I completely agree with the advice in this article, in a slightly different way. I write a blog, which is more or less like an online journal for me to dump my emotions into. However, I don't end up publishing all of my journal entries, and not even in the correct chronological sequence. I write a lot of shitty first drafts. *The idea is to dump all your ideas without prejudice against imperfection*. Eventually, a few weeks later I pick up those terrible first drafts again and rewrite them.
To add to all of this, reading books in the same genre that you want to write in (whether fiction or nonfiction) helps a lot.
For the longest time with my fiction I was just focusing on writing writing writing and reading about writing. I'd always loved to read, but surprisingly never really read that much in my target genre. When I started, it's like another gate of improvement was opened up: analyzing the beats and conflict points of successful books in my genre immediately helped me see what I was lacking in mine. And being exposed to the wording preferences and writing styles of other authors gave me so many "Aha!" moments when it comes to formulating enticing prose.
I'm still not a good fiction writer by any stretch of the imagination, but the improvement has been steady when coupling reading in my genre with more writing.
Read more in order to identify the types of writing you admire, enjoy and perhaps wish to emulate on some level. I like William Zinsser's books, On Writing Well is the "flagship" I guess.
If you're writing in public, like a blog, try giving yourself a deadline and permission for the post not to be perfect.
Zinsser's On Writing Well was my game changer, can't recommend highly enough. And it's a fun read too.
The main takeaway is to simplify text as much as possible. That doesn't mean dumbing it down, and it doesn't mean abandoning creativity. It's just the opposite: Once you get rid of all the excess junk, the reader will hear your genuine voice.
Read some fiction you might not normally read, sometimes you'll find phrases or sentences so interesting in the way they're constructed it's a learning experience. One example for me was reading Charles Dickens. Reading some of his stuff as a child in school was an inferior experience to reading it as an adult.
Write a lot, and repeatedly re-read what you wrote (when it's done in its entirety). You'll naturally correct yourself or tune it.
My personal experience has led me to believe that there’s truly no substitute for reading a lot and writing a lot. But the funny thing is that you may not realize how true that is until you’ve gotten sick and tired of trying to find shortcuts and hacks. You can get burnt out on reading and watching material about how to write well but it can be helpful in moderation. The best resource I’ve found is the Belief Agency YouTube channel. They have a lot of great interviews/shows about how command of the concept of storytelling can improve your communication, written or otherwise. Brian McDonald’s books are great too—-especially Invisible Ink. One more thing I’ve found helpful is to take up a practice that has nothing to do with writing—-gardening in my case—-and see if you can learn some things that shape the way you think about the writing process. All of these things should lead you back to a regular practice of reading and writing though. It’s like an archaeological dig. Most of the time you’re just throwing dirt over your shoulder but once in a while you find treasure.
I blogged every day for a while. That helped but it was grueling. With everything, practice makes perfect.
Working with an editor is huge. I worked with several editors and reviewers both when submitting to other blogs and when writing my books. I learned a lot.
There are great writer assistance tools such as Write Good, etc. They helped with avoiding weasel phrasing, etc.
Keeping a daily diary by hand is a good first step. When you’re reading, look for sentences whose construction surprises you or is otherwise novel. If you can, try to pay attention to how the parts of speech are being used to form the sentence’s structure. Rereading the diary once a month and making line edits will put into mind your own bad habits. In time, an intuitive set of reasoning about how to marry the idea to the structure of the sentence will develop. Continuing to express, articulate, and expand on that reasoning will make the act of writing more enjoyable and the writing itself better.
Sentences should have a quality that makes them individually memorable.
There's a video where Alan Moore recommends reading terrible books. Knowing what frustrates me in years of poorly presented university textbooks helps me in a way.
Set aside what you wrote for about two weeks and read it. Reading aloud what you wrote, too. Emphasis on smaller sentences-less than 10 words on average. Never more than 20 words.
Read books by Gary Provost on writing. Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark. Draft number 4 by McPhee. They contain a variety of ideas. Writing Tools is great if you want to identify and drill techniques. Provost's books cover everything and are written well.
- grammarly (mostly excellent, I ignore some suggestions)
- reading books more with stylistic elements that push the boundaries of what you're used to. I write technical blogs, but I've found some inspiration reading very different writing. Some examples are Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce, Greg Egan
- setting up constraints. Can you explain this in less sentences without making a long run-on sentence? How concise can you make this whole post? On the flipside, can you avoid all the most common adjectives when describing something? If you take a tokenized word count on your work, what words do you rely on? Can you delete them?
Having people read your writing who can give constructive criticism can be a huge help.
It can be people you know, but there are also online writing communities that will give candid feedback in a safe environment. Usually the catch is you’ll have to return the favor for someone else in the community, but that’s not a bad thing.
1. Read the Elements of Style by E.B. White. It describes how to write in active voice for positive effect.
2. Practice converting your thoughts to the written word so that they're clearly understood by anyone. That is the exercise at hand and it takes practice.
3. Once you've mastered clearly communicating your ideas, add some cleverness to your writing. Use double-entendre and practice economy of words. Leave something for the reader to guess, allowing one's imagination to fill the gaps with what you didn't say.
4. Finally, practice the art of showing versus telling, i.e., the art of story-telling versus an analytical accounting of facts.
Find people to read and critique your work. The time I spent in 'reading group' in grad school helped me curb some bad writing habits and develop other good ones. My mom used to participate in 'writers groups', in-person and online to get feedback on her poetry and prose.
Write -> give other people for proofreading -> rewrite -> publish -> gather feedback.
There is no other way than practice. Feedback speeds up this learning process a lot and improves the result significantly.
Everything else varies from person to person. Some write daily; some don't for months - then dive into their writing modes. Some start with an outline, and some - pour a stream of thoughts into the computer.
Nevertheless - what is your goal, and what blocks you in the process?
I'd probably substitute editing for proofreading (which for me implies copyediting). Particularly starting out you may be looking for more structural feedback than a copyeditor will often provide.
But other than that I agree. There are probably a few books worth reading but it's more about writing and getting good feedback. Past a certain point, you can probably dispense with some of that feedback depending on the nature of what you're writing. But it's essential to get started.
I've read drafts from people who truly write well and have come to the conclusion that the biggest thing they're doing that I'm not is revising. I write straight through and maybe do a single pass after to punch things up and get rid of passive voice, and so everything I write reads like an HN comment (which, don't get me wrong, is a useful local optimum for me). The good writing I've watched happen was revised a lot. Besides not having the talent, I lack the patience, which is liberating.
The other thing the very good writers I know do that I don’t is practice. That is they will write explicitly for no audience but in a form they’d want to present to a hypothetical audience for a hypothetical reason.
This allows them all the benefits of practice in other endeavors. They can experiment, get faster, build “muscle memory” etc.
I don’t know why I keep being surprised that the answer to being good at things is working at it.
Writing a lot is important, but being able to get feedback on your writing can prevent you from developing bad habits you may not be aware of.
When I was in college for English, getting regular feedback from professors and the writing center helped me learn things I wouldn't have figured out on my own.
But of course, context matters: that was great for improving my general writing skills and my academic writing, but if you're doing creative writing, technical writing, etc., ideally you want feedback from people that are experts in the kind you're interested in.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadhttps://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%...
For the longest time with my fiction I was just focusing on writing writing writing and reading about writing. I'd always loved to read, but surprisingly never really read that much in my target genre. When I started, it's like another gate of improvement was opened up: analyzing the beats and conflict points of successful books in my genre immediately helped me see what I was lacking in mine. And being exposed to the wording preferences and writing styles of other authors gave me so many "Aha!" moments when it comes to formulating enticing prose.
I'm still not a good fiction writer by any stretch of the imagination, but the improvement has been steady when coupling reading in my genre with more writing.
1. Read about writing. The very tactical stuff like "On Writing Well" and "Writing Tools" and "The Craft of Scientific Writing"
2. Imitate writers you like. Try reading someone else's work, then reproducing it in their style.
https://a.co/d/40wyBTq
If you're writing in public, like a blog, try giving yourself a deadline and permission for the post not to be perfect.
The main takeaway is to simplify text as much as possible. That doesn't mean dumbing it down, and it doesn't mean abandoning creativity. It's just the opposite: Once you get rid of all the excess junk, the reader will hear your genuine voice.
Write a lot, and repeatedly re-read what you wrote (when it's done in its entirety). You'll naturally correct yourself or tune it.
Working with an editor is huge. I worked with several editors and reviewers both when submitting to other blogs and when writing my books. I learned a lot.
There are great writer assistance tools such as Write Good, etc. They helped with avoiding weasel phrasing, etc.
Sentences should have a quality that makes them individually memorable.
Quite the exercise it is.
- grammarly (mostly excellent, I ignore some suggestions)
- reading books more with stylistic elements that push the boundaries of what you're used to. I write technical blogs, but I've found some inspiration reading very different writing. Some examples are Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce, Greg Egan
- setting up constraints. Can you explain this in less sentences without making a long run-on sentence? How concise can you make this whole post? On the flipside, can you avoid all the most common adjectives when describing something? If you take a tokenized word count on your work, what words do you rely on? Can you delete them?
It can be people you know, but there are also online writing communities that will give candid feedback in a safe environment. Usually the catch is you’ll have to return the favor for someone else in the community, but that’s not a bad thing.
2. Practice converting your thoughts to the written word so that they're clearly understood by anyone. That is the exercise at hand and it takes practice.
3. Once you've mastered clearly communicating your ideas, add some cleverness to your writing. Use double-entendre and practice economy of words. Leave something for the reader to guess, allowing one's imagination to fill the gaps with what you didn't say.
4. Finally, practice the art of showing versus telling, i.e., the art of story-telling versus an analytical accounting of facts.
There is no other way than practice. Feedback speeds up this learning process a lot and improves the result significantly.
Everything else varies from person to person. Some write daily; some don't for months - then dive into their writing modes. Some start with an outline, and some - pour a stream of thoughts into the computer.
Nevertheless - what is your goal, and what blocks you in the process?
But other than that I agree. There are probably a few books worth reading but it's more about writing and getting good feedback. Past a certain point, you can probably dispense with some of that feedback depending on the nature of what you're writing. But it's essential to get started.
I also made a web app to help develop my writing habit and improve fluency: https://enso.sonnet.io
I’ve enjoyed it so far and have been writing consistently for almost 3 years so far (ca 800 words per day).
Also: this book is great: https://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publish...
This allows them all the benefits of practice in other endeavors. They can experiment, get faster, build “muscle memory” etc.
I don’t know why I keep being surprised that the answer to being good at things is working at it.
When I was in college for English, getting regular feedback from professors and the writing center helped me learn things I wouldn't have figured out on my own.
But of course, context matters: that was great for improving my general writing skills and my academic writing, but if you're doing creative writing, technical writing, etc., ideally you want feedback from people that are experts in the kind you're interested in.