by Stephen H

Created on: August 27, 2010   Last Updated: November 24, 2010

Story telling has long been vital to human culture, whether it be journalistic relating of news, educative passing of knowledge or creative renditions of fictional tales.  It helps ensure people have the knowledge they need to operate in society and defines and enriches our culture.  In the information age with countless publications, both on paper and increasingly in electronic form, the ability to write well and convey these stories to a wide audience has never been more important.  Writing is the oil that lubricates our modern society.  It underpins all of the professions and is key to communication in our everyday lives.  It is also a profession in its own right and a joy for millions of people who produce and/or read articles, novels, plays and poetry.

Most of us can recognize examples of good and bad writing, but it is much harder to define what good writing is.  We can point to a set of rules and criteria to judge, but then find a piece of prose that breaks all of those and yet is powerful and wonderful.  Writing is a mixture of skill and art, and the good writers know when to subvert the rules to their advantage and produce something magical.  It is the difference between painting by numbers and producing a masterpiece.  But, like any skill, the ability to write well can be nurtured and there are a variety of ways we can improve our writing.

1.     Read widely and critically.

Read a wide range of literature and critically assess what works well and equally as importantly what doesn’t work.  When you enjoy a specific piece of prose, ask yourself why you enjoyed it.  Was it the language, the way in which it built a picture in your mind, the way it resonated with your own experience or the way it helped you understand something that was new to you. 

Equally, if you didn’t enjoy it, why was that?  What was it that failed to keep your interest, did the language used distract from what the writer was trying to communicate, was it boring, did you find yourself wanting to skip passages and if so why.  Asking these questions of yourself will help you identify in a very real way the elements of good and poor writing and you can use the lessons learned to improve your own writing.

2.     Write often.

The adage that practice makes perfect is very apposite.  Try to write something everyday.  Even if it is only a small amount, it keeps

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