Writing Tips From Reddit

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If you’re not on Redditt, you’re missing out on nearly 2.2 million sub-reddits, 130,000 active communities, and a whole lot of free, fun, halfway useful content. Reddit is described by Tim Squirrell as such: “If Facebook is people you know sharing things you don’t care about, Reddit is things you care about shared by people you don’t know.” Whatever you’re interested in, there’s a Reddit community for it. Reddit is easy to use and gives users more control over the content than arguably any other platform.

So when a reader asked me to give them some writing advice, I dove into a few Reddit forums, including “What is the best writing advice you’ve ever received?” “Writers helping writers,” and this forum started by a user compiling a list of tips for his friends birthday. Go read some stuff. Below are some of my favorite tips.

1. This advice from Steven King:

“An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.”

Poor opening lines, or opening pages, will lose a reader faster than anything else. If you’re writing anything: fiction, poetry, an essay, a speech, a screenplay, or simply a letter, you need to grab your readers’ attention.