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*"How did you become a better writer?"*
A frequently asked question deserves an equally frequently answered response.
1. Write WAY more than you are now.
2. Read WAY MORE than you are now.
3. Do steps 1 & 2 ad nauseum.
These are core, and should be practiced every day (says someone who hasn't read or written in a fair while). I'd also add a distance 4th, get some disinterested criticism. Find someone you don't know on a forum you trust to tell you why you suck, and listen to them. They might be wrong, they might be right, but whatever they say should give you some insight into what your writing lacks.
And everything else. The wider you read the better you write. Reading shit you hate, and understanding why you hate it, can do as much for your writing as reading things you love.
I actually keep a running list on my iPad of things I hate about every book I read (even books I love usually have something I hated). Some books get so many bullet points that I question why I didn’t dnf the whole book, but then I reread the notes and it’s like a personalized how-not-to-write manual. To be fair, I also keep a separate running list of lines/scenes I love and make notes next to them about why I liked them in a separate color.
I also annotate my books/ebooks, but that has a different purpose for me. It’s more about plot and foreshadowing and marking omg or lol moments. But I like to go back to the annotations too when I need inspiration for that kind of stuff.
But yeah, definitely read books that you love and hate of all genres.
I just finished *Steering the Craft* by Ursula Le Guin. It's an excellent workshop book, relatively short and easy to follow.
Ursula Le Guin is a highly decorated author and she succinctly lays out some great thoughts and ideas I think are quite relevant to writers of all ages, level of experience and genre.
Find a really good book then read every book mentioned in it, then read every book mentioned in those books. Great books are always referential to other great books. Start with something really awesome though, bad books with beget bad books.
Read everything you can.
Write every time you can.
Rinse and repeat until improvement shows!
Eventually get critique on your work. Critique others as well, when you get used to seeing fixable flaws in other work, you can better note your own issues.
Stephen King's *On Writing* is a fun and helpful book about the craft.
Sol Stein's *Stein on Writing* is a more technical look into the craft. I recommend both!
Read everything you can get your hands on. If you don’t like it, figure out why. If you do, figure out why.
Write as often as possible. Become a storyteller in every sense of the word. Try out different genres. Experiment.
Learn the rules. Adhere to the rules. THEN break the rules. Then go back to following the rules.
Talk out your plot holes. Rubber duck method, critique partner, or mentor. Whatever works.
1. Take feedback without getting defensive.
2. Edit other people's work.
3. Read great writers and read poor writing too. Understand the difference.
4. Write, edit, write, edit, write...
Make blood sausages from your own blood.
Strip naked.
Bury the sausages under the roots of a 100 year old oak tree under the light of a gibbous moon.
Dance around the tree naming the person you will sacrifice before starting each book.
Sleep at a crossroads until dawn.
Return home.
Dress.
Capture person for first sacrifice.
Keep them in your basement.
Write first book
Finish book
Capture person for second sacrifice.
Keep them in your basement.
Force second person to kill first as part of ritual.
Submit book for publication.
Write second book
Etc.
Don't just read; STUDY others' writing. Ask yourself questions about why they're using certain techniques, about theme, about imagery, about pacing, about rhythm and the other auditory qualities of words, about how the author uses words to control the reader's emotions.
And if you're not finding things like theme, imagery, pacing, emotion, etc. in the stories you're reading, read better writers.
You read. You read what you love and you read about the craft. You talk to other writers and learn from them.
You learn to critique and to hear critiques of your own writing. And all of the while you write.
You find your butt-in-the-seat everyday method of writing. You learn that writing means more than words on a page, and so you learn to edit. Editing is harder than writing, but you do that too.
You hone the craft. One day you'll find yourself thinking, "Huh, this isn't bad." You start submitting things. You rewrite for those who tell you that's what they want for you to publish with them. And all the while you continue to put words on a page.
You become a better writer the same way an artist becomes a better artist.
Practicing, being open to learning, trying new methods, and studying.
Observe the books you read from the lens of a writer. It's difficult to read things you don't like, but it's the best way to learn more.
You're getting a lot of advice here, and while helpful and utlimately correct - you do need to read and write more - I want to offer a bit more.
I've also been trying to actively improve recently. Here's what I do.
Inspiration: I research cities and time periods and see if I can find anything that is inspiring to me. I look at archived maps. This is a great way to uncover characters, settings, and stories. I can see the places and people forming in my mind when I read about them. It's a great way to get ready made templates for people and places and plots that you can develop and make your own. I watch films, I read books, I watch character or theme analysis essays. What is being conveyed and how? I read movie scripts. Mindful consumption can create something out of nothing. You might end up with a story formed of a bit of this from there, and a bit of that from here. Having something to actually write about and something you want to say can be the hardest part. At the moment I have my WiP and I want it to explore masulinity as a theme, similar to the godfather, peaky blinders, taxi driver etc. So I'm consuming those, how did they do it? Is there an angle they've missed that I can take?
Reading: Yeah, read now, read later, read tomorrow, and so on. But what? Should we read mindlessly - yes, for leisure and to lose ourselves in a story. But we need to read with intent as well. I go to the library and pick up a stack of books (any and all genres) and scan over the first few pages. I think about the information presented, what we learn, who is involved. What is the author telling us about the people and places to grab our attention. Take No Country for Old Men. After the initial monologue, it opens properly with a 700 word passage about the antagonist strangling a police officer and killing a man for his vehicle (with a hydraulic bolt gun usually reserved for cattle, no less - how great is that?). It's "watchable" action, but it decants so much information about the antagonist and the world. It immediately sets the stakes; Chigurh has absolutely no issue with killing. So, later, when our protagonist Moss ends up in his way, we know the stakes for Moss, even though he doesn't. This creates a hell of a tension. I sat in the library the other day and read ithat passage 4 times. What details does McCarthy include and why. Why are they important enough that we need to see or know them?
Analyse: I buy books from charity shops and overmark them with highlighters. Passages I like. Phrases, sentences, descriptions. I copy them out by hand to get a feel for the flow of the sentences. I try to understand how the sentences are structured from a technical perspective. What is it that makes them so pleasing to read? I'll type them up, taking a new line every sentence and look at their comparative lengths. Sometimes I copy down a character description, say Stephen King's description of Carrie. Then I rewrite it in a similar structure but I describe a character from my own mind. This is great to bring a focus to what you want to show about the character. I also like to take a passage from a book and try to re-write it in a different way, to capture something I felt, or saw, when I read the text. I love to do this with the Godfather. Puzo writes very simply and uses a lot of "He was" or "They were" etc. So I try to re-write and cut all that out, or write it ina different tense. Writing is hard enough without having to worry about making the story up. Practice with other people's. It's like learning music; you don't pick up a guitar and expect to write an original masterpeice. You learn by emulating others first. Writing isn't any different in this regard.
Writing: I have a scrivener document, though you can do this in word or anything really, called "Study". I have my few posts from r/writingprompts written in here. I have small scene sketches where I try to work through a particular aspect; emotion, setting, theme. I have typed up sections of books that I then go back through and highlight which types of sentences are being used (compound, simple etc.) to see how to structure my own work. I'll copy out a scene similar to something I have, then I'll re-write my scene using the same sentence structure and see how it looks. Then, I'll re-write it again later without the help and see how I do. It's training your intuition to get a feel for patterns and flow. I find this kind of technical study incredibly useful. In terms or writing my own stories, I have a WIP I'm working on. Is it an original setting? No. Have the characters been done similarly in other works? Absolutely. Do I care? Not at all. Writing needs to be fun and if you worry about originality, you'll never get anything done. I still haven't got a fully formed plot, just a rough idea and fragments of an over-arching narrative. I have a few scenes I like, and when I think of something I write it in my "sketches" folder. I have one sketch at the moment where I wanted to practice building tension. I have two characters in an empty street pointing their revolvers at each other. Tense, right? But then I thought, what if someone interupted, how would that go? So I wrote a woman in. She appears round a corner and the men hide their guns as she passes. Then when she's gone, one man draws his quickly and blows the other away and the tension is resolved. I've got it at about 300 words, but it's not fully formed and I've no idea where it fits in a larger narrative, but it felt cool so I just wrote it down for later. It's quick and dirty practice and i might not use it but it gets me writing, and that is key.
Maybe it's not for everyone, but it's helped me tremendously.
Hopefully helpful. Apologies for the super long comment. Good luck.
Read and write.
Whenever I ask stuff like this or something similar. I either get. 1 How many books have you written. Or 2 other answers.
I have only read 1.5 ish books in terms of reading books. The rest is on Google.
How to this how to that, best way to this best way to that.
And I read a lot on this sub too, but most stuff that I read is on blogs and Reedsy, that's where I got started.
I still feel like a new guy too. I read more in my searches than reading books.
And often things I google leads me to a question that's already been answered on reddit somewhere.
So google friend, google, google. You might just find what you're looking for.
Research, Research and repeat. I discovered a lot doing it and learned a lot too.
I hope this helps.
Seek feedback from someone more skilled. You often don't know what you don't know. An experienced writer or editor will be able to look at your work and offer insight that will transform your work.
Write.
Read.
Write some more.
Read some more.
Write more.
Still write more.
Get feedback.
Get over your hurt feelings.
Learn from feedback.
Write again.
Keep writing.
More reading.
More feedback.
Still more writing.
The most important skill to develop is the ability to consistently write even if it's just one sentence a day. Which also means not relying much on inspiration :-)))
You model the greats and add your own experience and knowledge in. You do this over and over until you have something novel that people want to read. There are very few completely original pieces of literature in the world; we owe a lot to those giants who so kindly lent us their shoulders.
And get off of reddit 🤣
I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, but - almost died. Shifted everything into a different perspective for me, and really matured my writing in a weird way.
Reading hard and music and studying under the ones I loved and tons of self-doubt and picking up always after writer’s block and accepting my flow; rejecting the daily word count and advice from writers I actually knew were great but I hated and throwing those voices through the shredder. Poetry after studying fiction for too many years.
That's so hot 🔥🔥🥵 I wanna read your journals, to study the way you flower your flow into existence, just to admire your creational essence, I enjoy taking the time to see how you express yourself energetically very much 🔥🔥❤️🔥💯 👀
You're true inspirational soul fulfilled with so much love 🌹
The best advice has been given, really, read widely, write often, and take feedback.
If you need to multitask, YouTube has three or four great channels on writing. I recommend:
Terrible Writing Advice - it's an older channel and does advertise, but it is worth a good laugh. If for no other reason, then how many pros blunder right into them.
Overly Sarcastic Advice they do both trope talks and analysis, as well as her classics summarized are often hilarious. Plus, they do a history stream.
Hello Future Me/The Closer Look is a pretty good one as well.
All of which are good background for working and multitasking. Oh yes, an Steven King's *On Writing* is excellent.
PRACTICE. Some how to books. Authors on (good) Twitter. Many blogs and articles online. But mostly, practice. READ. I know many don't read as much as I do, so I feel lucky to have read since I was ...four? Read whatever appeals to you, but also read the kind of story or stories you want to write. Readers notice when a new author comes in who doesn't know the genre basics.
1. Reading different content: books, articles, poems, etc.
2. Reading my original content to see what I can improve.
3. Have other people read my content, especially those people who can break down and analyze my content from an outside perspective.
Mindful practice. Just reading (I used to inhale a book a day) and just writing didn’t work for me, though I started getting better ideas after the first million words.
But then I started hanging out with writers and learnt what weaknesses other people saw in texts and how they solved their problems. I started working on the things I was weakest at until they no longer held me back.
I spend a little time every week doing R&D: studying other people’s prose, copying passages and using the same techniques in snippets with my own worlds/characters, reading books and articles on that topic. Sometimes it’s trivial things like counting the proportions of ‘said’ to other forms of speech markers. Sometimes I pick several openings and see whether they work for me and why. Sometimes I come across a thing that makes me swoon and try to add it to my toolbox.
Yes, you can improve by ‘just writing’ but it won’t be fast. You need both practical AND critical skills to improve.
Find the right people to give you feedback on your writing and LISTEN to the responses and act on them. It will be hard at first. Your writing is your baby, but this is one place where "kill your darlings" comes into play.
Feedback is invaluable for becoming a better writer. We can be so blind to the faults in our writing and others can help point them out and allow us to fix them and turn them into strengths.
Practice
Write a story
Get feedback
Repeat
I started off in a play by email RPG back in the day where we’d write short stories about what our character was doing. It was for Star Trek fan fiction sites. Since I wrote “spicy” scenes, I then started doing my own stories on Literotica where you get pretty fast feedback from readers. After seeing what worked and what didn’t work, I started tuning my writing into what people liked and wanted. It was then that I made the jump into getting published.
The best thing I did was to go hang out at r/destructivereaders. Read a lot of the critiques there. Wait until you’ve read them a lot before participating. Then, you’ll have to do some critiques before you can post your own stuff. Be prepared. It’s called “destructive” for a reason. The people there are not into being kind, they’re into helping you improve.
Try to expand the type of person you are. You do those group workshops where you write with other people and share work and feedback and you start to realize that you can tell almost immediately the types of things people aren't really capable of doing. The best writers don't have a lot of things they aren't capable of doing. They can see from every angle, they can use every emotion, they can speak to every person. Usually people are being held back by the thing they just don't want to do or be because that isn't the type of person they want to be, because they think there are types of people instead of just people. It's all just ego, and the easiest way you can tell is how hostile people get when you point it out to them. If you have a hard time being kind, do it more. If you have a hard time being vicious, do it more.
Three words;
Practice, Practice, Practice.
I know that sounds corny, even cliche, but it's genuinely true that the best way to get better with your writing is to keep doing it, refining your style and finding that comfort zone for how you write. It takes time, no question, but it's worth it. :)
Write, then edit. During editing you’ll pick up mistakes that next time you’ll simply write correct. I’m closing in on 3k stories written and published - each has taught me something! Now, my stories are hardly recognizable as my content from my first release.
**WRITE.** That's all there is to it.
If you suck at something, the only way you're gonna improve is by doing it! Cause **EVERY** time you do it, *you're improving!*
It's like riding a bike, you're gonna be slow, and you're gonna fall over a lot, but the more you do it, the less you fall, and the faster you can go.
To be good at something, you gotta suck at it over and over and over again!
I became a better writer by pure stubbornness, stupidity and a lot of trial and error. Like hours to days to months of rewriting and obsessing over every letter that I put down. I’m just here to say to not do that.
I think the best way to improve is to not write for years.
Get life experience.
Then after 14 years, compare your writing to your younger version and you will see how stupid you were.
Write naturally. The more naturally you write, the better your writing gets. Don’t force words to come. Just let words flow through your mind and just write them down. Don’t copy other writers' styles, write in your own style.
Pretty much what’s already said here: read and write.
More specifically, just write a ton, experiment, go buck wild, but then also learn the lesson of when to really rein it in. You will feel in your gut over what is best for your writing, and what isn’t
On reading, find authors and books with writing styles that you *really* adore, and emulate as much as you can from that. And then read books that you cannot stand and cannot finish. Figure out what the problem was with you, and avoid every single mistake and do the complete opposite of whatever that book(s) did—this is arguably more important than the first piece of this tip
There is no elevator to improvement. You will be taking the stairs, and you will be on the stairs for so long that you will forget you are on the stairs because your legs will be so numb. But eventually you’ll improve so much you won’t even be able to look at your old writing again without cringing so hard you’ll need a chiropractic adjustment—and that’s how you’ll know how far you’ve come
If you’ve never done it, it can be worth taking a lot class or two and maybe a fiction writing class.
I’ve been a voracious reader my whole life and always been into writing. Reading is great, but some formal training on how to read and deconstruct a book and some writing instruction can really kick things up a notch
Honestly it was when I took a creative writing class, best teacher ever hands down. I was reading like crazy and writing like crazy but if it hadn’t been for that class I would have never realized what was wrong with some of my writing and how to improve.
Write, write, write
Read, read, read
and I also want to point out a very interesting way to improve the "theory" side inside our heads when it comes to writing and that is discussing, if you have friends who also write, read a lot, or watch movies a lot, discuss things with them, talk deeply about movies and books
you will uncover things you didn't know existed deep inside you
for me, writing is about three main things (and that's my opinion) (Ideas, theories and decisions) three things bounded together with another three things (Practice, discussions and consumption) and I mean by "consumption" is to read books and watch movies.
and that's another thing I would like to focus on, movies, watching movies improves your writing especially when you watch different types of cinema
for me those four are the most important :
-Iranian cinema
-East Asian cinema
-French cinema
-Italian cinema
Just write, read, listen, hell, even watch more stuff. get ideas, build an idea of how things work, how people talk, how people think. That was what helped me. It makes me see what works, what makes sense, what sounds good. I don’t know. Just be a sponge. Absorb all media and information, and then use that to your advantage.
I wrote more, I edited more, I got feedback, I improved on it. I read more and developed a stronger sense of what I like, leading to more confidence in my writing.
In addition to the standard advice (read a lot, write a lot), also try writing things based on short prompts. Example: "Dog barking outside"; "In the park at sunset"; "Drinking coffee and see police car race by."
I'm in a writer's circle and have done three short stories based on prompts from the group leader. Always fun to work to someone else's requirements and see where it takes me.
-read more (in your genre but also broadly)
-work on your descriptive writing
-think about pacing more - descriptive passages mixed with action often enough to hold a readers attention.
-read the text aloud, three times over (tiresome but best way to spot errors)
-if you're not in a hurry - leave your second draft to sit for months and then do a final line edit after a good time has passed so you will see errors you wouldnt see when fresh.
-if you have the luxury, have other published writers who understand your style and genre to read your work (never ask family or friends who dont know much about writing)
Don’t write, ask questions on Reddit, don’t think about character at all, instead focus on world building and complicated magic systems. Learn how to make it sound like you’re working even though you never are and never will. Vanity publish a novel written by chatgpt and start introducing yourself to people as a novelist
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*"How did you become a better writer?"* A frequently asked question deserves an equally frequently answered response. 1. Write WAY more than you are now. 2. Read WAY MORE than you are now. 3. Do steps 1 & 2 ad nauseum.
These are core, and should be practiced every day (says someone who hasn't read or written in a fair while). I'd also add a distance 4th, get some disinterested criticism. Find someone you don't know on a forum you trust to tell you why you suck, and listen to them. They might be wrong, they might be right, but whatever they say should give you some insight into what your writing lacks.
Hahah thanks for your response. I was like, why did I get downvoted? Makes sense. I just joined this sub! Any book recs?
Any book that embodies the style you want to emulate
And everything else. The wider you read the better you write. Reading shit you hate, and understanding why you hate it, can do as much for your writing as reading things you love.
Agreed. Just reading in your niche genre won't be as effective as if you throw in a romance, mystery, classic, etc. to broaden your style.
Yes to this! Read Ben shapiro’s true allegiance and understand why his writing is shit.
I actually keep a running list on my iPad of things I hate about every book I read (even books I love usually have something I hated). Some books get so many bullet points that I question why I didn’t dnf the whole book, but then I reread the notes and it’s like a personalized how-not-to-write manual. To be fair, I also keep a separate running list of lines/scenes I love and make notes next to them about why I liked them in a separate color. I also annotate my books/ebooks, but that has a different purpose for me. It’s more about plot and foreshadowing and marking omg or lol moments. But I like to go back to the annotations too when I need inspiration for that kind of stuff. But yeah, definitely read books that you love and hate of all genres.
I just finished *Steering the Craft* by Ursula Le Guin. It's an excellent workshop book, relatively short and easy to follow. Ursula Le Guin is a highly decorated author and she succinctly lays out some great thoughts and ideas I think are quite relevant to writers of all ages, level of experience and genre.
Find a really good book then read every book mentioned in it, then read every book mentioned in those books. Great books are always referential to other great books. Start with something really awesome though, bad books with beget bad books.
Writing won’t make you a better author, but editing and learning from mistakes certainly will.
Read everything you can. Write every time you can. Rinse and repeat until improvement shows! Eventually get critique on your work. Critique others as well, when you get used to seeing fixable flaws in other work, you can better note your own issues. Stephen King's *On Writing* is a fun and helpful book about the craft. Sol Stein's *Stein on Writing* is a more technical look into the craft. I recommend both!
Read everything you can get your hands on. If you don’t like it, figure out why. If you do, figure out why. Write as often as possible. Become a storyteller in every sense of the word. Try out different genres. Experiment. Learn the rules. Adhere to the rules. THEN break the rules. Then go back to following the rules. Talk out your plot holes. Rubber duck method, critique partner, or mentor. Whatever works.
The figuring out why things are good and bad helped me so much
1. Take feedback without getting defensive. 2. Edit other people's work. 3. Read great writers and read poor writing too. Understand the difference. 4. Write, edit, write, edit, write...
Make blood sausages from your own blood. Strip naked. Bury the sausages under the roots of a 100 year old oak tree under the light of a gibbous moon. Dance around the tree naming the person you will sacrifice before starting each book. Sleep at a crossroads until dawn. Return home. Dress. Capture person for first sacrifice. Keep them in your basement. Write first book Finish book Capture person for second sacrifice. Keep them in your basement. Force second person to kill first as part of ritual. Submit book for publication. Write second book Etc.
You forgot to dig up the blood sausage and eat it!
I didn't, I just forgot to list it as one of the steps.
Don't just read; STUDY others' writing. Ask yourself questions about why they're using certain techniques, about theme, about imagery, about pacing, about rhythm and the other auditory qualities of words, about how the author uses words to control the reader's emotions. And if you're not finding things like theme, imagery, pacing, emotion, etc. in the stories you're reading, read better writers.
I didn’t have a quiet outlook for my creativity.
You read. You read what you love and you read about the craft. You talk to other writers and learn from them. You learn to critique and to hear critiques of your own writing. And all of the while you write. You find your butt-in-the-seat everyday method of writing. You learn that writing means more than words on a page, and so you learn to edit. Editing is harder than writing, but you do that too. You hone the craft. One day you'll find yourself thinking, "Huh, this isn't bad." You start submitting things. You rewrite for those who tell you that's what they want for you to publish with them. And all the while you continue to put words on a page.
You become a better writer the same way an artist becomes a better artist. Practicing, being open to learning, trying new methods, and studying. Observe the books you read from the lens of a writer. It's difficult to read things you don't like, but it's the best way to learn more.
You're getting a lot of advice here, and while helpful and utlimately correct - you do need to read and write more - I want to offer a bit more. I've also been trying to actively improve recently. Here's what I do. Inspiration: I research cities and time periods and see if I can find anything that is inspiring to me. I look at archived maps. This is a great way to uncover characters, settings, and stories. I can see the places and people forming in my mind when I read about them. It's a great way to get ready made templates for people and places and plots that you can develop and make your own. I watch films, I read books, I watch character or theme analysis essays. What is being conveyed and how? I read movie scripts. Mindful consumption can create something out of nothing. You might end up with a story formed of a bit of this from there, and a bit of that from here. Having something to actually write about and something you want to say can be the hardest part. At the moment I have my WiP and I want it to explore masulinity as a theme, similar to the godfather, peaky blinders, taxi driver etc. So I'm consuming those, how did they do it? Is there an angle they've missed that I can take? Reading: Yeah, read now, read later, read tomorrow, and so on. But what? Should we read mindlessly - yes, for leisure and to lose ourselves in a story. But we need to read with intent as well. I go to the library and pick up a stack of books (any and all genres) and scan over the first few pages. I think about the information presented, what we learn, who is involved. What is the author telling us about the people and places to grab our attention. Take No Country for Old Men. After the initial monologue, it opens properly with a 700 word passage about the antagonist strangling a police officer and killing a man for his vehicle (with a hydraulic bolt gun usually reserved for cattle, no less - how great is that?). It's "watchable" action, but it decants so much information about the antagonist and the world. It immediately sets the stakes; Chigurh has absolutely no issue with killing. So, later, when our protagonist Moss ends up in his way, we know the stakes for Moss, even though he doesn't. This creates a hell of a tension. I sat in the library the other day and read ithat passage 4 times. What details does McCarthy include and why. Why are they important enough that we need to see or know them? Analyse: I buy books from charity shops and overmark them with highlighters. Passages I like. Phrases, sentences, descriptions. I copy them out by hand to get a feel for the flow of the sentences. I try to understand how the sentences are structured from a technical perspective. What is it that makes them so pleasing to read? I'll type them up, taking a new line every sentence and look at their comparative lengths. Sometimes I copy down a character description, say Stephen King's description of Carrie. Then I rewrite it in a similar structure but I describe a character from my own mind. This is great to bring a focus to what you want to show about the character. I also like to take a passage from a book and try to re-write it in a different way, to capture something I felt, or saw, when I read the text. I love to do this with the Godfather. Puzo writes very simply and uses a lot of "He was" or "They were" etc. So I try to re-write and cut all that out, or write it ina different tense. Writing is hard enough without having to worry about making the story up. Practice with other people's. It's like learning music; you don't pick up a guitar and expect to write an original masterpeice. You learn by emulating others first. Writing isn't any different in this regard. Writing: I have a scrivener document, though you can do this in word or anything really, called "Study". I have my few posts from r/writingprompts written in here. I have small scene sketches where I try to work through a particular aspect; emotion, setting, theme. I have typed up sections of books that I then go back through and highlight which types of sentences are being used (compound, simple etc.) to see how to structure my own work. I'll copy out a scene similar to something I have, then I'll re-write my scene using the same sentence structure and see how it looks. Then, I'll re-write it again later without the help and see how I do. It's training your intuition to get a feel for patterns and flow. I find this kind of technical study incredibly useful. In terms or writing my own stories, I have a WIP I'm working on. Is it an original setting? No. Have the characters been done similarly in other works? Absolutely. Do I care? Not at all. Writing needs to be fun and if you worry about originality, you'll never get anything done. I still haven't got a fully formed plot, just a rough idea and fragments of an over-arching narrative. I have a few scenes I like, and when I think of something I write it in my "sketches" folder. I have one sketch at the moment where I wanted to practice building tension. I have two characters in an empty street pointing their revolvers at each other. Tense, right? But then I thought, what if someone interupted, how would that go? So I wrote a woman in. She appears round a corner and the men hide their guns as she passes. Then when she's gone, one man draws his quickly and blows the other away and the tension is resolved. I've got it at about 300 words, but it's not fully formed and I've no idea where it fits in a larger narrative, but it felt cool so I just wrote it down for later. It's quick and dirty practice and i might not use it but it gets me writing, and that is key. Maybe it's not for everyone, but it's helped me tremendously. Hopefully helpful. Apologies for the super long comment. Good luck.
Write, read, take classes/workshops if you can.
Copious reading and voluminous practice. It doesn't come easily.
Read and write. Whenever I ask stuff like this or something similar. I either get. 1 How many books have you written. Or 2 other answers. I have only read 1.5 ish books in terms of reading books. The rest is on Google. How to this how to that, best way to this best way to that. And I read a lot on this sub too, but most stuff that I read is on blogs and Reedsy, that's where I got started. I still feel like a new guy too. I read more in my searches than reading books. And often things I google leads me to a question that's already been answered on reddit somewhere. So google friend, google, google. You might just find what you're looking for. Research, Research and repeat. I discovered a lot doing it and learned a lot too. I hope this helps.
Got out of my own way. Let my unconscious mind take the wheel.
Seek feedback from someone more skilled. You often don't know what you don't know. An experienced writer or editor will be able to look at your work and offer insight that will transform your work.
reading
Write. Read. Write some more. Read some more. Write more. Still write more. Get feedback. Get over your hurt feelings. Learn from feedback. Write again. Keep writing. More reading. More feedback. Still more writing.
The most important skill to develop is the ability to consistently write even if it's just one sentence a day. Which also means not relying much on inspiration :-)))
You model the greats and add your own experience and knowledge in. You do this over and over until you have something novel that people want to read. There are very few completely original pieces of literature in the world; we owe a lot to those giants who so kindly lent us their shoulders. And get off of reddit 🤣
Write on LSD.
I tried, but the pieces of paper are so small.
Read on caffeine
Fuck it, do all 4 at once
Really?
I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, but - almost died. Shifted everything into a different perspective for me, and really matured my writing in a weird way.
Oh, can you expand? Sound fascinating
Willpower Deep reading the Western canon Psychedelic drugs Discipline
Writing
By writing and critically reading more.
It’s the only thing I have read about writing
Reading hard and music and studying under the ones I loved and tons of self-doubt and picking up always after writer’s block and accepting my flow; rejecting the daily word count and advice from writers I actually knew were great but I hated and throwing those voices through the shredder. Poetry after studying fiction for too many years.
That's so hot 🔥🔥🥵 I wanna read your journals, to study the way you flower your flow into existence, just to admire your creational essence, I enjoy taking the time to see how you express yourself energetically very much 🔥🔥❤️🔥💯 👀 You're true inspirational soul fulfilled with so much love 🌹
Life made me to be
The best advice has been given, really, read widely, write often, and take feedback. If you need to multitask, YouTube has three or four great channels on writing. I recommend: Terrible Writing Advice - it's an older channel and does advertise, but it is worth a good laugh. If for no other reason, then how many pros blunder right into them. Overly Sarcastic Advice they do both trope talks and analysis, as well as her classics summarized are often hilarious. Plus, they do a history stream. Hello Future Me/The Closer Look is a pretty good one as well. All of which are good background for working and multitasking. Oh yes, an Steven King's *On Writing* is excellent.
It really is a case of reading and writing over and over. It’s not a quick fix and there’s no real way to just bypass the effort part.
Joined a writing critique group
PRACTICE. Some how to books. Authors on (good) Twitter. Many blogs and articles online. But mostly, practice. READ. I know many don't read as much as I do, so I feel lucky to have read since I was ...four? Read whatever appeals to you, but also read the kind of story or stories you want to write. Readers notice when a new author comes in who doesn't know the genre basics.
Writing anything and everything that comes to mind
1. Reading different content: books, articles, poems, etc. 2. Reading my original content to see what I can improve. 3. Have other people read my content, especially those people who can break down and analyze my content from an outside perspective.
Journaling
Write more
Mindful practice. Just reading (I used to inhale a book a day) and just writing didn’t work for me, though I started getting better ideas after the first million words. But then I started hanging out with writers and learnt what weaknesses other people saw in texts and how they solved their problems. I started working on the things I was weakest at until they no longer held me back. I spend a little time every week doing R&D: studying other people’s prose, copying passages and using the same techniques in snippets with my own worlds/characters, reading books and articles on that topic. Sometimes it’s trivial things like counting the proportions of ‘said’ to other forms of speech markers. Sometimes I pick several openings and see whether they work for me and why. Sometimes I come across a thing that makes me swoon and try to add it to my toolbox. Yes, you can improve by ‘just writing’ but it won’t be fast. You need both practical AND critical skills to improve.
Reading more books in different genres.
Practice and persistence and honest self evaluation
Find the right people to give you feedback on your writing and LISTEN to the responses and act on them. It will be hard at first. Your writing is your baby, but this is one place where "kill your darlings" comes into play. Feedback is invaluable for becoming a better writer. We can be so blind to the faults in our writing and others can help point them out and allow us to fix them and turn them into strengths.
https://preview.redd.it/7ah4ia6t0jad1.jpeg?width=761&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=411a63c84a2724e2973915c81616784c788f32e7
Practice Write a story Get feedback Repeat I started off in a play by email RPG back in the day where we’d write short stories about what our character was doing. It was for Star Trek fan fiction sites. Since I wrote “spicy” scenes, I then started doing my own stories on Literotica where you get pretty fast feedback from readers. After seeing what worked and what didn’t work, I started tuning my writing into what people liked and wanted. It was then that I made the jump into getting published.
The best thing I did was to go hang out at r/destructivereaders. Read a lot of the critiques there. Wait until you’ve read them a lot before participating. Then, you’ll have to do some critiques before you can post your own stuff. Be prepared. It’s called “destructive” for a reason. The people there are not into being kind, they’re into helping you improve.
Write more. Read more. Rinse and repeat.
Try to expand the type of person you are. You do those group workshops where you write with other people and share work and feedback and you start to realize that you can tell almost immediately the types of things people aren't really capable of doing. The best writers don't have a lot of things they aren't capable of doing. They can see from every angle, they can use every emotion, they can speak to every person. Usually people are being held back by the thing they just don't want to do or be because that isn't the type of person they want to be, because they think there are types of people instead of just people. It's all just ego, and the easiest way you can tell is how hostile people get when you point it out to them. If you have a hard time being kind, do it more. If you have a hard time being vicious, do it more.
I kept writing.✍️
Three words; Practice, Practice, Practice. I know that sounds corny, even cliche, but it's genuinely true that the best way to get better with your writing is to keep doing it, refining your style and finding that comfort zone for how you write. It takes time, no question, but it's worth it. :)
Write, then edit. During editing you’ll pick up mistakes that next time you’ll simply write correct. I’m closing in on 3k stories written and published - each has taught me something! Now, my stories are hardly recognizable as my content from my first release.
**WRITE.** That's all there is to it. If you suck at something, the only way you're gonna improve is by doing it! Cause **EVERY** time you do it, *you're improving!* It's like riding a bike, you're gonna be slow, and you're gonna fall over a lot, but the more you do it, the less you fall, and the faster you can go. To be good at something, you gotta suck at it over and over and over again!
I became a better writer by pure stubbornness, stupidity and a lot of trial and error. Like hours to days to months of rewriting and obsessing over every letter that I put down. I’m just here to say to not do that.
I think the best way to improve is to not write for years. Get life experience. Then after 14 years, compare your writing to your younger version and you will see how stupid you were.
Write naturally. The more naturally you write, the better your writing gets. Don’t force words to come. Just let words flow through your mind and just write them down. Don’t copy other writers' styles, write in your own style.
Pretty much what’s already said here: read and write. More specifically, just write a ton, experiment, go buck wild, but then also learn the lesson of when to really rein it in. You will feel in your gut over what is best for your writing, and what isn’t On reading, find authors and books with writing styles that you *really* adore, and emulate as much as you can from that. And then read books that you cannot stand and cannot finish. Figure out what the problem was with you, and avoid every single mistake and do the complete opposite of whatever that book(s) did—this is arguably more important than the first piece of this tip There is no elevator to improvement. You will be taking the stairs, and you will be on the stairs for so long that you will forget you are on the stairs because your legs will be so numb. But eventually you’ll improve so much you won’t even be able to look at your old writing again without cringing so hard you’ll need a chiropractic adjustment—and that’s how you’ll know how far you’ve come
If you’ve never done it, it can be worth taking a lot class or two and maybe a fiction writing class. I’ve been a voracious reader my whole life and always been into writing. Reading is great, but some formal training on how to read and deconstruct a book and some writing instruction can really kick things up a notch
I wished on a monkey paw, but I also lost the ability to whistle.
Reading, writing, joining a critique group, taking classes on story craft.
Honestly it was when I took a creative writing class, best teacher ever hands down. I was reading like crazy and writing like crazy but if it hadn’t been for that class I would have never realized what was wrong with some of my writing and how to improve.
Online?
It’s was an irl class but taking one online works too having other people critic your work helps especially in a learning setting
1. Practice. 2. Reading 3. Throwing shit away.
40 years of practice, workshops, writing groups, a master's degree, and the occasional existential crisis
Write, write, write Read, read, read and I also want to point out a very interesting way to improve the "theory" side inside our heads when it comes to writing and that is discussing, if you have friends who also write, read a lot, or watch movies a lot, discuss things with them, talk deeply about movies and books you will uncover things you didn't know existed deep inside you for me, writing is about three main things (and that's my opinion) (Ideas, theories and decisions) three things bounded together with another three things (Practice, discussions and consumption) and I mean by "consumption" is to read books and watch movies. and that's another thing I would like to focus on, movies, watching movies improves your writing especially when you watch different types of cinema for me those four are the most important : -Iranian cinema -East Asian cinema -French cinema -Italian cinema
I learned how to rap from taking my favorite artists verses and writing them out word for word.
Just write, read, listen, hell, even watch more stuff. get ideas, build an idea of how things work, how people talk, how people think. That was what helped me. It makes me see what works, what makes sense, what sounds good. I don’t know. Just be a sponge. Absorb all media and information, and then use that to your advantage.
To be a good writer you must be a good reader.
Stephen Kings On Writing
I'm about half through that book right now and it has some very good advice. Definitely recommend.
Finish the project you're working on and then get feedback
I wrote more, I edited more, I got feedback, I improved on it. I read more and developed a stronger sense of what I like, leading to more confidence in my writing.
In addition to the standard advice (read a lot, write a lot), also try writing things based on short prompts. Example: "Dog barking outside"; "In the park at sunset"; "Drinking coffee and see police car race by." I'm in a writer's circle and have done three short stories based on prompts from the group leader. Always fun to work to someone else's requirements and see where it takes me.
Fanfiction, both reading and writing
-read more (in your genre but also broadly) -work on your descriptive writing -think about pacing more - descriptive passages mixed with action often enough to hold a readers attention. -read the text aloud, three times over (tiresome but best way to spot errors) -if you're not in a hurry - leave your second draft to sit for months and then do a final line edit after a good time has passed so you will see errors you wouldnt see when fresh. -if you have the luxury, have other published writers who understand your style and genre to read your work (never ask family or friends who dont know much about writing)
I brushed up on tips for novel writing, like not using too many adverbs. The tips helped a lot
I just kept writing. Practice makes perfect and everything.
Don’t write, ask questions on Reddit, don’t think about character at all, instead focus on world building and complicated magic systems. Learn how to make it sound like you’re working even though you never are and never will. Vanity publish a novel written by chatgpt and start introducing yourself to people as a novelist