Goodreads asked L.E. Modesitt Jr.:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

L.E. Modesitt Jr. Over the years, I've become acquainted with scores of writers, and, so far, I don't know any two who write in exactly the same way. The same is bound to be true of aspiring writers. This is why anything I say that will apply to a large percentage of aspiring writers has to be general in nature.

Writing fiction, by its basic definition, consists of two elements. The first consists of the ability to craft workable and understandable sentences and paragraphs and readable dialogue. That's the technical side, and while successful published authors range from those whose grammar and writing skills are merely workmanlike to those whose technical skills are superb, even the most gifted wordsmith will fail without the second element, which is the ability to tell a story that will draw readers in. And there are some authors with weak technical skills whose story-telling is so compelling that no one notices the weaknesses, while there are brilliant wordsmiths whose skill with the words overcomes less than brilliant story-telling.

But in the end, as a writer, you have to be able to present the words well enough so that the reader doesn't have to puzzle out what each sentence means and tell the story in a way that people want to read it.

One of the skills that helped me was years as a poet, and I mean as someone who worked with the vast majority of formal types of verse, differing rhyme and meter schemes. So did technical and political writing, because success in both requires clarity above all.

Reading a wide range of fiction, especially outside whatever genre is one's favorite, is also useful because it exposes you to a wider range of story-telling.

Also... subject matter expertise is a must. You have to know, either through research or personal experience, what you are writing about, and you have to know far more than what you put on the page. That's because successful writing requires creating the illusion of a larger reality. No writer can describe everything. You have to choose which details to describe, and which will evoke the feelings and memories of your readers. You can't do that without having a range of information much greater than that which appears on the page. That's why I believe it's important for writers to keep taking in information. I read a tremendous amount of non-fiction, from science to economics, history, archaeology, and politics, all on an on-going basis.

As could most writers, I could go on for hundreds of pages, and there are scores of books on writing that do... but call what I've said the basics that I believe are essential.

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