<p>How do you know that we’re great writers?</p>
<p>One tip is use lots of synonyms for more interesting and varied words. You can just Google synonyms while you write for an on-line sort of dictionary and replace simple or repeated words with others. Also, descriptive adjectives are an “easy” way to seem like a better writer–adding more complexity to your work and interest to your reader. My son, now 18, has been a voracious reader since age 4, everything and anything, and still is. His writing has always been years (per his teachers) years above his grade level. He loves to write. I would assume the two are tied. Fortunately his primary K-8 and high school were both very focused on writing (when it was not fashionable to be so). One other thing is that when he could not type or type well, say in 6/7/8 grades, I would type for him (as I am incredibly fast) and he would dictate papers, etc. to me. He would pace behind me just letting it flow and then revise later. While his schools were very formal in writing, I also encouraged him to write differently than that some of the time, more like novel writing–catchy openings, poignant closings, lots of good vocabulary, not repetitive words. He got a little flack now and then for not being technically on target, but it has made him a beautiful (and largely) technically correct writer. Writing is dying, so kudos for your interest in it.</p>
<p>I’ve skimmed the responses above. My take is somewhat different: writing is putting into words what’s in your head but the act of writing mostly consists of figuring out what is in your head. Every writer has a process for getting there. Some get up early and sit in a room. Others revise the same words over and over. Hemingway said if he got 100 good words he did well that day. </p>
<p>Jerry Seinfeld rents an office and sits in it working on material. Patrick O’Brian used to eat dinner and walk around in the garden thinking through a scene until he had it clearly and then he’d write it out. Some writers start with an idea and let the characters develop on the page. Others write out entire life stories as background. </p>
<p>Some of my favorite writing is by Isaac Newton. (You can find his papers online.) He would work for years on his experiments and then reduce all this material to a handful of concise pages in which all the wrong roads and mistakes nearly disappear. He’d “notice” something, meaning he’d tried a zillion combinations and this was the result. Marvels of economy. Others, like Mill, are verbose, each sentence well written, each paragraph well constructed yet the whole going on and on.</p>
<p>One suggestion is to try writing in different styles, imitating this and then that author, even in the same paper, just as art students copy masterworks. That’s helpful for learning the effect of words and punctuation used in specific ways. </p>
<p>But the essence is figuring out what you’re saying. That’s hard in school because you’re given assignments and deadlines and these don’t necessarily fit the timetable your brain is on for understanding. You will be told “simplify, simplify, simplify” as though simplicity is easy. Superficiality may be easy. Being trite may be easy. Simple is not easy because genuinely simple is profound. When you’re told “write a paper about Hamlet”, you’re being asked to analyze one of the most complex, endlessly deep works of human achievement … in 5 to 7 double-spaced pages. If you’re told to “simplify”, understand it means find something small to write about, something you can grasp. But even that is hard when it’s Hamlet and everything in it ties together. </p>
<p>When you’re older, if you are able to choose what you write about, you have more opportunity to figure out what you mean. Then it becomes easier to control how you write. If you are writing for a job, you become skilled at its repetitive aspects, which means your brain is able to put the requirements into the format well. </p>
<p>They say “you need to find your voice”. This is also true for actors. Your voice is in your head. It’s not easy to find.</p>
<p>guys, i mean parents, i just downloaded Elements of Style wirelessly to my kindle. for free. i bet a lot of you parents have kindles, seeing how so many of you are saying what a big part reading a lot is to being decent at writing. and if you read a lot as a kid and as an adult before kids then likely you’re still reading because for serious readers it’s basically a lifelong habit. and if you’re still reading then probably you got a kindle because they make reading pretty awesome. even if you don’t like to read on a kindle chances are your friends know you’re a reader and they got you one as a present anyway, even if you said you weren’t interested. i actually told my mom i was interested and to please please buy me one, so she did. so far im making pretty good use of it i’d say. like im buying (well noy buying im getting it for free, so we can call that downloading, i’m downloading the style guide) this style guide which i know is going to be just as enlightening as you guys said it is. thanks so much for the recommendation. </p>
<p>i don’t know that you’re all great writers. in fact i know you’re not, not everybody can be at the high level of written expression that makes me envious but there’s LOTS of parents here who are. like the level of the written discussion on these forums is really really high. all the more so because this is just for parents. its not like the grad school forums although i get the feeling lots of you have been to grad school, or any other intellectual forum where you could expect this from. that’s why it really stands out. like, don’t you guys have jobs. don’t you have kids to,well, parent. how are so many of you finding the time to write so many good posts. but the answer to that is that you’re great writers, lots of you, and it just comes naturally and easily and is pretty good as recreation.</p>
<p>You’re hoping to get better at writing, correct?</p>
<p>no not really. i think its pretty much hopeless for me. but i still want to read the style guide that helped the people who could be helped, or when they could be helped. but this isn’t about me its about you guys, im basically looking for interesting stories about how people learned to write. or peoples thoughts on it. like that poster from where was it, elbonia? the poster from there had quite the interesting story. i accept this theory for the most part</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-confidential-cafe/402413-have-you-noticed-improvements-writing-skills-often-seem-saturate.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-confidential-cafe/402413-have-you-noticed-improvements-writing-skills-often-seem-saturate.html</a></p>
<p>i know there’s exceptions and i’ve read of some cases that are exceptions to it, but that’s what i believe. and i don’t believe i’m an exception. if i was striving for anything its not really academic writing i never wanted to be better at that, but more like conversational writing, and more ease at putting thoughts down on paper, the kind of thing that for most people it takes considerable effort for, but for a few its almost natural. those are the kids that kept long diaries as kids or posted on forums from an early age or something. so that’s what i would aim for if i wanted to improve, and i would take more idea generation too, who would refuse that, but my bigger weakness is saying the idea, not coming up with vaguely what i want to say. </p>
<p>basically all the friends i made from forums are better at that than me. and that’s kind of why i picked them to be my friends. i know, im an idiot. but they were the people who i liked the most. but isn’t it always the best writers that people like the most. so i liked the popular people who everyone else liked. this is making me sound pathetic but there’s a reason people like the popular forumers, okay, a reason that goes beyond their reputation. its their writing which is so good that’s the reason why they get liked so much. honest its the writing. not their social standing. and i tried extra hard to become their friends which i succeeded at with varying degrees of success. but then i found myself in a new predicament. i just feel kind of inadequate to them. like there was a reason they were the most popular and i wasn’t and that reason is what’s making it hard for us to be friends. because im not like them in that way. or im not as fluent in my own native language as they are (actually two speak spanish and more like bilingual, yet still have a better grasp on english than me) and essentially they’re just really smart. for some its in a traditional sense but for others it’s in a creative way. but the thing that they have in common? they’re all super good at writing. so that was one of the things that led me to think about this. like why they’re like that and im not. i never believed for a second i could become like them but it just got me curious about the topic.</p>
<p>do i need to pay you for the therapy. i hope not because i didn’t ask you for therapy. i asked how the parents here got to be so good at writing. if this is therapy and oddly it feels like it (yes, i’ve been in therapy before to know what it feels like) then just let me be clear on this: im not paying for it.</p>
<p>Here are a couple of extremely easy way to improve your writing immediately: begin capitalizing the first word of each sentence and the word “I” consistently, and be careful with your contractions (im and its are I’m and it’s, although its is correct in certain circumstances. </p>
<p>I hope that you don’t write like this in formal academic writing, but even for the purposes of forum posts, your writing will come off as far more mature if you make those changes. </p>
<p>this is just how i write on forums or when <em>im</em> instant messaging. if i didn’t captitalize in formal writing that’d be pretty rebellious. i’m not that rebellious. i’d have to have a real defiant streak in me to do that. just imagine the constant criticism and censure i’d get. and to ignore it and to continue to lowercase would take some real courage. courage that i don’t have.</p>
<p>but on my math homeworks i typed all my explanations in lower case. some of the explanations were up to a page long. i still got a b+ in that class that had us do all the proof writing. my proof writing is just abnormally long because i like to say the same thing in five different ways to cover my bases. but in math that’s okay, its not about style, it’s not about how it looks or how you’re writing reads. neither is it about conciseness. the goal is to beat your opponent over the head with your mathematical explanation until they’re so overwhelmed that they submit to your proof. the lowercase gives the appearance of timidity, but then WHAM you launch your argument from multiple perspectives at once at them. by the time they’re done reading your “proofs” you’ve earned a b+. </p>
<p>Well, I know this is a parent’s forum but I as a high school student applying to college can give you some idea.
(I am more of a math/physics/technology/engineering/philosophy/history person (STEM) but I think I can give you a fair tip [i am really good with getting highest grade in economics/bio/chem but i find them boring])</p>
<p>I always considered myself a horrible writer during my middle to high school career. I think that view towards my writing skills changed A LOT when I started to actually care for SAT/ACT writing/critical reading sections.
The standardized testing helped force me to actually learn my grammars properly (to get a perfect score).</p>
<p>In doing so, my writing came to have less and less grammar errors.
Now this might sound confusing and weird but writing, once you have the basics (grammars and high level vocabulary skills), if you have the creativity, you could write really well thought out essays/stories.</p>
<p>[advantage of being strong at math] For me, as someone whose strength was in math and physics, due to the proofs’ nature of being logical, my essay became more and more logical and thus become more and more understandable. Actually, it is due to this I was able to soon start making really complex logical arguments in my essays while KNOWING that the thoughts were all connected (thank geometry proofs for this)</p>
<p>[advantage of history] Due to history, I was able to learn to write stories in the correct time periods and know the typical views of those times.</p>
<p>[advantage of philosophy] Studying Kante, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, etc., I was able to think of deep thought out themes.
**I suggest you reading the Allegory of the Cave and trying to understand it. You should search the web after reading and understand to its fullest.</p>
<p>[advantage of visualizing math] As someone strong in the fields of math, I always tried to “understand” and “see the beauty of math” when learning. I think this helped me become a better thinker (physics conceptuals also helped me become better thinker)
*<em>I suggest you try learning about the relationship of infinities and circles
*</em>I also suggest you try watching <a href=“http://worldsciencefestival.com/videos/can_math_be_beautiful”>http://worldsciencefestival.com/videos/can_math_be_beautiful</a> .</p>
<p>[advantage of reading good books with really good lecturers] If you read books like the Great Gatsby or Scarlet Letter and take time analyzing the themes carefully (or have really good lecturers), you are going to get inspired by such writing styles and learn more about literature.</p>
<p>[advantage of reading A LOT] Well, like all math geeks, I LOVE TO READ. Now, I realize that you don’t have to read those “great classics” to be good at writing. No. Read what you love. However, I do recommend that you try avoiding books like Goosebumps if you really want to improve.
(There are some really good books in SAT sparknotes sections that are really fun to read like “Busted”)
**I suggest you read fun series like LOTR, Harry Potter, Blue Bloods, PercyJackson, Twilight. Anything FUN to keep you awake and make you read all day. Heck, I had times in which I slept at 8AM after starting at 3PM because I was so addicted to the fun.
NOTE: It doesn’t have to be a thick book. Books like mangas also help because some help broaden your perspective (yes, you will be shocked but even mangas help you think better). I recommend for short books books like “The Last Lecture” or “For One more Day” or “Tuesdays with Morrie”…</p>
<p>[advantage of traveling A LOT] I traveled to at least 28 states in USA and many different countries and ATE food from different countries (And lived in different cultures). In doing so, it helped shape my view A LOT, which actually influenced my writing.</p>
<p>[advantage of always writing steps in math] Well, having like an OCD mind in mathematics, I always made my homework neat and put EVERY step possible. My handwriting was so good that some teachers during my elementary years actually suspected that I even stole a girl’s homework…
Now this helped me since it helped me learn how to convey my thoughts to paper. (VERY IMPORTANT!)</p>
<p>[advantage of copying/analyzing other essays] Well, I many times wrote parts of the Bible by hand and analyzed many creative essays (due to college apps). I specifically like “The 50 Successful Harvard Essays” out of the many books I read for writing. Now, just READING does not help but many of the times, after reading, I would note to myself, “hey I’m going to use this style too.” “Hey, if I add this essay with that essay, I can make this better.” “Hey, I could change this and put this in my essay” (highlighting them, folding the page, etc.)
And after that, I would pour all those thoughts in like a document and then USE it on my essays. </p>
<p>Also, when you write, you don’t always need to write in such a research styled essay. You can put #1 #2 #3s, bullet points, poems, directions, directions (like CUT YOUR PAPER), etc.
And be passionate when you write. Creative writing don’t come from just “reading books,” it comes from your life experiences. Even things like foods are a big factor.</p>
<p>Personally, I recommend that you travel a lot to broaden your perspectives, perfect your grammars, improve your writing, and try visualizing/understanding areas of math and philosophy.
**Also, have a positive mindset in an everyday life and be engaging.
There really is no “key way” to get better writing. Personally, I detest writings such as timed writings, etc. BUT, writing is about showing your thoughts. So Q.E.D. and if you had read through all this, read the books I recommended you like “The Last Lecture” and …well ^^</p>
<p>Good readers = good writers. I was always book crazy.</p>
<p>All the parents who have replied make a lot of sense. Read a lot, write a lot, critique other writing.</p>