These are my writing tips; if anyone would like to add some tips, contact me and I might add it!

Your tools

Computers are helpful (built in spell checker and everything, and you don't have a whole load of papers everywhere) but there's nothing wrong with using a pen and paper. I often plan on paper and then type it up because it's easier to jot down brief things that come to me.

Without a doubt, always have a notebook and pen, even if you plan to do most of your writing on the computer. This can be good for scribbling when you've got writers block and writing bits you never intend including in the final product.

You need a dictionary, and a thesaurus. Reference books are also helpful. Encyclopaedias etc.

Old writing notebooks; never throw these away. You never know when a sentence you wrote back when you were twelve is going to come in handy, or when you are going to realise you now have the expertise to rewrite something you never finished.

Ideas and Planning

I don't know where I get my ideas from, I think everyone has their own way of doing things, but there are some things that help my imagination. Listening to music is one of them, if you find a piece of music with either good poignant lyrics or the mood of the piece you are writing, then this can be really helpful. Also, take a notebook with you everywhere. Write down things you see, any good things that people say, anything interesting that you could use in your writing.

Write some sort of plan. This doesn't have to be a chapter by chapter plan that you write before you have started writing. If you can sit down and write from chapter one then good, but often it's a good idea to have some sort of plan so you know where it is going. I tend to start off, and then write a general outline so I know where I am heading. It's easy enough to lose track of what you mean to happen when if you write with no plan at all.

Research. There is nothing more irritating than someone who has included something in their writing that is based in real life and is completely inaccurate. It can take two seconds to google something on the internet to find out what you want to know. If you are writing about something medical going on, look that up so you have some idea what you are talking about. Making things up only makes things like this seem unbelievable. I have also found that it's a good way to expand your collection of relatively useless knowledge. I am not saying you have to be an expert on everything, but some basic background knowledge is useful. Plenty of authors write brilliant historical fiction without it being historically accurate, but they don't just go making everything up. They go and research it. And an example of a book where they've just made things up would be Love Story. If a doctor told someone's husband they had cancer before they told them, let alone never told them, they would be struck off, or sued for a million dollars or whatever.

If it's helpful to you to write character bios to keep next to you as you're writing, go ahead. I don't do it personally, but a lot of people find it helps them a lot to keep track of everything. Writing a bio of your main character is always helpful; know your characters inside out. Avoid stereotypes, and making your characters one dimensional. People are complex and often surprising; your characters should be too.

Getting down to writing

If you cannot manage these basic things, then give up now, or learn how to do them fast. These are based on basic mistakes I have seen too many people do.

Punctuation and Spelling

There is no excuse for bad spelling. That is what spell check is for, or failing that a dictionary. Know the difference between there, their and they're and other words that are commonly mixed up. There is also no excuse for leaving out capital letters or failing to use basic punctuation. These are things you learn in primary school.

You should at the very least know how to use full stops and commas to break up your sentences. Otherwise don't bother.

Semi colons are a good thing to practise; they are used to break up two sentences that are closely related.

Do not litter your writing with exclamation marks. It makes you look like you're way too overexcited.

Check your use of question marks. It's incredible how many times people use them incorrectly. Sometimes spell checker even tries to put one in where one shouldn't be. A question mark is used for direct questions, not indirect ones.

Don't always trust the spell checker. It is generally reliable, but it can't be a substitute for checking yourself, especially when it comes to grammar.

 

Fluency and Structure

Number one rule; never write in five sentences what you can write in one. It's unnecessary, and the writing comes out as rambling and clumsy and soon becomes over the top drivel. I see too many teenagers writing who write long descriptive paragraphs when the first two sentences would suffice. Yes, descriptions are good, but leave some of it up to the reader to imagine. That's part of the appeal of reading, and using words you've obviously spent hours looking up in a thesaurus makes the writing seem forced and interrupts with the flow.

Paragraphs are easy. You learn this in primary school too. They are used to break up writing and you should start a new paragraph after a new subject or whenever a new person is speaking during dialogue. It is also helpful to create a new paragraph if a block of writing is getting too long, just to break up the page. There is no need to leave a line between paragraphs; it is better to have an indent in the first line of the paragraph (although when posting online, this is generally an exception-putting a line between paragraphs in this case can make it far easier for people to read.)

Avoid using the same phrases too often, and watch out for words you repeat too much. For instance, things like really and just, and in dialogue alright and okay.

Vary sentence length. Lots of long rambling sentences are difficult read, so mix them in with shorter ones. Feel free to use And, But and Because to start a sentence. You learn at school not to do this, but your teachers mean it in relevance to essays and the like; when you are writing fiction you have full literary license to do as you like.

Chapters can be any length; don't pad out good writing with scribbling because you want to get it to the right length.

Dialogue

A lot of people seem to struggle with dialogue, and it isn't that difficult, and you don't have to put 'he said' all of the time. If it is clear who is speaking then it's even better not to; having many lines of 'he said' and 'she said' is rather tedious to read. Do not use 'said' too often, but similarly too many different ways of saying this (asked, replied, responded, whispered, shouted, yelled) in one lot of dialogue sounds silly, the same as if too many adverbs are used (she said quickly, he shouted angrily, she responded brusquely). I know a well known children's author who does this, and I get the urge to go through the books with a red pen and cross out all the unnecessary words. It drives me mad.

As I've said, use a new line each time someone speaks. If you indent your paragraphs, then these should be indented too.

Don't capitalise the speaker (for instance he said, not He said). Until very recently I used to do this, until someone pointed out that if you had someone speaking, followed by a full stop, and then simply He said, it wasn't a proper sentence. Instead, if following with 'he said' end with a comma, exclamation mark or question mark, but not a full stop, and use a small letter for the 'he' or 'she' that comes after it.

Try to be natural. Fair enough if your character is likely to speak in a particularly flowery way but if not, write how people are likely to speak. Although not using okay and alright too much comes in here. I'm very guilty of that and have to edit them all out at the end.

Accents: if someone has a particular accent, and you have already mentioned this, there is no need to write continuously like they speak. However, if it is a particular dialect they use, with different words, then this can be included.

And don't forget speech marks.

After you have finished: Editing

This is the most important part of writing. This is how you get the best out of what you have written, and you must learn to be very critical of your work and to disassemble each sentence and consider it's merit in the writing as a whole.

If possible, leave a gap between finishing and when you go back to it. This way you have forgotten about some of it and are looking at it from afresh. Start from the beginning. Go over every single word. Delete anything unnecessary. Good writing is one good sentence after another; someone said that and I don't know who.

Get somebody else to look over it for you if you need help. Other people often see the mistakes you have made that you don't notice, especially if you're a fast reader and tend to scan. This is also good for a final spell check if you can find someone who reads slowly enough to notice what you've missed.

Don't be afraid to change whole passages if you have to, or add in material, but similarly delete material if you need to.

If you can, print it out, double spaced, and take a pen to cross things out and write things in with. This way you can edit while still being able to have the original alongside it. This does take up a lot of paper and printer ink though.

When you think you're done, put it away, leave it again, and then go back and do it again. Keep doing this. Either you will eventually not be able to do anything more to it, or you will be sick to the teeth of it.

Give it to someone else who will give you constructive criticism and won't be afraid to be honest. Take in what they say. Edit once more and repeat as often as necessary.