The bluebird was singing soft melodies and flapping its wings. The breeze was blowing sweet scents from the flowers that were red, blue, and purple. The sky was clear with only a few thin clouds. The tall dark trees were creaking and echoing against the woods. ✖️
Vs.
The rose-scented wind blew breezes against the forest. Bluebirds sprang into the air with songs of summer. ✔️
If it’s boring to you, it’s boring to your reader.
Otherbest writing Tips:
▪️Write what you love
▪️throw away guidelines (if you want to write about a character that passes out every five seconds for no reason, GO FOR IT)
▪️stop writing for other people
▪️stop worrying ☺️
▪️fall in love with your story, characters, and setting
▪️allow writing to be fun again
▪️don’t write for money, popularity, or anything other than YOU (you’re not an accountant, you’re a writer! But if money follows your passion, yay you!)
Questions to ask yourself:
If bores me, why am I writing it?
What do I love? Hobbies, places, food, subjects, events, eras, etc.
What do I not love? Don’t write it.
What do I know? Homeschooling, raising animals, career, art, cleaning houses. (You’d be surprised what others don’t know and how interested they would be to just read about a character that mops floors for a living )
Am I writing about a subject I’m unfamiliar with?
Do I love my book?
Does my book excite me?
Do I love my characters?
What books do I like to read?
Testimony:
Once upon a time, a writer that loved to write couldn’t write any more.
She tried everything in her power but ended up hating her book just as much as a runny nose and sore throat.
She wondered why this had happened to her.
She realized she had been writing for others, what she thought they wanted and liked.
But in reality, her stories were boring like watching rain out the window.
Especially to her.
So she decided to take a break from internet writing and wrote a private story for herself.
She quickly realized she had never lost her writing gift and she felt so happy that she finished an entire novel and published it.
Many people loved and commented on her book, telling her it was the best book she had ever written.
Now she realized that her own passions also interested others so she kept writing for herself. And others enjoyed it, too!
Now she writes for a living, it’s not boring, and she has fun everyday.
Start your book with an onomatopoeia: (Sounds words)
Bark!
I jet up in bed with a racing heart. Why is Luna barking at this hour?
Bang!
The sound echoed through the woods, birds hurrying into flight.
Start your book with repetitive phrases:
No. No. I stared at the torn picture in unbelief.
“Where’s dad? Where’s dad?” I asked, tears running down my face.
Start your book with ADJECTIVES:
White swirls covered the top of my salted caramelcoffee.
Agiant blue wave crashed over the little blonde-headedgirl.
Start your book with a personal experience:
I always loved the way rain sounded on a tin roof; it would lull me fast to sleep.
When I was five, my big brother had punched me in the nose. He used to always get away with bullying me.
Start your book with SETTING:
The neighbors’ house was dark, always shadowed even on a sunny day. The black iron gate that surrounded the mansion kept everyone out and what was in, stayed in.
The park was full of children and their pets, racing back and forth through the sandboxes and dewy morning grass.
Hey there! I was hoping if anybody would give me constructive criticism and feedback for the first chapter of the novel I’m finally writing and satisfied with writing?
The first chapter is 3000ish words, with a bolded line at 2000 words since this was a creative writing assignment.
Please feel free to comment on the doc itself, or on this post, and please be as brutal as possible! You won’t hurt my feelings, and brutal honesty is necessary to get better at writing! It can be about anything at all: the dialogue, the characters, the flow, whether it bored you or not, etc!
None of these are required and doing them allis not probable— but, adding a few of these into your novel could really elevate your first page! Here are a few different ways to open your story in a way that makes it more intriguing! Lesssgooo:
1) Consider grounding your reader on the first page. No… not in the sense of sending them to their room (), but rather— place them in a setting and make sure they know where they are from the start. You don’t want to confuse your reader by waiting too long to describe the setting. Make sure they know where they are so that they can vividly see the scene in their mind. Plus, if it’s a breathtaking fantasy world, that could be your hook.
HOWEVER, make sure you’re not ONLY describing the setting. Try to mix some narration, action or dialogue in there.
2) Have a clear, distinct voice from the start. Voiceis the mixture of tone, POV, word choice and punctuation that an author uses to tell their story. Essentially, it’s their writing style (similar to how musicians all sing differently). Some writers have such a unique voice that you can tell it’s their writing right from the get-go. If your unique voice/style comes through strong enough on the first page, it could very well be one of the major things that captivates your reader.
3) Allude to something that’s about to happen. My favorite example of this is The Hunger Games. In the very firstparagraph, The Reaping is mentioned. This compels me to read more because I want to know what it is and why it has everyone stressed out.
4) Consider showing who your protagonist is. If your character is a hothead, maybe the plot starts while they’re extremely angry. If they’re an assassin, maybe they’re planning a hit, already on one… or just finished one.
5) Introduce tension and conflict. Conflict can be huge (a car chase) or super minor (running out of milk). If you do not want conflict on the first page, consider alluding to future conflict. Make the readers feel like something is about to happen (drop hints) and that whatever it is… will change the protagonist’s path— thus beginning their journey.
6) Based on your audience/genre, create a hook. For example, if you’re writing a fantasy, you could tease the magic of your world. You don’t have to explain your magic system and all it’s rules (in fact, the first page is way too early for that) but you could rather allude/hint at how: “her fingers felt hot, like when she burned them on the stove as a child. She couldn’t wipe off the heat, it was like they were on fire.”
7) THINGS NOT TO DO:
Don’t let your character(s) wander around aimlessly. Give them something to do, put their goals and wants to use right away.
Don’t overwhelm the reader with a ton of names or locations
Don’t start your story in an overly generic way that editors have seen too many times (waking up, dreaming, running from something, etc.) The exception is if you can put your own unique twist on it.
Point #4, show who your protagonist is, is a really good idea. Give the reader sufficient evidence this character is worth following around, worth investing in, and worth suspecting good (or bad) things about. Many readers are looking for reasons to trust or distrust characters. Some early-career writers think of the first page as a “first impression” of sorts: What imprint should this character make on readers, on the story, or on other characters he or she meets for the first time?
Is the character good at her job? Is the character prone to making tiny but consequential mistakes? Does he leap to conclusions? Is she successful but often at the cost of personal fulfillment? Is he self-doubting?
