August Writing Challenges: Day 21 - Writing a Critique

August. The summer is nearly over. Kids are going back to school. You now have some time on your hands.  Okay, you still have a list of chores a mile long, but let's put writing at the top of the priority list, okay?

I am going to challenge you with a writing prompt every day this month. Are you up for it? I hope so.

The writing challenges will be about a variety of topics and hopefully cause you to dig into your writing toolbox to complete with emotional skill.

Watch out, I just might throw in a fun one, well, just for fun!

For the twenty-first challenge we're going to turn the tables and you are going to write a critique.

Critiques are similar to reviews except they address a writer rather than a potential audience; a critique explains what's working and not working to the author in an effort to help a fellow writer improve his/her work.

In a critique, you start by listing what you liked about the piece. Then, you list the areas that could be strengthened. Don't try to change the piece into what you would have done as a writer; take it for what it is.

Finally a proper critique discusses the work, not the person who created it. Your objective is to use positive, supportive language framed in the context of how the piece could be improved.

Here is your challenge:
Choose a piece of writing and compose a critique. You can use a book, short story, poem, article, or blog post. You will address the critique to the author, but you will not send it to the author. Also, your critique will discuss the work, not the person who created it. The length of your critique will depend on how long the piece of writing is and how deeply you evaluate it.

TIPS: While the focus of this exercise is to evaluate and analyze the overall content of a piece of writing, you should also look for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes as well as typographical errors.

As a change of variety, you could also do this exercise using a TV show or movie, or any kind of story or art medium.

This exercise teaches you to look at a piece of writing objectively and assess it thoughtfully in an effort to consider how it might be improved. Writing critiques helps you build skills that benefit your own writing projects.

Enjoy!

10 Ways to Develop Style

We are all looking for ways to improve our writing. Today, I thought I would help you develop your style. So, what is style? When in the discussion of writing, style is "the way in which an idea is expressed, not the idea itself."

1. Think About Style -  Think about how you want to express your idea. Use all of your senses.

2. Listen to What you Write - Think of your writing as music. The words you write make sounds, and when those sounds are in harmony, the writing will work. Read your writing aloud. Listen for the beat. Listen for gaps where the music doesn't work. "There are no good sounds or bad sounds, just as there are no good notes or bad notes in music. It is the way in which you combine them that can make the writing succeed or fail. It's the music that matters." states Gary Provost.

3. Mimic Spoken Language - Writing should be conversational. Your writing should convey to the reader a sense of conversation. Mimic spoken language in the variety of its music, in the simplicity of its words, in the directness of its expression. Writing provides time for contemplation. Use it well.

4. Vary Sentence Length - Vary the sentence length and you create music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm. A lilt, a harmony. Write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader's ear. Don't just write words. Write music.

5. Vary Sentence Construction - Subject. Predicate. Object. That's how we were taught early in life to construct sentences. However, identical sentence structure can become boring to readers. Of course, you should strive for clarity and not arrange your sentences in a way that strangles their logic. Keep the primary elements of the sentence dancing so that they will create their own music.

6. Write Complete Sentences - Complete sentences have a subject and a predicate. You should always try to write complete sentences. Good writing often contains incomplete sentences. The incomplete sentence is a useful tool. Using it wisely can invigorate the music of your words. Like a chime or the beat of a drum.

7. Show, Don't Tell - When you are showing people something, you are trusting them to make up their minds for themselves. Readers like to be trusted. Don't dictate to them. Let them see the person, situation, or thing you are describing, and they will not only like what you have written, they will like you for trusting them.

8. Keep Related Words Together - Adjectives should be placed near the nouns they describe so they don't appear to be describing some other noun. In the same vein, adverbs should be close to verbs they modify, and dependent clauses should be near the words on which they depend for meaning.

9. Use Parallel Construction - Just as the steady beat of a drum can often enrich a melody, the repetition of a sound can often improve the music of your writing. When you deliberately arrange words and sounds in similar fashion to show the reader the similarity of information contained in sentences it is called parallel construction.

10. Don't Force a Personal Style - Style is your writing. It is tangled in the content of your words and the nature of you. Do not create some kind of persona in your head and try to capture it on paper. Do not try to write like Erma Bombeck, Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway or anybody else. Write well and without self-consciousness. Only then will your own style emerge.

If you follow these simple points, you'll be writing your own music and it will be delightful to the reader and to yourself.

Writing Reference - 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Gary Provost

Writing Tips - 5 Bits of Writing Advice

From Gotham Writers' Workshop Inc. and an article in The Guardian comes some great advice about writing from P.D. James.

5 Bits of Writing Advice

1. Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.

2. Read widely and with discrimination. bad writing is contagious.

3. Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.

4. Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.

5. Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer - however happy, however tragic - is ever wasted.

Writing Tips - 11 Composition Principles

From Gotham Writers' Workshop Inc. comes 11 Composition Principles from the authors of The Elements of Style from which comes the wisdom of the Elementary Principles of Composition.

1. Choose a suitable design and stick to it.

2. Make the paragraph the unit of composition.

3. Use the active voice.

4. Put statements in positive form.

5. Use definite, specific, concrete language.

6. Omit needless words.

7. Avoid a succession of loose sentences.

8. Express coordinate ideas in similar form.

9. Keep related words together.

10. In summaries, keep to one tense.

11. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.

An excellent source of writing tips. We'll visit this tiny book again.