writing tips from Laura wilkinson

Laura Wilkinson is a tutor on the two-year Creative Writing Programme in Brighton and runs the Advanced Writing Workshops. She has published seven novels for adults (two under a pseudonym) and numerous short stories. Here she offers her top writing tips:

• Read a lot – and in a wide variety of genres. Read books you love for a second, or third, time – with your writer’s head on. Observe how the greats do it.

• Write a lot. Writing is a craft and mindful practice will make it stronger, if not perfect. (Is there such a thing as perfection?!)

• Aim for done – not perfect. First drafts can be terrible, but without something to improve, you’ve nothing.

• Look outwards as well as inwards.

• Take risks – go deep; be dangerous and be authentic.

• Exercise. It’s good for solving plot problems as well as avoiding writers’ bottom.

• Check out Pixar’s rules of storytelling.

Already have a writing project and need some structure to help get it done? Why not sign up for Laura’s Advanced Writing Workshops, starting in mid-October?