You’ve taken the most important step and written your story down. Whoop and holler! That’s a huge accomplishment. So many amazing stories are lost because the dreamer never shares their stories. But committing your story to paper or the computer is only the first step in creating a great story. Now you must take this raw material and, like a sculptor, shape your ideas into a masterpiece. 

I find it difficult to simply read and re-read my story and make it better. I thought I’d share a few of my tricks to make your story shine. All you need is a printed a copy of your story and as many colour pens and highlighters as you can find! 

Put a red line between each sentence. Read your sentences out loud and consider them one-by-one. Are they complete sentences with a subject and verb? Now look at pace and flow. Short, punchy sentences can be used for action or tense scenes to make your reader feel breathless. Long, flowing sentences can make your reader linger on a thought or idea or paint a beautiful scene. But too many long, complex sentences can cause your reader to pause or stumble. Take a look at the flow of your sentences and make any adjustments that might make your prose more readable. 

First pick a coloured pen or highlighter and circle all the nouns in your story.  Can you picture the noun? Did you use a generic noun when a more specific word could paint a more vivid picture? For example consider the line: Zack drove by in his car. This sentence is pretty bland. We know the bare minimum of what’s happening. We could tell so much more about Zack based on the car he drives. Is it a rusty old sedan or a fiery red sports car? Look at your nouns and help them paint a picture of words. 

Also keep on the lookout for passive voice: sentences that start with ‘there are’, ‘here is’, ‘he is’ etc. These signal that you are  telling and not showing the reader your story. Passive voice is easy to fix. For example: There are twelve pink polar bears swimming in a sea of lemonade. Simply delete ‘there are’ and use the active verb already in the sentence. The new sentence has more power:  Twelve pink polar bears are swimming in a sea of lemonade. 

Now let’s look at the action in your sentences. Pick another colour and highlight every verb. Then read only the verbs in your story. Do you have a sense of the action in your story? If not, your verbs may not be powerful enough. Have you overused some verbs?  

Let’s consider Zack and his car again. We now know that Zack has a fire-engine red Porsche. But he’s simply driving by. We can do better than that. How did Zack drive? Drive doesn’t tell us much does it? Is he driving by very fast or very slow? He could race, zoom and speed by or he could sputter or putter or inch by. These verbs tell us so much more. Zack zooms by in his fire-engine red Porsche. We know even more about what’s happening in the scene.  

My final tip is to highlight each character in a different colour. Now read your story character by character. Look at each character’s dialog and description. Is your character consistent throughout your story? Has the character come to life on the page? Can you picture the character?   

Now revise your story based on what you’ve learned. Read and re-read your story until you can’t think of any way to improve it. Then set it aside for a week or longer. Go back to the story with fresh eyes. When you can’t find anything else to change – then give it to a friend, family member, teacher or librarian who loves reading and writing as much as you do. Ask them for feedback. Do they have any suggestions for making your story better? Writers need editors and readers. We often read what we think we put on the page. We can visualize the characters and actions because we’ve imagined it. Now it’s your turn!  

Patricia Elliott

What are you about? What upsets you? Makes you happy? Sad? Thrills you? What are you interested in? What do you care about most – even feel passionate about? When you write, you must write with passion because writing is a passion and only that passion will help you persevere, drive you on and turn you into a true writer.

If you had to shout out just one sentence from a rooftop to a crowd clustered below, hanging on your every word, what would it be? That sentence is your passion, your obsession. So feed it. Feed it with books and more books, with films, with music, with TV, with drama. Visit art galleries and museums – anywhere and anything that might stimulate an aspect of it.

But feed it.

And if you don’t know what your own particular obsession is yet, don’t worry. You’ve got loads of time in which to discover it. The rest of your life, in fact.

You will do.

J.P. Buxton

You’ve gone on the internet, done a search for Top Tips on Writing and you’ve got 170 MILLION hits. I know, I just did it too. This reveals a simple truth: there are as many ways of telling a story as there are of reading them: on the bus, in the library, upside down, right way up, watching telly. But that’s no good, is it? You want advice, so here’s some:

* Almost everything you have is made by someone else but your story is your own; utterly, totally and uniquely. Be proud of it.

* Stories are simple – they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. When you start, have a little think about where you want to end, then forget about it and push on.

* Your characters are like people – you’ll know some of them but others are just plain weird. The weird ones are REALLY interesting.

* If your story stops dead, it’s probably because your characters are a bit lost. Take a moment to work how to help them.

* Try to finish everything you start. Your story, picture or poem deserves it. And if you finish, it’s easier to move on to the next thing you’re doing. Don’t ask me why; it’s just way things are.

BUT none of this advice is ANY GOOD AT ALL if you’ve been told to produce a story for homework and YOU’RE TOTALLY HORRIBLY STUCK. So here’s a trick.

Close your eyes and let a picture float into your head: it could be a red ball in a dirty puddle, or a white kitten in a blue room, or an empty wooden boat in the middle of a flat blue sea, or a candle flickering by an open window.

Now get curious and start asking questions: HOW did the boat get there? WHERE did the ball come from? WHY is the kitten in the blue room? WHO lit the candle? Answer those questions and you’ve got a story.

Cate Sampson

I like mystery in my stories. That was easy when I was writing crime novels – someone was dead and my readers wanted to know who the killer was. But you don’t need a dead body in order to have mystery. There doesn’t even have to be a crime. But if your story is asking questions like, “Why did that happen?” or “Who did that?” or “Who on earth is she?” then your readers are more likely to keep turning the pages to find out the answer.

Have your characters talk to each other, a lot. A reader learns about a character from seeing him or her chatting with other characters. Move your story along through dialogue, feeding information and clues into the things people say to each other. Dialogue is so much more fun for readers to read than long paragraphs of explanation.

Karen Owen

Waking up the imagination is everything to me. I spent most of my time daydreaming. Whenever I’m thinking about or writing my stories, I’m always asking WHAT IF…? I imagine their strange and unknown worlds and I’m filled with curiosity.

Where do they live?

What can they see?

What do they eat?

What can they smell?

Do they sleep easily?

And what are they scared of?

Now add a healthy dose of what if… and you’re on the road to a new adventure.

Chitra Soundar

How many senses do we have? If you exclude Common Sense, then we perhaps could agree that we can SMELL, SEE, HEAR, FEEL and TASTE.

Senses have everything to do with story. When you write stories, you want your reader to be able to smell and see and hear, feel and taste what your story’s character is facing.

Clear as Mud?

Oh, what colour is mud? Is it thick or is it transparent? Is it icky to touch? Is it wet or dry?

Youtube videos of how to draw Tiz the cat and Ott, the donkey from book Tiz and Ott’s Big Draw

Recipe for Quick Draw Animal Characters (printable download)

Bridget’s Recipe for Drawing Quick and Funny Animal Characters

Make Your Own Pop-Up Monster

Writing Exercises and Activities

Teacher and parent resources for ages 3-7, including Early Reader packs, word searches and art & crafts by Karen Owen.

Creative writing exercises on character development, setting and description, and how to breathe life into a story by Sara Grant

Puzzles, recipes and writing tips by Chitra Soundar

Ages 3 to 10.

A Reading Guide for ‘Secret Breakers’ including writing activities, discussion points and group activities for use in the classroom by H L Dennis.

Years 4-7

Is Your Middle a Muddle? Year – 6 upwards

Polishing Your Story Until It Sparkles 

When Characters Become Your Friends 

 Using Historical Sources for Fiction 

Why Writing About Difficult Subjects Is Important

Detailed ‘how to’ write different kinds of stories

On writing picture books and creative partnerships by Beverley Birch for  Older creative writing students, teachers, parents and writers.

A step-by-step process on how to write a mystery the Chasing Danger way by Sara Grant

How to Write a Scary Christmas Tale by Ross Montgomery Years 5-6

How to Write a Mystery Story by Patricia Elliott

How to Write a Sequel by Sarah Mussi – For ages 13-100

Top Tips And Advice for Writers

A collection of Top Tips from CWISL Authors

How I write and some writing tips (for ages 6 to adult) by Beverley Birch

Tips for Writing for YA (ages 13 – 100) by Sarah Mussi

Eleven pages of tips on Creative Writing by Cate Sampson for teens and adults

Write Like A Pro – Using Objects As Inspiration by Jackie Marchant

Part 1

Part 2