Improve, Improve, Improve!

[Chicklet]

My goal as a writer is simply to...improve, improve, improve

Everyone! What would you improve in your writing? What are you constantly trying to make better?

For me, I'm sort of trying to kill the passive tones...but, since I can hardly even spot them in the first place... <wink>

 

[Madame Manga]

If I really knew that, I'd have tried to do something about it by now. ;-) But it's much easier to think about my shortcomings than about my advantages. What comes to mind:

Old-fashioned style. I should read more modern literary fiction and set aside the Victorian novelists for a while. Either that, or write historicals.

Character business. I tend to use the same few things over and over: she grimaces and looks away, he examines his fingernails, she crosses her legs, he compresses his lips. I should observe people as they talk and find less hackneyed body language.

Overly plot-driven. I often try to make characters do and express what I want them to, instead of letting them have their heads. I have a horror of amorphous, meandering stories where nothing happens and no one changes. But there's no need to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts and impose a rigid structure that limits the story rather than drives it ahead. There is a happy medium. I know when I've put handcuffs on the characters, because they stop cooperating. The problem is to break out of that dead end when I run into it, or avoid it in the first place.

MM

 

[TheEarl]

To make everything perfect. That's my aim and nothing less will suffice.

The Earl

 

[English Lady]

i want to sort out my grammar and tenses and suchlike,i can do emotion,i can do plot,i can do characterisation but i fall down on my actual basics. I am doing better now and i am sure i can only improve more as i read and write more.

 

[Invid Writer]

Overall I'd say my problem is I use the same words/structure over and over again. Maybe I need to sit down and read a dictionary?

By structure I mean a lot of my sentances seem to have the same feel to them. I'm trying to correct this but not entirely sure how to do so.

Every once in a while I switch back into my more commonly used present tense instead of the past tense I'm writing novels in. I'm trying VERY hard not to do that though and think I've corrected most of the obvious mistakes. There's still some out there though.

Umm... there's plenty more, but I can't seem to think of it right now.