: What are good ways to improve as a writer other than writing courses? As a novice writer to improve my writing I have taken one online course. I want to ask, what are good ways to improve

Write.

Write like nobody is watching.

Write the story you want.

Write for yourself.

Write like nobody will ever read it

And Read. Read a lot and widely.

Reread what you have written. And rewrite what you don't like.

Get honest feedback from honest people, people who read a lot and with a decent sense of artistic appreciation.

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I will disagree with everyone!

The best way to improve as a writer is to analyze how writers you really like, of books you really like, accomplished what they did.

Don't just read them, that quickly descends into story immersion and entertainment, you aren't really learning anything. You have to read analytically, you need to pick apart those conversations you love, and try to figure out what makes them work. Not just "you love them," but why you love them.

The same thing for exposition, or descriptions. How much did the author really say? Do they describe their characters in exhausting detail, or not much at all? How much is "enough" detail?

When they don't describe characters much, how did you get an idea of how they look? Could your notion of that differ from others?

How much do they show in terms of appearance, instead of telling you? For example, I can tell you Jack is very tall, or I can show you Jack is very tall by having him do something only a very tall person can do: Get something off a high shelf without tip-toeing to do it. Reflexively ducking to not hit his head on the door header. Accidentally getting hit in the head by a ceiling fan (I saw that happen).

How does that author start conversations? How do they end them?

How do they open chapters? How much exposition is used to describe a new setting? Count how many details they use. What senses do they appeal to; is it just sight and sound? How often do they appeal to smell, or touch, or the sensing of temperature or humidity?

How long are their chapters? A page is 250-300 words, measure it in pages.

How long are their books?

How long are their scenes?

All these metrics are things you should be thinking about, and should try to internalize and emulate, so when you are writing you are writing like what you already perceive is a great author.

Take notes. You will never learn these things if you just read, read, read for entertainment, because all of these things fly under the radar. You actually have to think about them to notice them, or notice a pattern.

When I first got the urge to write (long ago), I wrote some crap, realized it was crap, and taught myself to write by analytic reading of a handful of authors I thought were fantastic. I remember spending about a month going through just first chapters, trying to figure out how they opened a story. (Online resources did not exist then.)

There are mechanisms, and tricks they use to give readers "just enough" information to aid or trigger the imagination, without getting verbose and boring by giving too much detail.

Any online writing courses or advice you have read on story structure is all great, it can help you to identify those structures being used by your favorite authors. But if they really are good authors they have hidden the machinery of what they are doing, and to notice it you have to approach it with a mindset of looking for that machinery, instead of just enjoying the ride. Understand what is effective, and most importantly, why.

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I had this same dilemma recently. I've been writing for over twenty years, sometimes professionally, and I have some areas in writing I really excel at. But I also have some big weaknesses, and those weren't getting any better. I don't have the availability to enroll in an MFA program, and I'm not big on online courses. So what to do?

Instead I checked out every writing book I could find from the library. Most of them weren't that great. Some were terrible. But a few had some very valuable advice, insight or writing exercises that really helped me out a lot. And even some of the bad books had one or two hidden gems. In terms of the good ones, my all-time favorite writing book is Samuel Delany's About Writing. McKee has gotten a lot of backlash, but his Story is a good resource (as long as you don't take every word as gospel). Out of the new ones I read, Writing Past Dark really stuck out. Then too, it's also good to read books about the mechanics of the business --formatting, query letters, manuscript submission, finding an agent, marketing. I've also learned a lot about writing on this site, not only by asking questions, but also by reading other people's answers --and often even though the process of answering other people's questions myself.

Finally, it can be worth taking a good hard look at yourself, and working specifically on your weaknesses. My strengths are characters, storyline and dialog, but my weaknesses are description, background research, and putting in the work on worldbuilding. But, since I know that, I've been able to improve in each of those areas.

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Other answers have already covered rather well the benefits you can get from both writing and reading so I won't rehash those but rather to add another - get feedback.

Join a local writers group or an online one where you can get regular feedback from others on your work. If you keep writing the same way over and over without this all you'll do is keep making the same mistakes over and over.

Ideally you want these people not to come from your family or existing social circles because they will be less likely to be honest about what they didn't like, and if you want to improve you need to know both what people liked about the writing and what they didn't.

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The best way to improve as a writer is to write. Just write. Then write some more. Then look at what you've written critically, ask others to read and comment, then rewrite and write some more.

Courses are a systematised way of doing the above. If having someone tell you "write!" helps you, go ahead. But you have to understand that at the core of them all is the simple imperative - write.

To be able to look at your piece of writing critically, you also need to read. Try to read critically. Notice the author's choice of words, use of tropes, rhetoric elements. Reread works you have enjoyed, to better notice the pins and cogs that make them work. Break those works apart, see what makes them tick, and where they clang.

Telling stories is not like playing a musical instrument. With a musical instrument, you first need to learn how to get it to make a sound at all, you start from learning the letters, and then combining them into words. None of this is "natural" (making music is natural to humans, or at least ubiquitous across human societies - a particular instrument is not). With stories - you already know the words. You've been telling stories your entire life: every time someone asks you "how was the vacation", or "what are your plans", you're telling a story. So it's just a question of honing your skill to achieve mastery of telling stories.

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Reading! Read for pleasure, and in the field you want to write in.

Sometimes, read strategically, analyzing a paragraph/sentence/section you really like or dislike.
Sometimes, try to paraphrase an interesting section several times, to observe what different choices might have led to. (The textbook I got this from, Writing Analytically, suggested doing at least 3 iterations to properly separate from the source material.)
Sometimes do a deliberate plagiarism or "forgery" (not to sell or display to others, but as a learning experience) - trying to use a similar style/structure/vocabulary as the source material, just as painters would try to first copy a specific work of art, and then try to copy that style about a different subject, and then eventually that becomes another tool in creating their OWN style.
Read books on writing (often tons at libraries and cheap book sales) and DO THE EXERCISES. See if they build sequentially or if you can do random ones.
Test parameters -- do you write better with music or without? With coffee, tea, water, nothing? In long bursts or can you make progress 20 minutes? Do you like word-count or time-based goals better, or another type? (Make a list of every strategy you encounter, and devote some time to the testing.)
Do NaNoWriMo, Camp NaNo, month of blog posts, book-in-a-month (which is actually a set-your-own-goal thing), 750words.com, or any of these time-based "challenges". I know some say that they don't help anyone get better, but I think a lot of writers get in their own way, editing instead of proceding. For those who don't consider themselves "writers" at all, it can definitely boost fluency and comfort. Also, the sense that the writing is "disposable," and that the goal IS merely quantity can encourage you to take risks you wouldn't otherwise take, and can encourage you to feel less "precious" about doing the best thing on the first try. (Quantity leads to not feeling so bad about deleting a ton, because you now KNOW you can generate a ton more.)

I'm sure there are more, but these are some of the first things that came to mind.

Source -- I used to teach English 100 at a local university, and I allowed students a fiction/memoir option for part of it. I also taught some strategic reading strategies for the research portions of the class

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