As a writer, my biggest advice to you would be to read as much as you can. Find flash fiction, short stories, novellas, and even books and entire series in the genre you want to write, and read them. Pick a story (I write Horror almost exclusively, so for one exercise I chose H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness") and then read it to completion. Then, read it again while taking notes on everything the author did right that you want to emulate. How long was the longest word? How long were words on average? How many words in their sentences? How many sentences in a paragraph? What about word choice, did you ever have to look up any words? Do you think others would have to look up any words, and is that good or bad? What about the flow, what are the main points of the plot? When did the primary problem in the story show itself, and what earlier problems were there that may have seemed to be the primary problem when they were happening? Ask tons and tons of questions, and seriously look at the answers.

Then, write a lot. Write down 10 concepts for stories you want to write. Make outlines for all 10, and pick at least 5 that seem doable - if all 10 seem doable, pick all 10. Write the first draft of the first one, and then put it down for anywhere from a day to a week. Go back to reading. Come back to it, read it again - is it total shit? The likely answer, surprisingly, will be no, it'll most likely seem salvageable even if it's not as good as you thought it was when you finished it a week earlier. If you can't see how you can salvage it, toss it and move on to idea 2. If you can, show it to people. Post it on here for feedback, show it to friends, family, people you trust to give honest feedback - then take that feedback to heart as you move on and write your second one.

You'll find that by taking writing very seriously, doing intense reading, intense thinking, and intense practicing where you ask yourself, and have others answer, "What is wrong with this story?" You will improve very quickly. Your friends that you show your works to will see a noticeable improvement in your second story over the first - and by the tenth you'll seem like a whole new author, even if you're nowhere near as good as you want to be.

In short, you'll never get better at writing without doing two things: reading, and writing. I'd like to emphasize active reading (taking notes and whatnot), because many people gloss over the importance - it's very frustrating to see a work you want to emulate, and to just flail wildly until you get lucky and hit the vague theme you were going for. By doing your research and thinking hard about it, you'll get ideas on how to craft your writing to fit what you'd like - and then in doing so, you'll find out what you don't like about it, and that's where your style will come from. The synthesis of what you like about your influences, and what you wish they'd changed.

Anyway, that's the strategy I took, and it worked for me. Hope it helps, keep in mind there's nothing that works for absolutely everyone.

PS. On your comment of "It's best to try to practice actually writing comics", all writing is writing. Comics have less writing in them than stories, and your goal should be to write as much as possible. So, for practice, writing stories will give you the most for the shortest amount of time, at least for a while. Eventually you'll want to add in comic practice, but never stop writing stories if you want to improve your pacing and structure.

Practicing finishing a story is definitely the way to go. Being able to take one small story from beginning to end is much more valuable than having a bunch of unfinished epics. I think this applies to comics as well, if you don't feel like you're ready to start the art, it's still good practice to write stories. My comic1 started out as a novella, so you don't need to go straight to a script/thumbnail format when writing a story you want to use for a comic.

As far as specific writing exercises go, I'd recommend Camp Nanowrimo2. There's going to be one next month, and it's a lot like Nanowrimo if you're familiar with that, but it's less structured and you can set your own word count goals and such. Definitely a good way to keep yourself accountable to finishing a writing project!

Well, I can give you a pretty basic answer: When it comes to writing, whether if the author or reader wants to admit it or not, the story is only good if the characters are good. That means extremely fleshed out, seen at their best and their worst, and put through all kinds of situations that give the audience a deep sense of who the characters are.

As a writer, I try my best to do this over on Wattpad and will most likely be bringing some stuff over to Tapas now! Follow this advice and you should be able to improve your writing SIGNIFICANTLY ~

Write and read a crap ton and focus on introducing your character from the start to rounding your character off by the finish. Depending on what happens (events) in your piece of fiction, determine how your characters will react and perform under a particular circumstance.

Obviously after characters are down pat, grammar matters. Yet, again, at least you acknowledged the basics.

Write on rockstar!

I know this is kinda weird, but I got all sorts of writing practice through RP. That might not be for you, but it's nice to talk to someone creative and form a plot with someone.

And, as mentioned, reading helps a lot. Not just reading things, but watching things too. Since comics are a visual medium, watching movies and shows will also help you. So, read and watch your favorite things analytically. What draws you to it? What does it do that's so right to you? How do they execute their concept? What are your favorite characters and why?

Then, there's writing short stories. It'll help you get used to planning out a story. They probably aren't going to be winners, but it's good to get the bad stuff out before the good stuff comes up. Who knows. Maybe a concept you tackle in a short story will inspire you to expand on it and make it something bigger. Whatever it is, let passion drive you. That's the best way to go.

I also recommend watching Jenna Moreci1 on Youtube! Her channel is great and full of sooooooooo much writing advice! It's great stuff!

In lit classes back in High School (many moons ago : ), our practice consisted of writing 'lean' short-stories, around 1,000 to 2500 words. The emphasis was beginnings and endings.

Our teacher felt that too often we became too involved with either world building or telling the audience why we cared about the story (and therefore why the audience should care too). In short, short-stories, there's simply not enough room for that. After about the tenth one you realized that all you needed was a character, something to happen and reflection by the character; fin.

It really helped to clean up beginnings in larger short-stories/novels.

hmm... yes and no. if what you want to write is comics, writing prose is still good practice, but maybe focus more on structure, characterisation, dialogue, etc instead of wording. its also nice to be aware while writing prose, with comics in mind, of the level of dialogue vs the level of movement, to get you into a visual, action based mindset (and i dont mean action as in fighting, i mean action as in movement)

on the other hand, practicing writing comics is a very very good idea. read scott mcclouds understanding comics series (its such an eye opener, and the first one has a free pdf online) and experiment with laying out pages. you dont need to draw them to any detail or quality, focus instead on the composition of the page, the 'shots,' the panelling, the way you adapt a story to fit that form. just lay it out to tell you whats happening. adapt books you love into comics, adapt your own prose into comics, and try drafting comics with no prose to bounce from as well. getting into the habit of drafting comics (even just in your head) from things you read all the time is so fun, as well.

as an inbetween... what about looking into scripts? film scripts, tv scripts, play scripts - theyre all very different, but also all action based (theres no telling, only showing). film scripts can go into a lot of detail about the emotions and thoughts within characters, whereas tv scripts are very very prescriptive with their stage directions. every single action the actor makes is in the script (minus improv'd stuff.) and then play scripts... oh play scripts... sometimes, all you get is the dialogue. i saw a script once that had *s every time the writer wanted a transition, nothing else, and the line 'here everyone could get up and do the spanish polka. or not.' playwrites can take the absolute piss, because its a very experimental medium and directors have a lot of time and a lot of say in how the play is put on.

you should definitely read scripts. id say start with your favourite shows and films, and some classic plays (in yer face theatre is a right romp, and shakespeare has lots of films and filmed plays where you can see how directors can spin things. personally i like jb preistley) and branch out. then write them. they get your mind into that 'watching, not reading' place - and comics are somewhere in the middle. id also say try to write comics, from scripts. thats a very useful skill, and will also give you an idea of how youd want to script an artist if thats what you choose to do.

also: fanfiction. its got a motivating community, a more or less confirmed audience, its fun, with low pressure, so you can experiment and make mistakes and just write prolifically. quantity > quality in practice, so long as the quality increases.