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filipinosamflynn · 7 days

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How to Become a Better Writer

It can be easy to stagnate in your writing. To feel like you're spinning your wheels and not progressing.

"But I'm listening to all the writing podcasts all the time!" Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. Writing podcasts are great (I highly recommend Writing Excuses)... but are best for passively absorbing ideas around the art of writing.

You cannot passively become a better writer.

So what should you do?...

There are 3 main things to really get going in your writing: reading, writing, and getting feedback. (And there's a bonus hidden power up at the end!)

Read the language and medium you want to write in--regularly. (Medium being prose vs poetry vs academic papers, etc.) This helps you figure out your own tastes (likes/dislikes), and lets you absorb things like grammar and punctuation and those sort of low-level ideas, without having to memorise all the rules (which are bent by writers all the time anyway).

This is particularly helpful in the early days of writing. Seeing books by established authors with the eyes of a writer is a different experience to that of a regular reader. Instead of thinking, "Okay, I understood that part." You think, "Wow, you can do that in a novel?!"

You pick up tricks you can use in your own writing, as you read. And pick up on things you don't like in the way they write. This is "active reading"...

Don't just read: think about how what you are reading actually works on your brain.

You might think about how you would have written that sentence, or how you would've had it played out slightly differently to better hit that dramatic sweet spot.

That's what developing your own style is like, also known as a writer's "voice." Developing taste is when you start to gravitate towards some movies over others, and enjoy reading about certain characters and plots over others. You naturally do this when you've watched a lot of shows and movies. And you'll naturally do the same as you read books, as a writer.

Simply noticing what you like and dislike about what you read leaves you with a better sense of what you want your stories to be like. Both in terms of taste (genre, plot type, kinds of character) and style/voice (how you use the language to tell a story).

Writing regularly gets you the practise you need. Get used to sitting down and writing words--paper, digital, doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter if it's good. You don't need to show anyone else everything you write. What matters is that you practise the art of writing.

In the past I've used this exercise to get into the habit of writing, without worrying about it being good, editing/polishing it up, showing other people, etc. which actually lets the words come a lot easier. You can get into the flow of writing a lot better if you're not second guessing yourself, and this exercise gives you no time for such an indulgence! [Freewriting Exercise]

Just writing something--anything--is productive in itself. And you'll probably start writing better stuff as you go just from the practise, and even find a story you want to develop from it!

But it's also good to finish things--both for the dopamine hit, and to be able to practise editing your work, understanding the structure of your story, and...

Getting feedback. Once you've got something you like but want to make better, get scientific! Ask people for feedback! (Preferably ask people that aren't your friends and family.)

Your goal in getting feedback is to understand how your writing is conveying your story to readers. What effect your use of language has on someone other than yourself.

Some will read it and like it, some will dislike like it, some may even hate it! Thing is, those are all subjective takes on what they read. When someone says a film "is good" or "is bad," they're really expressing that "it has things I like experiencing" or "it has things I don't like experiencing."

A hardcore fantasy fan might say a sci-fi film "is bad" because it doesn't have fantasy in it. Or visa-versa. All it speaks to is their personal tastes, not necessarily about the quality of the film as a whole.

Which means there's no need to worry. It's all just data.

Look at feedback like a scientist would the results of an experiment.

You're looking at your work in a scientific way. You're studying its effect on those readers. And through that analysis, learning how language affects their experience. Use that new understanding to bend language to your will so that it has the effect you wanted for your story.

This means it's not about doing what the readers want you to. Even if they're writers, and you respect their work... they are one reader among many. When it's published, it could be one reader among millions!

Others may have the opposite suggestion on the same piece. You could get 20 differing points of view. Don't give any one comment more weight than any other comment you might receive.

Learn about language and story, through reactions to your writing.

Use their reactions and suggestions to learn about language and story. Don't learn "how to make your story better," even if that's what they're trying to force on you.

Always, always, do what you want to do with your story. If you learn from the feedback and critique, and you end up wanting to tell your story differently, then do what you want and change your story. If you don't end up wanting to tell your story differently, do what you want and don't change your story.

In other words, any feedback can be taken or discarded at your own discretion. You're not trying to find out if your story "is good" or "is bad."

You're on a data-gathering expedition!

This process is vital to growing past writing readable prose and gaining mastery over the language--bending the words to your will and crafting experiences for readers to have.

By looking at things more scientifically, you'll begin to grow faster and faster. There's still a lot of subjectivity to it, of course. But that's the art: shaping another person's subjective experience by words on a page!

And as you do this more and more, you'll be able to write to a better standard even before you've gotten feedback.

Now, the uber-writers know this one last secret to growing as a writer: Giving Feedback (shh, don't tell anyone).

This is the juiciest of them all! You're active-reading... plus plus! Because you also have to put into words what is happening, which is even harder than just sensing you're not into how that writer did that one thing. You also get scientific with it--but from the other side!

That sentence didn't feel right to you. Why? How might it be changed to make it feel less weird? And how do you convey that to the writer so it's useful feedback?

That scene wasn't as impactful as you thought it was going to be. What about the structure of the story let that down? How might you shuffle things around to bring out the drama in that moment?

This kind of deeper thinking is what you get by giving feedback to people asking for it. And those that are looking for feedback are from all sorts of backgrounds, and all sorts of skill levels when it comes to writing.

You can see a lot of new ideas, new ways of writing, new traps to fall into, and analyse them all to figure out what makes them tick. And they tend to not be entire novels, so you can get a lot of that in a shorter time, too!

Just keep in mind those different skill levels when writing your feedback, however. Back when you were just starting out, if someone who seems to know what they were talking about said to you "it's good," like a family member might do... how would that have made you feel? On top of the world! And if they told you "it's bad," you would've quit writing on the spot!

So many writers have quit writing from bad feedback at an early stage for years!

This isn't to say you should coddle them and pat them on the head and send them on their way. Even if you sense that they're not at the "scientific" stage yet, they are seeking to grow as a writer. And hey, look at that--you're a writer, and you can help them grow!

So, start with a positive thing about their piece. Even if that's "you've got a clear vision of your world!" when you as the reader aren't exactly sure you have a handle on what that world is even if it's vividly described.

Be truthful, but find something that they've got a glimmer of that will help them in their writing journey. In the early days, finishing anything is tough. Having an idea and writing it down is tough. Getting tense correct is tough. Because it's all new to you.

Having a clear vision of their world isn't something everyone has. Sometimes it's so far in the background that you feel like you and the characters are standing in a blank white room. So even if the only good thing is that they have the confidence to have a world and present it to the reader... hype them up on that!

And whatever little slice of being a writer they've got is a good place to grow from. Nurture it, even in a brief comment pointing it out. Make them feel good about it.

Then, based on what their skill level might be, give them something to reach for in what they write next.

I like to make that clear to such writers... in the early days, you shouldn't be editing and revising and redrafting the same 3 opening paragraphs over and over, you should be writing new stuff all the time! So...

Give them something to work on for next time.

...Or next chapter, or whatever. Like, "For your next story, think about how you might show the world from your character's perspective more. What do they notice? What do they think about the statue in the distance? And how would they describe it? This helps the reader get to know the character better, just by how you narrate things. 👍"

Something simple, and understandable, with a hint of teaching them why that might be good for a story. Don't inundate them with your many pearls of wisdom and a full line-edit. Just gently help them take one more step in the right direction.

All of this is scaled according to the apparent skill level of the writer you're giving critique to, of course. A better-written story might warrant a real review of the story as a whole, and a longer list of aspects they could look into improving. Things like that.

Just be careful not to make people run away from writing. It's all too easy to cause.

#seriously tumblr needs a save feature #writing

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