Maybe its just me but while I read my own sentences in a story I always tend to dislike them. Are there any tips out there to improve my writing? I compare my sentences and descriptions and I find them pretty childish. When I try to edit them I have trouble placing exactly what I find wrong. Since I am new to writing I feel everything I do is incorrect.
Keep reading and writing. Sounds like a flippant answer but it's the only real way. It probably is. Would you expect to pick up a guitar for the first time and immediately play like Hendrix?
There are books that can teach you how to write . When your not learning how to write , write . When your too tired to write, read . When you sleep, dream the stories you will write . Submit your work for critique .
Read more, take English writing lessons, take a look at course material or join classes if you struggle with the technical aspect of writing, and come back to ask more specific questions when you hit certain stumbling blocks.
I'm a bit of a novice like you. The members of this forum are great and they have a whole of a lot to offer. You can learn many useful things here. You should also read books about writing. I recommend this one for now: https://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Dictionary-Literary-Terms-Theory/dp/0141047151/ref=pd_sbs_14_3/141-6960762-0116733?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0141047151&pd_rd_r=958226fb-3328-47e5-a438-dc12febeaea7&pd_rd_w=RB7up&pd_rd_wg=ri6FX&pf_rd_p=b65ee94e-1282-43fc-a8b1-8bf931f6dfab&pf_rd_r=KK2WHMFSN1A274HNXXR5&psc=1&refRID=KK2WHMFSN1A274HNXXR5
Get critique. Keep editing your own work. Keep reading. Critique other people's work. I'd utilise the Workshop on the forum.
Understand your own writing and that of others. In order to improve, you need to be able to identify what needs improvement - there's no point churning out the same sort of stuff and repeating the same mistakes over and over. That's where giving critiques is so valuable, because it teaches you to really understand what makes writing work, and how a story is constructed.
It comes with starting out with writing. You best bet is to write and polish and the critique other peoples work. A lot of it. It's easier to recognize the flaws in other peoples work absorb that info and then stop doing it in your own writing than to recognize it in the work you've put time into. It's nothing you can fix over night. It takes time and a lot of editing to get to a point when your sentence and the flow of your work sounds better. My work when I started sounded very cheesy and unreal. It sounds a lot better now. I won't tell you how long I've been writing but I will say I made my most significant improvement when I started here. I wrote about a dozen short stories (polishing them) and critiqued a lot of stories.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a strange recommendation: don't learn how to write just yet. Don't think too much about your sentences, don't bother too much comparing it to other people. Just write whatever story you want to write. I know 'just write' is one of those terrible pieces of advice, but hear me out: here's a very personal experience. When I first decided to try my hand at writing a book, I was so outraged by a series of books I'd just read that I said "I bet I could do that better." So I did. Over six months I wrote 160,000 words and a complete story. Was it better? Absolutely not. There's NO WAY it could have been better. But it WAS a story--a complete, emotional story with my own perspectives, and little details, and personal experiences. It didn't matter that the sentences were dumb and there was enough descriptive prose to sink a ship. It didn't matter than only I would really get it, and readers would be lost and confused: the outline was there. The structure was there, and the emotion, and personal was there. And the only reason it ended up being there is because I wrote what I could feel, what I wanted to write. There were no weighty rules, or thoughts of 'how is the reader going to interpret this line', or 'will this sell?' It was just a simple, stupid story that needed to get told. And I've never been able to write that way since. Once you add the lens, and the rules, and the knowledge, it's very difficult to remove it. It's awful tough to just put things on the page. You can ALWAYS learn that lens, and read books, and listen to critique, later. But while you're new, while you've got something to say, while you don't have any of those burdensome weights, write as much and as truthfully as you can. Just go nuts. You can always come back to old works with new knowledge.
Start or join a local writing group that goes over each persons work in turn, for proof reading, minor editing, and general thoughts about the story. I've found such a group quite helpful when it comes to making better story writing and composition over the past few years. Mind you I am still far from a great writer, but I've improved much, and that is what is important.
Things I have found work best of me (though still very new to the experience): Using pen and paper. Writing on a word processor seems to make the process much easier, but takes away from the amount of intention you use in the choice of words in building up a sentence. Often writing by hand *seems* be produce a better style. When you are satisfied with your piece, by all means type it up and make a few changes, but it may be best if the bulk of the work is already done. Listen to Music. Writing requires you to be in a particular state of mind, where you are both relaxed enough for the words to spill on the page and can sustain being focused on writing as a single task. Certain kinds of music can be better than others. Sometimes music can put you in a particular mood which is appropriate for the fiction you are writing. (This seems to work for writing horror for me, so I do have some tracks stored to listen to, so I am in the right mood). Write regularly. After watching a video where Stephen King suggests you need to write about 2,000 words a day to be serious about writing, I had a go. I have tried to write "something", whatever it may be, for a about a month. The main point is to make time for writing and to make it in to a habit so you really develop it over time. Most days I hovered around the 1,000 words mark, which is adequate for what I want to do. I have stopped for now to take a break, but I can tell that my writing is definitely better for the practice. At a minimum, the word choice seems more deliberate. I should note that I tend to be a "free writer" as I write in short-bursts when the inspiration strikes. This is not a great strategy for writing a novel because I would need to be consistent, but these tips seems to work for me to get me started.
Personally, I find the opposite. Any kind of distraction, including music, becomes detrimental to my writing.
There is a subtle difference between the title of your post and your post itself. Writing, 'in general' as you said, contains two different aspects. The crafting of words and the storytelling. Because you mentioned sentence in your actual post, I would put your problem in the crafting department, which is also my weaker aspect. So here are a few things I learned to better my crafting skill: a.Make reading aloud a habit. Why? Because it trains your ears to detect problems you wouldn't find otherwise. Don't just read out loud with books. Do that with all sorts of writings. Read news articles aloud, read tweets aloud, read song lyrics aloud, read this post out loud. And most importantly, read your sentence out loud as you write. b.Read books about CRAFTING. (You learn best when you are specific about your goal.) So not books about story structure, about character development, or other irrelevant subjects. But books about flow, about sentence, about language. But don't just read them, take a few minutes to do some practices so you can absorb all that knowledge. c.Study lines you like. Pick them apart, imitate them, figure out what makes them work for you by asking questions. (e.g. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." I like it because it's easy to read. Why is it easy to read? Well, they are short, and I like short sentences. Secondly, they are mirroring each other with only one word of difference, and those two words are antonym, so the focus of the sentence is crystal clear.) Of course, these tricks can feel tiresome at times, so just do what you can, because baby step is a good step. One thing to keep in mind though, crafting sometimes can get in the way of storytelling. That perfectionism of the perfect noun, the perfect verb can kill your emotional engagement to the story in your head. And that's a price I am not willing to pay. I think that's why a lot of us can agree on the 'Just Write' advice. My method is that I ignore all rules when I draft, and I don't read back until I set the material aside for at least twnety-four hours. That distance helps me to gain a less-biased mindset toward my writings. I just work better that way. Anyway, I hope this helps.
Read. Write. Read what you wrote. Recognize that it sucks when it sucks. Re write. Repeat. If it still sucks after all that, write something else. Learn new stuff. Make something. Start again. My writing improved when I became able to highlight an entire paragraph and hit the delete key without lamenting over lost work.
I adore this piece of advice. Kinda similar to how I started. When I was 8 I moved to England and at 9 I had an amazing teacher who introduced me to rhymes and rhythms and set me off writing story after story in an attempt to teach me English (barely spoke it back then). I got it into my head that I could write a story in English, but I was scared. I was 9 years old and old enough to realise my English wasn't nearly up to par. In Chinese I could be proud of it and think it's great, but in English there was no hiding it at the time. I couldn't even write grammatically correctly. My mum told me, "Just write. Who cares? As long as you enjoy it." Of course that piece of advice can only get you so far, but for starting, it can be excellent advice. Well, I followed it. I started. Incidentally, I don't subscribe to half the rules writers' culture says we must. Use only 'said', never use adverbs, get critique from everyone and listen to them all, never discuss critique. It just always depends on context. The only people you should listen to is someone who writes well. I don't believe in just trusting critique from anyone willy-nilly. Go to people who actually write well. Learn from those better than you, not worse lol. Sure, every reader is a reader and their opinion is valid - that does not mean they can tell you how you should write instead though lol. Learn from writers better than yourself, learn from published books you enjoy. Screw the "rules". If someone's criticising your use of "shouted" because some rule said to only ever use the word "said" - if that's their reason for criticising, then they haven't a clue what they're talking about. Thank them and move on. No one actually good at the craft has ever spouted some useless rule like this at me.
My suggestion (only because there are so many great ones made already) may be to find a writer that you like that has the same style of writing as you do. For me, and this is just me...and me alone, I like Stephen Crane as a writer because his style matches mine. Now I do not suggest him for you, or anyone else really, because he tends to be descriptive, which can go against the "Show...do not tell rule". But he makes it work and I would like to think I do in my writing. But he also lived a very short life too, and does not have many examples of literary work. So that is another reason I do not recommend him. So if you read a writer that you like...dig deeper and find out why, and how they write as they do. If you still struggle, see if there is an adult education class in your area where the instructor might be able to help you identify your writing style. If there is no class, ask the adult education coordinator if they could network to other schools to find a class. And never be afraid to attend a class that might not fit exactly. Instructors love to instruct, so we adapt for our class needs, even if it is only one person that needs specific instruction!
Totally agree. I've seen any number of people come to this forum who've probably bought a book on writing and are so overwhelmed by the number of rules that they don't know where to start. Nothing annoys me more than receiving a critique with rules quoted at me, that fail to explain why the rule should be applied. That always indicates to me that the person doesn't understand the purpose of the rule in the first place.
