What can you learn from other writers to improve your skills?

Learning from other experts is the best way to improve your skills. You can learn many things from them like -> Find out their great works, analyse them, and determine how they have been done. From hook, introduction to conclusion. Analysis of every section will help you to understand the voice, tone, and other styles. -> Read and emulate their work to improve writing -> Copy their content on Hemingway and find out the readability score. It would help you to understand the readability score of your content

I use writing techniques that I see other writers use all the time. Sentence structure, story flow, etc. See what others are doing - including in fiction or nonfiction - and use that as inspiration to step up your writing game and content performance.

For sure, add variety to your reading list. Learning from other writers is a great way to improve your writing skills. While reading other writer’s work, pay obsessive attention to detail. When you are reading about same subject written by different writers, observe how everyone has their own way of saying things. Every time when you read an article or any piece of writing, ask yourself what is the purpose of this article whether it is to persuade, entertain, inform, motivate or to educate and if that article is meeting that purpose. When you learn to analyze and critique while reading, you will gain the habit of doing it while writing on your own that will make your writing more effective and authentic.

I think a good mentor is essential because without a mentor you will be wasting lot of time on reading without knowing how to be critical and also without knowing how to develop one's own voice and style.

• Vocabulary and grammar: Reading other writers can help you expand your vocabulary, learn new words and expressions, and improve your grammar and spelling. • Structure and organization: Reading other writers can help you learn how to structure and organize your writing effectively. • Creativity and originality: Reading other writers can help you spark your creativity and originality. • Feedback and improvement: Reading other writers can help you get feedback and improve your writing skills. The more you write, the more you will develop your own voice, style, and confidence as a writer. Remember to have fun and enjoy the process of learning from others and improving yourself. blush

Joining writing communities has likely had the greatest impact on my writing career because of the opportunity to find role models, ask questions, learn strategies for improvement, and be referred work. The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) has certainly aided my writing ability and boosted my bank account. I started the Association of Ghostwriters more than a decade ago because I observed more of my writer colleagues were being asked to ghostwrite and weren't sure how. And Freelance Success was probably one of the earliest writing communities I joined, where I met writers and colleagues who have become friends and advisors. The most successful writers, I suspect, are members of multiple writing communities.

While Chat GPT and Google Bard are taking briefs from us, it's only an added advantage for us to hone our own writing skills through prompts. Peer review, collective thought of developing your skills, eyeing for minute details and sometimes yourself plying the devil's advocate for other writers bring about a conducive environment for knowledge to be imparted the right way.

Read novels, journals, poems, blogs, and other content. Use power verbs, attention getting leads, and strong conclusion. Make your quotes short and to the point.

There are tons of great resources available online and offline. The problem is there are tons of great resources available online and offline. I've sifted through so many over the years, I've forgotten most. Here are my top recommendations (in no particular order): - The Elements of Style by Strunk and White - On Writing by Stephen King - Ernest Hemmingway On Writing edited by Phillips - Revising Prose by Richard Lanham - Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg - Story by Robert McKee - Grammarly's blog (/blog) - Purdue.edu's general writing site (/owl/general_writing/)

There is a saying we are all aware of, that 'practice makes a man perfect', and this applies very well to the creative profession as well. When I started my writing journey, I was a novice, not well knowledgeable about the nitty gritty, tips & tricks of it. But, with time,& learnings, I polished my skills. It is good to be a versatile professional, one who has experimented with different forms of writing, such as SEO writing, Copy writing, scripts, technical content, to name a few. As you touch base with each forms, you realise what your true calling is & eventually settle down in that niche. But, again there is no harm in gaining knowledge, either.

Also, don't forget that AI now can offer feedback. Just copy and paste your article into Google Bard, for example, and ask it to give you feedback.

Chekhov's friend Nikolai Yozhov once walked in on Chekhov and found him rewriting a short story by Tolstoy, editing it down as he went. Just to practice. By hand, of course, as this was before modern word processors. Malcolm X took things a bit farther and rewrote, by hand, an entire dictionary. To improve as a writer means cultivating both audacity and humility: audacity to revise, rework, and recreate anything and everything; and humility to subject yourself to that kind of laborious practice. Even if you don't transcribe and edit famous writers' work, edit others' work in your head as you're reading. Do this until technical skill becomes reflexive instinct. Then keep doing it so you don't lose what you've gained.

Learning from other writers offers me a palette of techniques, allowing me to see how a story can be told. I am transformed by the distinctive voices, narrative structures, and character development strategies each writer uniquely brings to their work. I enjoy many writing worlds by immersing myself in their work, fiction or non-fiction. It’s not just about learning techniques but absorbing the essence of their craft and allowing those lessons to enrich my work. It is a way of exchanging energy and ideas.

There is always room to learn more. For me, when i began writing as a profession, I consumed all sorts of written content that was everywhere around me like posters, contact cards, sites, subtitling, fiction, non fiction. I microanalyzed the details across these formats and different genres. I tried finding similarities and differences, always made note of my observations and went and looked up to validate my findings. This is how i became an editor and then a writer. I never had a regular writing ritual but i kept writing most of the time in form of notes, concising news i watched. In the end, everything has helped but maybe the openness to experiment is what clicked for me.

The question should be, what can't you learn. Every writer has its own way to craft a narrative. You may come across things you never would have imagine on your own. They might help you add different perspective to approach a narrative. It is not always about writing. It about the way they think, process, and finalize the things. As writers, we work on similar facets of writing, nonetheless, approach differently. Stay curious, and shameless while asking. If you're not a writer and reading the post, know this, out tribe loves to explain stuff. This is among the ways we express ourselves.