Writing tips from an English Minor:

Use good grammar. Mistakes will interrupt your natural flow, and make your writing jarring. The only way to protect against this is experience, and revision. Teachers and professors have their students write rough drafts for a reason. You are more likely to catch something upon review. Let others read your work for errors as well. If you do not have a partner, try reviewing your work by saying it aloud. You're more likely to catch errors that way. Write a plot outline before you begin writing anything else. Many works are made with no particular structure thought out, or if there is a structure, it is only a rough idea of where they want the story to head. A plot outline will insure consistency, flow, and lessen your contradictions. It also dramatically improves structure, and cohesion of a story.

For beginners, make your plots simplistic, and try to follow the general idea of the "Hero's journey", as well as having a clear story arc of exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution. You have to walk before you can run. If you try something too complex right away, you'll have no basis or foundation of experience to fall on.

Be patient. Oftentimes, a writer will have a particular scene or moment in their pocket that they know is good, but they use it too quickly and with no buildup. Pulling the trigger too early is not only a wasted opportunity for tension and/or anticipation, but also can clog your narration if you are too hasty to put in a scene that may be out of place. Yes, we want to see the bad guy get his comeuppance. Yes, we want to see the hero finally master his powers. Yes, we want to see cool moments, but not at the expense of pacing, buildup, and narrative flow.

View it like this: You have a good scene that you want to use. You could use it now, and the reader may think "oh, that was rather neat". But how much better would it be to build to it, to make the reader wait, and finally give a huge payoff. In an interview, J.K. Rowling stated that from the beginning of her writing of the Philosopher's stone, she had the scene in her mind of Harry being carried, dead, by Hagrid back to Hogwarts after being killed by Voldemort. It was a touching and powerful moment that she had been sitting on for over a decade. Strive for that kind of patience.

The use of imagery and literary device is a powerful tool. It is the bridge between the reader's mind, and the story, that makes everything real, that puts them into the scene. It is also sadly underused in a lot of writing on the site. It not only improves the quality, and sophistication, of one's writing, but also gives them a greater sense of tone, flow, and so on. As an example, consider the following passages, one that I wrote with little imagery, and one I wrote with more imagery:

The firework streaked upwards, and exploded. The sparks rained down to the ground. the audience cheered as they drank their soda and laughed. A young boy shared a kiss with a girl on the hood of a car nearby, before both burst into giggles.

This reads rather dry. Other than a bit of personification, it lack a lot of depth. It is almost like a stage direction, or an instruction manual, rather than a narrative. Now consider the following:

The firework spiraled up into the starry sky, and cracked in the air, sending yellow shimmers and fireflies back down to the earth. The audience cheered, their shadows cast behind them by the light of the sparks. On the hood of a nearby car, young teen with black, shiny hair shared a gentle kiss with a blonde girl smiling, eyes closed, a hand gingerly cupping her rosy cheek as they joyously laughed the night away.

A bit better, no? This is easier to see, not too overbearing and specific about every detail, but also not leaving simply everything to the imagination. Instead, it is a happy medium that describes the scene, but leaves enough for audiences to fill in the gaps. Work on imagery and literary device, and you will find your writing more captivating.

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(Ongoing)

This section is in response to a mindset that I see a lot in Naruto fanfiction. This was spurred on by a review I saw that went like this:

"naruto would be a good ninja...if his teachers bothered.
iruka knew naruto being a jinchuriki, so he knew his chakra controll was crap, and yet did nothing, same with the third hokage.
The third knew that naruto would have problems with the clone jutsu being an uzumaki and a jinchuriki, so he could have had naruto "find" a clone scroll. but yet still did nothing.
Kakashi is in the same boat. he really didn't teach team 7 anything. tree clilming and somewhat teamwork. he knew naruto had problems and didn't go out of his way to do anything really, and perty much abandoned naruto for the chunin exams to teach sauske.
and Jariah didn't do much, just take off the seal on the seal, and teach him to summon,
so naruto hasn't had much in the way of teachers."

Note that this isn't a direct response to this review, but more a response to this weird viewpoint in fanfiction where people who don't do everything they can for Naruto, or are slightly flawed when it comes to a position revolving around Naruto, are worthy of scorn, and in some people's eyes, utter contempt and bashing. I'm going to go through each character and their relation to Naruto as a teacher/potential teacher, and explain my thoughts. Here's what I have to say on the matter:

I agree that if everyone solely focused on Naruto, then he'd probably be a lot better. That just common sense. But I think it's also an unrealistic thing to expect from everyone.

First, we have absolutely no idea what Iruka did or did not teach Naruto. There is a large perception that Iruka did nothing to correct Naruto's flaw, but we have no way of knowing that. Maybe he did try and teach Naruto, but as the dead-last name implies, the kid just didn't have the concentration to or the maturity to pick up on it. With that being said, we don't know either way, and I can't outright say that he did teach him, just like anyone else couldn't outright say he didn't teach him. We do know that Naruto likely learned the basics of kunai/shuriken work, hand seals, Bunshin/Kawamiri, and a variety of other basic ninja stuff from either Iruka, or another academy instructor.
Even if he didn't focus an incredibly large amount of time on him, how can one expect that from someone who has hundreds of other kids in the academy to teach? As a teacher myself, I know personally that instructors have an incredibly large work load, with a lot of stress over their student body, and not a lot of time outside the class room to focus so much on one person, so he couldn't just give him outside lessons, and focusing only on Naruto in the classroom would cause him to neglect his students.

Kakashi I someone that I semi-understand. While we don't know everything he taught them inbetween episodes, it doesn't look like there's a huge improvement between arcs (though there are little ones, like Naruto's taijutsu steadily improving).
But I also think that much of Kakashi's teaching experience towards Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke was dictated by circumstance. The big one that comes up always seems to be "Kakashi passed up Naruto during the Chunin exams". This is brought up time and time again when it comes to Kakashi as a sensei towards Naruto, and there are more fanfiction than I can count that starts with something along the lines of "Naruto walks into hospital to ask Kakashi for training, Kakashi says no, Naruto tells him off in a way that just looks attention-grabbing and pathetic in real life, and then storms off while Kakashi has tears rolling down his cheeks, thinking 'what have I done?'".
Was Kakashi perfect in the whole Chunin exam scenario? No. But I do think he was completely fair to Naruto. Who among the two of his students was facing a homicidal maniac with a Bijuu backing him, that couldn't be easily stopped if he was as far away from the Jonin sensei's as he was in the arena? Yeah, Neji did try to attack Hinata, but there's an ocean's worth of distance between a genin/chunin level ninja that is lashing out at (what Neji perceives as) the culmination of all his suffering and loss in his life that he's grown to hate because they caused the death of his father as well as the enslavement of his side of the family, and a crazed maniac that kills for fun and is stronger than a lot of Jonin. To top all that off, Orochimaru, one of the Sannin, was chasing Sasuke to the point that Kakashi had to hide with him during their training. The fact that Kakashi set up anyone with Naruto shows that he was thinking about the kid, and put more logical thought into it than I likely would have in the scenario. I probably would have forgot Naruto existed under the same circumstance.

The Third isn't even one of Naruto's teachers. He doesn't have any responsibility when it comes to Naruto getting strong. If he decided that Naruto was going to be a weapon, then yeah, I understand how some responsibility would fall on his shoulders, but he didn't. He specifically didn't want that, and made sure it didn't happen. Added to that, he's the Hokage. It'd be like the President taking time out of his day to teach some kid how to run for senate, instead of taking that time to run the country, which is far more important. In terms of throwing Naruto a scroll, or something along the lines of what the review above mentioned, the answer for why he didn't is simple.

One: Hiruzen has far more important things to be doing than keeping track of the strength of an academy student, and probably didn't even know the reason for Naruto's shortcomings, other than what he could infer. Two: Naruto has demonstrated no patience for reading, learning, or practical application of a technique without a sensei before the Mizuki incident. Three: Asking to teach an academy student a Jounin level technique is laughable. Keep in mind that there's a reason everyone with knowledge of the technique was surprised at the fact that Naruto knew Shadow Clones (Kakashi, Iruka, and others who knew about the Kyuubi included). It was because nobody expected a Genin, even one with a wide chakra reserve, to know such a thing, or be capable of it. An academy student is even more surprising under this scenario. If one asked Hiruzen to teach Naruto shadow clones, he'd have likely laughed them out of the office, even though Naruto could learn, and do, such a thing.

Overall, I think there is something to keep in mind: Being a ninja isn't just about being strong, and therefore, Naruto's teachers aren't simply working to make him stronger. Yes, strength is a part of being a ninja, but so is subterfuge, infiltration, reconnaissance, discipline, and so much more. I think it's telling that Naruto displayed ample strength to become Chunin, yet wasn't promoted, while Shikimaru, though strong, clearly had strength flaws, yet was the only promotion. That's because being better in a fight isn't what being a ninja is about, and the values looked for in a chunin clearly represent that, as do all other aspects of ninja life.

You ever notice how catching Tora the cat is eerily similar to a search and rescue mission? There's a reason for that, because D-ranks do more than teach teamwork and give revenue to the village. They teach a team actual things a ninja will be doing, and develop attitudes/qualities that a ninja will need. On Tora alone, you get stealth, tracking, search and rescue experience, tactics, patience, teamwork, communication skill, learning to deal with questionable employers, speed training in case Tora runs off, dealing with limited information on a target, and a heck of a lot of other things.

Strength was given when strength was needed. Notice how Naruto is only trained in strength when there is a direct threat (Haku, Neji, Akatsuki, Pein, etc), with the rasenshuriken being the only thing coming to mind that didn't have a direct threat, other than akatsuki still running around. The reason is because strength isn't the only aspect of a ninja, and if Naruto wasn't being threatened, he'd have likely been developed at a much slower pace. In fact, if you asked me, Jiraiya, the one who improved Naruto's strength the most, was probably the most reckless of Naruto's teachers when it came to dealing with him.