We’ve all seen articles like this that vary in content, however I found through my journey of becoming a professional writer that I only used one or two from any given list. With this in mind, I would like to save you at least some time and research by compiling the tips that helped me the most. This is not a set guide or list of “follow these or you will fail” rules, however I have found them all to be instrumental to my success.
1. Assemble a great team of qualified individuals (they can be friends or family) with three key roles: content advisor, grammar nazi & emotional support.
- Content Advisor: there will be times when you need to bounce ideas off of someone, so your content advisor will need to be someone with a vast knowledge of and love for the genre in which you are writing.
- Grammar Nazi: as frustrating as this type of person can be, their OCD mannerisms when it comes to punctuation, structure and spelling will be sure to keep your work to a very high standard. Just remember to take their views with a grain of salt.
- Emotional Support: there will definitely be times when you just can’t keep writing, so you’ll need someone in your life to give the encouragement (or the kick in the pants) necessary to press forward.
2. Research, research, research! No matter the genre, accurate details are key to setting your work apart from the mundane. Nothing could be worse than placing false “facts” into your writing, only to leave someone scratching their head & thinking “that’s not how that works…”.
3. Backstories are essential to dynamic characters. Take some time to write out at least one full page of history for everyone introduced in your story (i.e. Blacksmith? That’s cool! Why?). The deeper the character, the more they will tend to “leap” off the page at the reader, even if they never learn all of the finite details.
4. Plot holes are your worst enemy! The solution to this is remarkably simple, yet difficult for some to utilize… OUTLINE. Even if its just a handful of basic points, an outline is crucial to a cohesive story. You’ll want to use it as a reference for your work from beginning to end. It might bend or change as your story develops, and that is perfectly natural (a great thing, actually), but having it as a general guideline is a must if you want to avoid huge (or even minute) mistakes.
5. Don’t wait until your manuscript is complete to have trusted friends and colleagues read and critique your work. You’ll want to dole it out a chapter at a time so that you can improve over time, instead of having to backtrack and change too much at once.
6. Despite the popular idiom warning otherwise, people almost always judge books by their covers, so you need to make sure that yours makes the best first impression possible. You want the potential reader to have an “ooh” moment when their keen eye catches its first glimpse of your novel.
7. Last, but certainly not least, if you’re serious about being a professional author and not just a hobbiest, you’ll want to utilize a professional Microsoft Word editing tool. This will help to keep your structure and style consistent all throughout. I personally use and recommend Grammarly.
Copyright © D.M. Kurtz 2018
D.M. Kurtz 