Writing advice for budding and amateur writers, key skills for writers

There is plenty of writing advice to be found out there on the internet and much of it comes from well established writers, online and offline (the latter would be called "books" by the way!). However, truly successful writing is not necessarily all about following rules.

Steps to writing good stories and a bestseller book

  1. Writing advice for budding and amateur writers
  2. How to start writing a story
  3. Can't be bothered to write, no motivation to finish & writers block
  1. I can't get round to writing because life gets in the way
  2. Nearly finished my book, I'm a good writer
  3. Finished my story but its rubbish - help me make my story better!

There are thousands of websites out there with a great deal of writing advice and how to hone those key writing skills - but this is intended as a general guide to writing advice and to enhance your writing skills.

Many people get bogged down in getting the right deal with a publisher or an agent - and a lot of the time that can focus itself on whether you write what's in your heart, or what's commercial. You might go along the path of creating a phenomenon that reflects the times, or more powerfully, that the times then reflect (think Harry Potter!). But zeitgeist is not something one can easily fall upon and it is too difficult to even begin thinking that way. The following pages are intended to be of use to budding and for amateur writers, or even for those who are just suffering from a bit of writers block.

Hopefully this part of the our website will help give you some good writing advice, particularly for amateur and beginner writers who are hoping to get "onto the scene". Writing is about 3 different key skills:

  1. The ability to write. Oh, not spell or punctuate or even write accurately - but you will need to be able to put your ideas forward in a way that is exciting, intriguing or just plain poetic. No-one will care if you can't spell perfectly, and anyway, computers will take care of most of that. The important thing is that you can put down what's in your head and this is the key skill if you want good advice from any other writer.
  2. The ability to think of a story. Sounds ridiculous when you say it, but being able to think of a story is very, very important and some people don't necessarily always have this skill. They can type, they can write, they can spell... but they have no inner poet and no story to tell.
  3. Lastly, but of equal significance and importance, is your ability to be motivated. You can't have the above skills with no motivation or you'll never quite get round to it.

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