Better writing is about choosing more interesting words, and words which
go well together. The English language has thousands of words in it, many
of which mean almost the same thing, or are just a little bit different. If
you know anything about horse riding you'll know about the words canter
and gallop. Both are words for running, but while canter describes an easy
run at a comfortable pace, a bit like a jog, gallop means to run very fast.
When you're writing a story, try choosing words which describe more about
what is happening. If in the story some one is running, ask your self
how fast they are running? Are they jogging? or perhaps galloping?
The world of colour provides a never ending list of words for different shades of colour. We have put together a number of these in their own page all about colour words which you can find here.
Like colours, size has lots of words to describe things which are big, or small, or fat, or thin, or long, or short, or which last a long time. We have gathered together some of them in their own page and tell you what they mean so you can choose different words. You can find the size page here.
You probably learned at school about aliteration, this is using words which have similar sounds in a sentence. Like the 's' sound in the three words 'similar', 'sounds' and 'sentence'. Aliteration is very easy, and very good at making writing better. But don't over do it. Sometimes people try to put too many words with similar sounds together, and it just sounds silly. Two or three is usually enough, like:
'The snake slithered smoothly'
This example has used another trick as well. The aliteration I chose, that of the 's' sound, is the same sound as we think of when we think of snakes (we call this onomatopoeia). We think of snakes hissing, or making an 's' sound.
Here's another example of how to make your writing better. Let's say I write in a story:
"I watched the red car drive past."
It's a boring sentence. What sort of car was it? What shade of red was it? How did I feel when I watched it? What speed did it go past at? We can asnwer all these questions by rewriting the sentence in a more interesting way:
"I drooled as the crimson Asto-Martin DB7 cruised past."
Can you see how the two sentences both say the same thing, but the second one gives you a picture of the narrator, and of the car. We know that the narrator was excited and loved the look of the car because he 'drooled'. We know the type of car, an 'Aston-Martin DB7', we know the shade of red, 'crimson' and we know the speed the car went past at, it 'cruised'. From this second sentence you should be able to picture the scene in your mind. For more ideas on describing scenes I should refer you to stories by Charles Dickens. He was one of the best writers for letting the reader see, smell and hear what was happening. By reading and thinking about what he wrote you can learn how to conjure pictures using words.