Minecraft Building Skills

Ok, don't yell at me yet, when i say this, but chances are if you are playing minecraft and not making maps, or sometimes even when you are your building skills probably suck. This is how it is with most people. When you start a world, don't immediately look for food or mine, first get a bed then lots of wood, cobble, and sand to make into glass. then you can make a decent house. NEVER NEVER NEVER make a house out of dirt unless you are planning to detonate it the next day... Never have a house that isn't lit up, even if you use charcoal (it is it's only useful use in my opinion).

1. And NEVER go your first day without a bed, I mean even in creative it is nice or time set, but survival is vital, most people won't ever survive the first night if you run around like an idiot gaining exp like a madman until that one creeper walks up behind you while you are typing good-night to yourself and blows you up! I have seen this so many times especially in hardcore, and guess what? Good Night Level! MAKE A BED that is the first step to survival building and a strong suggestion to creative building if you don't want it to be night or to use nightvision.
2.  Anyway the second step is NEVER flatten the land, use the environment to your advantage, build with it not destroy it, trust me it might make it more complicated, but it looks a billion times better.
3.  Third NEVER make it perfectly square, most minecrafters are rather sick of squares or should be, be creative make it a cool shape without it looking like a piece of crap.
4. Fourth, don't keep it only to that shape... make some indents or something, make something to look at, make a frame around your walls or something like that.
5. Fifth, make some kind of roof and balconies. Whether they be inside or outside stepped or flat, make them something to look at. If you want a flat roof that bad, make a railing out of fences or something, most minecrafters are sick of flat roofs.
6.  Sixth, find villages, and steal some of their ideas and play with that, look at others creations and copy some of their ideas and designs.
7. Seventh, oh how I love the number seven...  don't use super flat unless they will never see the outside, I suggest not using it anyway.
8. Eighth, find cool seeds, find something that people want to explore, not something that they will always want to be inside.
9. Ninth, put some adventure into it, make it something people want to explore, make hidden chests full of your extra dirt or cobble or lapis you don't need. Lapis is useless...
10. Tenth, try, try, again. Trust me, if you don't wake up tomorrow it is probably due to you giving up in minecraft. Or maybe you never watched blue's clues and winnie the pooh as a kid, and should go look it up on Netflix before the Grim Reaper comes to suck out your soul like a dementer. wooohewoewoowho! My point is if you ever give up you are screwed.
11. Eleventeenth tip is pillars and supports. especially if your house is floating or built into a mountain or on the ocean, give some kind of supports, usually fences, and make them look good. This is a vital rule in bridges, docks, and mountain buildings, plus pillars look nice too, especially if made of quarts slabs, stairs, and blocks.
12. Twelveteenthish, know what you are doing and explore on it a little bit. Making an execution stage? Use leads, hang chickens, make it cool.
13. Thirteenthteenth, MAKE IT FUNCTIONAL!!! Don't just let it sit there and do nothing. The only reason I usually hate creation maps more than adventure maps. Add some adventure, dive into redstone a little bit, add monsters to fight, and spawners, and chests! Add ghast fights with fishing poles, let me earn a freakin' awesome fishing pole of doom! Let me find an amazing battle axe, do something with the Custom NPCs mod, basically make it an adventure map, or a survival map, or a game, or pvp map.
14. Next use the Custom NPCs mod. Really no jokes, this is one of the best mods I have ever seen, for servers, maps, everything, this one is required. Please help me get enough people using it that Mojang will decide to throw it into vanilla.
15. Seventh... Use MCedit, this is not a mod techniquely it is its own program that works with minecraft maps. Try it out its both fun and amazing, and it will save you A TON of time. If confused or wanting to see how to both use it and be better at it, look up blamethecontroller's videos on youtube.