All you really need is practice. An interesting method a photo prof. taught me was to take the camera but not load any film in it and just walk around town shooting with it. Try to find interesting subjects and you'll know more about what you like in an image. This way at least you don't waste money developing rolls of film with boring images on them.
When you think you got the knack, load some film and go back out and shoot.
Another trick is to shoot from the hip. lower the camera to your hip and pre focus the lens to an easy to guess distance like 8-10ft. Stop the lens down to F8 or something that will give you some depth of field if you walk too close or not close enough to your subjects. You can use your light meter before each exposure or you can just use the sunny 16 rule (bright day, set to f16 and shutter to 1/film speed, 400asa, then 1/500, or 100asa, then 1/125 etc.) If you're shooting at f8, then just increase the shutter by equal stops.
so for a sunny day, using asa100 film, at f8, set the shutter to 1/500 instead of 1/125.
Sometimes I just leave the shutter at 1/125 and overexpose, especially for black and white because it give me higher contrast but it depends on the light.
And that's pretty much it.
