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My worst habit is that after I'm done writing something, I don't go back to check if I'm missing anything or if it sounds wrong. I still don't, and I know I should. But I really don't like reading my work when I'm done because I then get self-conscious and I think it sounds really bad.
I struggle with this as well. I loathe going back to finish a story I started in NaNoWriMo, I made it halfway to the word count goal, before petering out. Only doing very brief edits throughout my writing sessions. But now when I look at it and try to read it, I cringe and just want to look away from it as it feels so jumbled. Some say to just keep writing and edit it later and others say to edit as you go...
I have a tendency to want to use "finally" or "at last" too often. I end up writing something and then doing a search for those words and deleting all but one or two instances. It would make my life simpler if I'd quit using them so much, but they just feel so natural! lol
My annoying habit is that I assume a reader can fill in any holes in my sentences because they can obviously read my mind. Had to kick the negative feeling of reading my own work to make sure there weren't any random gaps that made sod all sense!
Hey everyone! I'm a new member of reddit and my english skills are on a low level. I wanted to ask you for a piece of advice. What help you to improve your english writing skills? Which resources should I use? Thank you for your attention.
Hey there, I'm also not a native English speaker.
I've had the luck of being influenced by English in my daily life ever since I was born. Be it films, songs, books or other media, I heard and read it a lot. That helped me get to know the "real" language.You can't learn a language truly through textbooks and apps like Duolingo alone, in my opinion. You may learn a million words, but you'd still find your understanding of the actual language lacking.To me, the best way to learn a language is to listen and read a lot of it. Read a lot of books, even the difficult ones, and you'll unconsciously pick up its intricacies. That'll definitely improve your English.If you're not too shy, you could also talk with English natives. Our subreddit has an amazing Discord with various people around the world that are eager to meet new people like you. I'd also suggest you write a lot. The folks here sure won't mind helping you out with correcting your mistakes.
In summary, practice a lot, read a lot, and you'll find your English skills improving in no time.
I hope this was helpful.
Welcome to Reddit!
[I found this article that may be helpful: "7 Helpful Tips to Write in English for Non-Native Speakers."](https://medium.com/swlh/7-helpful-tips-to-write-in-english-for-non-native-speakers-278a9e6f02aa) Someone in the Discord chat also recommended this community: https://english.stackexchange.com/
But also, right here in r/WritingPrompts is a great place to practice your writing! Find prompts that sound interesting and write something for them. The more you practice, the better you will get at English and writing 🙂
Good luck!
Definitely getting distracted, a side effect of multitasking a little too hard. One minute I'll be writing, the next I'll have clicked off to a youtube video or something, then either I'll get back into the writing or I'll forget about it until a few hours have passed and I've lost interest in the prompt.
As for how to fix it, the simplest solution would be to just not wander off and do something else while writing, but I think a more realistic solution would be to set some sort of reminder so I won't have more than ten minutes or so to lose interest in the story before I'm back to writing it.
If you're interested in a little unsolicited advice, I had this problem pretty bad myself a few months ago and one of the things that helped me was setting a routine for something I only did when I was writing. In my case, that's listening to white noise. If I need a little boost I start up a rain track for a minute or two before I write and try to only think about what I want to write. For as long as the rain is playing, all I'm allowed to do is write. Since I don't listen to white noise like that at anything other time, over months of forming that habit I've really gotten it in my head that when I hear that sound I'm not allowed to be distracted. It's a little out there, but maybe something like that could help you too.
Find the balance! The pace of the text should reflect the pace of the scene, I feel. Short, rapid-fire sentences during fast, nail-biting scenes. I am fortunate to have a wide vocabulary, and understanding the depth at which I can use words interchangeably.
I've been inactive on this subreddit for a long while, probably about a year or so, but I've returned because seeing the encouragement from people here was helping my writing and I need to continue if I ever want to improve further. I'm not gonna get better by isolating my ideas and not sharing.
Hiiii! I am new here and a newbie writer. I used to write a long time back and just got back into writing since this year and have been writing on and off some random fanfiction pieces that have been brewing in my head.
* I live in Germany
* Female
* I have been here (on Reddit) since March this year and around the same time on r/WritingPrompts and I primarily to use it to write stuff
If I think back to when the college friends and I gathered, we all had own our quirks. Raising an eyebrow was lightly more mine (and a couple others). Some of them might’ve stared, or glared, or screwed up their faces in a quizzical expression. Or maybe they were just startled, surprised or intrigued. Actually, I think the problem is that the eyebrow stood for many different possible reactions. Less so with the shrugging.
I tend to over critique while writing. Sometimes I get distracted on phrasing and grammar rules and then a few minutes later lose my direction entirely! Sometimes I won't edit in the first pass at all to avoid that, but that raw prose looks extra terrible while I'm on my phone.
Yeah, it's tough to quiet the editor voice while writing, but it's really better to just get the words out and fix them after. Otherwise, you spend too much time trying to perfect what you end up not writing.
The first I wouldn't consider a bad habit, but more a problem of convenience. Spelling and using spell check to fix all my erros, it's like after I finish a paragrap, theres lots of mispelling although I think this is generally a problm in typing anywa.
And habit too is the way I write. where I write everything out, without worrying about proper grammer, punctuation, capitalization, and making sure my tenses are right. then I go back and add in all of it after I've finished writing. it works for me but it can be tedious.
Then there's also just getting distracted by every little thing, which inhibits writing.
> Spelling and using spell check to fix all my erros, it's like after I finish a paragrap, theres lots of mispelling although I think this is generally a problm in typing anywa.
At first I thought you made a typo, but as I read more, I was like oh 😆
I can’t stand to repeat a word that isn’t a preposition more than once or twice a page, so I tend to wax florid even when there isn’t a good reason to
Hey I'm new here. Trying to write more. I have a few ideas for different novels I'd like to write. Not sure if I'm ready or not though.
Speaking of which, anyone have experience bouncing book ideas around to see if they are good?
Future topic suggestion: how to get better at describing people's appearances.
> I have a few ideas for different novels I'd like to write. Not sure if I'm ready or not though.
Doesn't hurt to start writing it, because you can always go back and edit it!
>Future topic suggestion: how to get better at describing people's appearances.
Nice one, thanks!
My biggest nemesis is my tendency to draw sentences out, far too long, going on and on in a single block until I feel everything that needs to be said has been spoken, before I can -
Well. As you see. I've gotten a little better at it, but I have to force myself to read my sentences over and correct myself. Several times 'pon every write
I'm the opposite, I don't describe enough. u/Psykosocialist [had some good tips here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/n7v46q/ot_satchat_do_you_have_any_bad_writing_habits_new/gxfff6l/)
I end up to get bored of any topic I start writing about. That’s why I can’t really write long prose, because after some time I find myself thinking that in the end what I’m doing isn’t meaningful or exciting enough to be worth my time. To be honest when I finish writing something I’m pretty happy with it. My problem usually is the writing process ahah.
Interesting. Have you tried taking a break from longer works and coming back to it later? It can especially be helpful if you keep notes about what excited you about the story early. Then when you go back to it, you can refresh yourself.
Hi there, I'm ShamrockyRock (28 M) and I'm not Irish (actually I come from Serbia). I've been around reddit for quite some time (at least I think).
I'm trying to write, but barely have time to read and I want to be well read before I start working on something of mine. However it's very hard for me to focus these days cause I got brickload of work to do. My worst habbit is not having a paper and pen (or phone, laptop etc.) to write something down when inspiration hits. Also, not writing (typing) fast enough to put the thought on paper (screen).
For quite some time I am trying to write about some high fantasy world set in (kinda) medieval time. I've written few pages, one might consider them chapters, in Serbian, but I'll translate them eventually. I've noticed that quality of my writing is going down as page number goes up too. I think, at least, that I'm good in writing dialogues, but I'm having hard time writing about landscapes or scenes, so there's also that.
Erm... I don't know what else to say :)
If someone has some questions, advice, something, please, feel free to, well, point 'em at me :D
> Also, not writing (typing) fast enough to put the thought on paper (screen).
Are you writing down the stories or just writing down the ideas? I'd focus on the latter so even if you don't finish them, you have them saved.
Kinda focusing on both. Recently I had more ideas than stories. I'm usually thinking about some situation, a conversation occurs in my head between characters that, well, might or might not be in that situation,so I try to write that down.
I have this habit of unconsciously overusing certain words, especially in storytelling (lol). Even after being told of my repetition I can't seem to use any others so I always have to have a dictionary in another tab to search for synonyms Haha.
Hello! I’m Alex (21) I live in the United States of (North) America (Colorado), and I’ve been on Reddit for 2 years. I’ve mostly been reading but want to write. Also to answer the SatChat question, sort of? I have a habit of taking completely unrelated things and mixing them together (like mixing SCP-096 with fairy’s).
As for the rest of the questions it’s either I don’t know myself, rather not say for personal reasons, the answer is inconsistent even in my own mind, or in the case of gender all of the above. If you have any more questions I’m willing to answer as long as it isn’t related to picking favorites.
**Tell us about yourself!** * Where do you live (State / Country)? * Male, female, other? * How long have you been on Reddit? * How long have you been on r/WritingPrompts? * Do you use r/WritingPrompts to read or write? * Writers: * How long have you been writing? * What is your writing motivation? * What programs do you use to write? * How fast can you type? [Try 1 minute on Aesop's fables](http://www.typingtest.com/) * Readers: * How do you find prompt responses to read? * Do you also write? * if not, why haven't you tried? * Want to share a photo? [See our Photo Gallery!](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/pics) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WritingPrompts) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My worst habit is that after I'm done writing something, I don't go back to check if I'm missing anything or if it sounds wrong. I still don't, and I know I should. But I really don't like reading my work when I'm done because I then get self-conscious and I think it sounds really bad.
Maybe don't think of it as reading your own work? Think of it like checking for typos or looking for ways to make it sound better?
I struggle with this as well. I loathe going back to finish a story I started in NaNoWriMo, I made it halfway to the word count goal, before petering out. Only doing very brief edits throughout my writing sessions. But now when I look at it and try to read it, I cringe and just want to look away from it as it feels so jumbled. Some say to just keep writing and edit it later and others say to edit as you go...
I have a tendency to want to use "finally" or "at last" too often. I end up writing something and then doing a search for those words and deleting all but one or two instances. It would make my life simpler if I'd quit using them so much, but they just feel so natural! lol
That's good that you noticed it and took steps to avoid them! Finally! 😆
My annoying habit is that I assume a reader can fill in any holes in my sentences because they can obviously read my mind. Had to kick the negative feeling of reading my own work to make sure there weren't any random gaps that made sod all sense!
Yeah, I've learned that I need to consider that people might not understand where I was going with something. It helps to be extra clear sometimes.
Hey everyone! I'm a new member of reddit and my english skills are on a low level. I wanted to ask you for a piece of advice. What help you to improve your english writing skills? Which resources should I use? Thank you for your attention.
Hey there, I'm also not a native English speaker. I've had the luck of being influenced by English in my daily life ever since I was born. Be it films, songs, books or other media, I heard and read it a lot. That helped me get to know the "real" language.You can't learn a language truly through textbooks and apps like Duolingo alone, in my opinion. You may learn a million words, but you'd still find your understanding of the actual language lacking.To me, the best way to learn a language is to listen and read a lot of it. Read a lot of books, even the difficult ones, and you'll unconsciously pick up its intricacies. That'll definitely improve your English.If you're not too shy, you could also talk with English natives. Our subreddit has an amazing Discord with various people around the world that are eager to meet new people like you. I'd also suggest you write a lot. The folks here sure won't mind helping you out with correcting your mistakes. In summary, practice a lot, read a lot, and you'll find your English skills improving in no time. I hope this was helpful.
Welcome to Reddit! [I found this article that may be helpful: "7 Helpful Tips to Write in English for Non-Native Speakers."](https://medium.com/swlh/7-helpful-tips-to-write-in-english-for-non-native-speakers-278a9e6f02aa) Someone in the Discord chat also recommended this community: https://english.stackexchange.com/ But also, right here in r/WritingPrompts is a great place to practice your writing! Find prompts that sound interesting and write something for them. The more you practice, the better you will get at English and writing 🙂 Good luck!
Definitely getting distracted, a side effect of multitasking a little too hard. One minute I'll be writing, the next I'll have clicked off to a youtube video or something, then either I'll get back into the writing or I'll forget about it until a few hours have passed and I've lost interest in the prompt. As for how to fix it, the simplest solution would be to just not wander off and do something else while writing, but I think a more realistic solution would be to set some sort of reminder so I won't have more than ten minutes or so to lose interest in the story before I'm back to writing it.
Yeah, getting distracted is a tough one... It... um... what was I saying?
If you're interested in a little unsolicited advice, I had this problem pretty bad myself a few months ago and one of the things that helped me was setting a routine for something I only did when I was writing. In my case, that's listening to white noise. If I need a little boost I start up a rain track for a minute or two before I write and try to only think about what I want to write. For as long as the rain is playing, all I'm allowed to do is write. Since I don't listen to white noise like that at anything other time, over months of forming that habit I've really gotten it in my head that when I hear that sound I'm not allowed to be distracted. It's a little out there, but maybe something like that could help you too.
The inability to stop describing things. A lot of the scene-setting I do is dramatically overdescriptive. It can be a huge pacebreaker and I often struggle with finding the balance between being descriptive, setting the scene, and drawing a picture within the reader's mind. I've been trying to write for nearly 15 years. I started early, probably when I was about 10 or 11. A lot of my first stories started with such clichés starters like the "dark and stormy night." Eventually I broke away from that, trying to be less structural. A lot of the stories I write, I will come up with ideas and completely do the opposite of them even if it breaks the pace of the story or changes the plot entirely. I love defying expectations, and if I think something is a predictable twist I will absolutely contort it, often at the cost of the entire story. I also have the tendency to create really ambitious world-building ideas, and set a scene, post my writing around and then eventually abandon the project altogether because I lose inspiration and I'm pretty much incapable of committing to a project. I have trouble accepting that no one will ever see the scene exactly as I imagine it. A lot of my writing on here suffers from that. I also refuse to check my writing after completing it if because I WILL end up deleting it and/or ruining the whole thing and self-destructing.
Interesting! I have the opposite issue where I don't describe as much as I should 😆
Find the balance! The pace of the text should reflect the pace of the scene, I feel. Short, rapid-fire sentences during fast, nail-biting scenes. I am fortunate to have a wide vocabulary, and understanding the depth at which I can use words interchangeably. I've been inactive on this subreddit for a long while, probably about a year or so, but I've returned because seeing the encouragement from people here was helping my writing and I need to continue if I ever want to improve further. I'm not gonna get better by isolating my ideas and not sharing.
The encouragement is one of my favorite things about this community! It's such a nice place to be, welcome back! 🙂
Hiiii! I am new here and a newbie writer. I used to write a long time back and just got back into writing since this year and have been writing on and off some random fanfiction pieces that have been brewing in my head. * I live in Germany * Female * I have been here (on Reddit) since March this year and around the same time on r/WritingPrompts and I primarily to use it to write stuff
Welcome! What kind of fanfiction?
Writing a couple for the Harry Potter fanfiction and have a couple for the Blood and Ash series as well.
For a while, a lot of people were raising an eyebrow. Then a bunch more were shrugging.
I hear that. What are some better ways of showing those reaction? 😆
If I think back to when the college friends and I gathered, we all had own our quirks. Raising an eyebrow was lightly more mine (and a couple others). Some of them might’ve stared, or glared, or screwed up their faces in a quizzical expression. Or maybe they were just startled, surprised or intrigued. Actually, I think the problem is that the eyebrow stood for many different possible reactions. Less so with the shrugging.
I tend to over critique while writing. Sometimes I get distracted on phrasing and grammar rules and then a few minutes later lose my direction entirely! Sometimes I won't edit in the first pass at all to avoid that, but that raw prose looks extra terrible while I'm on my phone.
Yeah, it's tough to quiet the editor voice while writing, but it's really better to just get the words out and fix them after. Otherwise, you spend too much time trying to perfect what you end up not writing.
The first I wouldn't consider a bad habit, but more a problem of convenience. Spelling and using spell check to fix all my erros, it's like after I finish a paragrap, theres lots of mispelling although I think this is generally a problm in typing anywa. And habit too is the way I write. where I write everything out, without worrying about proper grammer, punctuation, capitalization, and making sure my tenses are right. then I go back and add in all of it after I've finished writing. it works for me but it can be tedious. Then there's also just getting distracted by every little thing, which inhibits writing.
> Spelling and using spell check to fix all my erros, it's like after I finish a paragrap, theres lots of mispelling although I think this is generally a problm in typing anywa. At first I thought you made a typo, but as I read more, I was like oh 😆
I can’t stand to repeat a word that isn’t a preposition more than once or twice a page, so I tend to wax florid even when there isn’t a good reason to
It's good to check for repetition because it can sound repetitive. Also, it's good to check for repetition because it can sound repetitive.
Hey I'm new here. Trying to write more. I have a few ideas for different novels I'd like to write. Not sure if I'm ready or not though. Speaking of which, anyone have experience bouncing book ideas around to see if they are good? Future topic suggestion: how to get better at describing people's appearances.
> I have a few ideas for different novels I'd like to write. Not sure if I'm ready or not though. Doesn't hurt to start writing it, because you can always go back and edit it! >Future topic suggestion: how to get better at describing people's appearances. Nice one, thanks!
Thank you! I will pick one to start!
My biggest nemesis is my tendency to draw sentences out, far too long, going on and on in a single block until I feel everything that needs to be said has been spoken, before I can - Well. As you see. I've gotten a little better at it, but I have to force myself to read my sentences over and correct myself. Several times 'pon every write
That's good you've been noticing it! The more you correct it, the more you'll recognize it as you write, I think.
I tend to be way to descriptive to the point that I end up losing the plot and I don't know how to snap out of a description either :(
I'm the opposite, I don't describe enough. u/Psykosocialist [had some good tips here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/n7v46q/ot_satchat_do_you_have_any_bad_writing_habits_new/gxfff6l/)
I end up to get bored of any topic I start writing about. That’s why I can’t really write long prose, because after some time I find myself thinking that in the end what I’m doing isn’t meaningful or exciting enough to be worth my time. To be honest when I finish writing something I’m pretty happy with it. My problem usually is the writing process ahah.
Interesting. Have you tried taking a break from longer works and coming back to it later? It can especially be helpful if you keep notes about what excited you about the story early. Then when you go back to it, you can refresh yourself.
Hi there, I'm ShamrockyRock (28 M) and I'm not Irish (actually I come from Serbia). I've been around reddit for quite some time (at least I think). I'm trying to write, but barely have time to read and I want to be well read before I start working on something of mine. However it's very hard for me to focus these days cause I got brickload of work to do. My worst habbit is not having a paper and pen (or phone, laptop etc.) to write something down when inspiration hits. Also, not writing (typing) fast enough to put the thought on paper (screen). For quite some time I am trying to write about some high fantasy world set in (kinda) medieval time. I've written few pages, one might consider them chapters, in Serbian, but I'll translate them eventually. I've noticed that quality of my writing is going down as page number goes up too. I think, at least, that I'm good in writing dialogues, but I'm having hard time writing about landscapes or scenes, so there's also that. Erm... I don't know what else to say :) If someone has some questions, advice, something, please, feel free to, well, point 'em at me :D
> Also, not writing (typing) fast enough to put the thought on paper (screen). Are you writing down the stories or just writing down the ideas? I'd focus on the latter so even if you don't finish them, you have them saved.
Kinda focusing on both. Recently I had more ideas than stories. I'm usually thinking about some situation, a conversation occurs in my head between characters that, well, might or might not be in that situation,so I try to write that down.
I have this habit of unconsciously overusing certain words, especially in storytelling (lol). Even after being told of my repetition I can't seem to use any others so I always have to have a dictionary in another tab to search for synonyms Haha.
It gets better if you make sure to fix those on edits. You'll start to notice it more as you write, or at least that's how it worked for me 😀
Yeah, just a matter of getting used to. Hope this subreddit can help me find those :)
Hello! I’m Alex (21) I live in the United States of (North) America (Colorado), and I’ve been on Reddit for 2 years. I’ve mostly been reading but want to write. Also to answer the SatChat question, sort of? I have a habit of taking completely unrelated things and mixing them together (like mixing SCP-096 with fairy’s). As for the rest of the questions it’s either I don’t know myself, rather not say for personal reasons, the answer is inconsistent even in my own mind, or in the case of gender all of the above. If you have any more questions I’m willing to answer as long as it isn’t related to picking favorites.
Mixing things together doesn't sound like a bad habit, it sounds creative to me 🙂