that just fit your style.

Peer reviewing

Once you have started to complete some short writing pieces a good way to find out how good they are is to involve yourself in peer reviewing. That is, ask friends, work colleagues and relatives to read through your work and make comments. This gives you a great starter for beginning an improvement strategy.

You may even join a local writers group where you can take part in appraising others and the participants offering their comments about your work too.

Online writing services help to improve writing

Depending on the length of your first creative writing piece there are certain things you need to do before sending it to the publisher.  The main ones are putting your writing through an online plagiarism tool, editing and thoroughly proofreading your text.

While you have been reading and researching for ideas you may have mistakenly copied sentences from other books or even used names for characters that other authors have used.

Copying chunks from other works or taking other writer’s ideas could lead to copyright issues which can penalise your reputation. You can use plagiarism checker  and cliche finder to analyze your text, to search for any duplication on the World Wide Web and to avoid the clichés. It helps you to receive a genuine and treasured writing piece that would be interesting to read.

And if you want to immerse yourself in writing process and to resist distraction, try to use focusing tool. Sometimes all you need to write is to feel yourself out of this planet, forget about rush and enjoying your favorite music.

Once you have established that all your work is original you can move into the editing and proofreading stage.  This can be quite a time consuming process depending on the word count and you may find some ideas on employing a suitable professional editor and proof reader here. All words must be spelt correctly and no words should be missing in the text.

All readers like to read a text that is perfectly written so that their immersion in it is not interrupted. It is possible to find an experienced author who will scrutinise your writing and make useful comments on ways to make improvements.

The successful writer’s secret weapon

Once you have achieved success in your writing, you will discover it is to do with you finding that perfect match of theme, plot and character development. It is this perfect match that will draw readers away from everyday reality and into the new world you have created for them.

They won’t want to put your book down and as soon as they have finished reading they will be searching online for another title. You are now destined for success. Your writing will improve in leaps and bounds as success begins to knock on your door. Never go for second best – always strive to be the best!

Author’s Bio:

Nancy Lin, a young and enthusiastic freelance writer, is fond of English language and literature. In her spare time she enjoys writing about writers’ life, educational problems and social issues. Cares about global problems and want education be open for everyone.

Twitter: @nancylin90

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy6lin