What is the best way of actually improving our writing? Mind has improved over the last year pretty substantially. But I feel as though I have hit a plateau. I know the mistakes that I used to make--over-using then, slipping into weak verbs without noticing, awkward phrasing. Mostly I've broken those habits or know to edit for them.

But I'm not quite sure how to go about taking that next step. I got a comment not too long ago (and an apology if it hurt my feelings) that my writing was easily in the top 10% of what he sees. The obvious problem with that is that the top 10% isn't good enough which was why he was apologizing.

If you're talking about writing -- the prose itself -- one way to do it is to find an author (probably outside the genre you mainly write in) and spend a week physically typing out his or her prose. Try to get 30 to 40 pages done. Then go to a completely different author the next week.

What got me wondering was this: I picked up "Perdido Street Station" by China Mieville and his writing is extraordinarily vivid, nore so than most of the stuff I read. (Maybe I'm reading the wrong stuff.)

One thing I noticed was that his vocabulary is rich. Now, I know what all the words mean, so my vocabulary is rich too - yet in my writing you don't see it. How can I enrichen my writing vocabulary to match my comprehension vocabulary?

I imagine, by extension, one can enrichen one's turns of phrases, use of metaphor, etc, also. But how?

To grab on to TaleSpinner's example (because I happen to be a Mieville fan myself), I found his writing very 'good,' and his storytelling entertaining, as well. But a friend of mine had a very difficult time getting through Perdido Street Station, and his complaint was with the writing style. If I were trying to improve my writing, I might try to make it elegant without being overly adjective-stuffed; rich. But a lot of authors (for one, Stephen King in On Writing if I remember correctly) advise against that kind of luxurious prose.

JeanneT, the top 10% is good! What may have gotten you in the top 5%, or even the top 1% in that particular commenter's opinion may be too subjective to strain for.

I think the 'next step' would be to write something substantial, edit it for mechanical correctness, set it aside for a while, and then pull it out after it's marinated to read it with fresh eyes, as if for the first time. Does it make you go, "wow, I love this! I wish I had written it - oh wait, I did!"? If it doesn't, hone in on what you felt was weak, as if critiquing another author - bland storytelling, lackluster prose, flat characters? I suspect the problems will be more subtle, but that's how I'd go about trying to improve my own writing. If the mechanical and stylistic elements are solid, I think individual preference and zeitgeist makes the difference between 'decent' and 'good' or 'great' writing, and you can only be true to yourself in that respect.

I totally hear you. In reading, writing, and reviewing over the last several months (and I'm a newbie to trying to write at the semi-pro to pro level), I have realized some of my own strengths and weaknesses as well. I think this is a good thing, even if it's frustrating.

In a way, I think that concept/plot/structure is more important than good language. And that is frustrating for me, because I (usually ) don't have any trouble with the language part of it.

I have heard once or twice that, "the tale is in the telling." But I don't think they're talking about the words. I think they're talking about the twists and turns and sights along the road from point A to point B.

One of my favorite books to re-read as a beginning novelist is Anne McCaffery's first novel, Restoree. Its writing is average at best. But she had a solid plot (even if it was kinda all over the place), and it sold.

But the reason it sold was probably on the strength of the concept and the plot that was there.

This is long and drawn-out, but my core point is, you have to have something interesting and cool to write about before you can select the language to tell the tale. And I believe that can be accomplished without a lot of high-falutin' language. If I have to resemble anybody, I want to resemble Hemmingway rather than Turgenev or Tolstoy.

All that said, the best way I've found to improve my own writing was to ask one of my strongest critics to be a regular reader for me. He pushes and prods me and annoys me into being a much better writer. My plots and characters are richer than they would be otherwise, and I've learned a lot from the (often painful) experience.

Other than that, write write write, then put the story away for maybe a YEAR. Then pull it out and see how it reads. Crit it the way you would someone else's story, then revise according to the crit.

I've felt like this before, when I was in journalism school, and I think these lulls are a natural part of growing in a profession as self-directed as writing. I think our subconsciousness are working things out, and if you feed it with books and writing you like, it picks up on it.

The other thing I've found helps is to try something completely different. Try a radically knew style. Take on a story or narrative structure you've never tried before. Pick up a writing book and try out some exercises. When I feel in a rut, I find stretching myself is just the thing I need to do. Even just picking up a book in a genre I normally wouldn't read sometimes helps me learn something different.

I'm not generally one for doing many "writing exercises." I've tended to feel the best writing exercise is--writing. But I've seen 3AM Epiphany recommended pretty highly. I may pick up a copy.

If that's the case, the only solution is to keep writing, even if you begin to hate what you're writing. You need to give your writing skills the time and practice to catch up to your critical skills.

Then try to write your own story while you're still dripping wet with the other author's style. (This metaphor is getting a bit much, perhaps?)

My experience has been that while I haven't actually written the way the author I chose writes, I was still able to write more richly for a little while.

Edit: I don't think "writing richly" and using a lot of adjectives and adverbs are the same thing. In fact, often it's the opposite. People throw in the adjectives and adverbs very often because they can't find the right (rich) word. The evocative noun... the verb that really shows the action. So they try to make up their lack of richness with a lot of weaker words.

I know that, for me, when I'm mentally stimulated, I write better. I write better when school's in session and I'm constantly reading nonfiction about history - and furthermore, hearing lectures on it, discussing it, and writing about it, since I still simply read it in the summer. And in the summer, when I'm working, generally at very mind-numbing jobs, the doldrums seep in and I find writing anything above mediocre to be more difficult. It's disgruntling, since summer is when I technically have the most raw time to write with.

1.) Keep reading

and

2.) Keep editing other writers' work.

The first thing will help you find a voice or style you want to emulate, or a genre you want to write in, or an idea you might want to pursue.

The second will have you s mad at the stupid things other people do in their fiction, that you will be conscious of every time you are on the verge of doing the same thing in your own writing.

I'd like to discuss what we can do at a higher stage (let's hope we've gotten to a higher stage) when improvements no longer necessarily come easily.

Not being an editor, I'm not going to take up editing and I can't say I regret that. lol

Edit: There are workshops, of course. I am taking one this summer. But I'd like to think there are things we can do on our own.

Keep reading. Keep editing. Don't take yourself too seriously, and don't forget where you came from.

Maybe you're right and there aren't more steps that we can take. But I'm still looking.

Edit: On thinking about it, and believe me I don't mean this to seem rude, but if there is nothing we can do to improve our writing, why would we take workshops, read books like King's On Writing and do exercises like the ones in 3AM Epiphany which I've seen highly recommended by other writers?

I signed up for Dave Farland's novel writing workshop this May. I debated a long time which one to sign up for since I can only afford one. I'm going to go out and buy that Epiphany book later today. I am going to try out the idea from Kathleen and a couple of other people in emersing myself in a good writer's work, reading it repeatedly and even typing it to fully absorb it.

Those might not work or not be needed by everyone. Alethea, maybe you're just naturally such a good writer that you don't need to work at it as hard as I do. I can believe that. As with all talents, it comes easier to some than to others. But I don't think I'm going to be as good as I want to be if I don't put extra effort into improving.

But maybe it's a question of refining your efforts (and I'm using "you" in the general sense here). When you're a beginning writer, you're eager to learn everything. However, once you've gotten a handle on the basics, it's time to identify more precisely what you want to improve and do a detailed, targeted study.

It lists a kind of hierarchy of things editors tend to look for when they read a submission, though every editor is going to put them in a little different order.

If the story passes on the first item (Lukeman lists them from simplest or easiest to hardest or most complex, in his opinion), then the editor checks for the next item, and so on.

If I could make another suggestion, I'd also recommend reading two classics about writing: King's On Writing and Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. Ha! Not all at once. It's a lot to absorb, but those are pretty basic for learning the craft.

Thanks for the recommendation, Kathleen. I'll pick that one up.

I've been a long time in the making, and Boot Camp in 2003 was the tremendous boost I needed to get my Rear in Gear.

But I'm still a work in progress. And there are still many worlds left for me to conquer.

And if I was such a "naturally good writer", I probably wouldn't have started out flunking all my English classes in high school and definitely would have majored in something other than Chemistry.

Writing is just like any other creative art. You become obsessed with it, love it until you hate it, and then do it some more.

It's difficult to know.

I think you're probably underestimating yourself. But I don't mean to imply that you haven't worked hard to get there. Even if you don't feel that you have to struggle to increase your skill, I don't think anyone eventually reaches success in writing without working at it.

Oh, I once flunked Sophmore English in HS. It had to do with my tendancy to read the book the first day of school then think about something else for the rest of the year.

Edit: Skadder, the only thing to do with doubt is stomp on it. Believe me, everyone feels it.

Skadder, keep at it. Lots of people write for years before there is any hope of publishing. Don't write because you want to be published. Write because you love it. Hone that work because you love it. The rest, well, if you keep chipping away, it will come.

As Alethea humbly said: "Luck might have thrown me in the path of five speeding book contracts: but if she had stopped trying she wouldn't have been on the path for luck to find her.