Looking for tips on improving my writing skills.

[Metalhead]

I am looking at movie reviews I wrote a week ago, and already I want to tinker with the wording and add more details and clarity. I would like to reach a point where I am satisfied with my own writing. My therapist has told me repeatedly that he thinks that I can write better than many people he knows that have masters degrees, but I look at my own writing and most of what I see is room for improvement.

So, to other writers out there, what are some practices you use to hone and refine your skills?

 

[Misery]

I dunno if I count as a writer, but the best thing I can think of is to give others a chance to critique whatever it is you're writing.

Whatever it is we make, we're generally too close to it to really be able to see problems that it has, whatever it is. That's why feedback is so very important.

 

[Kalinychta]

Write, write, write, and write. And read, read, read. Every day, as much as you can. That’s the only way to improve your writing skills.

 

[AprilR]

My job requires a lot of writing, it will sound cliche but reading a lot really helps. The more i read the more i get better at expressing myself on paper.

 

[Raggamuffin]

I write it - I post it. I then re-read it multiple times and add, edit etc. Sometimes I go back days later and continue to edit. I suppose anything creative can evoke the perfectionist side to us. It's good to re-read things you've written, also take in what you may have written long ago to see how style has evolved.

It'd be nice to have some form of career that accomodated my art, my photography and writing skills. Each one of these people have commented I could make a career out of. Yet here I am, 16 years in office jobs. The most creative thing I get to make is spreadsheets and the best hope I have for creative writing is emails to irrate customers. It doesn't exactly play to my strengths.

For writing I'd suggest 4 things:

• Write more - practice makes perfect.
• Read more - you'll see new perspectives witnessing how others present themselves in written form.
• Focus on your passions - no sense writing about themes that don't provoke your creative interests.
• Vocbulary - try an online thesaurus for words you use most often in writing, find new and alternate ways to express yourself.

Ed

 

[Fino]

Write, write, write, and write. And read, read, read. Every day, as much as you can. That’s the only way to improve your writing skills.

Dang, I scrolled down to type exactly that. Here's my version:

1. Write
2. Read
The end.

Your version is clearer and more precise! Thank you!

 

[Mia]

Write what you know.

 

[Mary Terry]

What is the purpose of your writing? Are you trying to entertain, educate, or express your private feelings? Who is your audience? The answers to those questions will drive your writing style.

In general, you need to just write, walk away from what you wrote, review what you wrote the next day, condense every sentence, eliminate unnecessary words, make it logically flow from one expressed thought to the next expressed thought, and doublecheck your punctuation.

I practiced law for nearly 40 years so I wrote and spoke for a living. I have a terse, blunt writing style developed over decades because judges have minimal time to read everything put before them. Brevity, logic and persuasion were my best tools as an attorney. An old lawyer told me when I first started practicing law to always follow the KISS principle - keep it simple, stupid - which always stood me in good stead.

 

[Metalhead]

What is the purpose of your writing? Are you trying to entertain, educate, or express your private feelings? Who is your audience? The answers to those questions will drive your writing style.

In general, you need to just write, walk away from what you wrote, review what you wrote the next day, condense every sentence, eliminate unnecessary words, make it logically flow from one expressed thought to the next expressed thought, and doublecheck your punctuation.

I practiced law for nearly 40 years so I wrote and spoke for a living. I have a terse, blunt writing style developed over decades because judges have minimal time to read everything put before them. Brevity, logic and persuasion were my best tools as an attorney. An old lawyer told me when I first started practicing law to always follow the KISS principle - keep it simple, stupid - which always stood me in good stead.

The purpose of my writing is me wanting to take on film criticism as a hobby. I want to have fun with it, and to me this is very much fun, but that does not mean I can’t want to step my game up with it at the same time.

So, I should keep my writing simple and clean, and not like that song from Kingdom Hearts, either. I am afraid to use a thesaurus like somebody above mentioned because pulling out obscure words for the hell of it is trying way too hard to look smart and that will come off as pretentious.

 

[Mary Terry]

You have a natural ability to write which you can hone to a fine skill with practice. Please don't view this as overbearing but the following is how I'd quickly revise what you wrote:

The purpose of my writing is to take on film criticism as a hobby. I want to have fun with it and improve my writing skills at the same time.

So, I should keep my writing simple and clean, unlike that song from Kingdom Hearts. I am afraid to use a thesaurus as mentioned above because pulling out obscure words for the hell of it is trying way too hard to look smart and will come off as pretentious.

You can do this very well so do keep working on it!

 

[Metalhead]

You have a natural ability to write which you can hone to a fine skill with practice. Please don't view this as overbearing but the following is how I'd quickly revise what you wrote:

The purpose of my writing is to take on film criticism as a hobby. I want to have fun with it and improve my writing skills at the same time.

So, I should keep my writing simple and clean, unlike that song from Kingdom Hearts. I am afraid to use a thesaurus as mentioned above because pulling out obscure words for the hell of it is trying way too hard to look smart and will come off as pretentious.

You can do this very well so do keep working on it!

Not overbearing at all. I actually appreciate your insight.

 

[Rabscuttle]

I'd (and in fact, I do, which would be what, I'o?) second the suggestion of having some else read and critique it. I don't know about you, but I, for one, am singularly vulnerable to cryptomnesia. Even if you just want to share your thoughts among other hobbyists, it can really turn people against you.

 

[Progster]

Writing is often an ongoing process. Make an initial draft, leave it a while to cook or marinate or whatever metaphor you prefer, come back the next day or in a week to it re-read, edit, polish up. Aim not to be perfect, but to get the best possible version, because you are always going to find things to change - there needs to be a cut-off point when you say, "I've done as much as I can on this, now time to publish."

Reading other reviews will also help to see what works and what doesn't., and might help you to develop your own particular style. As you progress, you will naturally improve and it will become easier.

 

[Metalhead]

I just thought I would post a couple of reviews here and see what you all have to say about them.

Bleach Season One – The Substitute (2004-2005)

Grade – 4.5 / 5

Format – English Dubbed

Rating – TV-14

Number of Episodes – 20


Few anime series in the last couple of decades have captured the world’s attention like Tite Kubo’s creation, Bleach, managed to pull off. Given the almost perfectly consistent narrative thrust of the first season, it is easy to see what made this series so popular in its early years. For a series that later became notorious for the large amount of filler episodes, I can assure you that the first season is narratively lean.


Most of the standard shonen anime staples are here. A punky young protagonist with a tragedy in his past (Ichigo), a mysterious young woman who totally reshapes his world (Rukia), the childhood classmate female friend who cooks the most atrocious foods imaginable (Orihime), the rival who later becomes a friend (Uryu), the token weapons that just get more and more powerful as the story progresses, the shouting out of the names of weapons and powers while attacking, and so on. All of this seldom fails to entertain me, so there might be some bias in my opinions here. This series is definitely not going to win any points for originality.


Ichigo is a 15-year-old punk who initially is all talk, but that is nothing new for this genre at all. What is impressive is that most of the characters on his side are instantly likable. As he fights monsters known as Hollows against an ever increasing rising of personal stakes, I found myself getting lost in Kubo’s expanding world. Whether Ichigo is trying to free a young boy’s soul from the tyranny of a serial killer or avenging the death of his mother, things never got dull in this batch of episodes.


As far as the English dialogue track goes, it is a standard Viz studio dub that remains consistently easy on the ears. Nothing really stands out about it, but it gets the job done well enough. The low-budget TV animation quality has its own charms to it. The best thing this first season has going for it is the momentum in its storytelling, and in neverending shonen anime series, that means everything. This is probably one of the best opening seasons to shonen anime that I have come across for that reason alone. It is easily bingeable and rarely ever boring.

———

Annihilation (2018)

Grade – 5/5

Length – 116 Minutes

Rating – R


Alex Garland is a filmmaker who has mastered the craft of creating films that are loaded with visual opulence, and Annihilation, his second feature film, is one of the most visually striking films I have ever seen. It is accompanied with an aural soundtrack and some heavy psychological probing of its characters to create a mood piece that works better as a metaphor than it does as a straightforward science fiction movie. Both great beauty and heavy duty nightmare fuel are presented here.


There is a sense of detachment from its primarily female central cast as they engage on what amounts to a suicide mission. There is a shimmering wall that is growing in proximity around a lighthouse, and most of what enters never comes out. The sole exception is a soldier who finds himself in the house he lived with his wife in. His wife, Lena (Natalie Portman), is shortly after picked up and sent to a scientific facility along with her very physically ill husband. Shortly after that, she commits to joining a team of scientists to figure out what is inside the shimmering wall in order to try to save her husband’s life. At least, that is her surface explanation for joining the expedition.


This is a beautifully produced exploration of self loathing and hopelessness, and the whole film makes a lot more sense on a psychological level than it does on a logical one. It is no small detail that every woman on this expedition has trauma in their past in one form or another. It also is no small detail that Lena’s husband had his own reasons for engaging in a previous expedition into the shimmer, and was the first person to come out of it despite being in a physically ill form. The more that is revealed, the more all of this makes sense as a narrative metaphor for the character’s internal struggles.


The performances are all believably tense, but Garland is more interested in observing the characters from the outside than making the audience really feel their pain. In this case, that is not necessarily make for a bad cinematic decision. Annihilation is equally fascinating and unsettling. In my experience, it was much better the second time around than it was upon my initial viewing. Watch it once for the tense mood and the rich cinematography, then watch it a second time for the deeper meanings behind the narrative.

 

[Kalinychta]

I just thought I would post a couple of reviews here and see what you all have to say about them.

Bleach Season One – The Substitute (2004-2005)

Grade – 4.5 / 5

Format – English Dubbed

Rating – TV-14

Number of Episodes – 20


Few anime series in the last couple of decades have captured the world’s attention like Tite Kubo’s creation, Bleach, managed to pull off. Given the almost perfectly consistent narrative thrust of the first season, it is easy to see what made this series so popular in its early years. For a series that later became notorious for the large amount of filler episodes, I can assure you that the first season is narratively lean.


Most of the standard shonen anime staples are here. A punky young protagonist with a tragedy in his past (Ichigo), a mysterious young woman who totally reshapes his world (Rukia), the childhood classmate female friend who cooks the most atrocious foods imaginable (Orihime), the rival who later becomes a friend (Uryu), the token weapons that just get more and more powerful as the story progresses, the shouting out of the names of weapons and powers while attacking, and so on. All of this seldom fails to entertain me, so there might be some bias in my opinions here. This series is definitely not going to win any points for originality.


Ichigo is a 15-year-old punk who initially is all talk, but that is nothing new for this genre at all. What is impressive is that most of the characters on his side are instantly likable. As he fights monsters known as Hollows against an ever increasing rising of personal stakes, I found myself getting lost in Kubo’s expanding world. Whether Ichigo is trying to free a young boy’s soul from the tyranny of a serial killer or avenging the death of his mother, things never got dull in this batch of episodes.


As far as the English dialogue track goes, it is a standard Viz studio dub that remains consistently easy on the ears. Nothing really stands out about it, but it gets the job done well enough. The low-budget TV animation quality has its own charms to it. The best thing this first season has going for it is the momentum in its storytelling, and in neverending shonen anime series, that means everything. This is probably one of the best opening seasons to shonen anime that I have come across for that reason alone. It is easily bingeable and rarely ever boring.

———

Annihilation (2018)

Grade – 5/5

Length – 116 Minutes

Rating – R


Alex Garland is a filmmaker who has mastered the craft of creating films that are loaded with visual opulence, and Annihilation, his second feature film, is one of the most visually striking films I have ever seen. It is accompanied with an aural soundtrack and some heavy psychological probing of its characters to create a mood piece that works better as a metaphor than it does as a straightforward science fiction movie. Both great beauty and heavy duty nightmare fuel are presented here.


There is a sense of detachment from its primarily female central cast as they engage on what amounts to a suicide mission. There is a shimmering wall that is growing in proximity around a lighthouse, and most of what enters never comes out. The sole exception is a soldier who finds himself in the house he lived with his wife in. His wife, Lena (Natalie Portman), is shortly after picked up and sent to a scientific facility along with her very physically ill husband. Shortly after that, she commits to joining a team of scientists to figure out what is inside the shimmering wall in order to try to save her husband’s life. At least, that is her surface explanation for joining the expedition.


This is a beautifully produced exploration of self loathing and hopelessness, and the whole film makes a lot more sense on a psychological level than it does on a logical one. It is no small detail that every woman on this expedition has trauma in their past in one form or another. It also is no small detail that Lena’s husband had his own reasons for engaging in a previous expedition into the shimmer, and was the first person to come out of it despite being in a physically ill form. The more that is revealed, the more all of this makes sense as a narrative metaphor for the character’s internal struggles.


The performances are all believably tense, but Garland is more interested in observing the characters from the outside than making the audience really feel their pain. In this case, that is not necessarily make for a bad cinematic decision. Annihilation is equally fascinating and unsettling. In my experience, it was much better the second time around than it was upon my initial viewing. Watch it once for the tense mood and the rich cinematography, then watch it a second time for the deeper meanings behind the narrative.

Are you primarily interested in writing movie reviews, then? You’re on the right path, I’d say. Definitely better than most people, so I’d say spend the next three or so years writing and experimenting and finding your unique voice (and also reading, reading, reading as much as possible) and you’ll be well upon your way to becoming a damn decent writer.