How You Learn How to Write
They say that you canât teach writing and theyâre probably right. What I believe is that there are definitely ways to get better and improve your craft. Certain things are absolutely necessary to progress and improve as a writer - no matter what the skill level is.
Iâve got a few things here and there that arenât trade secrets but more good advice for moving forward with your writing.
1. Put Pen to Paper.
You donât know what youâre like at writing if you donât try at least once. The important thing about giving it a go is that if you wonât know where to start if you donât start at all. You may think that youâre terrible at writing or that youâre Godâs gift to the medium but you have to produce something - and I mean anything - to get started. Think of it as taking a preliminary test for a college to get a handle on your skill level. See my blog about writing exercises if you need any help. :)
2. Get Help (and Allow Yourself to Be Helped).
It seems incredibly obvious considering what the subject of this article is but what is fundamental to learning the art of writing is that you have to know how to get help, where to get help from and how to apply it to your work. What I should point out at this juncture is that you should never hand out money to people who are offering to read your work. Most literary agents would happily read your work for free.
But it doesnât have to be a literary agent. Just get someone who you trust to tell you the truth and be honest. Preferably, get a reader to critique your work like they would for a book from a bookshop. The more important aspect is psychological. You have to learn how to take criticism on the chin and not take it personally. Understand that whoever is giving you constructive critcism has your best interests in mind. What is constructive criticism? Simple. The want for your work to be more effective and when that want is asked for. Not unprompted put-downs in preference of what the critic wants.
Be prepared to take the advice and make the changes to your work. You may see it as a damage to your work and you may even not end up with that in your final edit but cycling through the chunks of info will help you find your way - what is good and what isnât.
3. Read.
Iâll keep putting it in writing articles until Iâm blue in the face but you have to read. If not read, take in any media - painted art, television, cinema, music - and think about it creatively; how was it put together and how it works as a piece of media. Take in the story, the composition, the structure, the dialogue and the syntax. What you learned in English Literature at school is useful in these scenarios because of the problem-solving skills it teaches you. When you understand what makes something quintessentially good. What, exactly, absorbs you in the product?
When you know the answer, it will make you a better writer. Think about art like a philosopher thinks about life or how a psychologist thinks about the mind.
4. Make Use of Your Notebook (or memo app on your phone).
Plan. Write down story ideas (they wonât stay in your head forever). Keep tabs on your progress and if someone tells you helpful advice or if you read a pertinent quote online, write it down. Be economical and try not to fill your notebook with random circled words out of context or underlined dates for no reason. It isnât enough to just cosplay as a writer because you actually have to be one if you want to be good at it. This piece of advice is only small but itâs practical and a good notebook can put in the hard yards to make you work-hours more efficient in the long run.
5. Engage Your Imagination.
The word learning might sound tedious to you because it probably reminds you of a time in your life where you were depressed, bored, lost or just generally having a bad time of it. The truth is though that the best writers at the top of their game with nothing left to prove are still learning. You have to think about the process of writing without an academic mindset so you get the best out of yourself.
I did go to university and it must be said that it didnât necessarily teach me how to write but taught me how to be better. I didnât take a fancy to writing in school because they donât really teach it and the subject of âcreative writingâ isnât defined by 2+2. Itâs closer to crafting a sum with two numbers youâve invented yourself. I may be rambling but my point is this: engaging your imagination is learning how to write.
6. Read Your Own Work Aloud to Yourself.
This is very hard. Itâs difficult but very, very necessary. You have to read what youâve written out loud to yourself so you can see how it sounds. See if youâre out of breath at the end of sentences and if full-stops (periods) and commas are in the places that they should be. You have to believe me when I say that reading in your head is a completely different sensation.
Youâll even discover certain adjectives and nouns donât roll of the tongue the way you think they do in your head. There is a certain beat and rhythm to writing that you wonât discover without properly dictating it out loud. As a little bonus, you could unearth grammar and spelling mistakes dotted around here and there. That brings me on to my next and final point.
7. Master The Basics.
Okay, this is the only hard-nosed point that I have to make so I left it at the end.
This isnât even something that you need a degree for. You just have to know how to use Google and utilize it for incredibly accessible knowledge about language and how it is constructed. Grammar, punctuation, sentence structure - all that really boring stuff that you learned really early on. If you didnât pursue the subject of English Language (or the respective national language class in your country) in further education because of whatever reason, you will lose that basic knowledge.
If you use a word and you ask yourself what it means and your brain doesnât have a proper answer, look it up. Always double-check that a word means exactly what you think it means. You canât just guess or go from memory unless you are positively sure. Donât allow yourself to be caught out and, by using Google more and more, it will stick in your head. For example, I used the word quintessentially in this article earlier. I looked up both what it means and how to spell it. I was 95% sure but that isnât enough. If you donât know where the apostrophe goes in a sentence, I am begging you to look it up. There is no shame in not knowing and using a search engine takes ten seconds max.
If you master the basics, even your writing isnât all that much to write home about, it will look professionally put together. Youâd be surprised how many mistakes you read online and you donât even know it is a mistake. I have made mistakes that have been easily avoidable had I just looked it up.