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
Name:
Anonymous2009-08-02 16:40
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.