How to Level Up Your Writing & Storytelling Skills
Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash
Storytelling is both an art and a craft — and like any craft, the skills required to write great stories can be taught and learned.
The most fundamental way to improve your writing and storytelling skills is to write. Every time you read a book or watch a movie, you internalize important storytelling lessons, and the simple act of writing allows you to subconsciously apply these lessons to your work, using healthy self-criticism (i.e., comparing your stories to those you’ve consumed) to hone your craft.
That said, there are also action steps you can take to level up your skills and stories with intention — to learn more about the craft of writing fiction at a faster and more effective pace.
Since you're reading this article, then you already know one way to improve your craft. After all, I’ve made it my mission here at Well-Storied to teach writers how to craft sensational novels and build their best writing lives, and you've clearly taken the initiative to learn. Way to go!
What are some of the other steps you can take to improve your skills and stories beyond simply consuming how-to content? And how can you best apply what you learn to truly level up in your craft?
Let’s break down the six essential strategies you can put into practice to pave the way for incredible growth in your writing life…
Strategy #1: Adopt a Growth Mindset
Imagine you want to learn how to play the guitar. You don't expect yourself to pick up a six-string and immediately know how to finger-pick a haunting tune, do you? Of course not. Nor should you expect yourself to know how to craft a fantastic story the first time you pick up the pen.
As I often say, excellence is an earned skill. To excel in any craft, you must be willing to start from the bottom. To know nothing and learn everything. Embracing humility in this way is key to growth — and ultimately success.
If you struggle to believe that you could ever write excellent stories, then you’re likely operating from a fixed mindset. This is just a fancy way of saying that you believe your skill is static. That you aren’t capable of growth. That raw talent is the only thing separating the successful from the unsuccessful.
But writer? This is far from the case.
In truth, there’s no limit to how much you can grow in your craft. Yes, talent might be a boon to creative excellence and success, but it isn’t passion. It isn’t persistence. It isn’t damn hard work.
Plenty of people waste their natural talent, just as plenty of so-called mediocre creatives go on to prove to the world just how phenomenal their work can be.
So before you take any action steps to level up your skills and stories, first take a moment to adopt a growth mindset. To believe that you are capable of becoming the writer you want to be. Because you are. You’ve got this, writer.
Strategy #2: Mind Your Doubts
Most writers view doubt as a roadblock in their writing lives. They see it as an obstacle to overcome or a weakness to hide. But as I first mentioned in Build Your Best Writing Life, doubt can actually be an incredible tool for self-improvement.
When handled mindfully, doubt is nothing more than your subconscious trying to bring potential issues to your attention. Often, your subconscious presents these issues in the form of a question:
Am I good enough to write this story?
Is something in this scene not working?
Does that dialogue sound wrong?
Doubt becomes destructive when we take the question mark of uncertainty and transform it into the period of a limiting belief:
I'm not good enough to write this story.
I can't make this scene work.
I write terrible dialogue.
As a writer, it's your job to accept the helping hand that doubt presents. To do so, consider the question that doubt poses. Is there really an issue you need to resolve? If so, is there an action you can take to resolve it?
For example, if doubt tells you that you might not be good enough to write your story, then ask yourself why. What’s really going on here? Maybe you don’t feel good enough because you don’t know what to write next.
This situation doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of writing your story. It simply means that you need to take a step back from drafting to figure out where your story lost momentum. Maybe read up on the basics of story structure.
See how that works? You can use this same process to transform any instance of doubt into a springboard for growth.
Strategy #3: Read Critically
The books we read have much to teach us about how we can improve our writing and storytelling skills, and we can be intentional about learning and absorbing these lessons.
There are many ways to read critically. For example, you might:
Review how your favorite author writes descriptions to learn how to improve your own
Map out the structure of a book in your genre to better understand the types of story beats you need to hit
Write a book review to consider what you did and didn't like about the novel you just read
Explore what makes one of your favorite scenes so memorable and immersive
Examine the feelings of jealousy that arise when you read to understand areas where your own work might need improvement
If you'd like to take your critical reading skills to the next level, then you're in luck. I've written a full article on this topic that you can find at www.well-storied.com/critical.
Strategy #4: Consume Prescriptive Content Mindfully
If you’ve ever dipped your toe into the world of writing craft content, then you know that there’s an absolute wealth of information available to consume — books, blogs, podcasts, social media posts... you name it. It’s no wonder that many new writers feel overwhelmed and inadequate when seeking resources.
To save yourself from information overload, try to consume prescriptive craft content mindfully. Choose just one or two resources to review per week, or consider only consuming content when you’re ready to address a specific issue or area in your writing life.
While you can learn a lot by reading and listening, the best way to absorb new information is to take notes. By jotting down what you’re learning, you identify the key techniques and strategies you can apply to your work, helping you better understand what you’re learning and how you can use that information to improve your craft.
By taking notes, you can also create a personal database of the writing and storytelling principles you find most helpful, which you can then reference on repeat throughout your writing life. Awesome, right?
Strategy #5: Implement, Implement, Implement
Knowledge is power, but it isn’t action. If you want to improve your skills and stories, then you need to implement the information you’ve consumed. To do so, consider slowing down.
Many writers treat productivity as religion, focusing so much time and energy on getting words on the page that they fail to put in the work to write better words. Yes, writing is foundational to your growth. But implementing new knowledge often requires a slower approach to creative work.
So don’t be afraid to take your time. It’s okay to sacrifice word count in the name of honing your dialogue, just as there’s nothing wrong with forgoing revisions for a few days to really dig deep into your story’s structure.
Complete a writing exercise, or journal from your protagonist’s perspective. Whatever you need to do to realize the growth you’ve imagined for yourself. Put in this work now, and you’ll reap the benefits for years to come.
Strategy #6: Seek Feedback
As writers, we're often too close to our manuscripts to truly see their strengths and weaknesses. That's why seeking external feedback on our work is such a profound way to improve our skills and our stories.
When we seek feedback from beta readers, critique partners, or professional editors, we intentionally cultivate a broader understanding of where and how we can improve in our crafts. We pave the way for incredible growth.
That said, I know it’s not easy to share your work with others, especially when that work isn’t yet polished. But remember, good feedback is constructive. It exists to build you up rather than tear you down, to help you make your stories the best that they can be.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can handle constructive criticism with grace, then click here to check out my full article on the topic.
Putting these six strategies into practice in your writing life is a fantastic way to improve your writing and storytelling skills with intention. But don’t forget that at the end of the day the most fundamental way to write better stories is to keep writing stories.
You don't need to know every writing tip and technique in the book (no pun intended) before you begin writing. Nor is it possible to master the tips and techniques you learn without putting your newfound knowledge into practice.
Find a balance between writing to improve and writing to write, and it won’t be long before you recognize just how much you’ve leveled up your skills and stories.
