: Re: 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

@Berryessa137

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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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