: Is it a good idea to improve my writing skills by "fixing" what others wrote? So, I tried out a new thing. Take this segment from The Eye of Argon: The weather beaten trail wound ahead

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The initial goal behind your idea is correct. Going over other people's works with a writer's hat on is going to teach you a lot of things. But rather than trying to "fix" those writer's works, I suggest you ask different questions:

Why does it work?
Why does it make me feel what I'm feeling?
What do I know about this character that makes me feel for them in this moment?

These kinds of questions - when given enough thought - help you realize how to develop your own style in a manner much more impactful than going over other writers' work and trying to edit it for clarity and perhaps other 'technical' goals.

For example, if I would have said that I think Lord of The Rings is tiring and dumps on the reader too much information, some might agree with me, some others might want me to burn in hell for engaging in sacrilege of their beloved Tolkien's work. (For the record, I love Tolkien too, I'm just giving this as an example)

So, an exercise for you would be to read Lord of The Rings with a writer's hat and understand what Tolkien did to make this work such memorable and by proxy practically invent the genre of Fantasy.

Try to understand why the writers did what they did instead of trying to take this thing and make it your own. You develop your own style when you write, there's no way around it. But learning what other writers do well is always a useful activity.

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Could it be detrimental to your style? Maybe. It's complicated.

On the one hand, this kind of line-editing will help you to craft your own voice, especially if you understand from the outset that this is what you've set out to do. Instead of asking yourself, "How should this be said?" I would encourage you to ask yourself, "How would I say this?" Granted, some lines are so jarring that they utterly fail to depict whatever the author was going for (e.g. "a lithe, opaque nose.")

On the other hand, one of the biggest hang-ups I have with the wisdom of self-identified critics is how frequently their guidelines are contradicted by the works of best-selling authors. This can be especially bad if the critic regards these guidelines as incontrovertible truth.

It's not just critics who fall into this trap, either; sometimes bestselling authors will present bad advice, and people will go on parroting it. When I pore over the number adverbs in The Stand, for example, I can't take seriously Stephen King's advice that I should treat adverbs like dandelions and uproot them before they multiply. The motive for this advice is solid: there are many times when a stronger verb will depict your thoughts far better than any adverb. But his advice is way over the top, and because he's Stephen King, people mindlessly parrot it and critique other works on this basis.

It's so bad now that people have begun insisting aspiring authors avoid adjectives as often as possible. Hell, I was just watching a video about how to "Show, Don't Tell" from Skillshare that cautioned me not to use adjectives, then provided an example of a "corrected" paragraph that stands out because of the clever use of adjectives. It's that incoherent. But judging from the corrections you made, you seem to have a good head on your shoulders.

So all that said, to the extent that rewriting another person's prose as you would write it serves your pursuit of your own voice, it can be very useful. But everything you read will influence your voice, and given enough time and distance you may find yourself revising previous revisions, surprised at how much you seek to change. And this is why I insisted that the answer is complicated.

The real risk here, as I see it, is that you develop an impulse to line-edit when you should be reviewing your work, and so end up writing a chapter, then getting drawn into line-editing it out of habit until you find yourself revising and retouching your work every time you sit down. If you get lost in this process, your style will be in a constant state of flux, and your ability to grow as a storyteller will suffer in tandem with every subtle shift in your voice. It's not a fun problem to have.

So I'd say go for it, but be very cautious, don't do it at the expense of your reading, and keep an eye out for a growing tendency to edit your work when you're supposed to be forging ahead. Oftentimes my desire to review a few pages of text before I start writing again has become a lengthy and unnecessary editing session. If you don't have that same problem and don't find yourself developing the habits that will lead you there because of this process, you should be fine.

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This is similar to an older exercise of learning how to be a writer. It involved transcribing selected passages exactly. The point of the exercise was to kind of force you to think, “Why did they use this word in that sentence?”

Your method extends that technique. It might be helpful in finding your own voice — as in, how would I say that phrase, notion, idea, or scene in words that more match a manner in which I express myself.

Unless you are using a very poorly written text as your source (a harlequin romance) or using one that is dated or in a style that is no longer in fashion, then you are unlikely to improve the work.

There are people that want to be writers that use this technique. I met one such fellow, he rewrote all of the dialog of “The Last Jedi” to improve it. I am fairly certain many others do things like this too. And, then there are writers that only write fan-fiction for their favorite TV or Book series. Personally, I’m sure of the attraction, but I’m in no position to judge whether they’ll ever develop themselves as good writers. And, I’ve no desire to judge them, if it makes them happy, so be it. And, the same applies to you, if you enjoy it, then go wild.

The only other word of caution I’d add is that I think the best developing writers I meet are always the most honest, open, and humble of people. I think that it what it takes to learn to be a great writer — when you are part of that great mass of humanity not seemingly born with talent and have to work at it.

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To answer your question “could this practice be detrimental to developing my own style?”

I would say no, as what your doing is rewriting it in your own style. But developing your own style would probably be better served by rewriting it from scratch. So its all in your own style, rather than just editing it so only parts of it are. Or by just writing your own original scenes.

I would also say that editing the work of others can certainly improve your ability to edit your own work as its much easier to see mistakes in the work of others than in work that you have written yourself. And recognising them when others make them, makes it much easier to see when you’ve done the same thing. This is true even if the “mistakes” are only subjective.

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To be fair, I'd recommend that you solely work on your writing before you start to critique others, especially if these others are already published. If they've published, they were likely already professionally edited. Your works have not. Perfect your own writing by reading aloud your work, and by giving it some rest. By this, I mean allowing at least a month or two weeks before reading through it. You have to read your work objectively.

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Personally I'd say that exposing yourself to other material (like you're saying you're doing) is always good because you learn new things from it which you can incorporate into your own work. Reading many different types of work and styles surely can help you determine which things you like and which things you don't, which can push you on your way to tuning up your style. Editing like this sharpens your eye for mistakes when you get used to it so you'll be better at that.

But I've heard from several different places that the best way to become a better writer is just to write. You need to throw your thoughts onto the page to be sifted through. See what works and what doesn't, and play with it and keep writing until you can lock something in for yourself. Because nobody can know your writing better than you (https://copyblogger.com/bad-writing-habits/ just go to #7 , it's kind of related).

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