sup /text/

I want to improve my writing skills. i've been told by people who've read my stuff i have a lot of ideas but all are very poorly executed and that my writing is shit.

tl;dr: how do i get better at writing

Read a metric asston of books.

Write a metric asston of books.

>>2
>>3
Correct. The funniest part, it is THE ONLY WAY POSSIBLE. You may become popular even without being able to write really well, but that's based on luck. Writing really good is based on experience in both reading and writing.

yes but only read good books

^As above. Reading Stephenie Meyer helps neither your writing skills nor your sanity.

1) You must read. It is your apprenticeship. Try to read a book a week.
2) Do not read a writer's earlier works and try to see what they did correctly. Every early work sucks to some degree. You don't want to be like them when they were young, you want to write like they do now. Even Stephen King falls into this category. Go read "The Mist." The writing in it sucks balls.
3) You must write every day. Try for a minimum of 1000 words. 2000 is recommended. The general rule of thumb is you won't be a good writer until you've written 1,000,000 words--the equivalent of 12 novels.
4) You need to get an objective critique of your work. Don't go to family members or friends. If you have a piece you think is worth more time to make it better than it already is, you might wish to entertain the possibility of paying an editor to do a line by line edit and critique. This is buyer beware, so do some research on who you ask.

>>7
Even Stephen King
lmao

>>8

Is your 'lmao' because you think someone is stupid to question Stephen King's writing, or because you think he sucks?

>>9

King's writing is a catch-22. He is a skilled writer, but what most aspiring authors fail to realize, he is a commercial fiction writer. If you want to sell a ton of books, you can't write like Hemmingway or Joyce.

Unless you are already a successful writer, you can't break all the rules like Cormac McCarthy either (No quote tags, no quotation marks, incomplete sentences galore).

>>10
0/10 troll
If not I hope you get deported to England.

>>10
I bet you have never been in a fight or a violent situation. Get the fuck out.

>>11
Accusing someone of trolling is the worst way to troll lol

>>12
You aren't very smart, are you?

Also Stephen King is terrible and that guy who said he was skilled is dumb

>>15

Yeah, he's so horrible that he's managed to cross over into about 6 different genres and get multiple best sellers from each.

Half of you are just the typical 4channer who hates anything popular. But I guess if you want to be a good writer, you'd best not ignore what King does correctly.

>>16
That is such a pathetic defense that I don't even know what to say.

>>17

king is da bomb! gunslinger kills baddies, travels in time and doesn't afraid of anything.

>>7
Where do you suggest I try and get objective critique? The internet isn't the best of places, I find. Most of the reviews here are done by 12 year old kids with ADAH who don't bother explaining why a stiry is good/bad. They just write "it sucks because it's shit" or say that it was the bestest thing they ever read and leave it at that. Not very helpful.

>>15
Stephen King writes good books but he can't finish. His endings blow but he does everything else right.

>>19

Try Preditors and Editors (Yes, the misspelling of Preditors is correct). Look for an editor there. You can also try one of the writing sites to get free critiques, such as SF and Fantasy writers workshop, but use those with your best judgment in mind. You may learn some of the basics, but it can lead to the blind leading the blind, as in unpublished telling another unpub'd how to write.

>>20

So true on many of his works, but you can't teach a writer "imagination." Either you have that or you don't. King's structure and imagery is top notch.

Lol at the guy saying King is genre spanning. I love his horror but his fantasy novels are arse gravy of the wort kind.

>>23

you didn't like the dark tower?

Dark tower, eye of the dragon and I would be hard pressed to say The Stand was horror....the richness of that book is way closer to fantasy and Sci Fi. Horror doesn't in my opinion deal with large concepts like The Stand or The Dark tower does.

I don't class The Stand as his fantasy work, even if it isn't completely horror. It's also one of my all time favourite books, definitely my favourite work by King.
Eye Of The Dragon sucked a lot of cock though.

I, sadly, have a language problem when it comes to writing.
My native language isn't English, and although I feel like I speak it fluently my vocabulary and basic grammar flaws will probably make it impossible for me to actually make it in the English writing world.
So the only option I have is writing in my native tongue, which means that less than 10 million people are able to read what I wrote.

>>27

Blah, excuses excuses.

90% of the English speaking world can't even speak or write the language.

The answer to your question is the answer to another questions.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

>>28
You know, that actually cheered me up.
Everything I do seems to be in English these days (books, 4chan, Visual Novels), might as well give it a shot.
Thanks.

>>29
Seconded. Go to it dude.

Reading bad books, like Twilight, picking them apart and finding out exactly what they did wrong can be just as helpful as reading quality literature for what the authors did write.

In fact, seeing what other writers have done wrong encourages you to correct it in your own words, thus leading to an overall more personal writing style, with less influence from older writers.

>>1

You are no good at writing because you have nothing to say.  Give up.  Seriously.  Just do something else.  There are uncelebrated geniuses writing masterpieces furiously in pillbox apartments whose stuff will be buried under thousands of pages of slush, whose work will never get more than a glance and a pass, because editors are fucking swamped, because writers like yourself--people with no vision, no originality, and no passion--are flooding their desks with mediocrity.

They don't need the competition from the likes of you.

>>32
On the contrary, while few people may be writer material, I can imagine most people would have something meaningful to write about.
Of course, you still need to learn to write properly.
Also, do research.