The evolution of your writing

[LadyN]

So let’s be honest, our writing is completely different than what if was a few years ago. For me personally, it hasn’t gotten better. But for you all, how has it changed?

Mines went from being pretty well executed with a really bad and lazy story idea to now being much more diverse and expanded but subpar execution.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

Honestly I can not tell, improvement in art is more easily trackable than writing.

Probably (and hopefully) it become more concise and less purple in prose, kinda more coherent dialogue, and slightly better English. I cannot compare it fairly because the earlier chapters have been through way more edits in a longer time than a newer ones (which some are unedited).

[KhanSpring]

I would say that mine has matured. It used to be very cliche for the fantasy genre and young adult, while many of my characters were one dimentional Marry Sues, but as I grew older I realised that the world is not just black and white, while people are not simply good and bad.

[Kura]

I had little confidence in my writing because of my bad English (ESL household) and dyslexia, eventually I lost all confidence in my writing and now I will not attempt to write anything that's not script format.

[cherrystark]

I think mine has improved because I'm much more confident in my own abilities as a writer. I found a story I was working on when I was like 15 or 16, post-Twilight. I wasn't a fan of Twilight but I thought the idea of a supernatural romance was interesting. It was SUPER cringey. I can always share portions later if someone wants to revel in the cringe with me. But my point is that I'm much happier with what I'm working on right now. It's the stuff you write as a teen compared to what you write as an adult.

[ble]

Honestly I can not tell, improvement in art is more easily trackable than writing.

Yep, i have the same answer.

I consider myself artist first than writer, so i mostly focus on how to improve my art.

[girinma]

I've done a lot less creative writing in the past few years, but the larger academic projects I've done have helped me a lot with effectively outlining and using small bits of time. It's embarrassing but up until the last year, I was trying to write the final product immediately with minimal notes for each chapter. If I couldn't figure out how to continue a scene, I just sat there blankly instead of going on to jot down summary points for future scenes and coming back later. I don't know when I started working this way, because I used to write scenes out of order all the time when I was younger. Maybe it was a side effect of me constantly pushing off papers to the last minute and writing them all in one go? I also feel I've gotten better at writing fight scenes, but there's still plenty of room for improvement, lol.

[Dysis]

So let’s be honest, our writing is completely different than what if was a few years ago

Uh-huh.

[IndigoShirtProd]

I was such a pretentious writer when I was a teenager, youger teens like 11-15. There was a lot of emotion flux in my life at that time so I projected it into my literature. I very much thought my work was better and deeper than it really was. I've gotten much more grounded when it comes to writing now. I did have one or two good passages occasionally when I was younger. Now, not only do I think my writing is better, I think it's more accesible.

[domisotto]

I started with tragic elves.

Then I tried to evolve and write deeper and more varied characters. Now, I am back to the bad boys with abs, though not the elves.

The internet didn’t change.

[SagaHolmgaard]

Hmm, I think I'm writing a lot longer introspective paragraphs, for better and for worse. Probably because I've gotten more introspecive as I got older.
But at the same time, I've gotten HORRIBLE at writing actions xD I blame that Ive started writing comics scripts where it's just "Person A does X. Person B says Y." and I kinda... lost the skill to write actions in a different way.

[MeltingCORE]

I've worked really hard on making my worldbuilding the best it can be over the years! It's not perfect but I do take a lot of time to research different things (science, history, government) to make my imaginary worlds feel real. I think my prose in general has gotten better? As a teen I used to be chided by my creative writing teachers for trying to make everything sound poetic and too "anime". Nowadays I keep some of my poetic descriptions in there but I don't let it overwhelm the narrative either. I think I've found a good balance! So that's my evolution haha.

[kmlangleyauthor]

As someone who just read through a decade old story... DIALOGUE I think I’ve gotten to the point that I can make dialogue flow really naturally. Also, character motivations, but I feel like that’s almost a whole different topic

[therosesword]

I was such a pretentious writer when I was a teenager,

Weren't we all?

[therosesword]

Surprisingly enough, the core of my writing has not changed. I do not seek the angst, pathos ridden stories, I do not seek deep meaning that makes people stop and contemplate the existence of navels. I simply try to tell a good story in a manner pleasing to the reader and not compromising my way of telling it.

I was mostly all audio drama/play and advertising for many years and just this past year gone into prose/short story/novels. I'm better than I thought I would be but not nearly as good as I want to be. And I'm fine with that because when you reach the point where you think you're perfect you may as well give it up. Perfection implies stagnation and no growth.

[GD_Cruz]

Hey,

This feels like an interesting topic. Hope you don't mind if I jump in.

I used to emulate my favorite authors, not that I could. I tried but failed to do Rick Riordan for a long time before I found my real voice which was a little more mature than the MG audience I was targeting. I got rejected a bunch by publishing agents who said my writing was great but the manuscript needed work, so that brought me back to the drawing board where I had to revamp my style completely.

Although I still love to write in first-person, past-tense perspective, I discovered I write smoother in 3rd-person, although I loose a bit of the character voice I want to project. Have you guys had that challenge?

Lastly, I did the whole Webnovel stint, yeah that place with the daily chapter requirements, and although I got faster as a writer with 200+ chapters to my belt, the prose just kept getting worse and worse. So I guess I've gotten worse this 2020... Sad.

[sxxaint]

Since i was a teen, number one is I finish novels now instead of endless middles! yaay! But other than that, I'd say my main improvement is how I no longer over-describe actions and feelings and backstory. The shift from 'tell' to 'show' in those areas has honestly improved my content so much - i put a lot more trust in the audience to figure things out now, and it evokes a much deeper emotional reaction.

I also have a much stronger voice and my descriptions are sparkling in comparison

Also I hide my edgy content better now

[shfra13]

I'd like to think... hella improvement. I'm currently rewriting a story that I started 6 years ago, and seeing how cringey my writing -- I'd say, it improved quite a lot. I used to write too many dialog and use the same word again and again (and, yes, again). Now, though, even when my vocab literally diminishes, I still try to find ways to describe things -- though haven't been writing in a few years, so kinda still crawling my way back.

On the other hand, genre-wise, has been the biggest change. In the past, I only write romance and BL. A lot of them were angst with unnecessary character death and sad emo kids, thinking that happy endings aren't superior endings. Now -- I can't kill even one of my characters. They are all my children. I love me some happy ever after. Also, I never dared to write Fantasy, thinking that worldbuilding is too hard and all. Now, Fantasy is something I'm kinda really digging.

So, yeah. I evolved to my true form. I was a Pidgey 8 years ago. Now I'm Pidgeot.

[Puck]

I got better at it by copying other people´s work and with learning the theory of it. What´s also helpful for me are patterns like the hero´s journey. Making character sheets and thinking of a detailed backstory for my characters also helped me alot. Dialogues are still hard for me in german or in english

[kkaawmics]

Love this topic and seeing everyone's introspection!

I think I've had some similar experiences with shedding pretentiousness older pieces from like 2014 are littered with dense faux-LOTR style descriptions that were an absolute slog to get through.

I've also recently started trying to play with formatting and the visual appearance of the text. So experimenting with line breaks, left-right justified, italics, and seeing how it can change the reading experience for prose. Poetry already does so much of this, so I wonder what we can learn from it! (Unfortunately Tapas doesn't have much in the way of unique formatting in novels yet, so these experiments remain in my docs)