: 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

@Connie138

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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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