Your best solution is to continue writing down what thoughts and ideas come to you as you focus strongly on grammar and correct spelling.

Get into the habit now of writing the best you can, regardless if it’s in a letter to a loved one, a business associate, an e-mail, or even a question on this forum. The way you express yourself speaks volumes of your energy, intellect, and willingness to improve your writing skills.

Focus on correct capitalization, spelling, and avoid street language that is considered vulgar (suck). Find the booklet, “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White. It’s an invaluable tool to better writing and can be a quick reference sitting near your computer.

Initial drafts are always in need of correcting, so don’t get discouraged that they are sloppy and need polished. Even the best writers must concentrate on editing their drafts. Seldom are first writings considered ready for publishing.

Correcting your question is as follows:

How do I improve my writing?

I do well at coming up with ideas and I know what I want to write about, but I lack the skills at putting those thoughts and ideas into writing and making it read proficiently.

How may I improve?

All replies are appreciated.

I wish you success.

The same way you get to Carnegie Hall:

Practice. Practice. And then, when that’s done, practice some more.

And don’t be afraid to show your work to people for HONEST critique. Don’t show it to people that are going to kiss your behind — really tell them to illustrate where your gaps are. Then work towards addressing them.

Open Office is loose and it is extremely related to Microsoft Office. In truth, I use it myself. It has a few merchandise integrated within the kit, they comprise: – Writer (MS Word) – Calc (MS Excell) – Impress (MS Powerpoint) – Draw (MS Publisher) – Base (MS Access) Note: The Open Office product is at the left and the related MS Office product is in parentheses.

use software that helps you with your choice of words. So, for example if you think of one word, and It doesnt strike you as very good, the software will offer a variety of alternatives. Its a modern day cheat for those with great creative minds, but who are sometimes lacking in expressing themselves!

Oh, at first I thought you were talking about your hand-writing, and I know how to improve that, but I didn’t know you were talking about authoring something. Sorry. God Bless you.

Read challenging material outside of your usual. Expand your vocabulary. Start small; one idea, one scene, one character.

Listen (pay attention) and read others’ styles. – I know that they will provide more than enough ideas that you seek.

I practice this “show me, guide me so I can lead” technique in my Public Speaking endeavors.

Read, Read, and Read.

reading helps your vocabulary skills improve, so that you can get one of those juicy, detailed words.

also, when you read, keep a look out of how the author puts his/her description into words.

hope i helped! :]

If you really want to improve your writing, you must practice writing. Do a little bit of writing every day. Start a journal if you don’t have one. Sit and observe people in everyday situations and describe what you see. Some of my best writing classes in college had us doing that all the time. Take that information and place it into your own scene. Observe the people you know and base your characters on them. Remember that you are creating new characters and while you might start by using a friend’s name if you continue to think of your character as the real person you know you will never allow that character to try things that your friend wouldn’t do. So, expand upon the original person and let your imagination take you to a new level. I find that I can write better if I use the first LETTER of that person’s name (this allows me to identify who’s who in the real world as I set the work aside for a while) but it allows me to turn Melinda into the slut Marina without hurting Melinda’s feelings or saying SHE is a slut. Get it?

Take something simple and describe it in a lot of details. Your bedroom, for example, or the lamp on your desk. Practice looking for ways to put the simplest things into words. Examine how you say things and how others interpret those words. (One reason people don’t recommend sending a letter when your mad is because TONE is important to the reading of such a note. Harmless things are misunderstood by someone who is also angry with you.)

Is your writing speaking in the 1st person (I) or 3rd person (he or she)? Is the person speaking from an all-knowing perspective (omnipresent- god-like) or from a limited perspective (not knowing what others think or know)? Practice writing the same thing using these different perspectives and see how it changes what you can and can’t say.

Grammar, punctuation, capitalization and spelling are important in your writing and you should try to use these all the time so you don’t get into bad habits. However, they are not the beginning and end of what you are trying to do so don’t let people stop you from writing by telling you to focus on these (at this point).

If you are choosing to use slang in your writing, be sure it is appropriate to the story. In other words, don’t write “sucks” or other slang words or swear words unless they IMPROVE your story. If you want the character to seem like a young person telling a story on an email then you would use this type of language but most of the time it will take away from what you are trying to accomplish. If you are describing a street gang fighting you wouldn’t be using, “Golly gee, Marco that isn’t funny! Stop it or I’ll tell your mommy!” Right?! At the same time, if you are talking about two characters sitting in a fine restaurant having dinner you wouldn’t have one of them saying to the waiter, ” Get the F*** out of my face before I blow your F***in’ head off!” (usually!) LOL!

Punctuation is like this as well. Some authors (Faulkner, for example) chose to write without a lot of punctuation but he did it INTENTIONALLY. By not using it he made where a sentence ended or a person paused unclear and you could read it several ways. You have to do a LOT of writing to understand this method. So, I recommend you stick to the traditional method of applying punctuation.

Find someone to share your writing with. This is a difficult thing for many people because you want someone to be honest with you but not brutal. I recommend finding a writing partner who is also writing.

Then, finish these three statements:

I like…

Example: I like the way you describe your characters. The detail you included in this paragraph shows … .

I noticed …

(One professor I had told me that she noticed I used “hands” in a lot of my stories and I had never noticed it before but this ended up being a very significant observation to my writing.)

I would like to know more about …

I would like to know more about why you chose to make this character so sad. Will you give us more hints about this? How will this character interact in the story? Is this character important? (or have you created a “red herring” character here? Red herrings are characters that are meant to distract the reader into thinking they are the guilty person when their story is minimal in reality).

Notice that these three questions are meant to be positive feedback to the other person. Writing is extremely personal and we are very fragile when it comes to sharing it with others so talk it over with your partner or partners. Find the level of honesty that you are ready to accept at this time. Down the road you may have tougher skin and want a tougher critique but for now don’t go overboard. These are only suggestion however so don’t expect the other person to change their story because you would prefer something was there any more than you would be expected to do that based solely on their suggestions. (Do take the suggestions when you think they will work for you though.)

Do a lot of reading. Find an author whose writing style you enjoy and try writing something using his or her style. How is the author speaking? Are they brief in their details, matter-of-fact, or flowery?

Ask a librarian or teacher to recommend other books that are similar to this author. Or go onto a bookstore website such as Amazon because they often say, “people who chose that book also chose these books” and then they give you a list of books to choose from. (And, you don’t have to buy a book to get this, just pick it to your wish list.)

Sorry this is so long. (What can I say, I like to write.)

Good luck with your writing and remember that lots of great writers are rejected by some and appreciated by others. Be true to yourself and remember that writing is never perfect. You just need to determine when it has reached the point of finished.

Good luck and happy writing!

Practice. Practice makes perfect, you know.