Writing Tips
If you want to be an author, you need to look at the books you read as specimens, and not merely as entertainment. To read effectively, it’s necessary to consider a book in ways in which it can teach you about your own work. Read and reread your favourite books and analyse them to see how they are written. (The genre/s you like to read will usually be the genre you will write in.) You can also study those books you didn’t enjoy to learn where the writers of those went wrong.
Here are some things you should note during your reading/study:
1 Look at chapter beginnings and endings, and note what it is that makes you keep turning pages. These are the openings and the hooks.
2 In the first few paragraphs, note what is told, what is shown, and what is only implied.
3 Study the way the characters are described, how they come alive and almost leap from the page.
4 What point of view does the writer use? (Whose story is it?)
5 Look at the rhythm of the language used (sentence length) and study what it does to the work as a whole.
6 Pay attention to word choice in key parts of the book and look at use or overuse of particular parts of speech.
7 Make notes about the plot and any sub-plots as you study the work. See how the climax and resolution work.
8 Check mood, tone and voice of the work.
9 What is the ratio of dialogue to exposition? Note how white space on the page works.
10 How does punctuation (or the lack of it) affect your reading of the text. (This is to do with pacing.)
11 Background, technical detail, research; did the author get it right? Does it all sound authentic?
12 Look at symbols or symbolic language if any, and consider what it does to the text.
13 How is the passing of time in the text handled? Do the events written about happen over one day, a week, months, or years; and is the narrative chronological, or does it flip backwards and forwards in time?
All of these things, and more, are what go into making a good story great. It's attention to detail that counts; someone once said that writing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration so it makes sense to me that most of our writing time should be spent in editing and polishing our work.