How To Write Better: 29 Tips From The World's Best Writers

This is an excerpt from my definitive guide on How To Write Better (281 Tips).

I’ve spent the past 10 years gathering writing tips from the world’s best writers. If you want to see them all in one place, then you’ll love this guide on how to become a better writer.

I’ve personally used these 29 tips to write two books under my own name, and help over a dozen authors write theirs, through ghostwriting, editing and coaching.

Wherever you’re currently stuck, you can scan the topics and find a solution.

1. Start writing with a question in mind, not an answer.

“Shift your emphasis from ‘what’s the right answer’ to ‘what’s the right question?’” - Michael Gelb, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci

2. Look for stories first, ideas later. Good storytelling beats good ideas.

The best way to sell an idea is with illustrative story.

3. Take notes, but don't hoard them. Kill them by turning them into creations.

Notes are meant to be used, not stockpiled. I delete almost as many notes every day as I create. - Tiago Forte, paraphrased

4. Don’t fill every spare minute with a podcast or Instagram scroll.

To get new ideas, make time for non-doing. 

Don’t fill every minute. Instead of letting my brain relax or work through a problem, I’m constantly stimulating it. It’s not a time suck, but it’s a time waster. I could making strides on a problem, but instead I’m listening to a podcast - Kelly Stocker - “Hack Your Life”

5. When struggling for ideas, call people out on their bullshit.

Some of the best pieces come from a writer's frustration with the world and its charlatans.

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.” - Ernest Hemingway

6. There’s no such thing as an original idea, just an original perspective or expression.

People say, “Everything has already been written.” Everything has already been said. But that’s a lie. I think every outline has already been written. But each human has a unique fingerprint. Just putting that fingerprint on an outline makes it yours, different, unique. And through practice and vulnerability, you make that fingerprint something others want to see.

There’s magic in taking what’s been done a billion times before and doing it your way. - James Altucher, Reinvent Yourself

Aspiring writers will often tell me, “I have an idea, but I’m afraid it’s already been done.” Well, yes, it probably has already been done. Most things have already been done—but they have not yet been done by you. - Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

7. Bad ideas are like toilet paper. If you obsess over any one particular piece because it stinks, you’re insane.

Just flush it down the toilet and try again.

8. The prerequisite to a good idea is lots of bad ideas. Run with every Idea Seed.

So the goal isn’t to get good ideas; the goal is to get bad ideas. Because once you get enough bad ideas, then some good ones have to show up. - Seth Godin (via Tim Ferriss, Tools of Titans)

“In nearly everything in human life, the mediocre, not the awful, is the enemy of the great. A bad date is at least perversely enjoyable – and usually teaches us something. It’s the mediocre ones that kill us with numbness.” - Umair Haque, “How to Grow”?

9. Whenever you have a big idea, find a small way to test it.

Did the audience react emotionally? If so, double down. If not, pivot and try again.

Tweet your idea. Put snippets on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Tell a quick story in your email newsletter. Did people react? Keep going.

You can test in person, too. Tease your idea. Observe their body language. Do they want more?

Mediocre ideas that contain buried within them the seeds of much better ideas. The key is to catch them early. And the only way to do that is by doing the work at least partly in front of an audience.

A book should be an article before it’s a book, and a dinner conversation before it’s an article. See how things go before going all in. - Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller

10. Only analyze your ideas after you’ve shared them in some small way.

Instead of predicting the response beforehand, analyze it afterward.

Your battle isn’t to find out which ideas are good. It’s to let your curiosity (“this might work”) beat your fear (“this might not work”). Let the world decide, not your head.

When I refer to “creative living,” ... I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear. - Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

11. If an idea is stuck in your head — even if it seems trivial — write about it. Your subconscious is telling you it’s important.

Your job is to find out why it's stuck in your head. To find the personal meaning, and make it universal.

Off hand I remember hearing about him saying that as he walked out to his mailbox one day and collected its contents, there was a missing persons, “have you seen me?” card. This sparked the idea for a story where those faces could talk to him.

About these ideas, [Stephen] King says that he never writes them down, taking their mental stickiness as a gauge for how interesting they truly are. - Simon Rich (via James Altucher, Reinvent Yourself)

12. Only write about things that fire you up.

Becoming a better writer fires me up. Hence this list.

Almost all advice given to writers by supposed experts is wrong. Because almost all of it tells the aspirant to engage in some kind of calculation about marketing before setting out to write. Now, in nonfiction, this may make sense. But that’s not my thing.

For artists, the most important thing is total engagement. So I always tell writers to follow their curiosity, obsessions, and fascinations. - Brian Koppelman (via Tim Ferriss, Tribe of Mentors)

13. Good ideas are crazy at first, then obvious. They start with huhand end with duh.

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” —Albert Einstein

If someone thinks that your ideas, or the changes you want to make, or the dreams bubbling up inside of you, are stupid, welcome to the Club. You’re in the company of the world’s leading innovators, change agents, thought leaders, inventors, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, philanthropists, executives, employees, educators, youth, moms, dads, families, philosophers, mentors, and more. - Richie Norton, The Power of Starting Something Stupid

14. Don't be a critic or a spectator. Be a participant.

Spectators are the most dangerous, because they’re likable. And they'll like you. You can commiserate in mediocrity.

But they never create, so they’re never truly happy.

And that’s what man has become: man is reduced to being a spectator. He reads the newspapers, he reads the Bible and the Koran and the Gita; he goes to the movie, sits there and watches the movie; he goes to the football match, or sits before his TV, listens to the radio … and so on and so forth. Twenty-four hours a day he is just in a kind of inactivity, a spectator. Others are doing things and he is simply watching.

Meaning comes through participation. Participate in life! Participate as deeply, as totally, as possible. Risk all for participation. If you want to know what dance is, don’t go and see a dancer—learn dancing, be a dancer. If you want to know anything, participate.

Risk all for participation. - Osho, Creativity

15. You only fail if you stop writing or publishing.

“Rejected pieces aren't failures; unwritten pieces are.” Greg Daugherty

16. The best way to succeed is to make as many bets as possible. In writing, lottery tickets are (mostly) free.

When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thick-skinned, to learn that not every project will survive. A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it ...

... and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back. - Neil Gaiman, “Make Good Art”

17. The best way to find your voice is to write hundreds of thousands of words and look back on what emerged.

“Until you’ve written hundreds of thousands of words, you have no clue what you will enjoy writing about or what other people will enjoy reading from you.” - Mark Manson, "Tips and Advice for Starting a Blog"

18. It can also help to read your writing aloud, or literally speak what you want to write and transcribe it.

Use a service like Otter, (it's free), then rewrite it into coherence.

19. Write how you speak. Edit out the fluff and meandering. Add hot sauce.

20. Don’t try to sound interesting. Just do what nobody does: Be honest.

The most interesting thing you can do is be honest. That’s it. That’s the whole secret to being interesting. - Tucker Max

21. Write like you've had two glasses of wine and are writing an email to one of your best friends.

Literally imagine writing to that friend. Don’t try to write for everyone; you'll sound like a dull lecturer.

I first ended up with this really pompous like Princetonian shtick that I was doing. Shit, too. Like four or five-syllable words. That was horrible, so I scrapped it, and then I went to like Looney Toons/Three Stooges slapstick, which was also horrible. Scrapped that.

So I threw away four, five chapters and had two glasses of wine and sat down and said I’m going to write this like I would write an email to my best friends. That’s how it started. That’s how I found my voice. - Tim Ferriss, "Master Your Fear and Find Your Voice"

Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death, and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist.

In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person—and write to that one. - John Steinbeck

22. Good writing creates a movie in the reader’s mind. Show, don’t tell isn’t just cliche; it’s essential.

23. Every piece of writing needs a beginning (hook), middle (build) and end (payoff). Even a Tweet.

Non-fiction is fiction ...If you want your factual history or memoir, your grant proposal or dissertation or TED talk to be powerful and engaging and to hold the reader and audience’s attention, you must organize your material (even though it’s technically not a story and not fiction) as if it were a story and as if it were fiction. Steven Pressfield, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t

24. Good writing interrupts routines.

If I say ‘Make up a story’, then most people are paralysed. If I say ‘describe a routine and then interrupt it’, people see no problem.

A film of a mountain climb isn’t necessarily anything more than a documentary. If we interrupt the routine of mountain-climbing by having them discover a crashed plane, or if we snow them up and have them start eating each other, or whatever, then we begin storytelling. As a story progresses it begins to establish other routines and these in their turn have to be broken.

… It doesn’t matter how stupidly you interrupt a routine, you will be automatically creating a narrative, and people will listen. - Keith Johnstone, Impro

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25. Ask yourself: What’s the one thing readers will remember after reading this?

Every piece of writing should have one key thesis, concept or theme.

If I could leave my audience with only one single key takeaway message, what would it be? If my audience was to forget everything else I said, what one single idea or lesson would I want them to remember? - Ted Talks Storytelling, by Akash Karia

26. "Storytelling is all about making the reader ask: What happens next?" - Brian Grazer, A Curious Mind

27. Good writing makes assertions.

You can always admit you were wrong and update your work.

28. Grammar is a tool, not a rule.

Don't make changes for "correct grammar." Make changes if it sounds better in your voice. Read aloud if you're not sure. None of the authors we admire use "technically correct" grammar. Grammar should be used to facilitate readability and voice.

29. First drafts aren't permanent. Get it down, then filter out the fluff.

“Write drunk, edit sober” isn’t a cliche; it’s an apt metaphor. Write as if you’ve had a couple of drinks and have no filter. Then cut out everything unnecessary to tell your argument or story. Nobody will see your drunk scribblings.