Your English teachers may be bleeping awful. Go to your library and obtain worn-looking books on how-to-write which have been authored by successful authors. (Beware that how-to-write books in the used bookstore may have been passed on for a reason; check to see if they were written by English teachers.)
“How to write” books are often an awful mess of superstitious prescriptivism. To be fair, the people reading your essays may have also read these books, and in this case it’s good to know that they may look down on you for splitting infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions, and using various other perfectly fine English constructions that someone a hundred years ago decided were ungrammatical because they don’t work in Latin. (See Language Log for some informative rants on this subject.) There’s good stuff out there, but don’t count on finding it easily.
If you want to learn to write well, (1) read a lot of fiction by successful authors (good writing style affects success more there than it does in, e.g., the sciences) and (2) write a lot, preferably in a forum where your writing will be read and criticized frequently.
In particular, the fiction of Isaac Asimov has done a lot to improve my writing. His writing (both fiction and nonfiction) is perfectly clear and transparent, to the point that you don’t even notice there is a style. Even if this isn’t the kind of writing you’re really interested in, I think everyone should have this style in their repertoire.
Hmm, I wonder if there are any stats on how applying the book’s advice affects a) acceptance rate and b) popularity. a) is hard to measure, but b) should be easy: take a few bestsellers vs a few random published books and see how severely the advice is violated and whether the bestsellers are better at compliance.
Presumably a) could be measured via the same techniques by comparing a sample of a publishing house’s published books with a sample of their rejected manuscripts.
Your English teachers may be bleeping awful. Go to your library and obtain worn-looking books on how-to-write which have been authored by successful authors. (Beware that how-to-write books in the used bookstore may have been passed on for a reason; check to see if they were written by English teachers.)
“How to write” books are often an awful mess of superstitious prescriptivism. To be fair, the people reading your essays may have also read these books, and in this case it’s good to know that they may look down on you for splitting infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions, and using various other perfectly fine English constructions that someone a hundred years ago decided were ungrammatical because they don’t work in Latin. (See Language Log for some informative rants on this subject.) There’s good stuff out there, but don’t count on finding it easily.
If you want to learn to write well, (1) read a lot of fiction by successful authors (good writing style affects success more there than it does in, e.g., the sciences) and (2) write a lot, preferably in a forum where your writing will be read and criticized frequently.
In particular, the fiction of Isaac Asimov has done a lot to improve my writing. His writing (both fiction and nonfiction) is perfectly clear and transparent, to the point that you don’t even notice there is a style. Even if this isn’t the kind of writing you’re really interested in, I think everyone should have this style in their repertoire.
I’ve only encountered one such, many books which repeated each other though usefully to the novice, and a few books which are excellent.
Any particular recommendations?
Currently reading this one, it’s pretty good: http://www.amazon.com/Self-Editing-Fiction-Writers-Second-ebook/dp/B003JBI2YI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1378421718&sr=8-2&keywords=self-editing+for+fiction
It’s not a basic book for new writers, though, as one might guess; I like it because it has some very low-level advice not contained in other books.
Hmm, I wonder if there are any stats on how applying the book’s advice affects a) acceptance rate and b) popularity. a) is hard to measure, but b) should be easy: take a few bestsellers vs a few random published books and see how severely the advice is violated and whether the bestsellers are better at compliance.
Presumably a) could be measured via the same techniques by comparing a sample of a publishing house’s published books with a sample of their rejected manuscripts.
RIght, if the latter were easily accessible. Besides, most of the rejects are probably terrible in other ways, masking the issue.
That looks really interesting! I’d been thinking of Strunk and White and the like when I wrote my comment.