Which creative writing hacks did you find the most useful as a newbie?

Use short paragraphs

Go through any popular Quora answer and notice the length of the paragraphs.

Short paragraphs make reading significantly easier because our brains prefer small chunks information compared to a long info-dump.

Make sure that a specific idea is developed in each paragraph. Although it can include several sentences, paragraphs with just one sentence, or even a single word work too.

Just like this one.

Eliminate unnecessary words

Words like very, little, and most often serve little purpose in your sentences, save making them sound bland and lifeless.

An example:

If I keep adding one useless word after another, no doubt my sentences will appear longer, but most often, the meaning would be lost in all the fluff, and the readers would be rather bored.

In the words of Mark Twain, “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

Avoid repeating yourself

Here’s an example of a conversation between a man and a woman from one of my stories:

‘But Jay, don’t you see the whole point? I am a workaholic. I may not be with you even at the end of the day. My work keeps me so occupied.’

‘Then I will share your work. I will be with you in your office. I can stick around you for ages and never get bored, trust me.’

She made another attempt to discourage him. ‘Jay I am not a good person. I am insensitive, insecure, impatient, irritable, and a total workaholic. You deserve a much better girl than me. I am sure you will find someone someday.’

‘I know that I will find another girl easily. I will have her, but will she have me? No, because my heart belongs to you, Shayna. You may be mad, bad, selfish, but I will always love you’

This dialogue spans over 100 words, the gist of which could simply have been put as:

Her: I’m a workaholic.

Him: Doesn’t matter, I’ll still love you.

We do tend to move around in circles in real-life conversations, but when the word-limit to your short story is 3000 words, you don’t want to spend a precious 100 of them saying the same thing over and over again.

Edit ruthlessly

This is the most important point to be kept in mind.

If you didn’t shorten your first draft by over one-fifth of its length after ten re-reads, you didn’t do a very good job.

Choose simple words

Beautiful can convey pretty much the same meaning as prepossessing or pulchritudinous. Use more fancy words only if the meaning you want to convey is so specific that no other synonym would do.

Source: https://www.quora.com/profile/Anangsha-Alammyan/answers?__filter__&__nsrc__=2&__snid3__=1910077283

Writer: Anangsha Alammyan