5 Ways To Hone Your WRITING MUSCLE

To be a successful author, building your writing muscle is something you should focus on as early as possible. 

Why? It will make your writing life SO much easier. It will take you less time to warm up, help you write more in less time and ultimately, you'll get more books out. 

The best thing about this part is that you can start now. It's easier than struggling through a novel - and much faster too. 

So here's five ways to hone your writing muscle. Let's get to!

  

1. Blogging 

Starting with an obvious one, blogging! This has been paramount to building my writing muscle. You can compare my older and newer posts to see how far I've come. 

Blogging has a huge influence on your writing. It has a consistent nature, so you become used to writing on a regular basis. It also helps you find your voice and share your ideas to the public. An engaged audience will help shape you into the best you can. 

It doesn't matter what you're blogging about. What you want to focus on is getting used to writing a large amount of words within as little time as possible. My goal is to write around 1000 words an hour, so if you want a goal, here's one for you! 

That said, it can be more beneficial to blog about something related to writing. Reviewing books, giving writing advice or telling real life stories as if they were a story. By doing this, you'll be ingraining storytelling techniques into your brain, which can boost your storytelling muscle. 

With blogging, you don't have to think about the many things you would with story writing. You simply write. If you want to take blogging seriously, then you'd put more effort into the structure and cohesiveness. But if you're blogging to hone your writing muscle, all you need to do is write.

2. Diary writing and journaling    

If you want something more personal, diary writing and journaling is for you. Take out a neat notebook and your favourite writing utensil (whether it be pen, pencil or crayon) and write about your day. 

Besides mental health benefits, adding one little twist can transform your writing muscle. Don't just write without thinking, write your life as if it were a story. 

Pay attention to the million things you'd have to do when writing a novel. Pay attention to characterisation, voice, setting, dialogue and action sequences. The benefits of real life is that you don't have to make this up by yourself. Other people are doing half the work.

Pay attention to the things you might not necessarily know, like motivations, feelings, thoughts. This one is trickier to translate, so you may have to make them up. But in story writing, you should know this. 

I'd recommend spending time thinking about other people's why for your own sake, but it's not necessary for this exercise.

Diary writing doesn't have to take much time. A paragraph or so daily is enough. Over time, this will build up. 

3. Short stories and flash fiction

Probably the best method is to write short stories and flash fiction. It's similar to novel writing, except on a smaller, more concise scale. 

Short stories and flash fiction lets you focus on key storytelling concepts without the hassle of committing to a massive word count. It's ideal for experimenting with different techniques. Different stories can focus on a different technique. Maybe characterisation in one, prose in another, description in a third. 

In many ways, short stories and flash fiction can be harder to write. Novels have the space for some meandering and little details that short works can't fit. 

You need to work on keeping things to the point. Not only is this a good thing to have for novel writing, you'll also be practicing your storytelling skills and writing muscle.

By writing shorts, you'll be solidifying your writing skill. When you go write your novel, all this practice really shows. Not only in your story, but also when you sit down to write. Words will flow. 

4. Writing random scenes

If you want to write your novel but have yet to decide what's happening, writing random scenes is a good choice. 

Almost every author will have that dream scene in mind, the one you spend fantasising on before you go to bed and when you wake up. Even if it doesn't make the final cut, just put it on paper. It can be a sweet bookmark in the early phases of writing. 

It will help specifically with your novel. You'll practice characterisation, character voices and you'll often find out little things about your characters you didn't know before. 

In the long run, you'll be building your muscle for novel-style writing. Unlike short stories and flash fiction, you get wiggle room for the extra details otherwise unnecessary.  

5. Transcribe visual medium to words

Having an idea blank but want to write? This happens way too often. Of course, you could come up with your own idea, but that's what the other four methods are for. If you have none, use this way.

Pull up your favourite movie, TV show or comic. Pull up a document or whatever you use to write, then transcribe the scene to words. 

The benefits of this is that you don't have to do any of the hard thinking. You can zoom in on just focusing on your prose. No fussing about whether Character A would do this, or how many trees are in the forest, or quirky mannerisms. 

Keep in mind that there are some things that visual mediums can do which books can't. You can replicate the effects using special techniques, but the experience is different. 

Another thing to note is that words on paper are louder than spoken ones, so you have to be careful not to be too repetitive.

~ 

That's five methods to hone your writing muscle! Here's a handy list for recap: Blogging, diary writing or journaling, short stories and flash fiction, random scenes, and transcribing visual mediums to text.

Which one of these you find most useful? Which one is your favourite and least favourite? Do you have any other methods not listed here? Tell us in the comments below!

See you next week for another post and until then, happy writing!

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