1. Some hints and tips on how to make your writing even more fabulous
Creative Writing
Some hints and tips on how to make your writing even more fabulous

2. The Opening
Capture the reader with your opening line. Do something interesting or have well crafted sentence. Needs to have some sort of impact.
Have a title – readers like that.

3. The best writing is simple.
Make it believable. It has to ring true for the reader for it to be effective.
Don’t be too ambitious, don’t overwrite in order to make your work urgent or emotional. If the work is good it will do this for itself.

4. Use your natural voice.
You do not want your writing to sound forced and stiff. Your test is to decide whether or not you would say this to your friends. This will also make the text more believable.

5. Don’t put in every step you take.
You don’t need to detail the and then…. and then…. of your story. Trust your reader. It is an important skill to ascertain the important details from the needless.
So.. Do not list events and action.

6. Adjectives are the enemy of good writing.
Use them sparingly. You can be more effective by using verbs and letting the action do the work. “Show don’t tell.”

7. Let me see how they are sad.
Show, don’t tell.
If you tell me that someone is sad, but I don’t ‘feel’ it, then your writing is not working.
Let me see how they are sad.
Cut all ‘ I see’ ‘I feel’ ‘I hear’ phrases whenever possible.

8. Beware of, rainbows, stars, eyes, tears. They lead to sentimentality.
Warning
Beware of, rainbows, stars, eyes, tears. They lead to sentimentality.
Avoid easy words such as suddenly, quite, really and always.

9. Don’t mix tenses and persons.
Tense and Voice
Don’t mix tenses and persons.
Decide whether the paragraphs in past present and stick to it. Check carefully
Present tense – avoid those ‘ing’ verb endings..

10. Mix Sentence length and Beginnings
Never underestimate the power of the short sentence. Mix your sentence lengths up.
Vary sentence starters e.g. Then or always having noun at start
Start with adverb+, or sub-dominant clause

11. Make every work earn its place
Eliminate every word that is not working for you, every word that is not driving your story on.
Don’t ramble – be precise. Concentrate events down if necessary.

12. Purpose
Reader needs a reason for reading this. It is not an exercise in your merely re-telling a story. What have you learnt or gained? What is the reader meant to get? Doesn’t have to be earth shattering, but solid.
Invest some emotion in to the story. Reader’s love that.

13. Read it again. Does it flow…. Listen to your gut instinct.
The Flow
Read it again. Does it flow…. Listen to your gut instinct.
Have a peer read it and make constructive suggestions.
Remember: it is your work, so you decide what to change.

14. The Proof Proof Proof and Proof again
The worst enemy of good writing is carelessness
.!?, CL – check them all.
Speech HAS to be punctuated correctly.
Remember, most punctuation you can ‘hear’ if you read your work aloud.