Have you ever thought about becoming a writer? Many people have, but most never take that essential first step. Why? Because starting to write can be intimidating. It can be scary. It can make you feel vulnerable. It can also be incalculably rewarding.
If you feel the itch to write but aren’t sure where to begin, you’re in the right place. Here’s everything you need to know about embarking on the writer’s journey.
Step 1: Figure out what you want to write
Before you get started writing, you’ll need to decide what kind of creative writing you want to do. This doesn’t mean you need to limit yourself to only one genre or medium for your entire career; however, it’s a good idea to choose one, develop your skills, and get comfortable with them before you challenge yourself to expand into something new.
Short stories
Short stories are a great place to build up your set of writer’s tools and learn the craft in a compact, manageable space. A short story is defined as any self-contained prose narrative of up to about 7,500 words. Short fiction has fewer characters and less complex plots than novels (and their shorter siblings, novellas and novelettes). Rather than conveying an entire world, they illustrate a dynamic moment in time.
Many writers get their start in this shorter medium before moving onto the more challenging novels.
Novels
Novels tend to be the writing medium that gets the most attention. These stories range from around 50,000 to 120,000 words, depending on the audience and complexity (novels for younger readers tend to be on the shorter end). They cover more time than a short story, contain more characters, and have numerous plots and subplots weaving through and around each other at any given moment.
You can think of a short story as a melody plucked out on a single guitar string, while a novel is a series of chords.
Poems
Poetry is another very popular creative form, but it’s approached a bit differently. Poems can tell a story, or they can convey a powerful image or idea. They use literary devices to create rhythm and musicality, and they’re very often designed to be sung or read out loud. Poems don’t have to rhyme (although they can), but they should have a sense of pattern.
Poetry is a particularly rewarding medium if you regularly use social media, because they’re easy to share as single images or posts.
Personal essays
Personal essays are a short form of what’s called “creative nonfiction.” They involve telling a story that draws from real-life experience. These essays often have a thematic message at heart, and are designed to resonate with people who may have had similar experiences.
Memoirs
Memoirs are the longer form of creative nonfiction. Like a novel, they tell a book-length story with multiple characters and events. The only real difference between a memoir and a novel is that a memoir is completely (or mostly) true.
Graphic narratives
Also known as… comic books! You don’t necessarily have to be an artist to write comics and graphic novels, but you’ll have an easier time getting your stories out if you can write and illustrate them yourself. Otherwise, you’ll need to find an artist to team up with who shares your vision.
This type of writing combines the impact of words and visual aids to tell a complete story.
Film or stage scripts
Scriptwriting is another writing medium which is formatted a bit differently, and is designed to be produced in collaboration with others. If you write a script for a movie, TV series, or stage play, you’ll team up with people like directors, costumers, actors, set designers, and sometimes post-production editors (the people who put magical explosions on TV where there were no real magical explosions on set).
Unlike writing a short story or novel, which is a very independent art form, every film or play becomes its own little community. Plays and screenplays can be fiction or nonfiction.
Step 2: Develop your personal writing practice
Now that you have an idea of what you’d like to start writing, it’s time to put together your own personal writing process.
Find your ideal writing schedule
Have you ever lamented that you “don’t have time to write”? The truth is, almost no one has time to write—but they do it anyway. Everyone can set aside a few minutes to devote to their writing, whether that’s waking up an extra half hour early before you go to work, or setting aside twenty minutes just before you go to bed. If you work a standard office job, you can make an effort to spend twenty minutes of your thirty-minute lunch break devoted to writing.
If you’re fortunate enough to have some flexibility in your schedule, try writing at different times throughout the day and night to see which works best. Most writers will feel their most creative at certain times, usually morning or evening. Learning to work with your individual body’s natural rhythms is the best way to develop and maintain a strong writing schedule.
Create a dedicated writing space
If possible in your circumstances, it’s a good idea to create a space where you go to write and be your best. This might be an office in your home or private workspace in your garden. Or, if you don’t have the means to create a writing space at home, this might be a favorite café where you go to do your writing.
If your creative space is something external like a café, it’s best if you go there only when you do your creative work. This helps signal to your brain that it’s time to write and gets you into the right frame of mind while you’re there.
Find your best writing medium
Now, what are you going to write with? The two biggest ways writers write is by hand or on a computer. But, some writers like to use old-fashioned typewriters, or dictate into voice recorders. If you’re writing by hand, do you prefer pencil or pen? Do you have a favorite notebook to write in? You can also get tablets that function like data-saving notebooks.
Try out a few different writing tools, and see which gets your creative wheels turning most effectively.
Set concrete, manageable goals
It’s time to set some writing goals. Usually these are segmented by word count or by time. Start small—something like setting a timer for 15 minutes of uninterrupted writing, or writing 200 words. Then, decide how often you’re going to pursue this goal. Every day? Three days a week? If you can only devote one or two days to your writing, you may want to make your goal a little bigger: Setting a timer for one hour or aiming for 700 words for two days each week.
Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day, but do try to stick to your schedule as much as possible. This will get you into a creative rhythm, and you’ll find the process getting easier and easier as you go.
As with all parts of the process, experiment with a few different approaches to find the one you best connect with.
Develop your writing skills
Once you start writing, you’ll realize there’s a vast landscape of specialized knowledge that goes into telling a good story. There’s characterization, worldbuilding, and theme. There are literary devices, rhetorical devices, and syntax. You don’t need to master every skill right away, but it’s a good idea to take a walk through our impressive cache of resources and get a sense of what to work on as you write.
Step 3: Start writing!
Now you have all the tools you need to begin. The next step is to start getting some words down on paper using your desired medium, space, and time.
Practice, practice, practice
All the preparation in the world won’t help you if you don’t put in the time and effort to become a writer. At some point, you just need to sit down and start. Don’t expect your work to be its very best right away—that’s what practice is for!
Try using writing prompts to get your mind working. Write about what you see around you, what you’d like to see more of. Explore “What if” situations and imagine a world that’s almost but not quite like this one. There are ideas for stories all around us, all the time.
Join a writing group
When you’re ready, try connecting with other writers. A writing group can give you accountability, support, advice, and ideas.
Fortunately, we have groups for every kind of writer on Scribophile! You can also look for in-person writing groups at your local bookshops and community centers, or even stick a notice up and start your own.
It’s helpful to have other writers around you on your journey, because they’ll help you stay motivated when you want to give up and cheer you on when you find success.
Don’t be afraid to experiment
Part of growing as a writer is stretching your creative muscles. This stage is all about having fun, so don’t be afraid to try out different voices, writing styles, ways of laying out your work on the page, and so forth. Want to tell a story backwards? Create a unique alien language? Write from the point of view of a candy wrapper? Assemble a narrative out of a series of haikus? Go for it.
Step 4: Polish to perfection
When you’ve managed to put together a piece of writing that you’re pretty happy with, it’s time to move onto the next steps: making it the best it can be, and then finding readers for it.
Revise your completed work
No story, poem, or novel comes out perfect on the first pass. Even experienced writers need to undergo a stringent editing process before their work is publishable.
Once you’ve completed a piece of written work, the first thing to do is take a step back for a little while. Go for a walk, binge some Netflix, have a gab with your best friend. A good rule of thumb is the bigger the work, the bigger the break. If you’re revising a short poem or story, you can come back to it with fresh eyes the next day. If you’re revising a full-length novel or memoir, it’s a good idea to give yourself at least a couple weeks before coming back to it. This gives you a bit of emotional distance so that you can approach it objectively.
After you’ve had a little rest and are ready to revise, go through your piece and ask yourself things like: is my dialogue authentic? Are my characters convincing and relatable? Is every scene necessary, or are there some that can be cut out to keep things moving? How can I make each individual sentence as beautiful as it can be?
As you develop your skill set, you’ll find that your editing eye develops too.
Get some peer feedback
If your first draft is as strong as you can make it on your own, it’s time to get some external input. You can do this by hiring a professional editor, but if you’re going to be writing for the better part of your future, this can get expensive fast. A more cost-effective (and often more efficient) way to get some good advice on your writing is to trade feedback with other writers.
Seeking peer feedback is a great way to get a sense of what’s working well in your story and what needs improvement. Often these improvements come down to clarity—it can be challenging to grasp how our artistic intentions come across to people who can’t read our minds. Peer feedback can also help you flag any inadvertent clichés, any misguided stereotypes, or any moments that seem unrealistic or unconvincing.
As an added bonus, offering feedback to other writers can help train your editorial eye and improve your own writing! If you see something in another writer’s work that isn’t quite working, take the time to try and understand why. This will give you a deeper understanding of how stories work.
Seek publication
Eventually, you’re going to want to get your work out into the world. If you’ve written a novel, memoir, or full-length script, this means submitting to an agent or publisher. If you’ve written a shorter work, this often means targeting literary journals, magazines, and anthologies.
Be sure to check out our resources on writing a query letter, formatting a manuscript, and hooking your reader’s attention to land that acceptance letter.
Bonus tips that will make you a better writer
Ready to embark on this exciting journey? Here are a few writing tips to give you a head start.
Read voraciously
A good writer knows that the best way to learn any skill is through immersion. Reading widely in your chosen genre (and beyond) will help you think creatively and understand the conventions of the kind of story you’re trying to tell.
If you want to write romance, read some recently published romances and see how other writers are approaching the genre. If you want to write comic books, make sure you stock up on comics and graphic novels at your local bookstore so you can see what readers are looking for today (for instance, did you know that thought bubbles have been passé since about the 1990s?).
Not only will reading a few books in your genre bring you inspiration, it will get you unconsciously thinking like a writer and improve your grasp of the writing craft.
Familiarize yourself with story structure
Some writers swear by plotting with story structure. Others prefer to wing it and let the story evolve organically. Regardless of which approach you take, it will be helpful for you to gather a basic understanding of the moving parts that make up a narrative: the inciting incident, the midpoint, the climax, and so forth. Being aware of these essential pieces will help you ensure your plot moves along smoothly and avoid problems later, whatever the medium.
Never stop challenging yourself
Think that once you’ve published your first novel, the journey is over? It can be, but then you’d be cheating yourself out of new skills, challenges, and growth.
If you feel that you’ve mastered one genre, why not try your hand at something else? If you’ve tried all the classic approaches, try experimenting with nontraditional structures or unusual points of view. Becoming a writer isn’t just about landing a spot on the bestseller list—it’s a process of constant discovery.
Remember to have fun
Fun, unfortunately, is one of the first things to disappear once you start taking your writing seriously. Resist the inclination to get down on yourself when something doesn’t come out quite right, or crafting a compelling main character turns out to be trickier than you expected, or you come up against an inevitable rejection. You’ve become a storyteller! How cool is that!! Enjoy it.
