Writing Tips

Geraldine McCaughrean says:

To be a top writer you need to do the following:

Read your stuff out loud – preferably to your mates, but if they aren’t an appreciative audience, to yourself, in the privacy of your own privacy. Reading aloud shows you how well the cadences of your sentences are working – whether you are making too many sentences the same shape, using the same words too often, using too many similes, adjectives or inversions.

It is particularly important when you are writing dialogue; you need to ensure yours sounds as if it might genuinely have come out of someone’s mouth.

If you can possibly find ways of submitting work to a local paper, newsletter, or magazine, grab it. That way you can build up a portfolio of published work which may help to prove your single-mindedness, determination and gravitas to potential publishers/agents.


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