Welcome to week 5 of our Top 10 Writing Tips by… feature. Learning from mentors helps us to improve and evolve in our chosen field, and I still recall the top tips given to me at the start of my writing journey. In honour of that, and to help the next generation of writers’ young and old, I started a feature whereby established authors impart their words of wisdom and share their top ten writing tips.
Next up for the challenge is bestselling author, Sue Moorcroft.
Top 10 Writing Tips by Sue Moorcroft
Sue is a bestselling author who lives in Northamptonshire in the middle of England. As part of a British Army family she was born in Germany and lived in Cyprus and Malta as a child. Sue loves to travel, especially to Malta, which she thinks of as a second home. Her big passions are watching Formula 1, attending dance exercise and yoga classes, reading, and hanging out with family and friends.
Here are Sue’s top ten writing tips:
- Plan? Don’t plan? Don’t be scared to try either way of telling a story. You never know what will work for you when you’re stuck.
- Think of your page as a stage. Your characters are the actors. Keep them interacting with each other and give them dialogue.
- Dialogue can be more than the words characters say. Those words are just part of a scene that includes action, thoughts and a dash of description.
- Replace bland verbs with vivid verbs. Instead of walk use trudge, march, sprint etc to help your character act out the scene.
- ‘I can’t write it …’ I have faith in you that you can. It’s just that sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s hard.
- Sagging middle to your story arc? Prop it up with incidents, lies, secrets, accidents, a new character, conflict, surprises or twists.
- Setting can be part of a conflict. Has your character’s car broken down? Place her on a lonely moor in a snow storm. No phone signal. No one to help.
- Struggling with a character? Discuss her or him with a friend. Personality traits and motivation will often become clear.
- If you’ve edited your story so many times that you’re sick of it, change the font for the final read through. It wakes your brain up.
- Understand which character holds the viewpoint. Let the reader see what they see, hear what they hear, know what they know, feel what they feel.
Huge thanks to Sue for sharing her top tips with us. If you want to check out her latest release A SUMMER TO REMEMBER, then click HERE.
You can also visit Sue on her website, or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
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Shelley Wilson Author 
Lots of great tips, Sue.
I found making my document bigger really helped too with editing!
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I love this idea!
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It helped me spot typos, much quicker!
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All good tips, especially the one about dialogue. It can do so much.
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Thank you, April. I love dialogue! I feel it breathes life into characters.
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Good tip, Ritu. I’ll keep that one in mind as I haven’t tried it before.
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Thank you very much for having me onto your lovely blog, Shelley. x
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My pleasure, Sue x
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Reblogged this on Sue Moorcroft blog and commented:
Shelley Wilson kindly invited me onto her blog to share my top writing tips. Hope they’re useful!
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Lots of good advice here, Sue. And I really must improve the way I write dialogue!
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Loving #4 and #6. The last writing course I went on was full of “Don’t use interesting verbs, when ‘said’ and ‘went’ will cover it”. But I found that so boring. And good to be given short practical tips to prop up a sagging middle, rather than just having it pointed out that there is one!
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Thank you, Shelley and Sue! I’ve always found that tip about changing the onscreen font very useful. Good wishes for your new book in Canada and USA, Sue.
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Great tips – and I can heartily recommend Summer to Remember. Loved it.
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‘Think of your page as a stage’ – that’s a new one to me, but precious advice, Sue. As somebody who would love to see their characters on a screen or a stage, it’s one of the best tips I’ve read for a long time. I also like the idea of changing the type of font. ‘Fresh eyes’ now ‘fresh font’.
I’ve also used the tip of reading your work from the end to the beginning. I picked up so many errors, including plot holes, by doing that.
Thank you.
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Reblogged this on Plaisted Publishing House and commented:
Ten writing tips from Sue Moorcroft – bestselling author.
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Thanks for the reblog x
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Awesome tips. I especially like the tip about changing the font for a final editing pass. That’s brilliant!
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That’s my favourite too!
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Reblogged this on The Reluctant Poet.
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Thanks for the reblog x
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Some great tips, interested to read about the changing the font one. Editing can be such a tiresome process that anyway to liven it up must be welcomed!
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