Writing Tips

I am putting together a list of writing tips to use with schools when I do author visits. Perhaps you’d like to hear them?

Sarah L. Thomson’s Eight Best Tips for Becoming a Better Writer

First drafts MUST be MESSY.

Leave space in a first draft (skip lines) so there is room to revise.

For a second draft—don’t try to write it better. Write it different.

Stuck for something to write about? Take a story or an idea everybody knows (Cinderella and her stepsisters? Witches on broomsticks?) and CHANGE it.

Want to be a writer? Do these two things. Read A LOT. And try to finish whatever you write. Getting to the end gets easier with practice.

Alliteration (using words with the same letter sounds) is fun.

Plot outlines can solve the dreaded “I’m stuck in the middle of the story and I can’t finish it” problem.

I’ve done twenty drafts of some books. Two or three should be no problem.