How to get better at writing

How do you become a better writer, anyway? This is a question we see frequently. It’s fairly straightforward.

1. STUDY. Read books and articles on how to write.
   • What to do: Read some good books on the craft of writing. There are also good audiobook courses. We have a good list of learning resources on our Resources page.
   • What happens: You’ll learn how to recognize both good and bad writing when you read it. You’ll be able to study the work of others, and apply those lessons to your own work.
   • If you don’t: If you only write, without learning how, you’ll waste time generating a large quantity of low quality work. This work may be fixed in editing, but it’s more efficient to write the best first draft you can, and if you don’t study, you won’t know how to fix it anyway (or you will work very slowly.)
2. READ. Study the work of good writers, especially in the genre you want to write.
   • What to do: Studying high-quality writing (and not just any random thing) is crucial: check out the National Book Awards, or for Sci-Fi and Fantasy, the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, or any other relevant literary awards. Pay attention to what the writer is doing, and how it affects you as a reader. Remember, you are writing for your reader—not for yourself. Take notes if you want, and review them at the end.
   • What happens: Combined with a study of writing techniques, you will see how writers construct stories that entertain their readers. This will help you improve your writing by learning from others examples.
   • If you don’t: You’ll end up writing a story that doesn’t hold up to the quality most readers of your genre expect, and you’ll learn the craft of writing very slowly.
3. WRITE. Practice your writing skills, especially short stories.
   • What to do: You can start a huge novel project, but a better choice is usually a series of short works such as journal entries, short stories, or articles. Short pieces are faster to write and edit, so there is less risk of burnout, and you will be able to see your progress as you improve. Writing prompts can be helpful if you are not sure what to write about. We have thousands of writing prompts available via a chat bot on our Discord server (link at the top) as well as monthly short story themes.
   • What happens: Combined with the knowledge of how to write (from your study of the craft and the works of masters), you’ll be able to practice your new skills, and you’ll also accomplish your writing goals over time.
   • If you don’t: How can you be a writer if you don’t write? Also, the stories you want to write will never be written. You’ll have a great knowledge of the craft perhaps, but no actual work of your own.
4. EDIT. Most of the work of writing is actually editing.
   • What to do: You may edit as you go, or edit at the end, but most first drafts need a lot of editing. Give yourself permission to write bad first drafts, then polish them into decent second drafts, better third drafts, and so on. Most successful authors revise their work dozens of times before it is published. Editing or critiquing the work of others, and having your own work edited or critiqued, can help you see your blind spots. Studying, reading, writing, and editing (as above) will build your skills so that you can give good critique, and understand the critique that people give you. We have active writing and critique discussion on our Discord Server (link at the top), and often discuss our editing work. You might also want to read this post on editing.
   • What happens: You’ll massively improve the quality of your work by editing it. The more you edit, the better it will get, but only if you’ve spent the time studying and reading to learn how to create good stories.
   • If you don’t: Unless you are unlike every writer in history and somehow you write perfect first drafts, your work will probably be disappointing to readers due to typos, grammar problems, point-of-view issues, and other basic mistakes that are easy to miss when crafting your first draft.

That’s it, those are the steps! The rest is up to you: be disciplined and spend the time to build your skills—or don’t, and you won’t.

You don’t have to do those steps separately; in fact, you may get better results and find it more interesting to switch between the different tasks as needed. Just make sure not to neglect any of them and you’ll be on your way. Good luck!