If you want to become a better writer, it will greatly help you to critique others. Read anything at, below, or above your level, and give it a solid critique. Consider all of the aspects of writing you know about and judge how well somebody's work stands. Consider technical aspects, like rhythm, movement, and melody, and consider deeper aspects like plot, believability, consistency, and interest.
If you can, critique these pieces objectively. You can enjoy a piece of writing that has no kind of rhythm, but you should at least be able to recognize that it is lacking. This is an important skill because, for as much as writing is intimate and intuitive, there is a cold, technical aspect of writing that must be appeased.
After you have done an objective critique, you should do a personal critique. When you read that piece of writing, how did it make you feel? Where you confused or lost? Did it surprise you or was it boring? These are questions that should be easy to answer because they're based on emotions and immediate reactions. The reason you do thihs is to compare it to your objective critique.
If an essay was perfectly logical and step-by-step, but it was still confusing, there is an issue. Why did this happen? Did the author move too quickly? Did they put in extraneous information that cluttered up the important parts? Discover whatever causes these dissonances in the objective and subjective critiques and then fix them.
Critiquing is always beneficial. For one thing, it keeps your skills sharp. For another thing, it keeps these aspects of writing in your conscious mind. Sure, you may naturally know how to make rhythm in your writing, but when you don't actively think about it, you don't realize when you get lazy or sloppy, or you may simply miss an opportunity to do something special.
Critique others, so that you can critique yourself.
About Me
- Kevin Bahler
- I am a writer. A writer is one who writes. By the same logic, I am also a thinker, an observer, and a puzzle solver. I am a graduate from the State University of New York at Cortland with a degree in Professional Writing. The idea of the program is that one studies all three aspects of writing as a whole: Creative Writing, Technical Writing, and Rhetoric. The knowledge I have gained in those subjects is put to use in every aspect of my life. The worst thing a person can be is boring. I am most interested in people who can pique my interests. An example is people who can correctly use the word 'pique'.
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