What do you do to improve your writing?

[narusasu]

"They" say that to become really, really good at something, like high-quality professional-level good, you need to work at it for at least 10,000 hours. I think this is true of writing.

Ah yes, the 10,000 hour theory... But you would need a LOT of free time to practice something like that. This website does the math for you... http://www.ryac.ca/blog/2010/01/10000-h ... g-is-that/ But still, it's true that practice makes perfect. We can't all be born super genius'. < :

Overall, I think we can all agree that reading and writing on a daily basis can help anyone onto the road of quality writing.

Though classes can help, they are not necessary. I'm currently taking upper level courses on Creative Writing... and they certainly do not teach me anything that I haven't already figured out on my own through self observation and articles online. The main priority in the class is to read and write. We get a few prompts here and there, but we're usually left to our own devices.

[Cidz]

Well, I don't particularly like flowery writing either. I recently read Lolita and I found myself skipping over pages of the abundant description of the countryside of America... I just couldn't take it.

you should read his book transparent things. he literately spends a couple pages describing a pen the MC found on the ground and its backstory no joke XD

anyways what do i do to improve my writing? ask and take advice from people that can write. im a newb at writing most of what i write i never finish however i keep getting all these story ideas and i want to write them down. i also think just plain writing is a great way to improve your writing. like my bf once said "repetition = succession." and its true writing, drawing, etc... the more you do it the better you get.

so even if im not working on my VN i usually work on other things even if its a silly 5 min short stories.

[Kokoro Hane]

I like to get inspiration from the things I read. But mostly, I just practice, practice, practice by writingf a lot. Doing fanfiction is a good way to practice writing, as you are using characters you already know, but sticking them in a whole new scenario, so this teaches you how to develope a plot and even characters if you have some of your own OC's. Alkso, making an original story ENTIRELY is fun, since the material is COMPLETELY YOURS. I think if anyone wants to improve their writing, they just need to write and write, and look back on their old work to see where they need to improve. This is how I've improved my skills over the years.

[KomiTsuku]

"They" say that to become really, really good at something, like high-quality professional-level good, you need to work at it for at least 10,000 hours. I think this is true of writing.

Ah yes, the 10,000 hour theory... But you would need a LOT of free time to practice something like that. This website does the math for you... http://www.ryac.ca/blog/2010/01/10000-h ... g-is-that/ But still, it's true that practice makes perfect. We can't all be born super genius'. < :

Overall, I think we can all agree that reading and writing on a daily basis can help anyone onto the road of quality writing.

Though classes can help, they are not necessary. I'm currently taking upper level courses on Creative Writing... and they certainly do not teach me anything that I haven't already figured out on my own through self observation and articles online. The main priority in the class is to read and write. We get a few prompts here and there, but we're usually left to our own devices.

The ten thousand hours theory cracks me up. I should be a super special awesome master according to that line of logic. On that note, I can attest to the fact that the differences over the last decade in particular have been drastic.

[Anna]

I write with music on that fits and doesn't contain lyrics, since it makes my writing more... emotional? Then I let it be for a day or two and look at it again, fix it and send it to my editor. She then tells me what's wrong and why it's wrong and makes me fix it |D. Critique rules.

I also look at some books, but should do it more. What helps other than that (for me) is using http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ for synonyms and I found this to be a good blog post as well:

http://www.sfwa.org/2011/10/guest-post- ... two-pages/

It gives you some good tips on building up a plot.