II. Writing steps

Experiment with writing all kinds of literature.  Poets, try writing prose.  Prose writers, try writing poetry.  Try poetic prose and prose poetry.  Scripts, anyone?

Experiment with styles and forms.  Write pieces in the styles of other writers.  This should be easy if you’ve done a little critiquing and have learned how to identify literary devices.  Use all of them.  Use meters in at least half a dozen pieces.  Save end-rhyme for last.

Experiment with symbolism.  Experiment with metaphor and simile.  Make sure your piece is still understandable on some level.  Perfect writing clearly before you start being cryptic.

Experiment with tone and voice.  Try writing like a 35-year-old housewife and a 68-year-old veteran.  If you’re an atheist, try writing about God like you believe in Him.  If you’re a Republican, try writing like a Democrat.  Leave your stereotypes outside the margins.  Borrow Whitman’s voice, or Larkin’s, or Dickinson’s, but only for a short time.  

Cut.

Cut out abstractions in favor of imagery; words like ‘ugly’ and ‘beautiful’ mean nothing.  Lots of people think Chihuahuas are cute, but if you’d never seen one, you’d be very surprised when you learned they look like bald rats.  ‘Bald rats’ is imagery that gives an idea of what Chihuahuas look like.  ‘Cute’ is an abstraction that tells us nothing about the size, shape, appearance, smell, sound, etc. of Chihuahuas.

Cut out half the modifiers you use in favor of better nouns and verbs (turn ‘tall building’ into ‘skyscraper’).  Cut articles, conjunctions, redundancy.  Cut anything that isn’t strictly necessary.  Did you experiment with devices?  Awesome.  Are some not doing their job?  Cut them.

Keep it interesting.  Pronouns are not interesting; use some, but not too many.  “Go” and “walked” are not interesting in and of themselves.  It may be tempting to start a story with the cliché of a character waking up, but it’s not interesting unless there’s something more happening than getting ready for school or work.  “This/It is” and “There/They are” happen to be the two most useless sentence openings; all they say is ‘this exists.’  Prose writers can sometimes make these work; in poetry, they’re often a waste of space.

Keep some tricks in the bag.  Explicit images used for shock value will gain you some readers, sure.  It will also turn some readers away.  You may intend this in a poem about sex, but if you’re writing about a serious issue, you may want to tone it down.

Keep it moving.  A poem should progress—something should happen in the poem.  Maybe it’s a physical happening, maybe emotional, maybe a mental shift, a realization, a change in perspective.  A piece of prose should have a conflict.  A short story should have a beginning, a middle, and an ending.