My Top 5 Tips For Writing

READ. It's been said before but reading is a great way to start writing. Read everything, read your favourite books, read books similar to your ideas. But more importantly, analyze how the author writes, what language do they use, how do they engage their readers. It's vital to understand how people write and what makes a compelling story.

Scrapbooking. This is something quite recent for myself, I've started scrapbooking with pictures and stickers, with pages dedicated to different characters - their looks, interests, their characteristics, and what drives them. But also pages for the different ideas I come up with. Writing is like hunting for a criminal, where you're trying to find all the clues and work out who it is and their motives. Except you, are hunting for the end of your story and trying to connect the dots. Using scrapbooks has been helping me link ideas.

Playlists. A lot of authors have mixed feelings on using music to help them write but I have found it gives me a way to connect to my characters, their emotions during scenes I write. Music helps you to focus on a character and I find it is useful for understanding them.

Schedule. We all know life gets hectic, but dedicating even just a small amount of your time to writing will help a lot. Writing daily will push your book further, especially if you set yourself weekly or even monthly goals. Even if the only thing you write is a line, it's still writing. It doesn't matter how much you write, only that you are writing something meaningful to yourself.

Research. Researching your ideas, even for fiction is useful. Because when it comes to writing, you want elements of your story to be somewhat factual. It engages the reader, makes the book more realistic, and brings them into the book. Researching and detailing can go hand in hand. You need to make sure what you write is going to be believable.