The legal profession relies heavily on the written word as one of its most important tools. Legal writing is the medium in which we express legal analysis, legal rights and duties, informing, advocating, instructing and persuading over a wide range of different materials.

Legal writing shares a lot in common with other forms of the written word. For the most part, it has the same goals in that you want to communicate in the clearest manner using the simplest language within the least amount of words.

It also shares another thing with other types of written communication: people have a hard time getting it right. With so many ways to write a single idea, it’s just not that easy for people to make the right decision when choosing which way to go.

Here are some guidelines to help with your legal writing tasks:

1. Don’t sound like an archaic statesman. That is, avoid the use of those ridiculous phrases and jargon that permeate dusty legal documents of yore. Words like aforementioned, heretofore and their ilk have no place in today’s vernacular — even in legal writing. If you’re afraid that dropping those will make you sound casual and informal, pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal or The Economist. Aim for a style similar to what those publications do — formal, but plain and easy to understand. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to read an article or two from those publications before you actually start drafting a legal document so they can influence your style. Everyone who reads what you wrote will thank you for it.
2. Use concrete words. Spend any amount of time in the legal field and you’ll find out how easy it is to fill up your mind with loads of legal abstractions. While there are times when using “subject matter jurisdiction” and similar terms are the only way to communicate a thought, those moments are actually not as common as some legal documents will suggest. A good rule of thumb is to use these abstract legalese only when there’s no simpler, more familiar way to convey the message. Otherwise, stick with the kind of concrete word choices normal people can understand.
3. Aim to clarify. Make clarifying your point and your message the primary goal in when you write. Don’t aim to impress. Don’t aim to obfuscate (it’s obvious when you’re trying to complicate something). Don’t aim to confuse. The more people trust your writing, the more favors will end up going your way, especially when those arguing against you are doing other things like trying to impress, obfuscating and creating confusion.
4. Never forget your audience. Like any other form of writing, you need to tailor your documents to fit the reader. A brief you’re preparing for a judge will likely read differently than a release on the same issue that you’re writing to members of the press. Content, word choice and tone are all things that require changes depending on who’s going to read a piece of writing.
5. Learn good grammar. At the least, use an English writing software to make sure you don’t turn in a document riddled with avoidable grammar and spelling errors. Poor grammar just makes you look uneducated — something that doesn’t bode well in a field where the practitioners are, generally, highly educated.
6. Don’t write anything you wouldn’t say out loud. If a phrase, a sentence or a passage sounds awkward or in poor form when you read it out loud, rewrite it. Good writing should be able to stand up to strong oratorical reading, especially in the legal field. The common advice to read your writing aloud during revision will work excellently for you here.
7. Organize your writing. Make your documents easier to read by using visual clues, such as headers and subtitles, to guide the reader. Group ideas in separate sections if it makes sense in order to better compartmentalize each individual discussion. This doesn’t just help make your message easier to digest — it greatly improves your document’s readability, too. Most importantly, limit your paragraphs to a single topic each in order to avoid confusing readers.
8. Don’t bury your most important content. What’s the most important message or idea you want to convey? Whatever it is, make sure it appears in your first paragraph, instead of just the body as part of the discussion. Repeat it multiple times, too, making sure it’s emphasized and amplified such that it’s impossible to miss. If an idea seems an awkward fit for your introduction, then create a summary or abstract preceding the intro where the important idea can be quickly highlighted. You need to give your most important ideas the spotlight, conforming the document according to them — not the other way around.
9. Make sure all your sentences can be understood in one reading. If somebody needs to go over a sentence two or three times in order to “get it,” then it needs to be rewritten. There are many reasons why a sentence could end up this difficult to comprehend: too long, obscure word choices, improper punctuation, pronoun misuse and a whole host of other things. Whatever the reason is, the symptom is usually clear as day. Just rewrite it until it can be digested in a single pass.
10. Avoid passive constructions. A lot of legal writing from the old days is written in the passive voice. As such, it has persisted among a lot of people in the field today. Just because those ancient law books you read wrote things that way doesn’t mean you have to do the same. Instead, follow current writing standards, adopting the active form by structuring your sentences to use strong, action verbs.
11. Edit ruthlessly. Half of writing is rewriting. In fact, it probably takes up more than half of the time for a lot of other people. Either way, editing and revision is where you trim and polish your work — it’s where you cut, prune, shorten, connect, combine, simplify and perform all sorts of changes that improve your piece.

When writing papers, a large part of the work will involve research — lots of it. A high level of writing skills can only get you so far. Without comprehensive research, there won’t be anything for you to write beyond conjecture and personal opinion.

Importance of Sound Research

Research is very valuable regardless of what you’re writing. It takes on even more significance when you’re producing content for school, since sound research is what will fuel your arguments and ideas. Papers earn their credibility by demonstrating that your ideas are backed up with information from experts and other authorities on the subject.

Additionally, performing thorough research allows you to gain a broader understanding of the subject matter. Even if you don’t use every piece of information you come across during your research, it lets you form a more complete picture of the issue at hand, making your arguments more informed and authoritative.

Categories of Research

There are three ways to categorize most research tasks. Your first task is to figure out which of these your paper belongs in, so you can focus your research on the appropriate sources.

• Hard. This involves performing research from scientific and objective sources. You’ll be scouring for data consisting of proven facts, statistics, figures and other measurable evidence. A paper on the impact of modern biology to medical advancement will likely require research along these lines.
• Soft. This involves performing research on more subjective topics, including cultural and opinion-based sources. Research for a paper on the influence of 90s hip-hop on today’s youth should fall in this category.
• Mixed. Papers on politics and economics, among other topics, tend to require this variety of research, which involves drawing from both hard and soft research sources. This type of research is necessary when facts and figures aren’t enough to make your case — you’ll have to argue against strong opinion as well.

Finding Sources: Soft Research

There are plenty of online sources for soft research topics. Provided a website isn’t a shady hack job created solely for ad income (e.g. article repository sites), there’s a good chance you’ll be able to use it as source. Good places to look at include:

• Product review sites (e.g. CNet Reviews, ZDNet)
• Blogs
• Discussion forums
• Wikis

Rule of thumb: as much as possible, stick to larger, authority sites, rather than obscure ones with a very small audience. Larger sites tend to have better quality control since they’re exposed to a larger group of people. As such, there’s lesser chance for false information and misattributed quotes (chances are, transgressions will be called out quickly in the comments section). Do note, though, that even large blogs are notoriously under-edited these days, so you might need to verify some information yourself.

Wikis (e.g. Wikipedia) are a great first stop for information, but don’t stop there. The real value of wikis are the links to sources at the bottom. Well-researched wiki pages usually collate some excellent sources for information, which you can use for your own research as well.

For the most part, soft research will involve collecting information from respectable and, hopefully, authoritative sources. While soft research sources are not as subject to scrutiny as their “harder” counterparts, positive reputation helps.

Finding Sources: Hard Research

For hard research, you need to cite material produced by scholars, professionals and industry experts who carry the proper credentials. The campus library is a great destination for this type of information. If you want to try your work online first, you can check out online libraries and academic journal repositories. Websites to check out include:

• Intute
• Google Scholar
• Journal TOCs
• JURN Repository
• ROAR e-Prints

If you’re looking for current data and statistics for the US, these websites offer excellent sources of details:

• Public Agenda. This is a great one-stop source for finding out current public sentiments on a wide variety of subjects, providing access to press releases on hundreds of research studies. Even better, these aren’t reports from amateur surveys and polls — instead, these are professional-quality documents put together by highly-credentialed research centers and academic institutions.
• National Center for Health Statistics. For stats and figures on various health and medical issues, you can’t do any better than this website as a primary source.
• National Center for Education Statistics. For stats and figures related to education, such as student performance, literacy levels and dropout rates, this website should provide a definitive reference.
• US Census Bureau. We’re guessing you have a good idea of what “census” means. As you may have guessed, this is the definitive place to find information on national population, living conditions, economic standings and more.

For a list of official government publications, just punch “Uncle Sam” into Google Search and you’ll get a full list as the result. When seeking out peer-reviewed medical and scientific documents, the OJOSE facility is a great source for finding and downloading both free and paid journals.

For international statistics, you can look for agencies per country that correspond with the above organizations. You can also use GeoHive for geopolitical data, statistics on the human population and other interesting world facts. Same with archived news via Archive.org and Google News. Non-commercial consumer websites, like Consumer Watch, are also great for finding objective, unbiased information.

Filter And Validate

While researching, you’ll likely accumulate more information than you’re likely to need in your paper. That’s fine. After compiling a hefty amount of research notes, though, you want to filter the material, sorting out the legitimate and useful information from the rest of the pack.

Research that you end up using in your paper should be able to withstand close examination later. For information to do that, it has to come from a credible source and be relatively current compared to other findings in the field. You want to collect pieces of information that support, rather than contradict, each other.

Cite Your Sources

Every time you use a research item in your paper, whether paraphrased or in quotes, always cite the source. You might get away doing this when posting to blogs, but papers for school need to be properly cited. Not doing so is lazy at best and can be construed as plagiarism at worst.

Writing essays — lots of them — is an inescapable reality for many students, regardless of how natural writing comes to you. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a gifted wordsmith to turn out college essays that get high marks. If you turn your attention to a few things that can produce high rewards, you can ace those college essays even with relatively average writing abilities.

Formulating Your Main Thesis

Most of the time, essay assignments won’t provide you with a ready-made thesis. Instead, you’ll get instructions about the kind of essay to write, the general subject to write it in and other such guidelines, but you’ll need to decide about the actual main thesis for yourself.

In these situations, your first move should be to formulate the questions that you want to answer in the essay? Once you have that, you can proceed to decide on your hypothetical answers, each of which then becomes one of your candidate theses.

From there, you can evaluate each one individually on the way to deciding which main thesis could work best. Personally, I filter them through these criteria:

1. Scope. Which candidate thesis has a scope that’s just the right size for the word count required in the essay? Too narrow and you could end up grasping for words. Too broad and you’ll have to cut out too much of your discussion.
2. Difficulty. Some thesis candidates will stick out at you as being easier to argue for than others. If it tackles an important enough issue, isn’t an obvious conclusion (i.e. the opposite of a thesis needs to be equally valid) and has the right scope, why make life harder for yourself by choosing something else? Make sure you test and refine as the research proceeds, though, to ensure you end up with something you can adequately prove.
3. Depth. You want something that delves deep enough into the subject that you have plenty of options where to go. Most surface issues restrict you to surface arguments — those tend to feel a little underwhelming when used as a thesis.

Outlining

Some people outline. Others don’t. If you belong in the latter group, you might want to consider your stance. The longer and more complicated the essay, the more an outline can help, as it allows you to plan the paper’s structure before diving in to actually put together the draft.

Outlines allow you to think before you write. It allows you to test out various elements of the essay — from the sequence your ideas are presented in to the paragraph groupings to the progression of your logic — before you even write a single word.

When you write an outline, make it brief. The point is to put your general ideas on paper so that they may gain structure and nothing more. In programming, this will be a flowchart or a use-case, rather than the actual code, so there’s no real need to delve too deep into the nitty-gritty.

Drafting

The biggest advantage of writing an outline is it simplifies the drafting phrase a lot. When you draft without an outline, you’re basically thinking on your feet, building the structure, presentation and progression of all your points and arguments on the fly. Instead of focusing on just expressing your points, you’re worrying about the structure of your logic and the sequence of your ideas along with it.

We always recommend jumping right into the body paragraphs unless the introduction comes naturally. After you’ve done the body paragraphs, the right introduction should be a little clearer, as you have a more concrete idea of how the essay flows. Many times, students get stumped trying to construct the introduction as the first paragraph they write. You can avoid that by just jumping right into the meat of your discussion and going back to the introduction later.

Finish the draft as fast as you can, focusing on expressing your ideas according to the structure in your outline. Don’t second-guess anything you write. If you put something on paper, leave it on. When you finish the draft, you should have more than enough time to second-, third- and even fourth-guess yourself. Learn to control the urge to judge your work — it can save you plenty of time.

Introductions And Conclusions

You can strive for average in all paragraphs in your essays and still get good marks, provided your introduction and conclusion are strong. For the introduction, make sure it includes an attractive component — one that generates interest in the reader to learn more. For the conclusion, try to end strongly, ending with a statement (a quote, a statistic or a finding) that carries heavy impact. The stronger the conclusion, the more satisfying the ending of a paper usually becomes.

For both, make sure you write clearly. Avoid using complicated language and keep things as simple as possible. Being the two most important paragraphs, you want to avoid any chance for misunderstanding.

Good Practices For Writing Essays

1. Start early. The earlier you start brainstorming ideas for the essay, the sooner you’ll start getting work done. If you think you can finish an essay in three days, then begin with the work two weeks before deadline — people tend to overestimate their own abilities to finish essay assignments (yes, including you), so don’t be too cocky.
2. Don’t write from beginning to end. Instead, write whatever is ready to be written. If the second point is already clear in your mind and the first point isn’t, then do the second point first. Doing so saves you time and speeds up the drafting process.
3. Keep the overall purpose and organizational scheme in mind throughout the drafting. That way, you don’t ever lose track of what’s important in the essay whether you’re writing the introduction or a body paragraph. Done right, it could lead to a more cohesive piece of writing.
4. Revise extensively. When you revise, attend to the whole essay, rewriting it as a whole, rather than a series of isolated sentences. Do multiple passes, checking for different things each time in order to ensure you sculpt it to the best of your ability. This is where starting early really helps you — the earlier you begin work, the more time you’re going to have to perform revisions.

The opening of a novel is extremely important, as it will establish a lot of elements that will come to play throughout the story. From the setting to the narrative pace to the tone to the characters, your opening often has a big impact in how those various elements are shaped.

Strong Openings Don’t Make A Story

A strong opening, of course, doesn’t necessarily make for a good novel or short story. However, it lays down the proper foundation for the reader to both understand the narrative and commit to it. Without a strong opening, you’re likely to lose a lot of potential readers before the first chapter is through.

Build Momentum

Story openers should exhibit as much of the individual craft elements that make up the story as a whole. That is, it works best when the opener establishes a distinctive voice, a specific point of view, a rudimentary hint of the plot and a small dash of character introduction. Before the first paragraph is done, readers should be aware of the setting and initial conflict in order to properly establish a context for the narrative.

Don’t Start In The Wrong Place

There are many places in which you can start a story. It’s important to avoid beginning it in spots where you’ll need to do fill in lots of blanks in the background, though. If you immediately need to do flashbacks, narratives of past events and similar strategies for establishing context as soon as you begin the story, then you probably jumped too late into the plot. In such cases, it’s better to just go back to an earlier time and start the story there.

Do note that this is different from holding back some information from the readers. Having small bits of details that you can fill in throughout the story are fine, provided you can skip them after the opening of your story.

It’s also possible to start a story too early. If you’re writing a retelling of Snow White, for instance, it’s probably a bad idea to open with the damsel in distress waking up one morning and making breakfast. A good rule is to skip right up to the point where action is imminent, so you don’t drag the reader into a boring account from the get-go. When nothing happens, many readers usually move on.

Generate Curiosity

Most stories are triggered by a thing, an event or a situation that makes the author wonder how someone will deal with it. The story, of course, narrates the process in which the characters do just that. This style is, basically, the default path almost every other mystery novel takes — a murder happens in the first scene, creating immediate questions about who’s responsible for the act. And you, the reader, jump in for the ride.

The same trigger can be used to entice readers to dive into the story. Simply put, a good opener raises questions — ones that readers will want to answer. Use that same element to introduce the narrative and pique the reader’s curiosity.

Viewpoint In Life

Plenty of stories do well opening with the protagonist’s philosophy of life, expressing the main character’s views right from the onset. This works well for establishing an immediate context for the story — the reader knows the statement will either be validated or not throughout the length of the narrative. It also sticks your story to an instant structure, giving you a framework from which to tell the tale. This type of opener often works best when the protagonist has particularly sensational or off-the-wall viewpoints, as they create instant hooks that can leave readers wanting more.

The Thick Of The Action

One of the most popular openings for new novels is to start the story right in the middle of an action scene. You’ll see this type of approach in many modern novels, as well as in most mainstream movies. This technique allows you to start the story in a vibrant and exciting fashion, all while allowing you to introduce characters and context in a natural manner.

When you use this type of opening, always assume that the readers will care about your characters. You’re in action-mode, so breaking up the pace to describe characters isn’t the best way to go about things. Instead, reveal aspects of them from how they act and react to what’s going on.

The Main Character

You can always start a story by introducing the main character. In doing so, you immediately signal that you’re going to give the reader a character-centered story — one where this individual will be the center of events and the bearer of conflicts. The more action-oriented you can make the introduction, the better. As such, it’s usually best to have the main character engaged in something, instead of simply being in repose, undergoing tons of descriptions.

Never Get Ahead Of The Reader

There are many times during the course of a novel where you can get away with confusing the reader, then introducing new information later to clear things up. Sometimes, it even makes for great effect. For openers, though, this is more likely to kill enthusiasm for your story than build it. Confusing the reader with the first sentence they encounter is just a shortcut to pissing them off. Avoid it like the plague.

Keep Dialogue To A Minimum

While I’ve seen many novels open with dialogue effectively, it’s a very tricky strategy that’s more likely to fail than succeed. It’s simply very easy to lose readers in the thick of conversation, especially when there’s not enough action going on in the same scene.

If you must use dialogue, start with a single line, but don’t follow up with a response. Instead, draw back and offer additional context before proceeding to the rest of the conversation.

Always Test

Never settle for the first opener you come up with. Instead, always write out multiple options that you can choose from. Set them aside to let them sink in, then review them after a day or two. The opener is critical enough to deserve extra thought and attention — make sure you give it as much.

Most of the time, you can’t submit a manuscript to an agent or publisher without sending in a synopsis first. Why would anyone spend time poring through several hundred pages of text, after all, when they have zero idea of what it is about. A synopsis allows them to get a clear picture of what the manuscript presents in detail without having to invest too much time in reading and understanding the material.

Ask Around

Look at the submission guidelines provided by agents and publishers. More often than not, you’ll find a recommendation to hold back the manuscript and send in the synopsis first. Or they’ll want a synopsis with the first chapter (or two or three) of a novel. That’s it. This places serious value on your synopsis, as it will play a major role on your chances of actually selling a manuscript.

The Synopsis Sells

Think it’s your manuscript’s cover letter that sells it? Think again. While it does carry weight, the synopsis is the most significant selling tool to get agents and publishers to the next step of actually reading your manuscript. If they like the synopsis, they’ll proceed. If they don’t, then it’s not a far stretch for them to assume they’ll probably dislike the longer material as well.

A Synopsis Is Not An Outline

That outline you make to map out your novel before you start writing? That’s not a synopsis. That’s your personal tool for organizing your thoughts and ideas. It’s likely valuable only to you, not to your agent, editor or publisher.

A Synopsis Is Not A Blurb

Those 100-word blurbs at the back of books that seem to encapsulate what the volume is about? That’s not a synopsis. It’s a marketing tool put together by copywriters attempting to sell the book to prospective readers browsing available titles. Your agent, editor or publisher isn’t concerned with that — at least, not at this stage.

A Synopsis Is Not A Summary

A summary is a retelling of the whole story in shorter form. Writing a summary as a synopsis is how many novice writers end up with a synopsis that’s too long for most agents and publishers to bother reading. Summaries attempt to tell the whole story without most of the dressings, including every pertinent scene and important twist. A synopsis need not bother with that much detail.

Your Goal

When writing a synopsis, your goal is to write a short document that accurately tells the important points of your story, from the initial conflict to the resolution. And by short, we don’t mean a 20-page summary. Instead, a synopsis should stretch to no more than two pages (ideally one) when typed in a single space layout. You want a short document that answers the question “What happens in this story?”, giving the agent or editor reading it a clear idea of its most important parts.

Note: forget about teasers and cliffhangers. You’re not building suspense with a manuscript. Instead, you’re selling a story, so put down what really happens in your story. That includes giving away special twists, surprises and endings. Basically, you serve the steak — leave the sizzle to the manuscript.

Writing The Synopsis

Step 1: Write Down What Happens In Each Scene

Considering most novels will have 70 or more scenes, this could go long. Don’t worry. This is a rough draft — a way to account for every important thing that happens in your story. Ignore the chapters and jot down your notes per scene — condensing each scene into a single paragraph. Expect around 15 or more pages from this first stage, which we will look to cut down in the succeeding steps.

Step 2: Condense The Scenes Into A Single Story

Go through each paragraph and condense them, combining those that make sense to go together into a single paragraph. Focus on the high points — those things that show the reader where the story is going. Remove everything else that doesn’t fulfill that criteria.

Step 3: Remove Dressings

Take down all the mood, humor, wit and similar elements. Basically, remove everything that’s supposed to make your prose beautiful. Also, get rid of the traces of vivid descriptions, character development and brilliant pacing. They’re not necessary. A synopsis should concern itself with “what happens” in the story and nothing more — no clever tricks necessary.

At this point, your synopsis should be very short. Hopefully, you’ve chopped it down enough to fit into two pages or less. If it still runs longer than that, repeat steps 2 and 3 until you get there. The goal, at least at this point, should be to pare it down to a single page (or a page and a half), so you have room to add stuff for polish.

Step 4: Tie It All Together

During steps 2 and 3, you revised to cut down on words. Here, you revise to ensure your synopsis flows in a manner that’s both interesting and easy to understand — these are the main goals. If you have the room, you can throw in a few story-telling elements, provided they can enhance the effect on the reader, as a secondary goal (note: skip this if the synopsis already runs long).

Step 5: Proofread

Like all writing, you want to proofread your synopsis, ensuring there are no errors in grammar, spelling and information. Basically, this is a last review — your final chance to put in changes. Once you’re done with this step, the document is done and ready for submission.

The Quick Synopsis

Think that process is too long? Yes, it is and intentionally so. The synopsis is your primary selling tool for the manuscript so it deserves that much attention paid upon it. In case you find it hard working with that much structure or you’re seriously pressed for time, here’s a quick and dirty trick for coming up with a synopsis.

Paragraph 1: Establish the main characters and their initial conflicts. End with these conflicts creating a difficult situation for the protagonist.
Paragraph 2: Detail the initial efforts done to deal with these conflicts. End with the failure of these initial efforts.
Paragraph 3: Tell the main part of the story — the points where the hero deals with the conflict head-on and makes great progress.
Paragraph 4: Detail the climax.
Paragraph 5: Tie up any loose ends by offering explanations.

Different things can irk different readers with the novels they’re reading. Chances are, you’re never sure which of the things you’re planning to do will result in a similar reaction. For those situations, you do what you feel contributes best to your story and just hope your readers feel the same way.

However, there are things that almost always universally irritates readers, especially with new novels coming in the market. While some of these can be forgiven on old work (maybe people were receptive to it then), they’ve been too much of a vocal annoyance among fans and critics not to be weeded out from new writing.

Here are a few of those things:

1. Too many characters. Imagine a novel with a group of five protagonists. And another group of five acting as their antagonists. Plus three groups of five in the middle helping to give volume to the story. Plus random people coming in and going out. That’s too much to handle, especially when a bulk of them are introduced in the book’s first few pages. The golden rule of characters: keep them to a number where readers can actually remember the names and roles for each one.
2. Lack of consistency. Everything has to be consistent throughout the entirety of a book — the plot, the writing style, the settings, the actions of your characters, the motivations of your main players and so on. If anything is changed, make sure there’s good reason for it. More importantly, make sure that reason is transparent to the reader, whether by a clear implication or straightforward stating it.
3. Characters that are too ordinary. Sure, striving for realism is a good thing, but characters that are too flat and banal just aren’t interesting enough to hold a reader’s attention. If there’s nothing to set them and their conflicts apart from most people you encounter in real life, people won’t be too keen in following their story.
4. Characters whose actions don’t match their motivations. Ever read a story and went, “Why the hell is he doing that now? That doesn’t make sense.” Usually, that happens when the author makes a character perform actions that can’t be justified by the things that supposedly motivates them.
5. Poor character description. When describing characters, don’t just rely on stringing multiple adjectives to get the point across. Remember the old adage of “showing, not telling,” leading readers into understanding your character without actually ramming the image down their throats. If a character is a beautiful woman, for instance, forget about telling the reader “she’s gorgeous.” Instead, talk about her many suitors, the many compliments she receives about her looks and her work modeling in print for a make-up line, all of which hint at the same conclusion without outright telling it.
6. Too long. Consider your genre and the length of novels that get published in it. Try to keep yours to within the same range, as the length of existing work tend to point towards what readers in that genre find acceptable. If your story is much longer, prune it — delete scenes, build-ups and twists that aren’t all that essential.
7. Too strange. Experimenting with style (such as half of the story consisting of interspersed flashbacks) isn’t bad. The problem with it is it often ends as a hit-or-miss. Unless you’re sure the reader can still follow your train of thought, it’s usually better to just stick to a standard narrative.
8. Too shallow. If people are going to be emotionally invested in your story, you need to make sure it’s compelling enough to warrant their attention. That is, if your protagonist is going to go walk through fire and defeat an army of ninjas, it better be for something worth the trouble. Readers can suspend disbelief for almost anything, provided you give them a plausible premise. Even for humorous stories that live and breathe exaggeration, you need to reel back a little to keep things in perspective.
9. Too predictable. Plots that have been played out many times over are like clichés. Sure, you can use them, but don’t expect your audience to be entertained. If you’re going to use an all too familiar storyline, try giving it a fresh angle or an interesting twist. People don’t mind plots that are similar to something they’ve seen, provided there’s something about it that can generate interest and intrigue. Otherwise, you’ll lose the reader the moment they wise up to where you’re going.
10. Offensive material. Gratuitous sex scenes, unnecessary obscenities and excessive violence fit right in with certain genres of writing (example: romance novels need sex scenes, often with very graphical description). If it’s not the norm in the category of the book you’re doing, be very careful using them. You can insert foul language and a risqué scene every once in a while, but make sure it’s actually necessary, rather than a mere indulgence.
11. Introducing a solution out of nowhere. Readers expect conflict to be resolved using reasonable means. Introducing a solution out of nowhere — such as a new character showing up in the middle of the story — will leave readers feeling cheated.
12. Unrealistic dialogue. Make sure your dialogue sound organic. While fictional dialogue is usually more coherent and less sloppy than real-world interactions, it can’t sound too contrived and too polished either. Making your characters spew words that sound too sophisticated (like it came rom someone who had hours to think up a line, rather than someone thinking on their feet) often leaves readers dissatisfied.
13. Speech tags. There was probably a time when getting creative with speech tags (“she howled, almost wolf-like”; “Nate whispered”; “he answered angrily”) was considered good writing. These days, most people are simply over it, especially writing that veer towards overuse of the technique. Just be straightforward, tagging dialogue with “he said” and “she said,” and omitting them entirely when you can get away with it.
14. Information dumps. Throwing a lot of backstory in one fell swoop might sound like a neat way to get context out of the way. In practice, though, all it does is leave a large chunk of your story totally unreadable. Chances are, the reader won’t even finish reading all the information before closing the book.

If you’re in that nomadic phase in your life, you might want to consider writing travel stories. After all, you’re already on the road, experiencing life on the go. Might as well document it and get paid for sharing your adventures. And even if you don’t end up selling your content to publications, you could set up a travel blog and share some valuable insights that could help others planning to take the same trip. What things should you keep in mind when putting together tales of travel and exploration?

Show, Don’t Tell

This advice goes for most any writing exercise, but it’s especially important in travel stories, since it’s too easy to fall into the trap of telling when writing places, events and day-to-day interactions — all of which will comprise the bulk of what you’re likely to write about. There are many ways to “show instead of tell.” The following are the most important to keep in mind:

1. Use dialogue. Conversational exchanges between characters isn’t just for novels and short stories — they work great when used in travel stories. Not only does dialogue allow the reader to feel privy to what’s going on in the scene, but interactions between tourists and locals often end up being an interesting (and, sometimes, humorous) high-point in many travel stories. Dialogue reveals more than information, often helping shed light on elements such as character and mood.
2. Use sensory language. Choose language that incorporates sensory information. It’s a great way to integrate the full sensory experience without having to outright assign a portion of the text to it, giving them a chance to see, hear, taste, smell and touch what’s going on in a natural way.
3. Be specific and concrete. Avoid abstract and general language — they end up imparting the same vague and fuzzy qualities to the message you’re communicating. Specific and concrete words, those which refer to objects and events that are easily accessible to the senses, will make any message clearer and easier to understand.
4. Write descriptively. Don’t just settle for inserting a modifier every few words or so. Instead, be mindful of your word choices, using detailed description and figurative language to paint a picture of scenes and events. You might need to rely on your creative abilities for this, so prepare to sit down and use your imagination.

Make It Personal

When writing travel stories, you’re usually telling your own stories — your experiences and adventures in a foreign land. It’s a first-person account, so there’s no point writing in the second or third person. Of course, you’ll want to weave in facts and description along with the narrative to fill in necessary information, but the heart of the story will always be your personal experiences, feelings and observations about the trip.

Additionally, write in the right tense. Since most travel stories will be written after the fact, use the past tense. The present tense could work, too, if it’s an ongoing thing. Otherwise, take a view looking back — it feels more genuine and accurate that way.

Start Strong

There are many ways to start a story. Most travel stories, though, work great with a short anecdote that introduces the heart and soul of the trip. Unless an opening presents itself, use the anecdotal opener as your default, presenting a short narrative that conveys the general feeling, tone and purpose of your experiences in the new place.

What anecdote to use? Preferably, it’s something that happened during the trip — not on your way to the airport or after coming back home. Things that happen right on the trip tend to be more emotionally-charged, making it more interesting to readers.

Important: make sure the main point of the story (whether it’s a life lesson, a cautionary warning or something else) is integrated into your opener. As with every good piece of writing, the better the reader understands where you’re going, the easier the journey is going to be.

Give Locals A Voice

You know how news features often include colorful and memorable quotes? You want to do the same with your travel story, inserting quotes and soundbites from locals to give your readers a good feel of the kind of people you meet out there. If you can identify the individuals (not just by name, but presenting various aspects of their personality), all the better, as it makes the message more believable and relatable.

Just make sure not to insert quotes for the sake of inserting quotes. Have your quotes serve a purpose, particularly for clarifying some questions that could be lingering in the reader’s mind. Quotes not only aid the readability of your story, it also gives you room to present a snapshot of the people and the culture, as can be gleaned from how they speak.

Write In Your Language

Don’t use slang in the foreign country in your own sentences. Think of them like jargon — sure, you think they make you sound cultured, but all they really accomplish is alienating the reader. If you want to use colorful local slang, use them as part of quotes. What about those few times when the local slang could be central to the feel of the story? Then use them, but introduce the slang properly, such that readers will note their importance early on in the piece.

Double-Check Facts

Many travel stories, especially ones written by novice writers, come with plenty of misinformed facts. Don’t let yours be one of them. Not only is it bad form to present inaccurate information, it shows a lack of respect for the country you just visited and the people you interacted with while there. With the ready availability of official sources of information online, refusing to double-check facts is just lazy.

If You Can Establish A Narrative Thread, Do It

The best travel stories usually include a narrative thread that runs through the length of the piece, allowing readers to easily link the beginning to the middle to the end. If you can establish that, do it. Don’t force one, though, if it’s not available — manufacturing a thread that feels unnatural will just lead to a story that reads in a very awkward way.

Sounding genuine and authentic is one of the most important qualities of really good writing. It holds true whether you’re writing features for a fashion magazine, human interest pieces for the newspaper or a sales letter for a car lot’s special weekend sale.

When you can write genuinely, people find it easier to trust what you have to say. Your ideas become easier to believe, requiring less work on your part to convince the reader of your message.

Ernest Hemingway, in my opinion, had the most poignant strategy for achieving this quality in your writing when he said, “Write drunk; edit sober.” When we’re drunk, our inhibitions lower, our self-control whittles and whatever part of us censors the things that come out of our mouths melts away. We’re able to express our thoughts and ideas earnestly without the shackles of doubt.

Of course, Hemingway was particularly notable as a functioning drunk — one who managed to make sense of things enough that he can set them down on paper even while intoxicated. Not all of us are built like that, though. For many, in fact, getting drunk means falling asleep, blacking out and being ridiculously uncoordinated. When I drink even a beer while writing, for instance, my focus just flies off into unknown worlds. I could be writing one minute, remembering my childhood girlfriend the next, playing with the dog the one after that and then searching the internet for lewd pictures of Lady Gaga all within the span of five minutes. Yeah, drinking doesn’t serve me well.

Then again, I don’t think he meant for us to take that literally. If you can write without allowing your inhibitions to get in the way, then you’re writing just as “drunk” as Hemingway. All without the drooling, slobbering and other gross affectations of the latter.

Removing Inhibitions When You Write

The most important thing to writing “drunk” is to let the words flow. Your mind works in ways that’s not easy to comprehend and when you let it loose, it can surprise you with some amazing things.

Your conscious mind is a helpful friend. It allows you to make sense of things, perform feats of logic and set your focus intently. However, it’s also the censoring part of yourself. It’s the one that screams, “That sounds silly” after you finish a sentence. Or “that seems all wrong” when a new idea pops into your mind.

The trick to writing drunk is to quiet that conscious filtering mechanism. Either ignore it (putting down the thoughts that come, regardless of your self-feedback) or outrun it (by writing fast — so fast that your conscious mind can’t keep up). The latter of those two is the ideal one. It’s usually the strategy we employ when we freewrite or do stream-of-consciousness pieces, putting down whatever comes to mind with no regards to how well it suits guidelines or convention.

Why Writing Drunk Works

All writers persuade, not just those producing sales letters and argumentative papers. Even if you’re writing a romance novel, you’re still persuading the reader to buy into your premise, your characters and the events surrounding them. Writing a white paper? Yep, you’re persuading potential clients to buy into your solution. Writing the news? Well, you better hope people believe you’re reporting real events.

Writing produced in this “drunken state” is naturally persuasive. Think of a time when you hear a celebrity interviewed and they answer with this pre-rehearsed response that just feels fake and contrived. It doesn’t matter what they actually say — you just know that the answer is a load of bull. That’s what a lot of people’s writing sound like.

When writing sounds fake, you file it away in the same corner of your mindspace as press releases and news from the Onion. You know, things to be taken with a grain of salt. Sure, some it may be true, but most of it are probably just creative figures of speech. And you treat it as such.

“Drunk writing” is naturally persuasive because it feels authentic. It shows thoughts and ideas expressed freely, rather than filtered through a thousand preconceived notions of what good writing should be. The writer’s personality shines through, making it feel more genuine and personable.

This becomes particularly important when you write about a topic that you’re particularly enthusiastic and passionate about. The less you hold back and filter, the more of those positive feelings will carry over to the page as you express your thoughts. And most of the time, the writing we love most are the kinds that allow us to feel through the writer’s genuine enthusiasm.

Editing Sober

The second part of the equation, of course, is equally as important. After giving yourself free reign to dump words as you please, you’ll need to sober up and engage that judgmental conscious mind to fix up the draft.

Yes, you’ll need to edit and revise the material. As awesome as the concept of expressing all your ideas freely sounds, it usually produces as much bad content as it does good ones. The editing phase gives you the chance to sort out the meat from the fat, removing those that don’t fall logically with the direction of the piece and polishing up the rough parts to conform to proper writing guidelines.

Can you edit while drunk (or whatever “drunk-like state” you need to get into to write freely)? Sure. But since your regard for convention and critical thought tend to go away in this state, it’s probably a bad idea. You want your conscious, logical and critical mind in full force during editing, as those are precisely the qualities that will help you work out the kinks in your current draft.

Will It Still Sound Genuine After Editing?

Chances are, it will. Personality has a way of sticking through even after major edits. The purpose of editing isn’t to kill the authenticity of what you’ve expressed. Instead, the goal is to ensure that the piece works as a whole, with parts that actually complement, rather than counteract, each other.

Presenting background is one of the trickiest things for new fiction writers to master. It’s just not an easy thing to do. Do too little and your reader might not completely understand the story. Do too much and you risk turning your story into a boring exposition of past history. Finding the right balance is critical to writing fiction that actually succeeds at entertaining the reader.

There are different ways to weave backgrounds into a story. They can be as short as a single clause or as long as an entire page. Some of the more common include:

1. Backgrounds As Narrations. You can reveal background and context by describing it, similar to the way you would describe a scene. It’s critical to keep it short, though. Backgrounds, just like scene descriptions, hold up the action, creating a lull in the story. Extend it too far and you can end up putting the reader to sleep before the next “real time” scene even begins.
2. Backgrounds As Dialogue. A more interesting way of presenting backgrounds is to integrate it into dialogue. Unlike straight narrations, these are able to move the story forward if done creatively. It’s a lot more difficult to pull off, though, since you’ll need to weave the background and contextual elements into your characters’ exchanges. Done right, it makes for a better alternative; done poorly, you end up with dialogue that sounds drawn up to serve your need for exposition.
3. Background As Action. You can also present background as action. The way a character responds to certain situations, for instance, can be used to provide clues about their upbringing. Same with the way an employee behaves in front of a particular co-worker is indicative of how their relationship is. Presenting background in the form of action is more dynamic, allowing you to maintain the story’s pace while revealing information about your subjects.
4. Backgrounds As Flashbacks. Most styles of presenting backgrounds slow down the story. Flashbacks halt them completely, shifting the reader’s attention to an entirely new scene from the past. For this reason, many experienced fiction writers and editors steer clear of them in their writing. In fact, I’ve received fiction guidelines from magazines and anthologies that explicitly forbid its use for submitted stories. Flashbacks can be useful when you need to present a previous event in its entirely. As in, the readers needs all the exact details in its entirety, such as when a detective recounts a two-year old case that’s relevant to the what’s currently going on. Avoid them if you can, but don’t hesitate to use them if they are what the story needs.

Backgrounds Are Explanations

Think of backgrounds as explanations — something you need to give when introducing an element that the reader may not understand. “Need,” by the way, is the operative word. If something doesn’t need explaining, then you skip the extra discussion. Same goes for backgrounds. When a reader can understand a situation, a character or an event without going into past details, then you skip it. Minimizing your forays into backgrounds will help speed up the flow of your stories.

As much as you can, whittle down the amount of background information to the bare minimum. The less of it the story requires, the more you can focus on action, character and plot.

Don’t Lead With The Background

Remember when we said that background exposition is boring? If you lead with the background, that means you’re opening the story with some of your worst material. Opening sequences always work best when they can hook the reader in, particularly scenes laced with action and intrigue. That’s why you never open the story by introducing the context — it’s a heck of a slow way to start things off.

Keep It At The Start

While you’re not supposed to start with the background, it’s a good idea to get it out of the way within the first quarter of your story. This goes for all character backgrounds and situational contexts. Integrating them within that first fourth allows you to focus on “present” events as you build into your story’s high points and get deeper into the plot, leading to a faster and more satisfying pace.

Ever seen one of those movies where they continue to introduce background elements even after the first half? Chances are, those expositions felt awkward and out of place, since people expect you to build towards the climax, rather than keep punching in low points into the story.

Juicy Backgrounds

Some background information, such as startling revelations of a character’s ancestry or a life-defining event, can create high points in your scenes. Use these to your advantage by keeping them as the last pieces of background you reveal. Dump them too early and they can lose their impact. Don’t keep them close till late in the story, of course (like we said, reveal everything by the end of the first quarter), but keeping them till that end point allows you to maximize their relevance to your story.

Break It Up

You can introduce all necessary background information in one fell swoop. Most of the time, though, it’s better to present them in bits and pieces as needed, allowing the reader to piece the whole picture together. Readers only require as much information as will be necessary to understand the next scene. You can hold off on other details for later, as the need for them comes.

Doing this allows you to integrate parts of the background into separate paragraphs, dialogues and scenes, minimizing the negative repercussions they can cause in the story. Plus, it makes your background exposition more meaningful when they’re introduced right at the point where they are relevant to what’s going on.

Be Straightforward

Give background information directly. There’s no need to beat around the bush, dress them up in fancy figures of speech, or turn them into a subplot with suspense elements. Those things aren’t necessary. Instead, give readers the details straight up, spoon-feeding the required background details to get it over with, so you can move on to the more important parts of the scene.

Writing is made up of words and all words have meaning. If a string of letters on a page means nothing, it’s gibberish and should be pruned out as soon as possible. Beyond textbook definitions, words carry connotations — side messages that are implicitly communicated beyond the literal meaning.

The words “doctor,” “healer,” “medicine man,” “medical practitioner” and “doc,” for instance, all carry a similar meaning. When used in writing, though, they each paint a different context. “Doctor” is casual and straightforward; “Healer” conjures images of faith healers; “medicine man” feels like it came out of a voodoo ritual; “doc” connotes a personal relationship; and “medical practitioner” feels formal and clinical.

One Word Makes A Difference

You can change the meaning and implication of a sentence by changing just one word. Even out of a 25-word sentence, that single update can turn the whole thing upside down.

Take these two sentences, for instance, where a single word change creates a notable difference:

“Let’s see a movie.” (connotation: an invitation to see any movie)
“Let’s see that movie.” (connotation: see a specific movie that you’ve talked about previously)

Choosing Verbs

Verbs define the action in a sentence. They decide whether the woman being described cries, weeps, sobs or sheds a tear. They tell the reader whether an event dents, hurts, shatters or destroys a man’s hope of redemption. Strong verbs bring vibrancy to an otherwise straightforward statement, giving it an element that will grab the reader’s attention.

As a rule, always use active verbs whenever it’s appropriate, reverting to passive verbs only when absolutely necessary. The various forms of “to be” are the most commonly used verbs in the English language, so it’s only normal that they appear in your sentences. Every time you write in the passive form, though, always consider if an active verb can be used in its place — doing so can help raise the quality of your writing immensely.

Light verbs, which are general words with many possible meanings, are fine, provided you can set the proper context. It’s best to avoid them, though, if you place serious value in clarity with regards to your writing.

Specific and Tangible

Want to be sure you’re choosing good verbs every time? Evaluate your verb choices using two criteria: (1) they should be specific; and (2) they should be tangible. That is, you want the action to be as precise and as meaningful as possible, with no room for the reader to misunderstand what the action is.

Same goes when picking words to use as nouns, adjectives and adverbs. The more exact and concrete your choices are, the more effective they will at conveying your message. Vague word choices, after all, will only force readers to put in twice the effort trying to figure out what you mean.

Repetition

Repeating words isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A lot of the time, we repeat words because it’s necessary to do so. Repetition becomes a negative, however, when it ends up stealing the reader’s attention away from the topic. This kind of repetition often hangs in the mind of the reader such that they become conscious at some point that you’ve been repeating yourself a little too much. And when the repetition continues, it just ends up being distracting.

If you like going by feel when you write (as some folks do), then feel out whether any repetition sticks out. Those are the ones that will likely stick out to the reader, as well, causing them to focus on the repeated items, rather than the message you’re conveying.

The more unusual a word, the more it will stick out when repeated. That’s why you’ve been taught to use pronouns instead of writing out a person’s name every single time. You’ll get a lot of leeway repeating common words without alerting the reader. Do it with the more unfamiliar items, though, and it starts toeing the line to sounding repetitive.

One way to avoid this is to use variations of any word or phrase that needs repeating. How? By finding synonyms from a thesaurus, coining a new term, using figures of speech and using labels in its place. This approach makes the necessary repetition a lot more elegant and a lot less noticeable.

Transitions

Transitional devices are necessary for fostering cohesion and flow. Like every aspect of your writing, though, you need to watch your choices in transitional elements.

1. Use a wide range of transitional words and phrases. Avoid using the same transitions throughout your writing, especially formulaic ones, such as “first, second, lastly.”
2. Stay away from awkward “there” expressions. Starting a sentence with “there” brings an explicit transitional function that makes it natural for introducing new or related items to a discussion. Relying too much on the same device, however, leads to repetitiveness that often ends up being awkward.
3. Minimize topic shift transitions. This includes items like “speaking of,” “with regards to,” and “another thing to note,” all of which are designed to introduce a new topic. While perfectly valid, they’re just a shade better than just diving into a new topic without warning. It’s better to use a more meaningful transition.

Gender-Neutral Language

Even if you frown at political correctness, you will want to keep your language neutral with regards to gender. Simply put, gender-biased language leads to a piece that sounds overwhelmingly tilted to one side of the scale. People today are used to reading gender-neutral material, as most every professional publication — even online — follows it in their style guidelines. Deviating from that makes your work look awkward and amateurish.

Clichés

If you’re going to use a figure of speech, such as a metaphor or a simile, make sure it’s not some old tired cliché that’s been around before you were born. While perfectly valid as elements of the language, their overexposure through the years have left many readers weary of them. They may have made written material from decades ago sound swell, but they’ll either register next to nothing in terms of impact or, worse, annoy the heck out of your reader when employed today.