Here are five simple habits that will quickly improve your writing.
I. Write about the media you consume.
One of the best ways to develop your taste as a writer is to engage with the stories you read and watch. After you’ve finished a book or a film, write about what you liked and what you didn’t like. What were the most memorable creative choices, and did they work? If you could change anything about the story or the way it was brought to life, what would it be? Focus in particular on things that left a bad taste in your mouth or resonated deeply.
Don’t be afraid to get opinionated. In analyzing art, you’re not trying to be an objective critic, you’re trying to develop your taste and discover what you want to implement in your own writing.
You can also do this with TV shows, short stories, plays, musicals, albums, visual art, YouTube videos, almost any piece of media that you want to think critically about. You can learn valuable lessons about storytelling from every medium.
How you record these thoughts is up to you. You might post reviews online, or keep a log in a notebook, or use a digital note-taking system. I journal every day, so that’s where my thoughts on what I’ve read or watched go. I have a media database in Notion that’s connected to my journal, so I can quickly find where I wrote about a particular book, film, series, or theatrical production.
You don’t have to write an in-depth analysis of every piece of media you consume. This shouldn’t feel like a chore—you certainly don’t want to take the enjoyment out of experiencing stories. Just aim for at least one takeaway. It doesn’t have to be anything big—maybe there was a single stylistic choice that stuck out to you. Naturally, for stories that really struck a chord, you might want to write more. Explore why you loved it so much, or why it affected you so deeply. Those pieces of art are where the most valuable insights are to be gleaned. But you can also learn plenty from less-than-stellar media, like what you want to steer clear of in your writing.
This habit isn’t just good for developing your taste in the present; it’s also a way of better remembering what you’ve read and watched. You can look back in the future and get a glimpse of what you thought about the art you experienced in the past.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but you won’t become a better writer if you never apply what you’re learning to writing itself. So try implementing techniques in your own writing as soon as you can after observing them.
II. Track your writing sessions.
I only recently started doing this, but I wish I’d started a long time ago.
You can track almost any parameter, but the most basic is writing speed. Just keep track of when you start writing, when you stop, and how many words you write in each session. Divide the words written by the hours spent, and you have your writing speed in words per hour.
Why is this useful? I find this information quite helpful when I’m scheduling time to write and setting writing goals. Finding my average writing speed allows me to plan ahead with much greater accuracy. It also illuminates interesting patterns. For instance, my writing speed is nearly double its average when I’m writing dialogue-heavy scenes. So clearly, dialogue comes to me a lot more easily than action and description.
If you want, you can also write brief notes about how each writing session went. You can track environmental factors, like the time of day and place where you were writing, or whether or not you were listening to music. This information can help you fine-tune your process and writing environment. If you write faster earlier in the day, try scheduling more time to write in the morning. If your writing sessions last longer when you’re listening to music, that’s probably a good sign music helps you write. Assuming you’re not just getting distracted by it.
My system is a simple database in Notion—although, of course, I had to make it more complex by connecting it with a book scenes database and my journal. I enter the time I started writing, the time I finished, and how many words I wrote, and a formula calculates my writing speed. Noting the scene and chapter I was working on lets me see exactly how long I’ve spent writing certain parts of my book. And it’s connected to my journal so I can see my total word count for each day within that day’s entry.
Now, yes, in tracking your writing, you do run the risk of turning writing into an almost mechanical process, clocking in and out and worrying excessively about productivity metrics. So don’t take it too seriously. The goal here is to learn about your natural rhythms and preferences. That self-knowledge will allow you to more accurately plan ahead and optimize your writing schedule and environment.
III. Collect quotes.
Write down interesting and insightful quotes from everywhere—books, films, articles, historical figures, people you know.
Words are a writer’s weapon of choice, so build a stockpile of the most notable combinations of words you’ve heard. It helps to have a centralized place to put all these snippets and a way of organizing them. Always include the source, so you can refer back to where the quote came from. I also like to put down the date I found the quote, so I can look back at it and understand the temporal context—why it resonated with me at a particular time.
Some quotes you find might even make their way into your writing directly. Of course, they should be used in an appropriate manner—don’t just rip words out of someone else’s mouth and stick them in your story as if they’re your own. But if I read a passage that thematically matches what I’m writing, I might make note of it and have a character quote or allude to it. This works best with well-known texts like Shakespeare plays or historical documents.
One way I find interesting quotes is literally the home page of my browser. I use a free extension called Momentum that shows a new quote, usually by a historical figure, every day. Every once in a while, there’s one that really stands out, and I’ll make a note of it. But you can find memorable quotes anywhere—advertisements, news articles, home decor, product packaging, blogs, overheard conversations, you name it.
One nice thing curating a collection of quotes can do is improve your own ability to craft similarly pithy sentences. While a good story is more than a series of witty aphorisms, trying your hand at creating memorable lines is a fun practice. Whenever I come up with a good quote that could fit in one of my stories, I write it down so I can use it later. With any luck, you’ll end up with a few quotable lines in your own story.
IV. Keep a dream journal.
Dreams are kinda wild, if you think about it. We basically get to enter worlds that don’t exist multiple times every night. We get to live thousands of lives while we’re not living our real one. Especially as someone who writes about fictional worlds and characters, I want to remember that. Granted, nightmares aren’t exactly fun, but other than that…
You’re probably not going to find your next great idea for a novel in a dream. It’s possible, but more likely, you’ll find inspiration for smaller pieces—locations, scenes, characters. My short film The Nature of Reality was inspired by a dream. There have been locations in my books, including my upcoming novel Catalyst of Control, taken straight from dreams. I love stories with surreal elements, and dreams are fantastic places to find those. Keeping a dream journal allows you to remember your dreams and pull inspiration from the otherworldly depths of your subconscious.
If you think you don’t have dreams, you do—you just don’t remember them. If I’m not very intentional about writing down my dreams as soon as I wake up, I usually don’t remember them, either. One thing that can help, believe it or not, is telling yourself to remember your dreams right before you fall asleep. This is a form of prospective memory, where setting a mental intention primes your brain to do or recall something. I’ve found that remembering a previous dream you had can also help.
Once you wake up, if you remember a dream or two, limiting movement can help you stay in that headspace. Keep your dream journal close to where you sleep, whether it’s digital or physical. Then, write down everything you remember. I find this a fun exercise, because often dreams are difficult to explain, with strange concepts and jumps in time and location. It’s like taking on an imaginative writing challenge to start the day. Bonus points if it gives me an idea for a story I’m working on.
V. Learn about the craft from the masters.
Read books about writing. Listen to lectures and interviews. Make a habit of learning about the craft of writing, especially from your favorite writers. And like I said before, don’t just consume, but engage with the material. Take notes. Interrogate what you’re told.
Don’t take everything you hear as gospel—you’ll often find contradictory advice, even from the world’s greatest writers—but take bits and pieces that apply to you. Try out different methods and recommendations to find what works best.
One of the things you’ll find as you learn from masters of the craft is that there is no one way to write a book. Different writers have different idiosyncrasies, habits, and opinions about storytelling. Learning about all the varied approaches to writing will help you find your own.
This doesn’t have to be a time-consuming habit. Maybe it just means carving out fifteen minutes a week to read a book about writing. Or maybe it means spending an hour a day taking a deep dive into an author you admire, reading biographies and studying their technique. The important part is that you keep expanding your knowledge, building your toolkit as a writer. The internet has made it easier than ever before to learn from experts, so take advantage of that.
Like many things in life, writing is a journey with no destination. There’s always room to grow. Carry that mindset with you, make learning a habit, and you’ll go far as a writer.
If you want to watch the video versions of these blog posts, head over to my YouTube channel here, and subscribe for more videos on writing.
– Grayson Taylor
Comments