There are lots of resources, mostly in the Penmanship forum, devoted to improving one's writing from a mechanical point of view.

What do people generally recommend as far as improving the content of what one writes with that newly improved penmanship? :-)

I see there are a number of books that have been recommended elsewhere in this forum, and I know that writing workshops (and college classes) on writing are not uncommon.

Beyond that, "read a lot" and "write a lot, getting critiques from people better than you" is about all that comes to mind for me.

Do you think that pretty much covers it, or am I missing another approach?

:-)

How about, "don't watch TV"? That will help improve at whatever you are working on. Just my 2 cents...

Doug

Read a lot... of good stuff. You don't want to have a head full of "Doom" novelizations when sitting down to write a lyric epic of life in Regency-era England.

LOL my college writing teacher said I was hopeless, I wrote exactly the way I talked. Either very short, stubby sentences or a rambling soliloquy that no one could understand. A James Joyce/Studs Terkel hybrid. Whoa, we won't go there.

1. Surround yourself with whatever art (music, film, painting, photography, etc) stimulates you. Drink it in, contemplate it, let it mix around with your ethos a little bit.

2. Write, write, write, write, write. Write constantly, don't give a damn about what it is, how good it is, etc. Write for yourself and nobody else. Eventually, you'll write something that is worth sharing with the world.

I have taken a variety of fiction writing workshops. I think you nailed it with the read alot and write alot. Moreso, you need to write a lot. The hardest part, I think, is the drafting process. You write your story/whatever, then rip it apart and rework it, rip it apart, rework it, etc.

I think most major cities have writing collectives or nonprofit orgs that offer writing workshops. Here in Milwaukee there is the Red Bird Writing Studio that offers a class called "Shut Up and Write." From what I've heard it's led by an experienced creative writing teacher that know how to offer criticism in a constructive way AND push students to be more honest and go for the jugular. I'm going to take the class in the spring. Writing is a personal thing for me. What I'm NOT going to do is attend some drop-in workshop and have my work shredded by some frustrated literary type. That would kill it for me.

In all seriousness and IMHO, your college writing teacher shouldn't be teaching. Everyone has a unique voice.

Stephen King wrote a book about writing that has had good things said about it. Find authors whose style and type of writing you like and look at how they use language and idea structure. Work on your vocabulary and grammar skills.

Hi there,

I agree with all of the above. I would also suggest taking a class. If you want to improve content nothing can beat writing under the tutelage of someone who knows what they are doing.


I have several advanced degrees and have been writing professionally for 20+ years. I am currently enrolled in an upper-division writing class here at the local state school. It is the single best thing I have ever done. My writing has improved by leaps and bounds. My daughter (read proofreader) noticed it, my colleagues noticed it and most importantly I noticed it.

Mind you it is a humbling experience. It is a small class, all of the students are younger than me, and it has the format of we write an essay and then we all go over it together in class. We started with 15 people; we now have 8 because the 7 who left couldn’t hack it.

Now I have to say that it all depends on the instructor. I got lucky – this one is excellent. Ask around, swallow your pride and take a class.

I try to find a sample of nice...but achieveable...handwriting...and try to copy it or incorporate elements of it into my writing to make mine look better.

I think the question was about writing, not penmanship. To the OP, I was told to just write about nothing. It is tougher than I thought and I can't really describe it. The exercise of describing nothing is really hard and usually ends up being pretty creative. I haven't done it in awhile, but it is fun. Then when you actually get to describe something (emotion, experience, event, cat, whatever), you have already flexed those creative muscles in your head and it is much easier. Good question.

Kath

I think a number of suggestions have merit. I'll add to the list a book suggestion:

Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams.

His understanding of what makes for good writing and bad writing was very helpful to me. Even if you read only the first two chapters, you'll get enough to adopt some good habits of thought that should improve your writing style.

Dan

Writing fiction, or general composition?

For either, ELEMENTS OF STYLE by Strunk and White is a classic, and available online (http://www.bartleby.com/141/) or in paperback.

Something I did when teaching penmanship to my children (homeschooling family) was take a school subject, and use a program called Write Now, which allows you to type in text, and select how you want it printed out. You can select cursive, italic, or manuscript, and variations between nearly complete, dark outlines, and very faint, fairly widely space dots, and many variations in between.

So, if you can find the software, use it, as it will improve your penmanship by your tracing the letters. And to double your "bang for the buck", use something which interests you as your source text. Are you studying something, for pleasure, business, etc? Type in the information, and print it out in faint spaced dot outline form, then connect the dots, and you will reinforce the learning of the subject matter, as well as improving your penmanship.

Donnie

Write and write and write and write and also pay close attention to how things are worded and written when your reading. There's so much you can teach yourself if you just push yourself and commit to what you want to accomplish. You also have to enjoy it, if you don't enjoy what you are trying to do you shouldn't do it, it kills part of the soul and interfers with other things. When you do write something but don't perticularly care for it don't throw it away, stick it in a binder and save it. Sometimes a bad story can have some good ideas and happenings throughout that can be reused in another story. Sometimes you get those lit snobs that say you can't reuse prior ideas because it's self plagerization but that's a bunch of poo- if a bad story is never going to see the light of day how would someone know your doing it. That's has to be tops on my list of the most stupid things I've heard list.

IMHO - you can't beat having a copy of On Writing Well - William Zinsser.

Mike

Yup, the ultimate conversation killer and thought killer.

I think it's HOW you read that's important. Read closely to find HOW writers get their effects - HOW they make something memorable out of common day-to-day material - HOW they describe people and places with sharp and memorable clarity. Popular authors are often best for this purpose as they are consummate professionals. When you read something that impresses you, be it the idea or the way the idea was expressed, don't just say "that was good" and move on, but read it again and read it closely, then again and again, even more carefully and closely, until you've worked out exactly why it impresses you, and how it achieves its effect or power.

So next time you read a description of a house, a place or a person, or a piece of action that is especially crisp and exciting, analyse, analyse, and analyse again. Then try to write something similar (though not too similar) in your own words. Put it away for a week and read it again. Compare it with the passage you read and see where your effort falls down.

Precis is another useful exercise, particularly when you revise your own work. Try to strip away all unnecessary words, get rid of all the 'veries' and unnecessary adjectives; replace 'weather conditions' with 'weather', 'confrontational situation', with 'confrontation', long phrases with single words, and so on. Look particularly at strengthening verbs. You can often reduce a passage by a third, simply by turning passive sentences into active ones, where you thing this will improve the passage (it won't always). You can overdo precis and render a lively piece mechanical and dull, but it's a useful discipline none-the-less.

You can try to improve any piece or writing, web pages magazine articles and the like. Rewrite them, trying to make them more vivid and terse. Put the original and your copy in a drawer for a week or so, then read them both and see whether you still think your version is an improvement, and if not, why not? Try to rewrite and improve passages from your favourite authors. Again, let the work lie for a while before rereading and comparing.

All this will, in turn, help you to read even more closely and critically.

I suggest these exercises because they are things you can constructively when you're sitting, pen in hand, wanting to write something, but have not the slightest clue what to write.

I hope this gives you some ideas. I've being doing it for years.

Chud, I'm curious as to what it is that you wish to write. Do you want to have good writing skills for everyday use, or do you want to write the next great novel?

Good writing starts with the basics of good grammar and how to write a strong simple sentence. Once you have the basics, then a good editor makes the next greatest difference, whether a teacher, parent, or friend. A good editor teaches you why sentences work, and why they don't. The final step is then to be your own editor. Once you understand the principles of good writing, read your own work over to tighten sentences and improve structure, until you are satisfied. Edit everything you write, whether a simple email or a complex business presentation. As Huffward suggested, you can also do the same with the works of others for further practice.

If you want to write the next great novel, well, that's adding that dollop of creativity, combined with the ability to paint pictures of the mind in words. That may or may not be your objective.

Start with a class in good writing skills, and work from there.

The responses so far in this thread are very good. I would add the following:

Read Hemingway, particularly, if you can find it, the volume of his newspaper dispatches. It is a perfect display of Huffward's point about stripping away unnecessary words and flowery phrases.

Before you write, think about what you are feeling/thinking as precisely as you can; work it until the part that you want to write about becomes clear. Then write as clearly about that as possible. One of the marks of good writing is the use of language to capture a thought precisely; the use of language takes practice and reading, but the determination of the thought can be done now.

Depending on the nature of what you will write, use structure. In nonfiction, even creative nonfiction, each sentence should generally be a thought, and each paragraph should generally be an argument.

Some other suggestions come to mind, but it all depends on what type of writing you want to improve.

If you're just looking for something to write to use your new found skill, here's what I do.
I drive a truck, so I have the radio on ten to fourteen hours a day. I also make anywhere from four to ten stops a day. At each place, there is a dock person I usually know enough to have a short conversation with. This person always has something to say.
Between the radio and the people I talk to everyday, there are always things I spend a few minutes dwelling on (believe me, in a truck you spend alot of time dwelling). Once I realize that I've spent valuable time thinking about a particular subject, I make a note of it. It doesn't make a bit of difference the subject. Politics, news, weather, anything at all. You cannot believe how quickly subjects will pile up. I have way more notes than time to elaborate on them.
When I feel like writing, but don't have anything in mind, I pick up the oldest note (although, I occasionally skip ahead) and put my thoughts on paper. Keep them, shred them, whatever you like. You've accomplished your goal, which is to write. The more you write, the more you'll write.
I always write as close to the way I talk as possible. Otherwise, when I read it later, it sounds strange to me.
So, now, I was wondering...should I take a couple of months off work to get caught up...if only I could write while driving...

I cannot really help with grammar but if you want to improve vocabulary read a lot. Also one thing I sometimes do is open a dictionary, pick a word and then learn it, trying to grasp its meaning and context.
If you want the most insight for writing that you can possibly get and extra vocabulary, and sometimes grammar and creativity (depending on the writer in question) then read a lot of philosophy!

First, I agree with two or three points which seem to have arisen by consensus: 1. Zinsser; 2. read read read. 3. write write write.

Second, I have an interesting aside. I have found that my ability with creative and flow-oriented writing has actually been a detriment to my new interest in getting ahead in law studies. I'll be going to law school starting this fall (responses to my applications are right now coming in) but I have spent the better part of two decades writing for journalistic and publicity purposes. The reading style which turned out to be necessary for doing well on the LSAT and in other legal contexts, I'm finding, is actually not something I'm particularly talented at, or at least not very experienced at. I'm having to learn to read repeatedly, at the pace one might go when one reads a heavy logic textbook, rather than letting the author lead me through the ideas. Generally, I'd say, from a journalism point of view, legal writing is simply bad writing. There's a lot of conflating of related ideas into synonymous nouns -- exacerbate and exaggerate are used synonymously; presumption, presupposition, and assumption are used synonymously; correct, right, accurate, and true are used synonymously. There's a lot of connecting nouns with the verb to be in its many forms, weakening the impact of a given statement. There's a lot of passive voice. All those things which we were told in college freshman comp would weaken our prose, can actually strengthen it in a legal context when the issue is less, leading a happy reader through your thoughts and descriptions and hoping to coax them to stay; and more, knowing the reader can't leave no matter how miserable he is, so you might as well repeat yourself and indulge in lazy writing.

I was most disgruntled at the inaccuracy of the adjectives some, many, and most on the LSAT. If in normal context I were to say, "Some of my friends live in Newton," I wouldn't possibly mean all of them do. If all of them do, then I SAY all. Consequently, by implication, from the fact that I did not use all, my listeners know that I do not MEAN all. Some is DIFFERENTIATED from all. Yet on the LSAT, if the statement "some burbles are fleeps" is made, then it is possible that ALL blurbles are fleeps, and you have to answer the questions about burbles and fleeps accordingly. This may "technically" be accurate, in a rarefied sort of way, and I did have little problem re-learning my vocabulary for the purposes of the test. But it's also "technically" poor thinking and poor writing, to believe that a word which is in current usage among fluent English speakers can be simply re-defined in a new manner, a manner NOT consistent with most fluent speakers' usage, merely because you're the person who has the power to write the test. Given that the LSAT is taken by a large community of people from diverse backgrounds, it would be reasonable that the framers of the LSAT should understand, that English of a standardized, non-rarefied type, would be the best to be used on the LSAT, in order to most accurately communicate with the largest possible range of people. Instead, the framers of the LSAT have arrogantly understood otherwise, that even though there's a wide range of possible legitimate interpretations to the English language, their idiosyncratic interpretation alone is the only legitimate one, and they aren't telling you what it is. You have to guess. Or pay $1000 for a Kaplan course to explain it to you, as was my case. I would NEVER have guessed what errors they were making with the English language, had I been left to my own EXPERT and RATHER CAPABLE devices, and thereby I would have scored LOWER on their test because of the framers' ineptitudes. This is arrogant inaccuracy, and I bridle at it.

So there. Harrumph.

Just an interesting aside about interpretive communities and the like.

In terms of reading to improve content, I'd suggest Edgar Allan Poe's short stories. They were the precursor to modern TV shows in terms of time to read- it takes about a half hour to read one, and they are full of great words and thoughts. Substitute one (or two) of his short stories for a TV show, and your vocabulary and content will improve.
Have fun!

Lovecraft is generally good, too, if somewhat lardy in the word-hoard (he was getting paid per word, after all).



Egad! The use of "some" makes an implicit suggestion of "not all"! "All" means all. They must have changed the LSAT since I wrote it, because I didn't get cranky about that sort of thing... but I did get cranky about law school itself, so I guess the situation is much the same.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, Trouble writing? You really need this book. See this post, 4/15/08 in this forum.

Read a lot to expose yourself to a (vast) diversity of writing style. eventually you'll be able to find a style that is most comfortable for your usage.

For me, I tend to use a method similar to the "six thinking hat" method developed by Edward de Bono. When i want to write to argue, i try to write like a lawyer would (formal, systematic, precise)...writing expressive pieces would call for the "poet" or "lyricist" hat, ..etc. It works most of the time. Just make sure you read A LOT of different materials, from Time Magazine to Cosmopolitan to the annual policy address.. might be boring at some point (esp the Policy Address), but it's worth it, seeing a writing style that's almost unseen anywhere else (which is, IMHO, trying to make BS sounds solid and grounded.... LOL) *Just illustrating, no intention in making a political statement*

Do you think you're creative enough? If so, then go on and write a story. Not big one, write an article based on the things that might need some improvement and you know you have the answer. Create a simple different stories and then wrap them up in one or two. Whatever you'll do, just handwrite. Besides the obvious thing, that you'll practice different writing styles and you'll finally find the one that matches with your style, speed, character, pen and paper media, you thinking discipline will be deployed further.

Over the keyboard we tend to write faster than we think. Perhaps, this is what we've used to do at work with our computers. Now remember those days back in school, when we had an essay to write and at the time we started with the foreword, we used to keep notes on the side for the key elements that needed analysis. The brain was working faster than the hand, so quite few times the sentence was changing at the time it had being written! The outcome was orthographically imperfect but the document was definitely a piece of our thinking through discipline.

Today, it's just difficult. I use, for a number of reasons, up to three pc's every day. I really enjoy handwriting, and it's a pity that post services are way behind this era. Maybe I should start handwriting my messages here, scan and post them as images...

Another thing- be sure to add dimensions to your story- add in discriptions of the surroundings, the weather, the way something feels to the character, what sounds they hear, smells. These subtle sorts of things can really influence how a reader pictures and feels about something. Make a point of sharing a characters thoughts in their words as they're thinking them- share their internal dialogue throughout bits of the story, especially when it concerns an important or climatic event in the plot. I've read many stories haphazardly thrown together, or at least they read like they were, and they seems flat, one dimensional. In a writing class I took awhile back where we read and left comments on stories other students in the class wrote it seemed more times that not the stories were vague, unengaging and even confusing because their authors took an approach that was too minimal. Write the scenes as you picture them in your head, don't always make the main focus of the story the dialogue between characters- another common mistake.

An exercise you might give a try is to go sit in a room in your house and write about what you see, hear, smell and feel. Try it in third and first person and write it like it were part of a story- what a character is witnessing. I had to do this for a writing class in high school.