<p>How do I become a good writer? Now i'm not just talking about college admission essays, but just writing essays in general? Please help!</p>
<p>Practice. Make sure your essay flows, stays within the scope of what you’re talking about, and makes sense logically. As my teacher commonly says, “You have to be a reader”. A good range of vocabulary would be useful as well.</p>
<p>Write more, and read more :).</p>
<p>Write for fun. You have to extend yourself beyond simply school papers. I started off in eight grade writing fanfiction, and over the one summer I did it, my writing dramatically improved. Since then, I’ve moved on to various fiction projects, and attribute my regular writing to the ease I have with school work.</p>
<p>Write constantly. Find time every day to write for fun. If you’re having fun doing it, this shouldn’t be a problem.</p>
<p>Read. Everything. Good book, bad books. Books that make you think, books with lots of big words, books with not so many words. The more literature you consume, the more you’ll observe what makes up good writing (and bad writing). How does your favorite author effectively convey pain, fear, happiness? How does a writer take little ink blots on a page, and turn them into emotions and stories and characters that feel just as alive as the people you see every day? A great author by the name of John Green once said that “the only apprenticeship for a writer is reading.” To learn the craft, you’ve got to crack open books. Lots of them. </p>
<p>It may seem like this advice only applies to fiction, but it really extends to anything you write. A good essay needs to use words effectively. A skilled writer of any subject can bend words like clay, molding and manipulating them. Through observation and practice, you can develop the talent and apply it to all you write.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Write everyday. Read everyday.</p>
<p>But also try to find people who will read your work and give you good feedback. If you’re writing an essay, go to your teacher or professor and have them look it over. (And make sure you don’t go the day before it’s due. LOL.)</p>
<p>Be open to criticism and advice. I definitely recommend getting some writing books like “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk & E.B. White, “On Writing” by Stephen King, and “Writing Brave and Free” by Ted Kooser & Steve Cox.</p>
<p>Just write. If you wanted to get better at basketball, wouldn’t you put hours on the court everyday? Do the same for writing. </p>
<p>Read good writing. Pay attention. Tell the truth and BAM! Good writing.</p>
<p>Write daily, read more, emulate writers you like and ones that you don’t, write what you know, write what you’re afraid to know, be yourself.</p>
<p>Along with the practicing, it’s a good idea to make sure you’re not writing “above” yourself. What I mean by that is don’t write like some pompous aristocrat with a bunch of unnecessarily big words and long sentences. A lot of the time, it helps to just write as if you were talking. That way, your writing has your voice in it, and it’s not so impersonal and cold. </p>
<p>Also stay away from the typical high school structural rigidness that they teach. Lots of teachers try to make you write like a robot, with an intro paragraph, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. In news paper articles and real essays outside of high school, NO ONE follows that. In high school essays, you see a lot of jumbo paragraphs that take up a whole page when the writer could have just as easily split it up and made shorter paragraphs, each for a single thought or idea</p>
<p>And writing fiction helps a ton</p>