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[Galick]

I wanna get better at writing and general things like that for my own purposes.

Anyone know of any way to do that beyond practicing a ton (which I'm doing already kinda, check my sig)?

I mainly want to learn to write actions and settings better.  I can do dialogue decently.  I wanna improve to the point where I'll be able to actually write a decent sized book that isn't non-fiction.  I have no real issues with essays or the like, but they're far too boring for me.

[Bdthemag]

You can't really be taught to write better, sure you can be taught how to have some sort of structure in a story but you can't really be "taught". My advice is that you practice, a lot. You may at first think that your work is total shit, but thats how your suppose to feel at first.

[nenjin]

Read, a lot. And don't just read to get into the story. Analyze what others you like do, and why what they're doing speaks to you. Is it the way their names seem to be hand-chosen, not just random selection? Is it how they build scenes, the way they use detail? Is it their dialogue?

Good writing is iteration, re-iteration, re-examining phrases and sentences and crafting them. Learn from the masters then put it into practice.

(And remember that writers you like aren't always great writers. I love Lovecraft, but some of his writing is a train wreck. It's almost like a guide on how to write bad prose in some places.)

[Willfor]

Practice is the best way.

Listening to other writers talk about different things they find relevant also helps. They're going to tell you to practice too, but there are some really helpful things there.

[Muffindog]

Like others said, you can only practice and read more. Always have a dictionary or grammar book nearby, and if you're not sure or can't quite remember something, look it up on the internet or elsewhere. If you want to expand your vocabulary, start taking notes while reading. Write down all the words you didn't know before, or the words that you think you should use more often. Write down their meanings too if you're not sure.

Beside that, just read, write and try to adopt new words by even speaking. Try to avoid speaking mistakes too, as most form sentences while writing exactly like they do in speech.

[Lord Dullard]

Read a lot. If you don't like reading, odds are you won't like (or at least won't be good at) writing.

[Sappho]

As others have said, read a lot. Read all the time. And read varied things. Don't read ten books by the same author - read every author you can think of, including the ones you don't like. Practice by trying to mimic their writing styles.

Your grammar and vocabulary will improve by reading, but you can also add to it. Study a foreign language if you haven't already - it helps you understand the grammar of your own better. For vocab building, I can recommend the site www.freerice.com - it's a charity site designed to improve people's English and feed hungry people at the same time.

[Eagleon]

As others have said, read a lot. Read all the time. And read varied things. Read ten books by the same author - read every author you can think of, including the ones you don't like. Practice by trying to mimic their writing styles.

Fixed. People with ten books are typically people that have some strength going for them (enough for a publisher to deal with them ten times, which is difficult to achieve even once), even if the other parts are bad to terrible. Figuring out what those are is very handy - beyond reading for the sake of it (which is rewarding, don't get me wrong), as a writer you should be looking for what went into a book to make it what it was.

[Biag]

Some books you might find helpful.

And also,

Spoiler: Tips From An Amateur (click to show/hide)

-Practice practice practice! People have said it already, but it can't be said enough.
-(from On Writing) Eliminate adverbs wherever you can. If you have to use an adverb to get your point across, that means that you think the writing around it is weak. Same goes for dialogue tags- stick with the simple ones ("he said", "he whispered", "he yelled", etc.)
-Learn to accept criticism. Including brutal criticism. If it stings, than either they're right and you need to practice more or you're not confident enough and you need to practice more.
-During all this practicing and criticizing, figure out what you do well and work on that. It's better to have passable description and incredible dialogue than to be an all-around decent writer. See: Tolkien (description), Joss Whedon (dialogue), Tom Clancy (plot).

[nenjin]

As others have said, read a lot. Read all the time. And read varied things. Read ten books by the same author - read every author you can think of, including the ones you don't like. Practice by trying to mimic their writing styles.

Fixed. People with ten books are typically people that have some strength going for them (enough for a publisher to deal with them ten times, which is difficult to achieve even once), even if the other parts are bad to terrible. Figuring out what those are is very handy - beyond reading for the sake of it (which is rewarding, don't get me wrong), as a writer you should be looking for what went into a book to make it what it was.

Reading 10 books by the same author can also show you the massive HOLES in people's writing too, even writers you love.

Example: David Eddings and the Belgariad

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This book pretty much defines modern sword and sorcery fiction today. I used to love it as a kid growing up. It's got everything you'd expect. Star-crossed main character who is really noble but is hidden away for their own safety because the whole universe turns on their actions. So of course they grow up as a farm boy.

All of his series are funny, the characters are rich, the world is developed and the story covers....like 8 books just in the Belgariad.

But it's got several problems once you read it as an adult. Once you've read a lot of David Edding's stuff, you come to realize that several character sound alike, both by design and by just how he writes. He's got his "crotchety old man with a soft heart" character that gets reused at least 3 times in just the Belgariad. He's got "stern, powerful Mother Figure character" that gets used perpetually throughout all his books as a mainstay. He's got "impish female with a sassy streak" that shows up in several books. There is at least one mandatory "silent, mystical god child" per series.

And the humor is the same from person to person. Everyone is clever and sarcastic when they make jokes, even the stupid characters. It gets to the point where his own characters start calling each other out for sounding like one another.....in the damn story!

After reading a dozen David Eddings novels, you'll be hard pressed not to start blending several characters together because of how he writes them.

My biggest problem however is his meta plot. Prophecy gets used so often you can really just substitute the word "plot" where you see "prophecy" in his books. Prophecy is actually a character that speaks to the characters in his story like a normal, cognizant being. Gods regularly have personal contact with the characters in his stories and prophecy is some sort of magical, universe spanning consciousness that actually has stuff it wants to have happen and speaks directly to characters to let them know about it. It's not like it has a name, but it literally talks like "just another clever character who knows everything" to the characters in the story. It's Deus Ex Machina in the worst possible way and Eddings flouts it through not one, but three different story lines set in two different worlds. It galls me so bad I can't even read his stuff anymore, even though it's still GOOD fantasy. To note, the guy was wildly successful with his books.

From an author I idolized as a kid, to an author I really have problems with for how they treat their own story, 10 years of reading and perspective and practice trying to write my own stuff has given me a whole different take on what story structure means, and what you should and shouldn't do with it.

[Neonivek]

Do you read Galick?

A lot of writing in my experience is noticing how synthesis works. If you REALLY get writing down, which I have lost the ability to, you can even write B+ essays on the spot.

Edit: My brain stopped working and I spelt the wrong person's name

[Galick]

Actually, I can write essays fairly well already.  Putting out a good essay was no issue for me while I was in a trade school, and I never made anything below a B on them when I put at most an hour or two of work.  It's scene setting and fiction type things that I want to learn how to do better.

I'll read more than I have been (which admittedly, hasn't been many books lately...mainly just webcomics, Let's Plays, and a few other things like that.  Most well written, but not books.)  and I'll try to write something that I'd like to try later and post it up on here for anyone to critique.  I need to practice, and well, critique helps that.

[Neonivek]

Well a lot of it is bringing your mind into the writing mindset and to think in the way in which one writes.

[Sappho]

Beware of reading too much on the internet. The reason people generally say to read books is that they have been edited (though of course most books still have a typo or two in them). There are a lot of very common errors that people make when writing, even good writers, and online these errors have not been edited out, so you might start to think they are correct. Examples include using run-on sentences (using commas where there should be periods), misspelling things like your/you're, there/their/they're, etc. It can really get in your head, even if you know the difference already. I'm an English teacher and even I catch myself making one of these mistakes now and then since I spend so much time online.

[Capntastic]

Some books you might find helpful.

John Gardner's Art of Fiction is an absolutely terrible book for any aspiring writer because he straight up asserts that one cannot ever, in any possible way, become a good writer unless you go to university to study writing.  Further, his book is nothing but namedropping books he considers 'classics', and building up a canon of books you must be intimately familiar with to consider yourself even capable of understanding what good writing is.  It's a literature professor explaining why the world needs literature professors.

Edit:  Here's a fantastic quote that is just the opposite of John Gardner's perspective in many ways, but still holds the view that practice is key.   Read it a few times:

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."

— Ira Glass, via NPR Fresh Air