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[itisnotlogical]

Yeah. If you can't put a book down, think about why. Same for if there's a book you hate, or a headline that catches your eye. Analyze it, take notes, try to recreate it in your own writing and make it part of your style.

[eerr]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I tend to look at forums as a sort of speaking platform where  I don't want to be grammatically correct all the time.
In writing my grammar is not an issue because  I tend to revise the grammar especially, but  I write on forums like I would talk, horribly.

Sounds like an excuse to me.

From your original post:

I am bad at writing, period. I write out a whole chapter then when I re-read it I realize that it reads like crap and I delete it. I don't know how to get better because we both love the universe that we have and would love to make books even if they are only to show to each other but he is the only one of us that can write.

Now you're saying you do it on purpose? Sorry, dude. Make up your mind. If you want to write well, then practice writing well. I'm not saying you need to turn every post into an essay, but it's silly to come here complaining that you don't write well and saying you want to improve, and then turn around and defend writing horribly. If you "write like you talk, horrible" that tells me that you both write and speak horribly.

That's not what you want, right?

So stop doing it.

Challenge:

Write a paragraph of at least ten sentences in the third person past tense about Bob walking through a dog park. Don't "write horribly."

Ok, I know I am bad at writing,  I admit that. I am bad at speaking, I admit that. But the forums to me is somewhere to converse with likeminded people and not have to worry about them judging you, If I spent all the time checking my grammar and making sure that I didn't sound like an idiot then the forums would get really boring for me. Sure, in writing a story you should be grammatically correct and all but in real life, I sound dumb, really really really dumb. So I feel like I should sound really really dumb here or it would just feel to fake and take the fun out of it. Checking my spelling is fine but my grammar sucks, I sound bad, I look bad, I am bad, so I  freely let that go on the forums because I don't think that a lot of people are going to immediately criticize my grammar.
Oh and by the way, thanks for the challenge, I'll try.

Alright, but by treating forum posts differently from your other writing- you are being pedantic (obsessively fussy about minor detailings of words)

Also you implied that you are trying not to care about your words which seems all sorts of wrong. LIVE THE LIFE.

Oh and a way to work on writing errors and crap sounding: Read out loud.

[nenjin]

In the absence of a face, a voice, body language, gestures.....all anyone on a forum has to judge you by is the words you use and how you use them. So to me it's even more important to write well on a forum than it is to speak well in person.

[Araph]

While I do concede that LordBucket's teaching methods are, uh... blunt, to put it diplomatically, he has made a few really important points.

If you want to be a good writer, everything you write - whether on a forum, in a book, scrawled on bathroom stalls - should be grammatically correct. Not because it's vital to your audience that you use the correct their/there/they're and that all your punctuation is in the correct place, but rather because you will end up writing books the exact same way you write forum posts. You get good at what you practice.

Ok, I know I am bad at writing,  I admit that. I am bad at speaking, I admit that. But the forums to me is somewhere to converse with likeminded people and not have to worry about them judging you, If I spent all the time checking my grammar and making sure that I didn't sound like an idiot then the forums would get really boring for me. Sure, in writing a story you should be grammatically correct and all but in real life, I sound dumb, really really really dumb. So I feel like I should sound really really dumb here or it would just feel to fake and take the fun out of it. Checking my spelling is fine but my grammar sucks, I sound bad, I look bad, I am bad, so I  freely let that go on the forums because I don't think that a lot of people are going to immediately criticize my grammar.
Oh and by the way, thanks for the challenge, I'll try.

You know, it's funny. You'll only sound dumb if you try to speak aloud with proper grammar, but writing is a whole 'nother can of worms. Trust me on this: it's a whole lot easier to sound dumb in writing than it is to sound fake. Nobody is going to lambaste you for your attention to detail if you use proper punctuation, but a little part of me dies inside whenever I read a sentence with a misplaced comma or missing apostrophe.

Also, if writing with proper grammar sucks the fun out of it, you need to practice until it becomes natural. If you're unwilling to practice, you shouldn't be a writer. The good news is that practice opportunities are everywhere. (Pro-tip: I'm referring to this very forum. Practice here. Git gud.)

Ok, I didn't even skim this, but I saw this sentence:

"1) "Crap" is a social class indicator. Generally best avoided unless you're deliberately using it to provide characterization."


What? Are you saying that by using the word "Crap" someone will somehow give away their social standing within their society? Or that "crap" is used as a word to denote a particular social class? Because neither seems very accurate to me.

Pretty sure LordBucket is just referring to using crap as a descriptor in the narration. If you read the sentence 'the car was a piece of crap' in The Dresden Files, it'd be fine: the books are told very casually from a first-person perspective. It's characterizing the narrator as someone who would use the word 'crap' in a sentence, while the word should otherwise be avoided entirely because of how colloquial it is.

If you opened up Game of Thrones and read 'the carriage was a piece of crap', you'd think to yourself that George R.R. Martin is a hack. When said by an omnipotent third-person narrator, it would be considered poor form.

As a more personal example, I've said 'whole 'nother can of worms', 'git gud', and used ellipsis to indicate a silent beat in a sentence in this very post. All three of those are acceptable in context because of the medium (posting on a forum) and give you an image of who the narrator is, but they still obey grammatical rules (using an apostrophe to indicate omitted letters, for example).

You used nearly as many words to convey a single piece of advice as he used to write the introductory post, which has at five separate ideas that I can pick out. And that piece of advice was to not be redundant/repetitive...

Different goals, different rules. LordPyrrole was explaining his situation, LordBucket was proofreading. The redundancy was because he was making a list, rather than summing up the end result.



tl;dr: Practice writing with proper grammar from here on out. Every time I see a post of yours, it needs to obey the rules of grammar or I will be very sad. My feelings will be hurt. This is a bad thing.

Also, listen to the other people in the thread. They're giving good advice.



On a tangentially related note, I have a sneaking suspicion that LordBucket is secretly Kazerad. He runs elaborate forum games, has connections with both MLP and TES, and types out gigantic essays on writing. There is no other possible explanation.

[Flying Dice]

It's been a bit, but I just noticed the thread.

Also, if writing with proper grammar sucks the fun out of it, you need to practice until it becomes natural. If you're unwilling to practice, you shouldn't be a writer. The good news is that practice opportunities are everywhere. (Pro-tip: I'm referring to this very forum. Practice here. Git gud.)

This. This right here is of paramount importance. The number one thing you can do to improve your writing is to write. What you write, especially early, will almost certainly suck. You'll look at it after you write it and think 'this isn't very good...'. You'll look at it the day after that and think 'ye gods, this is terrible!'

I'm a terrible writer when it comes to creative prose, but I've thrown away, crossed through, and deleted easily in the neighborhood of 300,000 words worth of material, and I scarcely write. You have to accept that writing is like anything else: if you want to get good at it, you need to practice, and in the process of practicing you will screw up a lot.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Learning to write well is not a simple or easy process. I love writing, I major in Film, and minor in Creative Writing. Frankly, if you want to get better at writing: write.

...But it seems else like everyone has nailed the "write more", "practice", and "get feedback" concepts pretty well. If you're really interested in storytelling, buy this.

(It's a book by Orson Scott Card about the process of writing in the context of fantasy and sci-fi novels)

What it WON'T do is tell you how to find your own interesting voice (and trust me friend, you DO have one) or fix your grammatical and/or structural errors, but what it WILL do is tell you a bit world building, avoiding boring stuff and clichés, and the process of writing a story better than most of us probably could. Another great resource that's a little more general and applicable to all aspects of creative writing is Janet Burroway's Imaginative Writing.

Listen, lots of stuff is being said here, but what is important is that you sit down, write your first draft, and then get critique on it. It could from Bay12, from friends, peers, teachers, or professionals. Then you have to revise what you have. That's the basic learning process for writing. When you're done, write another draft and repeat. Etc.

I know that's just a rehashing, but it can't be said enough because in there is where you'll find everything that you like and everything that you hate about words and how you will go about using them in the future. I.E. Your voice, and consequently, one badass, fuckmothering story.

So, in short, write your story, get critique, and don't forget to revise it extensively. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Remember to read stuff.

Sincerely,
One Really Tired College Student

[tonnot98]

After being here for too long, I write only in factual descriptions.

[strawberry-wine]

I'm going to disagree with what many have said about grammar. You can write in whatever vernacular you'd like -- there's plenty of examples of novels, poems, and creative nonfiction that are written in a natural speaking style. If you're looking for examples, off the top of my head I can think of Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (although the slang is made up). There's a lot out there though.

Whether a piece of writing is engaging or not depends many factors, of which grammar is only one. So it's more important to write in a way that you find comfortable, and is comfortable for your target audience to read. I personally would be very interested in reading a good book written in a 'Floridian' style.

Now, if you want to write factual articles on the internet, a casual style may not be the best choice. And if you'd prefer to learn to write in a more formal style that's okay too.

On writing improvement, here's a technique that was used at the Handy Colony. Lowney Handy would assign a student a work by a good published author, usually one that was the exact opposite of that student's typical writing style, and the student would have to copy the entire text via typewriter.

It's similar to what visual art students do. The idea is that you are training your hands to recognize the patterns of good writing.

[Edmus]

For a bit of variety in suggestions I suggest not trying too hard. Sometimes you can agonise over every word, but find that when you reread it that it's cold, lifeless and often awkward. Just write more, and low stakes stuff. Whenever I try to write out an idea I'm passionate about, I get so caught up in making it perfect that the flow is... plech. My source is the twenty odd short stories I've cranked out as study for the Australian HSC this year.
(Excuse any bodgey grammar, I'm very tired)