100 Things You Should Know About Writing (Part 2)

38) What Does It Take to Be a Good Writer?

Since Part 2 is mainly about being a writer and not so much about writing technique, I thought I'd skip right to MarissatheMarvelous's very good question. What does it take to be a good writer?

The answer is simple enough on paper, but to put it into practice is hard. In reality, it all comes down to dedication. But since that's a very short, not very clear answer, let me break it up for you.

Becoming a good writer takes IN THIS ORDER:

Guts

It takes guts to decide to write. It takes guts to keep going even when your story looks crap. It takes guts to put in the commitment needed to actually finish your story.

Speaking of which:

Commitment, aka Practice

When you write, you need to realize three things:

1) Your commitment to your story is what will get it done.

2) Getting multiple stories done is what makes you a better writer. The more you write, the more you practice writing, like with everything, practicing your writing is what makes you better at it. Which isn't to say you shouldn't ever publish your first book. But it does mean that if you have thirty unfinished drafts, you still learned from them, and that makes you a better writer.

3) But the only way to succeed as a writer is by not giving up when it's hard, or when things don't go the way you planned.

Editing

If you show me someone who says they write publish-ready first drafts, I'll show you someone who's a) lying or b) delusional. Everyone has to edit. Nothing that comes out of our minds come out 100% right all the time. So to be a better writer, you actually need to become a better editor.

Realizing that you can (and should) come back and fix things later also helps you to finish your stories, which helps you practice, which means that editing actually helps you improve in two ways.

Reading

By this I mean reading fiction if you're a fiction writer. To become a good writer, you need to understand what goes into a working story. You need to understand how the million little aspects of a story mesh together in order to form it.

The main way you do this is by PRACTICING.

The other way to do it, when you're tired of PRACTICING, is by reading. A lot. I know plenty of people who say that you should read exclusively in your genre, but I disagree. Stories are stories are stories and reading all the variations of these stories help us to grasp which things make up the foundation of all stories everywhere, and which ones are window dressing.

Because yes, some aspects are common to all stories. If you don't know that yet, you probably haven't been reading widely enough.

Studying

Note how this is not at the top of this list? There are multiple reasons for this. Yes, studying writing or reading about writing helps, BUT:

1) Not if you're reading about writing more than you're actually writing. I know of people who keep putting off actually writing until they know everything about it. The problem is...

2) Writing advice is often contradictory because writers all have unique approaches to writing and they all seem to think theirs is the only way. Therefore, if you haven't actually tried writing for yourself and found what works (or doesn't work) for you, you're going to be so confused and demoralized that you'll never get around to actually writing.