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How to adapt to different speaking situations
How to engage with an audience
How to use body language effectively
5. Write Good Dialogue
Good dialogue comes from two things: intimate knowledge of your characters and lots of rewriting.
Each character must have a unique voice, and to make sure your characters all sound different, read each character’s dialogue and ask yourself, “Does this sound like my character?” If your answer is no, then you have some rewriting to do.
Also, with your speaker tags , try not to use anything but “he said” and “she said.” Speaker tags like “he exclaimed,” “she announced,” and “he spoke vehemently” are distracting and unnecessary. The occasional “he asked” is fine, though.
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10. Share your work
You write better when you know someone will soon be reading what you’ve written. If you write in the dark, no one will know if you aren’t giving your writing everything you have. But when you share your writing , you face the possibility...
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9. Defeat Writer’s Block
The best way to defeat writers block is to write. If you’re stuck, don’t try to write well. Don’t try to be perfect. Just write .
Sometimes, to write better stories, you hav...
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4. Show don't tell
When something interesting happens in your story that changes the fate of your character, don’t tell us about it. Show the scene ! Your readers have a right to see the best parts of the story play out i...
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2. Develop Your Protagonist
Stories are about protagonists, and if you don’t have a good protagonist , you won’t have a good story. The essential ingredient for every protagonist is that they must make decisions. Victor Frankl said, “A human being is a deciding being.”...
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8. Know the Rules, Then Break Them
Good writers know all the rules and follow them. Great writers know all the rules and break them . However, the best writers don’t break the rules arbitrarily. They break them because their stories require a whole new set of rules. Res...
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7. Edit Like a Pro
Most professional writers write three drafts or more. The first draft is often called the “vomit draft” or the “shitty first draft.” Don’t share it with anyone! Your ...
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6. Write About Death
Think about the last five novels you read. In how many of them did a character die? Good stories often involve death. Harry Potter ,The Hunger Games ,Charlotte’s Web , The Lord of the Rings , and more all had main characters who died. Death is the universal the...
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1. Write in one sitting
Write the first draft of your story in as short a time as possible. If you’re writing a short story, try to write it in one sitting. If you’re writing a novel, try to write it in one season (three months).
Don’t worry too much about plot...
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3. Create suspense and drama
To create suspense, set up a dramatic question . A dramatic question is something like, “Is he going to make it?” or, “Is she going to get the man of her dreams?” By putting your protagonist’s fate in doubt,...
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TIGHTEN IT UP YOUR WRITING
Things to avoid:
- Repeated or unnecessary words and sentence structures
- Reliance on dialogue to convey information to the reader
- Characters using each others' names repea...
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