Write to show your unique take on the world and what matters to you.
Just as you’ve read stories and skipped the “boring” bits, make sure there aren’t any “boring” bits in your own work. Use your experience of what you like to improve your own writing.
Write to grip others (in a good way!).
Write true to (a) yourself and (b) your characters.
To write is to live another life, to visit places you wouldn’t normally go to and, indeed, to invent your own worlds. To write is to put yourself in your characters’ heads and to discover many different perspectives (you’ve got to be able to have some sympathy with your characters, even the villains, to be able to write about them sympathetically).
There was an author called A. Symes
Who wrote of the fairy world’s times
Whose main stars rebelled
And caused merry hell
Whose spells always came with some rhymes.
To write sympathetically means believing in your characters and to show them acting and speaking convincingly.
The joy of writing is in
Setting up your heroes to win
But only after a decent fight
With a villain who’s more than just might.
No cariactures then! The most interesting villains are those with depth to them, where you can see why they’re acting the way they are without agreeing with them of course (unless you prefer villains to heroes!). Heroes also need to be realistic - no supermen/women, you want to see their flaws and virtues. I’ve sometimes found heroes aggravating for being too perfect, which is exactly what you want to avoid. And what they fight about has got to be worth fighting over. Something that’s going to hurt someone badly if they lose...