Tips for New Writers

Basic Tips

Before I start, I am in no way a great writer, I just have some tips that I think will help everyone, so hopefully you learn something from this.

So to start of, here are some basic tips for writing any type of story or fanfiction.

- Add as much detail as possible (just don't focus too much on irelevent information).

So add as much detail as you can so the reader can imagine the character, place, etc as well as they can. For this try and use words that you don't use often. 

Examples:

"Anna's new dress was pure white with pink ribbon around the sides". That was very plain and boring.

"I hated the new teacher, Mr. Hill. He always looked angry and just stomped around the school". Again not much detail and rather flat.

Try:

"Anna's new dress was lily-white, with glittering baby pink ribbon wrapped around her sides, left flowing down and fluttering in the wind." 

"I hated the new teacher, Mr.Hill. He was ill-humored and always had the same facial expression, his eyebrows downwards and a sour frown plastered on his sunken face. He just strode around the building." See how I didn't even need to use the word angry as you can tell he is grumpy.

To help with writing in more detail, look around you. If you have to describe a certain facial expression then make it yourself and see what your face does and find the best way to write it out. For example when you're angry, your nostrils flare and you have more wrinkles form.

 However don't focus them on irelevent information as that can get boring and it's not needed. For example if you are describing your character and a bit of their backstory, don't go into detail about everything. Their childhood, their school years, just write the stuff that will either be relevant later in the story or is important for the reader to get a better understanding of the character and their life so far. No one wants to read paragraphs on what they done at school or when they were younger if it's not to do with the story.

- Don't have your story move too fast or too slow, balance the pace of your story.

Don't pace your story too fast, for example if it is a romance book don't have them meet in chapter 1 and be married by chapter 10. Although don't have the whole book be about their life and then not having them meet until the very last chapter, that is where you have put too much irrelevant information in. Try and get a good balance by having things move fast if it's an action book and a lot is happening, you want the reader to be excited and intrigued. The slow parts would be describing something important or a big moment for the character, for example if it's a romance book then their first kiss.

- Don't have a trashy title.

By this I mean nothing too long , Or Like This. Have only the important words be capital and other things like "the, for, and" be in lowercase. Also don't have something like:

bad - 'The Time I Met My Husband'

good - 'Finding Love'

Just something short and sweet and not too basic.

- Don't have a trashy description. 

So this is the bit the reader reads before they click the story. You want this to be interesting and grab the reader's attention. You can either write a blurb or put a bit of the story in with a question at the end to get the reader's attention.  

A blurb is what most published books have and it's just a quick, short description of the book. If however you want to add a bit of the story as the description then make sure you:

1. Have it be an interesting part. For example an important conversation or if it's an action novel then make it the bit before or the part where the action starts so the reader is intrigued. 

2. Add a question at the end, "Will they end up together?", "Will he/she survive?". 

3. Don't make it too long to the point the reader has got too much information and doesn't need to bother reading the story. 

4. Don't make it too short so they are not getting anything exciting or any details so they will find it boring and scroll away.

- Last of all, research! 

This is mostly for fanfiction. If you are writing a fanfiction about someone, make sure you research them and watch interviews or videos of them so you can get a bit of knowledge about how they are. If they do certain things when they talk, maybe their face moves a certain way, or maybe they use a certain word a lot. Just make sure you are writing them as accurately as possible.

I hoped these helped you! I will be writing more soon but I just wanted to help with the basic stuff first. :)