Writing Well

Read.

Before we jump into novel writing specifics, you gotta be reading. It's a no-brainer for those who love stories well enough to write them, but, well, apparently not for others.

To get good at writing, you need to see how it's done well, how it's done badly, and the difference between the two. You need to know what is being published now, what's been done to death, and what's never been seen. You need to be able to walk up to a book seller (aka, the person who runs your local bookstore) and tell them precisely where your book would go on their shelf, and why they should give their valuable, limited real estate to your words for a few days, weeks, or months.

To be a successful author, you need to read. A lot. Some of the books on your must-read list include:

Classics. There are many, and you need to read as many of them as you can. The people who started your genre. The people who started any genre. You need to discover the reasons why Dickens, Tolkien, Brontë, and Woolf created such a following that entire industries have risen from them. Why they still inspire people. The classics aren't just old books everyone has heard of. They're good books everyone has heard of. So go read them.

New releases (in genre). So if you're into space opera, or paranormal romance, or mystery thriller, or whatever it is you aim to write, you need to know what's been published, say, in the last five years. Because pretty much any huge, hot trend that they are making Hollywood blockbusters of, you can guarantee the publishing industry has tapped that well. So you don't try to sell dystopian after Hunger Games and Divergent and Wool and City of Bones and (list goes on) have hit the bestsellers lists. You need to sell them something new, and if it's a tapped genre, you'd better have such a fresh take on it that it surprises, yes surprises, editors and your eventual readers.

New releases (out of genre). Speaking of knowing your current genre, it's really a good idea if you know what's going on outside of your genre too. Plus, you can learn a lot from different genres, even different authors. Read a mystery and try to figure out how the writer plotted the book. Read a biography to see how reality can be represented in prose. Expand your knowledge in books. Be adventurous.

Peer critiques. Finally, you've got to get your work out there and critiqued by other people doing the same thing you are--trying to write stories that get read. The great thing is, by critiquing other's work--in a fair, honest way--you learn a lot about storytelling. It's one of the greatest teachers, critiquing.

So that's it. Go read a book. If you love the writing, try writing like that author, try his style on for size. Then go write your own story based on that style. Read another book, try a different style. It's all training for writing your own bestseller.