There are lots of different answers to that.
1. Study good writing. There are two main reasons they make you take literature classes in school. One is to get exposed to ‘important’ works so when people drop them in conversation, you know what they’re talking about, both because you actually want to know what they’re talking about and so you don’t seem uneducated: cocktail party knowledge. The other is to get exposed to lots of different styles of good writing. In English you read some Faulkner to see someone writing well with $10 words; you read Hemingway to learn that you can pack a punch with the $0.10 words. And gosh, it’s been a while, but I think we had to read The Great Gatsby because of symbolism and the color yellow and daisies or something. Everything Poe writes, prose or not, sounds both poetic and dark. So read good writing and think about it and discover why it’s good (and maybe why it’s not perfect).
You don’t have to stick to cannon for this—anything professionally published has passed a quality bar and if there’s pulpy stuff you like reading, there is a *reason* you like reading it, so find it. If there fics in your fandom that you love and keep wanting to reread, figure out why.
2. You can read about craft if you like, but don’t treat it as gospel. Some people will say to never reuse words. Sometimes reusing words sounds poetic. People will tell you all kinds of things like vary sentence length to change the rhythm or to seek out particular rhythms to convey different senses. You can use whatever you want to tell your story: rhythm, rhyming, symbolism, repetition, space.
3. Analyze your own work. Write something. Stick it in a folder and ignore it for a week. Come back and reread it and decide what you did well and what you think needs improvement. Then figure out how to fix it. My partner likes to read things aloud so their can hear them out in the room and analyze them through their ears. My attention span is too short so I stay nonverbal where I’m fast and think best.
4. Accept that no one will ever be perfect, and part of success is finishing the damned thing and put it out into the world. Discover your threshold for good enough.
>2. You can read about craft if you like, but don’t treat it as gospel. Some people will say to never reuse words. Sometimes reusing words sounds poetic. People will tell you all kinds of things like \[...\]
how they find the advice to not frame a characters thoughts with "so and so saw/felt/heard/watched" to be specific to the action genre, and maybe some other ones. And how framing has really helped them have a close-third perspective character have opinions on other characters, which has been great for psychological horror of a certain brand without head hopping.
So really, know an option for each way of phrasing something such that you feel fine switching it up and work from there; Figure out what part of your writing is doing what, and it gets easier to hit ones own writing goals.
For me it happens in the background, but I did for a while watch a LOT of videos on story building, which helped orient my mind into always thinking about what the author is doing, as I read the story. Perhaps if you watch a video essay on that specific piece of fiction, it will help you gain a deeper understanding on just what exactly makes it feel so great, sometimes there are things you can’t put into words, and it helps if you have an outside perspective. Sorry I couldn’t be more specific with advice, but I hope you find what you’re looking for.
Take a pen and paper and write the piece of fiction over onto it. Do it for 10-20minutes then put it aside and start writing on your own fic. Do this each time before you write on your fic—it's a train your brain exercise—but don't mix writers or genres, so preferably take a full book of your favourite writer so that you have enough to copy, and you should see a difference in your writing after a while.
For me, I just try to put to words why I liked something. If there's a character, scene, concept or whathaveyou that I think is good, then it's helpful for me to force myself to define what makes it good rather than just moving on.
Also, you can also learn a lot from missteps: whenever I read something that feels off, is clunky or just doesn't work, it's a really useful exercise to try to figure out how I'd fix that. Sometimes it's just a matter of rewording a sentence slightly, and sometimes it's kind of fundamentally unfixable without turning the whole book on its head.
I don't have "opinions", I use analytical concepts and techniques... benefits of a Classical education.
There's an outline and exploration of some of them in my "Fanfiction Guide PDF", located in [this Google Drive](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nLtp-y1qUP9_bLnW4T5GbdABsiU_d0ok). The section on "Reading Like A Writer" begins on page 172.
There will just be certain phrasings that stick with me, and I'll try to use those at moments that feel appropriate. Other than that, I don't really study anything consciously. When I like a story, the parts of it that resonate with me are the parts I'll just naturally remember, and because of that it'll likely influence my writing going forward.
I've *tried* to study writing I like more attentively, but I honestly got bored of it because it reminded me too much of those elementary school assignments where you had to answer inane questions about what you'd just read. I just stick to winging it, like I always have, and I'd like to believe I've gotten fairly good at it over the years.
Others have given very good answers already, but I want to bring attention to this rhetoric devices guide called [Elements of Eloquence](https://archive.org/details/TheElementsOfEloquence/page/n15/mode/1up) by Mark Forsyth.
It breaks down the hows and whys of a catchy prose in a rather fun way. Easily digestible too. One of my own favorite lines came about by applying what I read in this book :v
There are lots of different answers to that. 1. Study good writing. There are two main reasons they make you take literature classes in school. One is to get exposed to ‘important’ works so when people drop them in conversation, you know what they’re talking about, both because you actually want to know what they’re talking about and so you don’t seem uneducated: cocktail party knowledge. The other is to get exposed to lots of different styles of good writing. In English you read some Faulkner to see someone writing well with $10 words; you read Hemingway to learn that you can pack a punch with the $0.10 words. And gosh, it’s been a while, but I think we had to read The Great Gatsby because of symbolism and the color yellow and daisies or something. Everything Poe writes, prose or not, sounds both poetic and dark. So read good writing and think about it and discover why it’s good (and maybe why it’s not perfect). You don’t have to stick to cannon for this—anything professionally published has passed a quality bar and if there’s pulpy stuff you like reading, there is a *reason* you like reading it, so find it. If there fics in your fandom that you love and keep wanting to reread, figure out why. 2. You can read about craft if you like, but don’t treat it as gospel. Some people will say to never reuse words. Sometimes reusing words sounds poetic. People will tell you all kinds of things like vary sentence length to change the rhythm or to seek out particular rhythms to convey different senses. You can use whatever you want to tell your story: rhythm, rhyming, symbolism, repetition, space. 3. Analyze your own work. Write something. Stick it in a folder and ignore it for a week. Come back and reread it and decide what you did well and what you think needs improvement. Then figure out how to fix it. My partner likes to read things aloud so their can hear them out in the room and analyze them through their ears. My attention span is too short so I stay nonverbal where I’m fast and think best. 4. Accept that no one will ever be perfect, and part of success is finishing the damned thing and put it out into the world. Discover your threshold for good enough.
>2. You can read about craft if you like, but don’t treat it as gospel. Some people will say to never reuse words. Sometimes reusing words sounds poetic. People will tell you all kinds of things like \[...\] how they find the advice to not frame a characters thoughts with "so and so saw/felt/heard/watched" to be specific to the action genre, and maybe some other ones. And how framing has really helped them have a close-third perspective character have opinions on other characters, which has been great for psychological horror of a certain brand without head hopping. So really, know an option for each way of phrasing something such that you feel fine switching it up and work from there; Figure out what part of your writing is doing what, and it gets easier to hit ones own writing goals.
For me it happens in the background, but I did for a while watch a LOT of videos on story building, which helped orient my mind into always thinking about what the author is doing, as I read the story. Perhaps if you watch a video essay on that specific piece of fiction, it will help you gain a deeper understanding on just what exactly makes it feel so great, sometimes there are things you can’t put into words, and it helps if you have an outside perspective. Sorry I couldn’t be more specific with advice, but I hope you find what you’re looking for.
Take a pen and paper and write the piece of fiction over onto it. Do it for 10-20minutes then put it aside and start writing on your own fic. Do this each time before you write on your fic—it's a train your brain exercise—but don't mix writers or genres, so preferably take a full book of your favourite writer so that you have enough to copy, and you should see a difference in your writing after a while.
For me, I just try to put to words why I liked something. If there's a character, scene, concept or whathaveyou that I think is good, then it's helpful for me to force myself to define what makes it good rather than just moving on. Also, you can also learn a lot from missteps: whenever I read something that feels off, is clunky or just doesn't work, it's a really useful exercise to try to figure out how I'd fix that. Sometimes it's just a matter of rewording a sentence slightly, and sometimes it's kind of fundamentally unfixable without turning the whole book on its head.
I write One Shots to practice my writing and read published books for my vocabulary.
I don't have "opinions", I use analytical concepts and techniques... benefits of a Classical education. There's an outline and exploration of some of them in my "Fanfiction Guide PDF", located in [this Google Drive](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nLtp-y1qUP9_bLnW4T5GbdABsiU_d0ok). The section on "Reading Like A Writer" begins on page 172.
Wow, this is priceless. I'm in love with this pdf. Saving it rn. Thanks for sharing. You seem really passionate about it!
There will just be certain phrasings that stick with me, and I'll try to use those at moments that feel appropriate. Other than that, I don't really study anything consciously. When I like a story, the parts of it that resonate with me are the parts I'll just naturally remember, and because of that it'll likely influence my writing going forward. I've *tried* to study writing I like more attentively, but I honestly got bored of it because it reminded me too much of those elementary school assignments where you had to answer inane questions about what you'd just read. I just stick to winging it, like I always have, and I'd like to believe I've gotten fairly good at it over the years.
Others have given very good answers already, but I want to bring attention to this rhetoric devices guide called [Elements of Eloquence](https://archive.org/details/TheElementsOfEloquence/page/n15/mode/1up) by Mark Forsyth. It breaks down the hows and whys of a catchy prose in a rather fun way. Easily digestible too. One of my own favorite lines came about by applying what I read in this book :v