Creative Writing Tips and Techniques | Writers' Treasure

1 Year Later: How I Improved My Writing1 Year Later: How I Improved My Writing

September 8, 2010| Idrees Patel| 12:04 AM

One year and a day ago, I was writing a post for my blog.

The post was just a normal post. At the time, I just wrote it and left it in the blog archives. And then, nearly a year later, wrote another post. The two posts were written by the same person: me. But I was shocked when I read both of them together. I couldn’t believe a simple fact. My writing had changed. It had improved.

And the scary thing was: even though one year had passed, I hadn’t really spent much time on obsessively improving my writing. Yet the facts were there. More people were visiting my blog now. More traffic. Why?

The difference in my writing.

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7 Questions to Consider When Writing7 Questions to Consider When Writing

August 31, 2010| Idrees Patel| 5:17 PM

Writing is tough, right?

There are just so many things to consider when you are writing something, be it anything. It could be a:

Blog post or article
Fiction
Poetry
School paper
Business report
Etc etc

There are so many, many questions to consider when writing. Some of them are useful. Some of them are not. Some of them don’t improve your writing one bit.

And now we arrive at a question. It is: “When writing, what useful questions should we consider?”

The following things.

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Writing Powerful True Short StoriesWriting Powerful True Short Stories

August 16, 2010| Idrees Patel| 9:42 PM

Writing a short story is easy, but writing a powerful short story is difficult. In fact, extremely difficult. Add the word “true” to the whole thing and you might as well have a story which is impossible to write… but if you do write it well, then you have a winner.

True short stories can be awesome to read and they can be boring to read. The difference is clear, and you need to make your ones in the first category. You need to make them powerful ones.

But how do you write a powerful true short story? (more…)

Change of Post FrequencyChange of Post Frequency

August 9, 2010| Idrees Patel| 2:42 PM

Hi guys, this is not so much of a writing tip post as much of a general update. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you! :-))

My posting schedule for the past has been… well not a schedule. I used to post just when I felt like it, and for the entire last week, no posts were published because I was ill with cold. Yeah, great.

Now, I am changing my post frequency. You guys can expect a new post every week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Monday is the day where I will post a “killer article” (term by Daniel Scocco), i.e, a really long, structured and information packed article, usually above the word count of 700 words. On Wednesday and Friday I will post normal posts (news, quick tips, endorsements, debates, etc).
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Writing Tip: Use Vivid DescriptionWriting Tip: Use Vivid Description

July 31, 2010| Idrees Patel| 10:26 PM

What is good writing?

Even though the correct answer is that whether a piece of writing is good or not rests entirely with the reader, many people think that good writing is effective writing. And it’s true.

Good writing follows a flow. Good writing is focused. Good writing is written for a purpose. Good writing is grammatically correct and readable. And…

Good writing uses vivid description.

And I hear you saying: “what is vivid description anyway?”… So here we are!

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An Introduction to Academic Writing – Part IIAn Introduction to Academic Writing – Part II

July 26, 2010| Idrees Patel| 11:57 PM

Read Part I of this post.

After learning the basics of essay writing, today let’s look at story writing, dialogue writing and informal letter writing. All three are taught to us from an early age, with the exception of dialogue writing, which doesn’t come until middle school. Anyway, let’s begin!

Informal Letter Writing

The best resource I can give for anyone wanting to learn more about letter writing is Letter Writing 101, but here are some pointers on how to write informal letters:

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