Descriptive Writing: Part 2

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jonathan_Degler]Jonathan Degler
Once you have practiced and further developed the quality of your nouns and verbs, there are a few more steps that need to be taken to create masterful works of creative writing. The next of these steps is learning how to communicate your distinctive style. Many of you may be confused by these two words thinking, "How can this guy teach me about my own style?" Well hopefully you can discover this for yourself through a few simple exercises.
Discovering your distinctive style begins with figuring out your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. For example, one of my strengths is setting a scene. I am usually able to write in such a way where readers can "see" exactly what I am "seeing." Conversely, one of my weaknesses is creating authentic dialogue. For some reason dialogue is a constant struggle for me and it usually takes many different rounds of revision to get it sounding right. All of you will have a few things you excel at and one or two things you really struggle with, and that's okay. The key is to understand yourself as a writer so you can practice in the areas you are weak and foster the areas you are strong.
Quick-Writes are an easy way to help you understand what you are good at and what you will need to pay particularly close attention to in your writing. For your quick-writes try writing a few short pieces of writing without any preparation or revision. You can write a quick page of fiction, creative nonfiction, drama, and even poetry. Fiction can help you create scenes from your imagination, nonfiction shows you whether you are skilled in recalling and writing scenes, and drama can illustrate your skills with dialogue.
After your pre-writes, I would recommend that you give them to a fellow writer to have them read. I recommend someone you trust to give you honest and straight forward answers. Someone's who's going say, "this looks great" to everything is not a good critic. You need honesty for this exercise. This feedback should be able to help you discern your strengths and weaknesses.
Now that you have your strengths, you can use those strengths to develop your own personal and unique style. Your style is essentially your way of writing. Its just as it sounds. Your style is a way that readers can distinguish you as the writer. For example your style can be serious, humorous, dramatic, or a unique mixture of these. Your personality as a person needs to shine through your writing.
When writers combine their writing strengths with their personality, they find their style that is uniquely their own. As I've said before, your task is to write. The greatest practice is to just write. Experiment with different genres while adding your own personality and flare. These exercises will help, not only develop your skills, but focus your writing into a niche that is appropriate for you. Once you have discovered your style, run with it in confidence that your personality is truly within the page.
Good Luck!
Jonathan Degler is the author of the novel "Gone Astray," and more information can be found at http://www.jonathandeglerbooks.com/
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Descriptive-Writing:-Part-2&id=6613922] Descriptive Writing: Part 2