Ep 189: Write to Discover New Skills and Techniques

[Ep 189] When I feel my writing getting a little stale, I start looking around for a teacher. Now, I don’t mean I’m looking for a class with an instructor, although that’s certainly another way to learn and grow as a writer. I mean I start looking around for an author and text that has something to teach me. In this way, I can continually improve my skills as a writer. Develop a Customized Course of Study A lot of writers feel a strong urge to enter an MFA program to do this. If you feel compelled to pursue that, by all means, research it and see if that’s the best next step for you. But you don’t have to embark on a pre-planned course of study. You can develop your own path to establish a writing foundation, to build on an existing set of skills and experience, or to refresh your techniques after falling into a writing rut. Without spending a dime, you can invent an efficient, customized writing course using resources readily available online or at your local library to build your skills and style. By including reading, study, analysis, and practice pertaining to your biggest areas of struggle or weakness, you can write to discover the skills and techniques you’re lacking and integrate them into your work. Discover New Skills the Ben Franklin Way Novelist James Scott Bell wrote an article about how to strengthen your fiction the Ben Franklin way.1 He explains how Ben Franklin came up with his own self-study course to grow in virtues. Franklin made a grid and evaluated whether or not he was successful in his pursuit of a given virtue each week. In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Father concluded he did not attain perfection, as he had hoped, but “was, by the endeavor, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”2 James Scott Bell proposes the fiction writer identify key areas to develop into a stronger writer much as Franklin identified his list of virtues. Bell calls these key areas “critical success factors,” or CSFs.3 He explains: Business and sales folk have been using Franklin’s system for decades to improve their own performance. Not via Franklin’s virtues, but by determining their own areas of competence. These are called critical success factors.4 Bell goes through each CSF a fiction author would want to develop and points to related resources: if the reader wants to learn about scenes, voice, or other aspects of fiction, Bell provides links to articles or books that can address each of those. By tapping into these resources, the writer develops his own self-study course.5 You can do the same. Discover Your Critical Success Factors You can make a list of what you feel are your personal CSFs related to the writing you do. In this way, any of us can identify an area to improve in and find instruction and models pertaining to that exact skill or technique and we can learn from them. For fiction, you could check out James Scott Bell’s list in that article, where he cites the seven key elements a fiction writer could focus on: * plot * structure * characters * scenes * dialogue * voice * meaning (theme).6 You could make a list of CSFs for nonfiction writers. This might include research, idea development and organization, sentence fluency and word choice, grammar skills, or something as focused as transitions. Find Mentor Texts Find some “mentors,” or more accurately, some “mentor texts” you can study and learn from—mentors who excel in the areas where you feel you’re weak. Some of these mentor texts may be instructional, explaining how to do things. Others may simply serve as models.