<p>I feel like I'm having a problem. Since about 5th grade, all my English teachers have been telling me that I'm a brilliant writer. However, I'm writing an essay right now about The Catcher in the Rye for English and I'm not seeing it. I feel like my writing's horribly pretentious. How can I fix that?</p>
<p>Just be yourself . Use your natural voice. Don't think about you are writing for school . Maybe you are telling about it to your friend or writing it in your diary. How would you do that ?Hope it helps!</p>
<p>This sort of happened to me in 10th grade; I thought everything that I wrote was great, and I got good grades on it. Then my eleventh grade teacher went on a crusade against pretentious writing. My advice: cut out everything that doesn't matter. A lot of words are superfluous and if you cut down on the bulk, the writing will be a lot more natural and concise.</p>
<p>^ agree with the above. pretend you have to cut your paper down a lot. combine sentences, etc. if you can cut a lot, you probably need to change your style</p>
<p>That's what I did for my NYU summer essay! I ended up cutting about 2 pages. I just feel like that essay wasn't even good.</p>
<p>I would read narratives and essay anthologies to get a feel for the tone and to develop your own personal style... ask your English teacher about this; maybe he/she can recommend some authors.</p>
<p>Just resist the urge to use the Thesaurus tool.</p>
<p>How do you write? I probably couldn't write a proper essay if my life depended on it, but I can come up with a fairly decent poem in minutes. It's seems hard for me to clearly say what I am thinking (or at least my English grades reflect that :D) unless I go into poetical, messed-up-sentence-structure language. :D</p>
<p>same here, last year i couldn't write an essay if it killed me but now all of a sudden i can whip out a 100 essay one hour before its due.</p>
<p>I have some essays on the chatcher in the rye if u want topics, compare it to how socity has changed and how it ostracizes others for the being wierd and can't get help</p>
<p>Use only the simplest words possible. If you use the thesaurus to put in big words, you will look like a douche.</p>
<p>Definitely. English teachers see your unoriginal thesaurus jargon as evidence of desperation.</p>
<p>When you write, you go through phases. This is one of them. There is no set way in developing a natural voice (but do lay easy on the thesaurus tool; no one wants to know the ten-syllable sister to an unecessary word when its two-syllable brother is much more easily read). </p>
<p>From your note, it seems like you have done a large quantity of writing. Dig those old essays/stories/poems up. Look at the bad ones and the good ones. Were those bad ones pretentious? How about the good ones? Give those ones you considered 'great' a deep, objective look-over and compare it to the essay you are doing now. Similarities? Differences?</p>
<p>A lot of writing is based off mood as well. If you are not feeling it, take a break, drink some tea, and come back later (unless you procrastinated and that paper is due tomorrow). </p>
<p>I would recommend getting involved in online, local, or school-associated writing activities. Blogging, submitting articles, or becoming a member of a literature/fiction club are good ways. There are many websites dedicated to online publication of young adult works - more often than not, these works are also available for peer review. </p>
<p>If fiction is your thing, try fictionpress.com. If not, browse online for solid examples of fabulous writing or take a stab at self-documentation and create a blog. Even better, grab a teacher (a good teacher, not just one who likes you) and have them review what you have written. They will often give you feedback on parts you did not know needed critiquing.</p>
<p>Avoid the overuse of modifiers. There's nothing wrong with using the thesaurus to find new words if you feel one has been overused, but if you can drop an adverb or two, all the better.</p>
<p>Avoid semicolons unless one is necessary. I defer to Vonnegut on this subject. He says "...do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college."</p>
<p>Avoid overuse of the first person. But also avoid ignoring its proper use in an academic essay.</p>
<p>Try reading Twain as an example of a classic author who could write with both an economy of words and economy of complex sentences yet succeed in crafting much better prose than most pompous college students or self-aggrandizing professors.</p>
<p>I love semicolons. I find them very useful. But yes, they certainly must be used in moderation, or else it looks like you just learned how to use them and are playing with a new toy.</p>
<p>(I love dashes more than semicolons -- but some teachers hate them, so I'd ask before I dash.)</p>
<p>Something that adds to floweriness is the use of poetic language in a prose setting. </p>
<p>Never use the word "gossamer." Even where it's appropriate.</p>
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same here, last year i couldn't write an essay if it killed me but now all of a sudden i can whip out a 100 essay one hour before its due.
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<p>Yeah, I recall not being able to write at all in 7th grade and suddenly developing essay-writing ability a year later.</p>
<p>If you get stuck, get completely distracted by something else for an hour or so and then come back to it. It sometimes helps you to see what is wrong.
You'll need to have a lot of time to do this though - if you're writing it during lunch for an afternoon class, try a different method!</p>
<p>well catcher in the rye is a strange book really and so subconscious. Your own subconscious is working and messing withyour usual self and telling you that you can't write like an automaton anymore and say nothing. talk about the existential train ride - loneliness - the chugging of the train symbolizing the beginning of your youth brain awakening to a journey out of childhood to adulthood. you can do that. your struggling with exactly what holden was struggling with - identity - adolescent identitybeing formed. or so they tell me...............</p>