Writing???

Question

What are good ways to improve your writing skills? My teacher says im a good writer, could teach the class how to write, but i want to improve my skills. Any tips or adivce?

Answer 1

I found myself in a similar position in tenth grade and the most helpful tip I found was to "uber-streamline."

Once you have written a paragraph or an essay, read through it and see how many words you can remove without compromising your meaning. You may have to do this two or three times, until you can't find anything else that can be condensed.

This helps you write more concisely, which also makes your writing clearer and more precise. I wouldn't have said that I wrote a lot of unnecessary stuff, but it was amazing how much that helped my essays.

Answer 2

Teaching "how to write" is like teaching "how not-to throw the world into a cross planet war." (Which is something i've actually written on.) First you have to determine your writing style. I've been writing for years, but I'm still only 14. Learn your ups and downs, and learn how you perform those things. There are so many different techniques for writing, it's almost physically impossible to teach it, but not quite impossible to improve on yourself. What sort of things do you enjoy writing about? Take those and write. Here's the technique I use to teach. Write just one sentence on anything. Does the reader fall asleep? Have they heard that one before? Or do they wonder about the truth behind that statement? Edit, cut, chop. Just by you doing this, your style will emerge and so will improvement. As you learn to do this and learn to enjoy it, it will be very simple to do this with the class. The point is to submerge the new writer into discovery of their talent and challenge of the act.

... wow that was long...