Tuesday of the
Five Things You Can Do This Week to Become a Better Writer says to complete an honest evaluation of your own writing in order to determine your greatest strengths and weaknesses. The idea is to view yourself objectively and then fix the points you need to work on.
Strengths: I'm quite good at descriptions. I love to write poetic, drawn-out, well-crafted sentences that vividly whisk the reader to the scene. My language flows naturally and gracefully. Adjectives trickle through the prose like a gentle rain. I'm typically good with constructing compelling characters - except in my difficult WIP but that's a different situation. People have told me quite often that it's easy to slip into love with my characters. I do pretty well with first person point of view and putting myself in the role of the main character. I am fabulous at designing new worlds and settings. This goes along with descriptions I suppose. Pacing is terribly fun for me, perhaps I exaggerate it a bit too much, but I love it. I know exactly how to speed a scene up, as well as slow it down and make it drag along.
Weaknesses: I excessively enjoy adverbs. I know that it's proper, and sounds much better, when they are not included in the text - or at least as many as I naturally do. But I can't help peppering my sentences with them. I also adore using other more descriptive words than "said" when writing dialogue, but I understand the reasoning by requiring "said" only and have been faithful to it lately. This has helped my dialogue tremendously, yet, that too could use some work. I feel as if my dialogue is not as necessary as it should be. I'm not terrible, but I could use some more practice in third person point of view. I've heard that this is the easiest way to write, however I find it much easier to speak in first. Is this odd?
Averages: Plot and action creation. I'm not extraordinary, but it's not quite a weakness either. The action that is in my stories could use some work, as always, but not as drastically as the others could.
I'll have to find some good exercises to improve these weaknesses. Once I find something amazing, I will definitely share!
My tip: Do this exercise. It doesn't take that long at all, but it really is helpful. It'll also be nice to reference it when editing to know exactly what you're looking to fix.
Anyways... What are your strengths and weaknesses? Please share with me and we can help each other.
