How to Be a Good Writer: Advice for Every Aspiring Author

Every writer wonders if they are good enough. Debut authors, veteran novelists—even bestselling, award-winning writers worry about whether they can be a better writer. When you’re spending all that time alone at your desk spinning stories out of thin air with no one to talk to but the characters you’ve created, it’s easy to wonder if what you’ve written is any good.

The truth is, we all have unhelpful voices in our heads that make us doubt ourselves. Doubt is simply part of being a writer. The challenge is to know how to silence the inner critic and move past the doubt to keep writing. A big part of this is learning how to manage your expectations, stop trying to overachieve at everything, and embrace being a good enough writer.

An illustrated figure sitting on a chair, staring at a laptop that is shining a cone of light around their face.

Manage your expectations from the first draft

One of the most important things you can do as a writer is to manage your expectations. In other words: don’t expect your first draft to be perfect. After all, you are still learning and developing your writing skills. Even writers with a lot of experience will tell you that every book is different, which means the ways in which we approach writing them are different, too.

As John Steinbeck once said:

And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.
—John Steinbeck

It’s simple yet profound advice that many of us can benefit from. In a world where there is so much emphasis on product, content, and achieving our goals, process gets undervalued and overlooked. We’re so focused on the destination, we forget that the real joy and reward of good writing is in the journey itself.

Writers just need to write. One word after the other. Start there, and forget the rest for now.

Gently build your writing skills

It’s important that we develop our writing capabilities and fill up our toolbox with as many tools as we can, so when things aren’t going our way, we don’t get stuck. We simply try something new, look at the work in a fresh way, try a different perspective, or focus on something else until we are back in flow. It’s how we learn to be a better writer, mistake by mistake.

That could mean writing scenes out of sequence, diving into dialogue, or journaling—whatever works. At The Novelry, we believe in tools not rules, and we also believe in messy first drafts. That first draft is all about getting the story out of your brain and onto the page.

It doesn’t have to be genius; it just needs to be good enough.

If you’re finding yourself stuck for whatever reason, you can try this advice from guest author Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, or this deep-dive blog post on writer’s block from writing coach Emylia Hall.

Overachievers assemble

A lot of great writers are overachievers, which makes sense. We are making magic with our ideas and words, which takes vision, courage, and faith. But doing this also takes patience—something many of us overlook.

As founder of The Novelry, Louise Dean, wisely observes:

Overachievers throw themselves at their novel writing most diligently when they take our courses, but they don’t dawdle in the shallow end to find out about the techniques of staying afloat in a novel in the first place. They’re on the top diving board fast.

I know how it is. My worst writing habit is showing off incorrigibly. I’m the fool on the top diving board. In my opening chapters, I am giving all my long words and best tricks, and this is why I am a slow and uneconomical writer, because I have to write so many drafts to get the hell over myself, and simply tell the story, and say what I see.
—Louise Dean

The wonderful thing about our writing coaches at The Novelry is that each one of them has been where you are—struggling with doubt, rushing ahead without shoring up the foundations of the story, and eager to type The End, even when there are squishy bits and plot holes to be addressed. But because all our coaches are also acclaimed published authors, they use their experience to help you spot—and avoid—the pitfalls and traps that overachievers might fall into.

An illustrated woman staring down at an open book.

Enjoy writing more by slowing down

Many of us are juggling professional careers and responsibilities, families and relationships. We’re serious about our writing. We want it to be good writing—to be well regarded, well reviewed, and well received. We crave feedback, needing the positive, but often dwelling on the negative.

Psychologist Arthur P. Ciaramicoli called it “the curse of the capable,” which is “a complex web of emotions that drives people to hide their genuine needs behind a mask of over-achievement.” He claimed that people often seek:

...the “quick fix” of over-achievement to compensate for wounded self-esteem... Chronically overachieving people often don’t realize unrecognized needs are driving them from the healing conditions necessary for fulfilled lives.
—Arthur P. Ciaramicoli

Now, to be fair, we’re all driven by something, and if we can turn a negative into a positive? Even better. Who hasn’t wanted to prove the naysayers in their life wrong? It’s fuel for our fires, just so long as we can manage the flame and don’t burn ourselves out in the process.

This is why patience is key.

It is also one of the hardest things for an overachiever to have. We view it as a kind of weakness—as if we are going too slow, not getting enough done, falling behind other writers. But the reality is, if we get feedback on our work too early, we can actually set ourselves back.

One of the worst things a writer can do is ask someone to validate their writing before it’s ready. It’s like asking someone to taste the cake batter and tell us if they like the cake. It hasn’t baked yet! And neither has your story.

Thankfully, our coaches know just the kind of advice you need at each stage of your writing process and can give you honest feedback in a way that helps you move forward with faith and enthusiasm.

Illustration of a woman sitting in a cozy pink armchair reading a book.

Become a better writer by writing simply

When you’re an overachiever, it’s hard to trust that your story is enough. We wonder if anyone will really want to read our simple tale about a complicated family, so in order to make ourselves a “better” writer, we try to cram a whole bunch of other things into it in an effort to be all things to all readers.

This is us doubting ourselves once again: our own voice, our own work, and our whole plan to become a better writer.

Sometimes, a story about a boy who loves his mother is exactly what we want to read. But overachievers won’t have it. They want everyone to love them and their work, so they conspire to be all things to all people. They strive to write original, death-defying, jaw-dropping stuff. Thus, we have first chapters which pull punch after punch in purple prose.

What overachievers cannot accept is that readers like simplicity, and they’re not appalled by cliché at all. One or two can make a person feel quite at home. They don’t mind them, they’re partial to one or two with a cup of tea.
—Louise Dean

What we forget when we are trying so hard to be clever writers is that the reader likes to be clever, too. Be a better writer by letting them feel that way.

The reader likes to feel clever. He or she likes to join the dots and feel good about themselves. The reader doesn’t want to spend a few hours thinking how clever you are as the author, when she could be thinking about how clever she is. It seems to me that successful writers, offering viable commercial novels, know this.
—Louise Dean

Be choosy in your writing practice

Take a look at your story and ask yourself if you are accidentally writing more than one book at once. You don’t want to cram all your ideas and sensational one-liners into the first chapter of your novel.

Maybe you’ve got enough ideas for several books, in which case, go ahead and begin writing the one that excites you the most. Open a blank page and roll with it.

Focus on your main character. Make them real and let us see them, so we feel something for them. Ask a question that we, the reader, will be interested in finding the answer to. If you can do that, then you’ll probably have done a good enough job for chapter one.

An illustrated figure sits in a large red armchair, reading something on a tablet.

Slow your roll

You know what the best thing about writing your first novel is? No one is waiting for it. You can take your time. There’s no need to rush.

I see a lot of novels getting written, and the writers who do best don’t thresh about in agony, breaking and burning one draft after another: they proceed with prodigious sluggishness. They write—as did Greene and Hemingway—a regular daily 500 words or so, using the hours in between to refresh them, and keeping close to a well-considered path.

When we get you settled into your story at The Novelry (once we’ve got the premise sold and commercially viable), we put you on a word diet of 500 words a day (in the hour’s writing time) and increase that to 750 after a few weeks. It’s counterintuitive, perhaps, but it works.
—Louise Dean

Believe that you’re good enough

Anyone who has ever achieved any kind of success knows there is no end to that race. The finish line just keeps moving; the moment we reach our goal, we raise the bar.

Is it because we are running from an old hurt? Conditioned to believe that more is better? That we are not smart enough, successful enough, good enough—until, until, until….

Overachieving is a condition for which no success can provide a salve. You’ll simply raise the stakes when you get the prize because you’re running from an old hurt, the idea that you’re not good enough, planted somewhere back in childhood when your success seemed to make the people you love, love you more obviously.

You’re a praise junkie. The more you try to excel, the harder it seems to get until you feel that you can’t breathe, and it feels just like the very thing you fear most: failure. A lack of oxygen, the obliteration of your meaning and existence; death. You’re dying to succeed.

But the cure is inside the story. You’re almost home.
—Louise Dean

Our best advice: enjoy the journey

Novels are not just a wonderful escape for the reader—they’re an escape for the writer. A place where the world can be more just, where people can be better, and the satisfying resolutions we crave are beautifully written and expressed in dialogue we wish we could say in real life.

A female figure stands with her eyes closed beneath a full moon.

The novel is a form that provides the ultimate therapy. The place you can take the worst parts of yourself, those which you won’t own up to in daylight and good company, and give them to one of your cast and treat them for it in the story.

Every novel is a moral journey that concludes with the characters often finding themselves humbled, occasionally exalted, sometimes at home, sometimes in a strange place, but arriving at a place not of genius or outstanding insight, but self-acceptance.

Where else can you be in total control of your world, fall in love with people you’ve never met, say the things you’ve always yearned to say, and be the people you’ve always wanted to be? There are so many things in our lives that we cannot control, or that we don’t love doing but have to do anyway, because we need to as part of being an adult.

You don’t have to feel ready to start writing

So, why not give that adult a time-out for an hour a day and let that mischievous, curious, imaginative child inside you shine? Writers write to indulge themselves in the magical make-believe of story.

A story is a beautiful lie, and the novel pretends that people can change. I am not clever enough to tell you if they can or do. Possibly they can, possibly not. Perhaps that’s why fiction is so necessary; it’s our last best lie.

Your novel takes the thing you fear most, the part kept concealed, and grafts it onto someone not like you. And you, the author, play God or the doctor and treat it.
—Louise Dean

The novel is a tonic for the exhausted overachiever! It’s no surprise that so many overachievers come to The Novelry. We see you. We feel you. We know how to take all that passion and turn it into a process that supports you and your writing career, helping you become the better writer you dream of being.

Our team of bestselling author coaches and professional former Big Five editors are here for you. As is the incredible online community of fellow writers who are here to listen, share, and cheer you along the way.

So... Go slow, go steady, and be good—enough.

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Wherever you are on your journey as a writer, our online novel writing courses offer the complete pathway from the idea to “The End.” With personal coaching, live classes, community support, and step-by-step lessons to fit your schedule and inspire you daily, we’ll help you complete your book using our unique one-hour-a-day method. For mentorship from published authors and publishing editors to live—and love—the writer’s life, sign up and start your novel writing program today. The Novelry is the famous fiction writing school that is open to all!