What makes me good enough to teach about style in writing? Here is a list of my successes so far:
An article (3 whole pages) in the best polish computer Magazine called CD_Action. I wrote an article called 9xdeath about various kinds of deathtypes in computer games. Two letters and one post from their forum were printed in CD-Action in a veeery popular section with letters (it's more like a section with jokes) from the readers. My two letters were original and funny/stupid enough to be considered as one of the best in CD-Action's history. They were also printed in a little book added to one of the issues containing the best letters in the history of CD-Action. I have also published some articles about books in E-zines on the Cover CD of the mentioned earlier magazine. I possess proper proof and can scan the mentioned writings to prove my success. The magazine CD-Action is being read by over 200 000 people.

Please, don't think I am boasting here. I am sharing my experiences so you can be even better than me one day.

I am currently working on two novels: "Inquilibrium" [link]
and "Apostol i poszedl" ("Dis-ciple is gone")

The links to the previous issues of this series of articles can be found on the end of this article, just like links to my other articles (a kind of articles that never becomes outdated, mostly tutorials, guides and articles to help you in some way). Please, have a look. So far most of them received 3-5 favs.
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THE THIRD ISSUE OF ABC OF STYLE

(This article starts with rule n.10 and not 11 because I accidentaly wrote rule no.7 two times.)


Rule no.10:"Don't fear experimenting"

Often you fear that your innovative ideas won't be accepted by the readers. Often you resign of trying something new just because the mainstream-oriented publishers and readers aren't used to it. I already told you how destructive can self-censoring be to your novel. You have to remember one important thing: people go to see movies, play games, listen to music in hope they experience something NEW, something FRESH! People make trips abroad for the same reason - to see something they have never seen before. I understand that you fear that readers won't accept your innovative ideas, but trust me, they prefer to watch an original movie instead of watching the 15th clone of "American Pie". And what get people the Nobel Prize for? Mostly for inventing something new in the field of literature. Using known motives is safe, but mostly boring for the user... besides, commonly used motives make the novel predictable, and predictability is the killer of suspense in a novel. Being creative and innovative means: "letting go of standards, denying the obvious and being ready to try something out that no one or few have tried before". Remember one more thing: if you use common motives you can be compared to others (X did it better, it was more interesting in his novel) and if you're doing something what no one did before, you cannot be compared to others. Besides, people are more tolerant towards precursors and inventors than you think. Some won't like your ideas, some will. That's life. You can always ask around how people liked an original idea and if there is a way you could improve this concept. You use new ideas in your second novel and keep the ones that were a success. Then you can ask the readers which of the new ideas were interesting and whch need more attention. Eventually, you can write a novel that contains all of your highest rated ideas or rewrite your favourite novel, adding good concepts and removing the ones that didn't work. And don't worry about that you won't like the first novel after finishing the third one! It means that you are far more better now, that you have improved! You feel that you could do it much better now, am I right? People tend to think that if they won't like what they wrote anymore it means that they suck and that they should give up writing. Don't let this feeling ever, ever bring you off the path you are following, because...

Rule no.11:"There is nothing like failure - it's training"

Thomas Edison could give up his attempts to invent the ligh bulb, but didn't. He tried more than 4000 times, but he considered every attempt not as a failure but as a "way to not invent the light bulb". He considered failures as a valueable lesson, a training. In fact, mistakes make you often feel so bad, that you feel forced to do something about it and improve something this way. Successes are nice, but often make you think: "Oh, I achieved my goal, I won't try to make adjustment, it works fine as it is". If I wouldn't be self-critiscising I would probably still draw humans with no necks, just with heads melt into the shoulders. Learn to see positive things in bad experiences. I could whine about it, that a girl rejected me, but if I was with her now, I would never even look at a girl I am interested in now. Many times destiny knows better what's better for us. I could whine that my father is alcoholic, but at least it tought me how to be an abstainer and how to take over the responsibility for my younger brothers. We break down because we fail to create something decent, but it's a signal, that you have to try harder. Look at my first artworks in my scraps and look at the newest ones and you'll see how much I improved. I could give up thinking that I'll never be like <name of your favourite artist> but I didn't. And I hope you'll learn to view your problems from a different perspective too. Don't forget that were learning during our whole life. You have the right to make mis... to train!

Rule no.12:"You can recognize the gender of the author even by the style of writing"

This is kind of funny: I've read a great book called "The Barbed Coil" but I had no idea if the author hiding behind initial letters of his/her names was a man or woman. I tried to recognize the gender by analyzing the style of the author/authoress. At some point I was sure that the book has been written by a woman: no man would write about pregnancy and menstruation like the authoress did and although the authoress tried to give the main character a rough and manly personality (he said: "Women are only there to serve men, give birth to children and spread... uh, you know what I mean, underages), but through the rest of the book, he acted "feminine", he was kind of gentle, caring etc. Men and women have different viewpoints on life and it's impossible for a woman to create a 100% manly character (unless she avoids getting into details and uses stereotypes like mean are strong, riugh, drink a lot and like uh-ah). When it comes to men... mean create females that have definately too much testosterone running through their veins. I get often a feeling that men create female characters to undress them as soon as possible and have "fun" while writing se... "repetetive movement scenes".
It is a good idea to ask people of the opposite sex about the way a man/a woman would react in such a situation. Men think about a solution when they have a problem and women want to talk about it with someone to feel relief. Women are much more emotional and worry much more than men about verious things.
Well, I wrote about recognizing the gender of the author by the style, but mostly you can guess if something has been written by a man or a woman just by the genre of the book. Few men dare to write romantic stories...

Rule no.13:"Don't let situations create the character of the hero of your novel. The character can't be shallow"

I made a common mistake. I created a stressful situation and then wrote how the main character reacted on this situation. This way, I made the personality shallow and the reader found out how the character is only when something happened. This made his personality unstable... so unstable that every character acted like crazy or as if he had some bad mental disorder (no offence to people suffering because of such things). This unstability made the character quite unbelievable and hard to identify with. A much better way is to create a veeeery deatailed character sheet, where you could determine the extravertism/introvertism level, attitude, star sign, temper or something like that along with a biography, his/her experiences and beliefs. This way you can not only think out a situation and force the character to react on it in a particular way (run, fight, cry, try to calm down), but you can also create situations caused by some personality assets of the hero: if he is agressive, then he throws a rock towards a police car and if he is empathetic he gives his own jacket to a homeless little girl.
Never make a list of traits like: he was gentle, good-natured, sensitive! Write about situations that prove that he has particular traits. If you want to let your readers know that he was romantic, make him give flowers to a girl or something like that. Just don't make a list of such traits, ok? When it comes to describing clothing, you can write: "He wore a jacket, black jeans, leather shoes", but it's better to write: "He wore a baseball cap on his bald head, he was dressed in a jacket made of black leather, the shoes he had on were black". Try to be more inventive when it comes to descriptions and avoid making lists. One more thing: you don't have to describe the personality or clothing of the character on the first page or even on the same page. Even in the middle of the story, you can write "the sunlight created stunning reflexes on the surface of his polished, black leather boots."

Rule no.14:"Never write just anything to push the plot forth."

I remember when I wrote "Dis-ciple is gone" for the first time (I was in the second grade of highschool) I wrote just anything to make the character get involved in a situation I planned earlier. The hero had to fall in coma, but I had no idea how it happens that someone gets in a coma. So I wrote about a car accident. The father of the hero was driving the car and suddenly a cat with open cans and broken bottles tied to his tail ran across the street (wise cat, he knew when to run to cause as much trouble as possible) and the father turned to wheel to avoid the living obstacle, but the car fell into the pit next to the lane. The car spinned three times while falling into the pit (!) and landed upside-down (I still don't get it, how coule I believe that a car can make three spins when falling into a 1,5 metre whole that wasn't even broad enough) the hero got injured in the head and achieved this way the state of coma:/ Now I know why my friends laughed Writing about such a bizarre situation in a serious way made it sound even more pathetic. When you have no idea, how to get your hero out of a situation, don't write just anything what comes into your mind. No one will believe it, if you write that the head of the hero was resistant to bullets. Try to relax, take a break for a day or two so you're subconcious mind can think about it and find a solution for you, ask someone for suggestions, work on a different novel or simply modify the tricky fragment. Too many "accidents" and "higher-power-influences" aren't good for the plot. The reader won't feel engaged, won't feel the suspence because he will think: "Ah, there is no need to fear. Something will happen and the hero will survive the fall from a skyscraper. He will probably land on a pile of garbage or something". You have to make the reader feel that the hero got in a nearly hopeless situation and you have to surprise the reader by getting your hero out of this situation in a b e l i e v a b l e and logical way. It is hard, but it will be better for your novel if you keep to this rule.
I used to write the story in a continuuous way. I mean: I wrote that the hero got into an unknown town, and thought: "What can happen next?", then I wrote about a thief that tried to escape through the front gate and that a guy was chasing him. Then I thought: "what happens then?" and I made the hero catch the thief, so the other guy could stab him and then this guy kidnapped the weird looking hero and sold to the guys who organised illegal fights. This was lame. The best ideas are the ones you thought over and such ideas appear in such an order that you can't combine them directly: you get a good idea for the beginning, then a great idea for the ending and then... for the third tome:/ You have to write such ideas down before you forget them. It will take time till you will find a good chance to "paste" the scenario into the novel. I remember that I read in a friends book a good description of someone escaping through a forest and the next thing I did was making my heroes escape through a forest:/ Wow, great idea...

I hope this will help you to improve your writing. Watch out for my biggest projects: I want to show you step by step how to correct and edit your summary and then show you phases which a writing can go through before it's finished.

Here are the links to my previous guides, articles, tutorials. Please, have a look. These articles are written intentionally so that they can be valid and useful even after years. They don't get outdated.

Tutorial:ABC of style. Writing for everyone #2(5 favs)

How to: a good summary to present your novel(5 favs)
You inside of Tetris:how to avoid artist's blocks(5 favs)
When DA is down: Interesting websites #1(4 favs)
Tutorial:ABC of style. Writing for everyone #1(5 favs)
What medias do you use? Music!(3 favs)
When DA is down: Interesting websites #2(1 fav)