Ways to Improve Your Creative Writing Skills

Creative writing might not be one of your strengths and that’s okay. But if you need to boost your creative writing skills for college classes or because you really want to be a better writer, there are a few easy ways to do that and we can show you how. Let’s get started.

Create a Challenge for Yourself

Sometimes we get used to a particular genre or style of writing and it affects our motivation to write very negatively. Writer’s block, boredom, lack of inspiration – all these things happen because we need some changes done in order to get new ideas and learn something new.

So try challenging yourself – try something new every time you start writing another piece or practicing just for the purpose of experimenting. You can try writing prompts – you can come up with some great ideas or try prompts generators that can randomly assign you to a situation or a topic. You can try writing very short or very scenery pieces to learn how to operate new words or very concise sentences. Make writing interesting by periodically changing the workplace or the background music for more inspiration sources.

Practice Every Day

Every skill that you are improving takes practice. And just as you can’t become a good artist without painting more and more new canvases, you can’t become a good writer without practicing your writing every day or at least a few times a week.

You can try various techniques and writing exercises, for example, free writing. It’s a technique that allows you to set your imagination free and avoid focusing on perfecting your piece thus it releases all of the creative juices. Basically what you need to do is to stop focusing on the thoughts in your head and the process of phrasing, rather concentrate on the images, random ideas, and words that occur while you are just writing them down. It’s a great exercise that really helps you get through the phase when you are stuck because you don’t have any well-thought-through plot idea.

Make Sure You Show

Showing instead of telling is one of the basic methods that a writer with vast experience and great skills uses. You want your piece to be a complete world and let your reader be sunk into it – this is how really intriguing and interesting pieces are born. For example, when you are reading Lord of the Rings, you can vividly imagine what’s going on – the scene and the characters. It’s so well thought-through that a reader has no second thoughts and doubts regarding the plot.

Whenever you are writing a creative piece, you need to make sure that you provide your reader with needed information regarding the surroundings, the emotional state of the characters, their looks, and small details neatly embedded into the dialogues, like the tone of the voice or hand movements. This allows you to make your characters more alive. 

Edit and Change

Some writers admit that they don’t always know what their characters will do next. It is rather dictated by the personal traits and the personality, than the author’s idea. And it happens more often than you might think. So, don’t be scared to change your story whenever you feel like the original twist is not that realistic.

Sometimes you need to cut out an impressive chunk of the story – and it might make you feel uncomfortable. That’s okay – no one wants to destroy their effort. But you can always save the idea for later and use it somewhere else where it would fit better.

Avoid Cliches

Sometimes you might be tempted to use common writing concepts and phrases – try eliminating such things when you are writing your piece. Though some basic prose structures are proven to be working well by many authors, it’s always good to make sure you are experimenting and doing something new. For example, you might try the unconventional way to tell a story – from the very end of it.

Cliched phrases and dialogues are very boring to work with. It happens because you repeat the basic algorithm and it leads to poor results that could turn out much better. Avoid common phrases and descriptions, such as “the eyes like ocean,” “bittersweet love,” “unimaginable feelings,” etc. It all seems like another verse of “roses are red…” which doesn’t add anything to the plot or characters. 

Wrapping Up

We strongly believe that the more you practice any type of activity or art, the better results you get. And if you want to improve your creative writing skills, you need to practice more while also trying something new in order to find your true style and original plots. Be sure to never give up even when it doesn’t come perfect as only by making mistakes you can learn your lessons. Good luck with creative writing and we hope our tips will help you.