A couple of times a week I get asked about how to get good as an hired pen.
Now like most writing advice. This is not gospel but I’m just gonna let it fly.
I know what I’m going to say next is cliché as fuck, but it has to be said because it’s true and anyone who says otherwise is a goddamn clown wearing greasepaint made of delusion and self deception…
That said.
To get good at writing, you need to write every day. You also need to read every day.
/End
(Okay okay, here goes. This is going to be thick meaty boi email. Just shy of 3k words)
Those are the two fundamental things you have to do to get good. Not “pretty good” or “good enough for your mom to share on Facebook.” Actually good. The kind of good that makes people stop scrolling and think “holy shit, who wrote this?”
If you woke up this morning and decided to be a writer, then that’s what you need to do. End of story.
No shortcuts. No life hacks. No secret sauce except the sauce that tastes like discipline mixed with caffeine and honest helping of existential dread.
And as much as I want to punch myself in the mouth for being cliché cause they’re annoying. They’re undeniably true. Like “practice makes perfect” or “you are what you eat” or “social media is slowly destroying our capacity for sustained thought” (okay, that last one isn’t technically a cliché yet, but give it time)
So let’s talk about how to become a “gooder” writer. Yes, “gooder” is grammatically wrong. I did that on purpose. We’re breaking rules here, but first, you have to learn what the rules are.
And for good measure, I’ll do a micro summary of what I would do, if I was to wake up and have no memory of being the writer/marketer and manipulator of minds I am today and had to learn it all from scratch.
But for now. I’m climbing onto my writer-ly soapbox…
Ahh. Where were we? Yes. Becoming gooder…
Rule 1: Write every single day without fail. Not when you feel inspired. Not when Mercury is in retrograde and your chakras are aligned. Every. Single. Day.
Inspiration is bullshit. It’s the participation trophy of creativity. Real writers don’t wait for inspiration. They show up and do the work whether they feel like it or not. They write when they’re tired, when they’re hungover, when their cat just died, when they’d rather be binge watching Netflix and fisting handfuls of cereal right into their face hole, directly from the box.
Here’s how a typical day of writing usually pans out for me and it’ll happen to you too.
Some days you’ll write garbage that belongs on that dumpster fire down the road.
Some days you’ll produce one decent sentence and seventeen terrible ones.
Some days you’ll stare at a blank page for thirty minutes and manage three words.
Some days you’ll surprise yourself and actually create something worth reading.
All of those days count. The garbage days especially count because that’s when you’re building the muscle memory of putting words on a page even when your brain feels like it has gone the full distance with a fight against Prime Mike Tyson.
Now if you’re new to all of this. Start small. Write 100 words a day. Then 200. Then 500. Don’t try to write the “Great American Novel” on day one. We’re not Hemingway or Steinbeck.
Rule 2: Reading is fuel. Read like your life depends on it.
Because it does. Your writing life, anyway…
You can’t be a good writer if you’re not a voracious reader. That’s like trying to be a chef without ever tasting food, or trying to be a musician without ever listening to music. You need to understand how language works, how stories flow, how other writers solve problems you haven’t even encountered yet.
Read everything (Especially if you’re going into writing ad copy)
Shit you love.
Shit you hate. (This is important. Figuring out why something doesn’t work teaches you as much as studying what does)
Shit that’s way above your current skill level. (Haven’t read Dostoevsky? Now is a good time)
Shit that’s completely outside your preferred genre. (Fifty shades of grey lol)
Shit that was written before you were born.
Shit that was published yesterday.
Pay attention to how sentences flow. Notice how dialogue sounds. Study how writers transition between scenes. Observe how they handle exposition without making it feel like a Wikipedia entry.
When you read something that makes you stop and think “damn, that’s good,” It’s all fine to appreciate it but you might as well dissect it too. Figure out why it works. What specific word choices created that effect? How did the sentence structure contribute to the rhythm? What made that metaphor hit different?
Rule 3: Embrace the suck (I still do)
This is one for the memory banks and it’s insane that nobody tells us this. You’re going to be terrible for a really long time. I still am. Not everything I post and share hits and is what people consider a verified “Banger”
Your first drafts will read like they were written by a drunk AI getting bullied by Hologram Mech Hemingway and Robot Tolkien. Your dialogue will sound like robots pretending to be human. Your metaphors will make about as much sense as pineapple on pizza (fight me)
This is normal. This is expected. This is part of the process. Every writer you admire was once exactly as bad as you are right now. The difference is they kept writing through the suck until they emerged on the other side, battle scarred but competent.
Don’t compare your rough drafts to published work. That’s like comparing your practice scales to Beethoven’s symphonies. Published work has been edited, revised, polished, and probably rewritten seventeen times by someone who’s been doing this for decades.
And like they say. Good writing is just re-writing and I’ll tell you now. There’s a lot of re-writing in this game.
Rule 4: Learn the rules before you break them.
Grammar matters. Sentence structure matters. Punctuation matters. Not because some dusty English professor said so, but because these are the tools that help you communicate clearly with other human beings.
Personally you only need to know the basics cause a lot of the time we’re aiming to write like we talk. Especially if we’re writing ad copy, but if you’re going down the story/novel route. Then you might want to know a little more of the rules. Or just be lazy like me and send it to an editor.
You can absolutely break grammar rules for stylistic effect though. I do it constantly. But you need to know what you’re breaking and why you’re breaking it. Random rule breaking just looks like you don’t know what you’re doing.
But as you go deeper down this craft of writing and start to do some serious studying, you’ll want to learn about:
Character development that doesn’t suck.
Plot structures that actually work.
Dialogue that sounds like humans talking instead of exposition robots.
Show vs. tell. (and when to use each)
Pacing that doesn’t put readers to sleep.
Endings that don’t make people want to throw your book across the room.
“But Stephen, I just want to write social media posts and sell my stuff!”
Yeah that’s fine, but I promise you. Learning the basics of what I’ve just shared above from a storytelling point of view will make your regular writing slap. If you want punched in the gut writing that is the way.
Rule 5: Find your voice, but don’t force it.
Your writing voice is like your speaking voice. It develops naturally over time. You can’t manufacture it by copying other writers or following a formula. It emerges from the unique combination of your experiences, your personality, and your particular way of seeing the world. Some writers are naturally funny. Others are naturally dark. Some excel at beautiful, lyrical prose. Others are masters of sharp, punchy sentences that hit as if their words were bullets.
Figure out what comes naturally to you, then lean into it. Don’t try to write like someone else. The world already has one of them. It doesn’t have one of you.
Rule 6: Edit like a surgeon.
First drafts are for getting the story out of your brain and onto the page. Editing is where the real writing happens.
Be ruthless. Kill your darlings. If a sentence doesn’t serve the story, delete it. Even if it’s the most beautiful sentence you’ve ever written. If a character doesn’t move the plot forward, cut them. If a scene doesn’t advance the narrative or develop character, it doesn’t belong.
You always want to edit for:
Clarity (can readers understand what you’re trying to say?)
Flow (do sentences and paragraphs connect logically?)
Rhythm (does it sound good when read aloud?)
Redundancy (are you saying the same thing multiple ways?)
Precision (are you using the exact right words?)
Most people who say they want to be writers don’t actually want to write. They want to have written. They want the result without the process. They want the glamour without the grind. They want to be the one who romanticises it.
Writing is mostly unglamorous. It’s sitting alone in a room, wrestling with words that don’t want to cooperate, solving problems that don’t have obvious solutions, and creating something from nothing while your brain tries to convince you that literally anything else would be more fun.
It’s hard work that doesn’t always pay well (or at all). It requires patience, persistence, and the ability to tolerate massive amounts of uncertainty and rejection but you need to do it anyways cause, Writing teaches you how to think clearly. It forces you to organise your thoughts, examine your assumptions, and communicate complex ideas in ways other people can understand.
Plus, when you finally write something good. Something that says exactly what you meant to say in exactly the way you meant to say it. It feels like fucking magic.
So write every day. Read every day. Embrace the suck. Learn the rules. Find your voice. Edit ruthlessly.
There are no “gooder” writers, only writers who showed up and did the work.
Now quit reading about writing and go fucking write something.
[The TL;DR I just want the sauce on how to write “gooder” section]
Now a few of you want to write ad copy and/or learn to spin a yarn or get in to the money as soon as possible. So here’s what I’d if I had to start from scratch.
Ad copy and psychology
Pick up Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whitman. and Write to Sell by Andy Maslen.
Honestly. Those two books are all you need to get a solid foundation of what makes us tick and what copy is all about.
Start selling shit around your house. Write an ad on facebook market place or eBay. Sell it for more than what it’s worth. Write an elaborate story on how you became the owner of this haunted coffee mug from 1972. If they message you about loving the advert (they will in a lot of the cases) screen shot it and keep it. If you have the little notifications on the app for when you’ve made a sale. Screen shot that too. Build up a little file of those messages and wins. A little bit of proof goes a long way.
On top of that. Start your damn email list like this and share your small wins, what you’re learning and put those new skills to the test to get people off of your socials on to said list.
This all compounds over time. Is it boring in the beginning? Hell yeah. But embrace the suck, okay?
Go even more low brow
Post Office by Charles Bukowski
Love is a dog from hell by Charles Bukowski
Betting on The Muse by Charles Bukowski
Watch: Barfly 1987 staring Micky Rourke and Faye Dunway
Howl and Other Poems: 4 by Allen Ginsberg
There’s a reason why I recommend beat poetry. You learn to understand with humility, the dregs of society. Members of a community, often associated with poverty, homelessness, or social exclusion. It’s the rawest form of humanity that is often overlooked because we’ve all been there in one way or the other. If you want to understand humans at a visceral level. This is where you need swim for a little while.
Supercharge your voice
If you want to get good fast and find your voice…
Method Writing: The First Four Concepts by Jack Grapes
Advanced Method Writing by Jack Grapes
Like in drawing and painting you need to learn to “See” the exercises Jack has you go through have been adapted from method acting. I can’t really explain what this does but you have to go through it to experience the mental switch this puts you through. I’m surprised this hasn’t gotten as much love as it did but this will transform the way you write.
Read and study Chuck Palahniuk
You might know him from Fight Club but his other works that are deranged and in some cases been quoted as viscerally psychotic, have been built on a writing style developed by his mentor Tom Spanbauer (RIP)
Here’s an excerpt of a post I made on Facebook a little while ago…
Tom has taught many prolific writers and most notably, Chuck Palahniuk.
Without Tom. There would probably not have been Chuck Palahniuk and no Fight Club.
And as great a book and film Fight Club is.
Chuck’s stories/books and lessons bled out into the world.
I’m hoping he passes on “Dangerous Writing” in workshops in the future which pay homage to Tom.
And as the literary nerd that I am. I have studied their work for years and always recommend Chuck’s reading of his 3 infamous short stories.
Here’s a little snippet of what Tom taught in his Dangerous Writing workshop and what it truly was;
—
The core principle of this approach is to encourage writers to delve into uncomfortable, personal, and often taboo subjects in their work. The goal is to produce raw, honest, and emotionally impactful writing.
Writing and ideas get policed, which is not good at all if you’re a writer in any capacity.
1. “Going to the body”: This involves describing physical sensations and experiences in vivid detail, rather than relying on abstract emotions or thoughts. The idea is to make the reader feel the experience viscerally.
2. “Writing the unknown”: Encouraging writers to explore topics or experiences they don’t fully understand or are uncomfortable with, pushing their boundaries and uncovering new insights.
3. “Horses”: This term refers to repeated phrases or motifs that appear throughout a piece of writing, creating rhythm and resonance.
4. “On-the-body sensations”: Focusing on specific, concrete physical details rather than vague descriptions of feelings.
5. “Burnt tongue”: Using deliberately awkward or incorrect grammar and sentence structures to create a unique voice and maintain the reader’s attention.
(Personally I’m a big fan of making up new word combos and trying to tie local dialect into a written form)
6. “Recording angel”: Writing from a detached, observational perspective, as if simply recording events without judgment.
7. Minimalism: Stripping away unnecessary words and focusing on essential details.
If you write this way. You will uncover deeper meanings in your work. You’ll challenge the reader and your writing fill land a lot harder, regardless if the topic is comfortable or uncomfortable.
Right. This has been a thick meaty boi of a post.
So I’m gonna clock out for the night right here. If you make it all the way to the bottom and want me to carry on, hit reply and I’ll add to this another day.
Writing this was therapeutic tonight but now it’s time for a shower.
Stephen Walker.