10 Writing Tips from J.K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling shares her writing philosophy: read voraciously, write through bad drafts, know your story's every detail even if readers don't, plan meticulously with grids and notes, draw from deep personal experience, embrace criticism, and persist through rejection. She emphasizes that writers must understand their characters fully, control pacing and information reveal, and accept that failure is foundational to success.
Building Your Foundation as a Writer
Read Obsessively to Learn Craft
Reading extensively is the best way to recognize good writing and identify what makes writing bad. This foundational practice teaches you your genre and helps you avoid imitating weak work.
Write Through Terrible Drafts
You must resign yourself to writing lots of rubbish and get it out of your system. Sooner or later you'll discover your true voice and what you're really meant to be writing.
Imitation Is Part of Learning
Going through a phase where you imitate your favorite writers is perfectly acceptable and a necessary learning process on the path to finding your own voice.
Perseverance Over Discouragement
Writing is a career with many knockbacks, but the rewards of doing work you love lifelong are enormous. It is not a career for people who are easily discouraged.
Know Everything About Your Story
Author Omniscience Creates Reader Confidence
Readers sense when an author knows everything about their world, even if they're not telling them everything. This confidence in the author's knowledge makes the story feel real and complete.
Generate Far More Material Than You Use
Over 5 years, Rowling generated a mass of material that would never appear in the books but was essential for her own understanding. This background knowledge informs every decision she makes as a writer.
Meticulous Filing and Organization
Rowling maintains detailed, meticulously filed notes on every character, including house affiliation, magical ability, parentage, and allegiances. This system allows her to track complex plot threads across multiple books.
Discard First Chapters That Reveal Too Much
Rowling went through 15 different alternative first chapters for book one, rejecting each because they gave away too much plot. If combined, all discarded chapters would explain almost the entire plot.
Master Pacing and Plot Structure
Use Detailed Grids to Track Every Subplot
Rowling creates grids showing exactly when events happen (including month and weather), chapter titles, and multiple strands of subplots. She fills in details as she writes when new ideas for timing emerge.
Know Exactly When Everything Happens
Even though the reader might not know, the author must know precisely when every event occurs. This precision ensures consistent pacing and prevents plot holes.
Draw from Deep Personal Experience
Hermione as Exaggerated Self-Portrait
Hermione came from a very deep place inside Rowling and is an exaggeration of herself. Rowling was deeply insecure and writing about Hermione's journey from childhood to womanhood (age 18) reconnected her with how difficult that transition is.
Unhappy Teenagers Make Better Writers
Rowling's teenage years were not happy, which she believes is essential to writing compelling young adult fiction. The urge to write often comes from a wish to rearrange the reality you're in.
Fascination with Adolescence and Vulnerability
Adolescence is a formative, vulnerable time when people are concerned with big life issues—relationships, love, fear, mortality, morality—rather than the mundane details that preoccupy adults.
Morality and Mortality as Central Obsessions
These two themes run through all of Rowling's work. They are what obsess her as a writer and what she believes matter most to human experience.
Embrace Criticism and Learn from Failure
Expect and Accept Criticism
If you expect perpetual praise, something is wrong with you. Criticism is inevitable and proper; the key is learning which feedback is fair and actionable.
Thick Skin in Your Core Work
While Rowling is thin-skinned in other areas of life, she is not about her writing. She believes it is right and proper to be criticized in her area of expertise.
Failure as Foundation for Success
Rowling's greatest fear being realized (hitting rock bottom) freed her. Stripped of the inessential, she directed all energy into the one work that mattered. Some failure in life is inevitable and necessary.
Failure Is Unavoidable Unless You Don't Really Live
You might never fail on Rowling's scale, but some failure is inevitable. Living so cautiously that you avoid failure means you fail by default.
Maintain Secrecy and Mystery
Protect Plot Surprises for Reader Excitement
Rowling doesn't want readers to know what's coming because that's part of the story's excitement. After sweating blood to create red herrings and lay clues, protecting that work is essential.
Subjectivity Is the Point of Literature
Literature is utterly subjective—it's somebody's opinion. That subjectivity and the mystery of not knowing what comes next is what makes stories powerful.
Notable quotes
I like reading a book where I have the sense that the author knows everything. — J.K. Rowling
I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. — J.K. Rowling
Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. — J.K. Rowling
Action items
- Read extensively in your genre and others to train your eye for good and bad writing.
- Write through multiple bad drafts without judgment; quantity before quality.
- Create a detailed grid or outline tracking when each plot point occurs, including weather, month, and subplot developments.
- Generate far more background material about your characters and world than you'll ever use in the final work.
- Discard opening chapters that reveal too much; test whether your first chapter gives away the plot.
- Draw your main characters from deep personal experience, especially from formative or difficult periods of your life.
- Maintain secrecy about plot surprises to preserve reader excitement and the power of your carefully laid clues.