Critical Reading

One of the most important writing skills that you can develop is reading. The reason for this should be obvious. If you can learn to spot the mistakes that other writers make, you can find the problems in your own writing. When I say "mistakes", I don't just mean technical errors, most of which will get picked up by the copy editor, and the same with continuity errors. Sometimes those slip by, but they have nothing to teach you about writing, other than to keep careful notes. I consider it a mistake when a character makes a decision that is inconsistent with past behavior, or when a metaphor falls flat.

I find that most people can tolerate mediocre writing if the story is at all interesting. To write well, you must learn to pick out these problems. One side effect of this is that you will probably come to despise poor writing. When a writer describes a sailing ship moving "like a wolf o'er the waves" you should stop for a moment and think about the senseless and discordant imagery of that simile. If you had been passively reading, just absorbing the story, you might not notice it, but if you are looking for problems, it will jump right at you, probably to the detriment of your continuing enjoyment of the book.

When you read three pages of description detailing how skilled and deadly a certain assassin is, you should expect that the heroine will not survive an encounter with this person unless she possesses either the same type of training, or comes up with some pretty damn ingenious means of negating the assassin's advantage. All too often, you'll see the supposed killing machine get knocked off quite easily by an untrained civilian. This is lazy writing. Few things are more disappointing as a reader than feeling like you have been conned.

When you can learn to pinpoint these problems in the writing of others, you might be unpleasantly surprised by the amount of mistakes like these that creep into your own writing. Unfortunately, in the moment of creation, it is easy to miss them, so it is best to go back and read over what you write after a few days have passed. You might come up with a fantastic piece of descriptive imagery, or throw out a shocking plot twist, only to realize later, when you re-read it, that your imagery is terrible or that your plot twist seems horribly fake. It can be quite discouraging at times. I myself on a few occasions have been so horrified by my own writing that it was an effort to fix the errors and continue, rather than abandon the project in disgust at my own writing.

That brings me to my last bit of advice. Once you have developed the skill to spot bad writing, you have to grow a thick skin and adopt an attitude of perserverence, or you risk losing all confidence in your own ability. Remember the Dunning-Kruger effect? While you can sometimes safely disregard the ill-conceived advice of others, it is impossible to ignore your own criticism. What you should keep in mind is that the ability to spot your own mistakes empowers you to fix them.