Last month, I asked Grok for its best writing advice, one tip at a time. Let’s go through them:

Writing Tip #30 | Read widely and deliberately every day. Study other authors to improve your own writing.

Writing Tip #29 | Write every day, even if it’s just 200 words. Daily practice makes you a better writer.

Writing Tip #28 | Finish your first draft before you start editing. Separate the creative writing process from the technical editing process.

Writing Tip #27 | Study story structure. Check out, for example, the Save the Cat! method.

Writing Tip #26 | Show, don’t tell. Reveal emotions and character traits through actions and dialogue instead of describing them directly.

Writing Tip #25 | Give every character a clear goal and a meaningful flaw.

Writing Tip #24 | Raise the stakes with every major story beat. Your characters need to have something to lose.

Writing Tip #23 | Put conflict in every scene.

Writing Tip #22 | End every chapter with tension, a question, or an unfinished action.

Writing Tip #21 | Your protagonist must make active choices. Force them to make difficult decisions with consequences, but never take away the agency of your main character.

Writing Tip #20 | Dialogue should carry subtext. Don’t make characters say exactly what they mean. Use implications and body language to say it instead.

Writing Tip #19 | Foreshadow key plot turns. Plant clues that pay off later.

Writing Tip #18 | Enter scenes as late as possible and leave as early as possible. Throw readers directly into the action whenever you can.

Writing Tip #17 | Trust the reader. Skip unnecessary explanations. Readers are smart enough to understand what you’re trying to say.

Writing Tip #16 | Use strong verbs and concrete nouns. Use fewer modifiers. Be precise instead of vague.

Writing Tip #15 | Ground scenes in sensory details. Use smell, sound, sight, texture, and taste to bring scenes to life.

Writing Tip #14 | Kill your darlings. Cut scenes and lines if they fail to advance the plot, even if you love them.

Writing Tip #13 | Vary sentence length and structure. Pair short lines with longer, flowing sentences. Think about the rhythm of your writing. If the rhythm is always the same, the text becomes boring to read.

Writing Tip #12 | Build every scene around one clear goal and one obstacle. If your scenes don’t have these, they probably aren’t needed. If a scene has more than one central goal or obstacle, consider splitting it into multiple scenes.

Writing Tip #11 | Internal conflict and external pressure should be in balance. If your character falls apart under minor pressure, they become unbelievable. The same goes for characters who don’t even flinch when facing extreme pressure.

Writing Tip #10 | Force characters to make choices with lasting consequences. There are no easy wins in interesting stories. Make every character pay a price for their decisions.

Writing Tip #9 | Every description should reveal something. If you describe a character’s clothing, for example, it should reveal something about their personality or character. If it doesn’t, we probably don’t need the description in the first place.

Writing Tip #8 | Grok repeated writing tip #18. Enter scenes as late as possible and leave as early as possible. It seems like the AI ran out of capacity to understand what it had already told me.

Writing Tip #7 | Another repetition, but this time it at least gave me a variation of tip #20. Master the art of subtext. Body language, dialogue, and even silence can be used to say something without saying it explicitly.

Writing Tip #6 | Give every major character a distinct voice and an internal motivation for their thoughts and actions.

Writing Tip #5 | End every chapter with tension. Again, this is a bit of a repetition of tip #22.

Writing Tip #4 | Have a tension curve that rises as the story progresses. Big stakes should follow smaller stakes.

Writing Tip #3 | Center the story on the protagonist’s emotional transformation.

Writing Tip #2 | Your protagonist must have a clear, burning desire that motivates their actions.

Writing Tip #1 | Put the reader first in every decision. A great tip to end the series. Write the stories you want to tell, but when you do, think about the reader and how you can make the experience as easy and entertaining as possible.