Whether you’re dreaming of becoming a bestseller or simply enjoy writing for the sake of it, perhaps you’re looking for ways to improve your skills.
You could buy a how-to book, take an online course, or join a writing group. But what better way to learn than hearing from the best of the best?
Over the years, some of the finest fiction authors around have offered pearls of wisdom to aspiring writers – from modern commercial giants like Stephen King to classic Russian masters like Anton Chekhov. Below, we’ve pulled together some of our favourites.
1. Stop while you’re going well – Ernest Hemingway
For someone who considered it bad luck to talk about writing, Hemingway dished out lots of useful tidbits over his lifetime. However, one piece of advice he mentions repeatedly is to end your writing session while things are still going well. He says…
“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel, you will never be stuck.”
But this is only part of his advice. ‘Papa’, as Hemingway was known, also recommends trying to forget about your project when you’re not at your desk.
“That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.”
Of course, all writers work differently, so Hemingway’s advice might not be for you. In fact, in her early career, famed Canadian short story writer Alice Munro says she’d spend plenty of time going over stories before she sat down to write. This way, when she finally put pen to paper, she was already well acquainted with them.
2. Write the book you want to read – Toni Morrison
Choosing a writing project we’re passionate about can often be one of the trickiest parts of the creative process. If we have dreams of seeing our work in bookshop windows, we may try to write something with commercial appeal. Or we might even be tempted to pen something to impress our friends and family.
But, whether we have goals of becoming a published author or not, it’s worth remembering that art is very personal. That’s why many of our greatest writers claim that the best results come when we stay true to ourselves.
For example, in a 1981 speech, Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Or, as J.R.R. Tolkien put it, “Let your interests drive your writing.”
By following our individual tastes, we give ourselves the best chance of creating something authentic, compelling, and fizzing with passion. If we write a book that we want to read, the odds are others will want to read it too!
3. Show don’t tell – Anton Chekhov
‘Show don’t tell’ is one of the golden rules of creative writing. However, we don’t think anyone’s put it quite as poetically as Russian writer Anton Chekhov when he (apparently) said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
One reason why ‘show don’t tell’ is such a helpful guideline is that it encourages us to express experiences through imagery, actions, and details rather than simply relaying information. This helps create a richer, more absorbing experience for the reader.
For example, instead of saying, “The man was hot,” we could write: “There was a dark V on his chest where he had sweated through his shirt.”
4. Revise, and trust your intuition – George Saunders
While the old saying that ‘all writing is rewriting’ might have become a bit of a cliché these days, it certainly rings true for Lincoln in the Bardo author George Saunders. For Saunders, who talks about his creative process in his brilliant book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, revision is where the magic happens; you’ve just got to trust your intuition.
Talking about the way he revises, Saunders says, “I read my own text and imagine a little meter in my head, with ‘P’ on one side (‘Positive’) and ‘N’ on the other (‘Negative’). The game is to read the story the way I would read someone else’s – noting my honest, in-the-moment reactions – and then edit accordingly.
“This involves making thousands of […] ‘micro-decisions.’ These are instantaneous, intuitive – I just prefer this to that […] And then I do that over and over, for months, sometimes years, until that needle stays up in the ‘P’ zone for the whole length of the text.”
With Saunder’s advice in mind, try to be kind to yourself and don’t worry too much about how your first draft comes out. Just focus on putting pen to paper and remember that you can always improve it later. As romance author Nora Roberts says, “You can fix anything but a blank page.”
5. Protect your writing time – Zadie Smith
Literary sensation Zadie Smith outlined some of her rules for writing in The Guardian back in 2010. Among them were: “Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it” and “Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.”
However, the one that resonated with me most was: “Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.”
Our lives can get busy – with responsibilities ranging from work to picking up grandkids from school – and it can be easy to let our own goals and passions fall to the bottom of the priority pile. But it’s important to carve out regular time for ourselves.
So, whether you’re looking to develop your skills or simply love writing for writing’s sake, try not to feel guilty about setting boundaries with the people around you to protect your creative time.
6. Show your work to others – Neil Gaiman
Zadie Smith’s advice to leave some time between writing and editing is helpful because it allows you to gain distance from your story and come at it from your future reader’s perspective.
However, if you want to go a step further, Neil Gaiman (Coraline, Stardust, Good Omens) suggests showing your work to people whose option you respect because: “When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right.”
But Gaiman also adds the caveat: “When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
By this, he urges us not to take every note somebody gives us at face value. People’s instincts can be excellent indicators of where problems lie. However, their solutions for fixing them might not be as helpful. After all, it’s your story, and you know it best.
7. The Devil is in the details – Stephen King
Stephen King isn’t called ‘The Master of Horror’ for nothing. While his tales often deal with fantastical and supernatural elements (like vampires and killer clowns), they’re totally immersive. When reading a Stephen King story, it’s easy to forget about the real world and completely lose yourself in the realm of the book.
But this enchanting aspect of his writing isn’t an accident. He says, “Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything. Or a broken billboard. Or weeds growing in the cracks of a library’s steps.”
Though King doesn’t mean the more details, the better, as this can lead to an overwritten story. Instead, he suggests that it’s the writer’s job to pick the particularities that’ll have the most profound effect on the reader. As thriller author James Scott Bell writes…
“A telling detail is a descriptive element that powerfully illuminates a character, moment, or setting. One well-placed, well-formed detail deepens a story, pulling the reader further in, in a way that seems effortless.”
8. Read, Read, Read – William Faulkner
This next tip might sound a little obvious, but so many authors have mentioned it over the years that it’s impossible not to include it here. One of the best things you can do to improve your writing is to read as much as possible. As Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner says…
“Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write.”
When we read, we’re constantly learning, whether consciously or unconsciously. With each poem, article, short story, or book, we’re expanding our vocabulary and encountering different syntaxes, styles, and techniques. By reading great writing, we learn how to write well. And by reading bad writing, we learn how not to write.
As American literacy expert Pam Allyn says, “Reading is like breathing in, writing is like breathing out.”
9. “Start as close to the end as possible” – Kurt Vonnegut
We’ve all heard a story that started way before it needed to. Perhaps you’ve even told or written one yourself – with unnecessary preamble that leaves the listener or reader thinking, get to the point already. That’s why one of Kurt Vonnegut’s top tips for writers is to start as close to the end as possible.
The Slaughterhouse-Five author might not mean this in the literal sense – in theory, we could start our story right before the end and deprive our readers of all the juicy, character-building drama that comes before. Instead, he encourages writers to dive into the heart of the action as soon as possible so the reader is hooked from the get-go.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth setting the scene and writing background for your characters. In some cases, this might be necessary for the story. But even if it isn’t, it can always be cut out later. After all, as Terry Pratchett once said, “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
10. Persevere – Isabel Allende
At the end of the day, writing is like anything else: practice makes perfect. The surest way to become a better scribe is to get down to business and put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).
When starting out, it’s easy to become demotivated when we write something we aren’t happy with. But it’s worth bearing in mind that we need to write poorly before we can learn to write well. No one just sits at their desk and types up an award-winning novel. Instead, they learn how to write one through thousands of hours of practice. What sets great writers apart from the rest isn’t necessarily innate talent but that they persevered.
As Chilean-American author Isabel Allende says, “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.”
Final thoughts…
From practical advice from Ernest Hemingway to encouragement from Isabel Allende, we hope you’ve found these tips from famous writers helpful.
That said, it’s worth remembering that each writer has a unique creative process, and what works for some might not work for others. For this reason, try to take each tip with a pinch of salt – using what you find helpful and ignoring what you don’t.
And for more writing advice, why not check out our articles; How to write short stories and How to write a book and get it published?
Have any of these writing tips stuck with you? Or do you have any of your own you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
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