: Re: 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

@Sarah872

Vote Up Vote Down

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.

(0)

Login to post a comment!