manuscript

As a blogger, writing is no doubt an integral part of your life. Be it fiction, or non-fiction, the quality of your writing should never dip below brilliant. You would no doubt have noticed that you seem to glide through the works of your favourite writers, never once having to stop to try to make sense of what they’re saying. This is because most bloggers have learned to edit their posts like a pro over time, carefully and deliberately honing their craft. You won’t have to spend all that time though, because you are going to have this beefy list of 36 writing tips to help you level with the competition.

Writing a book, publishing it, and making millions off the royalty fee – that’s the dream, isn’t it? We all want to reach that stage one day, where we wake up to a topped up bank account, full of money coming in from our latest book release. The laurels, the fame – it’s all amazingly tantalising. But God knows writing a book isn’t that easy – otherwise, everyone would write a book. It requires careful planning and outlining, completing the first draft, editing and polishing it to produce a second draft, possibly even a third.

What is the difference between the biography of Elon Musk, and your physics textbook (draw such a comparison between any biography or autobiography and another non-fiction book)? Interest? Portrayal? Whether you’ve been forced into it or not? Yes, those may contribute, but they are not the most important ones. The most essential elements of a text that would draw people in are simply these:

There exist websites that allow anyone to set up an account and start publishing fiction right away – just like WordPress, Medium, and all the other blogging platforms, but for fiction exclusively. I haven’t used Amazon Singles, but did actively write on Wattpad, so I can comment on it with certainty.

Once we migrated from children’s books to YA and beyond, books with pictures in them were immediately thrown to the side, discarded as “baby books”. But the world of articles and other online pieces of text follow different rules. Images attract readers, they reel them in, like bait for fish. Or to put it as Jeff Kinney did in the 2016 Puffin Annual Lecture, they’re “islands to swim to”.