The Quality of Writing
There are two sides to good Christian writing; one is the closeness of the writer to God; the other is the writer's devotion to his or her craft.
I can't stress enough how much a Christian writer should be working at improving her craft. There are a thousand books and a hundred-thousand websites devoted to the particulars of improving your craft, so I won't go into all the details here (not that I could, anyway; not in a single post), but it is vital.
It depresses me, the number of submissions we have at DKA that are really well written, but that don't fit our theme. It depresses me even more, though, to see the ones that do fit our theme. Christian stories, yes, but you'd think the authors didn't care anything about the story they were trying to tell or the King the story was written for! There's often little plot or character--even basic spelling and punctuation are ignored! Surely our God deserves better than that?
My challenge for today is to find one book or article about writing; plot, character, dialogue, it doesn't matter. Read it through, then look at your own work and ask yourself, Does my writing measure up in this way? How can I make it better? What aspects do I need to work on? What parts am I doing fairly well? Then, use our forum at Inkies (or any other crit group) and post your story there. Ask your critters to read it through, looking specifically for whatever area it is you've been studying, and ask them to tell you how you can make it better. One thing I've learned over the years at Critters is that there is no such thing as a perfect story; there's always something else you can do to make it better. It isn't easy to find people who can tell you what that something is; sometimes you have to train your critique partners not to just blow the story off with an "Oh, this is awesome!" It's wonderful for your ego, of course, but how much help is it really to you as a writer? Does it make you a better writer? I think you know the answer to that.
So there's my challenge. Read up on some part of writing. Apply it to your own writing. Then put it up and ask for crits specifically about that part of the story. And mind you, I'll be watching to see if you actually do!
I can't stress enough how much a Christian writer should be working at improving her craft. There are a thousand books and a hundred-thousand websites devoted to the particulars of improving your craft, so I won't go into all the details here (not that I could, anyway; not in a single post), but it is vital.
It depresses me, the number of submissions we have at DKA that are really well written, but that don't fit our theme. It depresses me even more, though, to see the ones that do fit our theme. Christian stories, yes, but you'd think the authors didn't care anything about the story they were trying to tell or the King the story was written for! There's often little plot or character--even basic spelling and punctuation are ignored! Surely our God deserves better than that?
My challenge for today is to find one book or article about writing; plot, character, dialogue, it doesn't matter. Read it through, then look at your own work and ask yourself, Does my writing measure up in this way? How can I make it better? What aspects do I need to work on? What parts am I doing fairly well? Then, use our forum at Inkies (or any other crit group) and post your story there. Ask your critters to read it through, looking specifically for whatever area it is you've been studying, and ask them to tell you how you can make it better. One thing I've learned over the years at Critters is that there is no such thing as a perfect story; there's always something else you can do to make it better. It isn't easy to find people who can tell you what that something is; sometimes you have to train your critique partners not to just blow the story off with an "Oh, this is awesome!" It's wonderful for your ego, of course, but how much help is it really to you as a writer? Does it make you a better writer? I think you know the answer to that.
So there's my challenge. Read up on some part of writing. Apply it to your own writing. Then put it up and ask for crits specifically about that part of the story. And mind you, I'll be watching to see if you actually do!
posted by Keesa | 4:18 PM
2 Comments:
A wonderful idea!! And I certainly agree. I know in alot of the DKA subs I can see that this writer COULD write well, and I wonder - did they just not try? Or are they truly unaware?
I might even go to Inkies a step earlier and ask others what area you most need to work on. Sometimes it's hard to see where our own failings are - we may even see them, but not as failings. You could punctuate a sentence a certain way deliberately because that's what you're aiming for; but someone else could read it in an entirely different way.
Precisely! :hugs: If we knew where our flaws were, we'd have fixed them.
And don't you hate it when a really good story is carelessly written?! What a shameful waste of an idea!
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