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can be found on the end of this article, just like links to my other articles (a kind of articles that never becomes outdated, mostly tutorials, guides and articles to help you in some way).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 4-6 favs.
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THE 4TH ISSUE OF ABC OF STYLE

Rule no.15:"Plan the writing or write in a continuous way?"

Continuous writing (call it spontanous or the-first-reasonable-idea-that-comes-to-my-mind writing) looks like this. You start with defining a place and time where the story starts. Let's say you want to write about a boy related with the royal family that survived a siege attack and later got raised by rogues. You will probably have no problems with describing the battle and you will also find it quite easy to make the boy survive the siege (he hid himself in a pot or closet), but then it goes uphill. How do you make your hero leave the castle? You think and think about something believable and then you decide that the boy leaves his safety place and accidentally comes across someone from the fa,ily's servants. He or she decides to escort the prince and when the boy reaches the exit, you can let the servant die or get lost in the chaos of the battle (in the latter episodes they can meet again) and the boy escapes through the forest and moves loud enough to come across a rogue leader. He could kill the young one, but the decision to take ransom for the well dressed prince is believable too. Ok, but what if you have no further ideas about what happens to the boy? You use the first reasonable idea that comes into your mind, you "navigate" the plot in an unknown direction. The advantage is, you can finish a story quite fast, but the bad thing is, the ideas that come first into your mind are mostly not more than average and cliche and... if you decide to edit a part of the story (remember, you have no plan about the plot) then you will have to trash a part of the story and write a big part anew or use the unneeded ideas in a different novel. I began to write this way and I got dissappointed by it. The more time you spend on your novel, the more you think about it, the better the outcome.
The process of writing in a continous way looks like this(I hope that DA won't mess the schemata up)
X(good idea)
x__
\ _
\_/ \ _
\ / \
\/ \
\
\(you ran out of good ideas and
the level goes down...)
And what about the planned writing? Let's say, you have a great opening for the story and an surprising ending (hey, it's this way that you get the best ideas separately: you will be able to use some ideas soon and some later, some at the end and some... in the third tome), so the scheme looks like this. After a good start the average or bad ideas cause the interest of the reader is falling to a particular point. Let's say that you managed to surprise the reader, the interest grows, but most probably the reader will be just happy to finish the book he already wasted a lot of time on. You can see it on the scheme A) This is a story basing on a good idea, but spoiled through a lack of good ideas. Maybe the author used up all of his best ideas at the beginning and there was little left in the latter chapters of the novel to keep the reader interested. The line goes downward because the reader expects nothing interesting to happen. On the scheme B) a very interesting turning point appears. Three good ideas aren't enough to make a good overall impression about the novel, but a novel with a good cumulative point is more interesting than the one shown on the scheme A)
A) B)
O__ __E O__ _C_ __E
\ / \ / \ /
\ / \ / \ /
\ / \/ \/
\ /
\ /
\ /
\/

Of course, the reader has no idea, that somthing big is going to happen in the middle part, but the better his impression of the beginning and of the novel overally is, the greater the chance that he will read the whole manuscript. The scheme B has only three good parts that the reader is most likely to remember. The rest of the chapters play the role of the glue that make the story sound logical. The more good ideas you'll place "along the path" (they're like golden coins that the reader picks up one after another until he gets lost in the forest the trail of coins leads to) the more likely the reader will read the whole novel. If the reader starts to pick up every single golden coin, his interest will grow with every moment. Look at the scheme C) shown below. There is one important thing: even a very good novel can be spoiled by a cliche or stupid ending. This is one moment, one chapter, but veeery important. I read a lot of game reviews in camputer magazines and it was obvious that someone mentioned that the ending was surprising or stupid. You can of course end the novelthis way, that it will indicate a sequel.
A bit more about the ideas: your imagination will deliver you ideas in no particular order, separated and you'll have to wait even a couple of days to find a concept that will fill the blank spot between "the exorcism" and "the fight in hell". You have to explain the reader in a reasonable way how the exorcist got to hell and please, don't use stupid coincidences or accidents, just because you lack of good ideas. To find a good idea you can ask around, wait and relax a little to get a good idea, watch a movie, try to get the answer in a dream but please, don't write just anything to push the plot further. If you don't like the idea, why should the reader like it? If you have no idea for the chapter one then try to write down the chapter 5 you've already planned... or work on a different novel.
C) G...E
/
G
_/
G
G/
B__/

Rule no.16:"Don't be too obsessed with presenting the readers your beliefs and views on the world and life."

I remember reading one of the books from the "Steel Rat" series (the author was Zelazny, I think) nd one of the things that strcuk me was that the hero spent several days on asking a I-know-everything-talking-severed-human-head about various mysteries of the world and existencial problems. The author played a wiseman that knows life and is generous enough to share his beliefs with the reader. I wouldn't be surprised if the author would try to explain to me what HE THINKS the cause of the extinction of dinosaurs was. This is something like using complex words in a novel to show the reader "I know what 'disambiguation" means and you not!". Writers are eager to use new, interesting words without thinking about it that the reader doesn't understand such words, but he CAN. When? When you place a dictionary in the margin. A real scientist or writer can present complex things in a simple, understandable way. The shorter the sentences are and the more commonly used the words are, the more understandable is the text. That's why we read books! To u n d e r s t a n d! You don't have to play the wise guy. The producer of the game "Bioshock" could control his need to play the sage and wanna be philosopher. But he still managed to achieve his goal which was implementing a philosophic message in a First Person Shooter without making the game less playable. What do YOU want the reader to concentrate on? On the plot or on searching for new words in the dictionary? If you want to teach people new words, then include a dictionary on the same page. I know what I'm writing about... I wrote things like "disambiguation" or "reification" myself.

Rule no.17:"How to make the "chapter X" part more attractive?"

Usually you just write "chapter 5" and then continue to write your story, but this way you take away your reader the chance to distract for a while. I had a lot of fun when reading Andrew Sapkowski's "Witcher" but I also couldn't wait for the beginning of the chapter because I could find there a catchy poem or song, or an encyclopaedic entry related to the world of the Witcher. The concentration span of the human brain doesn't last forever and we simply cannot concentrate and use our brain effectively if we keep doing the same thing. You can make your reader find pleasure in waiting for the new chapter by
a)naming the chapters after known movies, books, computer games, songs that are somewhat related with the mood or topic of the chapter. If someone dies in the chapter you can write "It's not death that parts people from eachother, it's the lack of love" or "Meet Joe Black" (it's more about the content of the movie than the all telling name) or "Stay with me" by Terminal Choice".
b)An "authentic" text related with the world the hero of your story lives in. It can be an encyclopaedic entry about a monster, about a weapon, a technological description, a letter, or something visual like a slogan from a poster or the slogan on a picture or a reprinted poster.
c)A poem or song lyrics related with the topic or mood of the chapter.
d)A cite or proverb related with the topic or mood of the chapter
e)A drawing, conceptual art etc.
f)A "did you know..." or a question typical for zen philosophy (what sound do you get if you clap only with one hand?)
Under the number of the chapter can be anything that suits your tastes, is interesting and short enough. You can also play with typographical texts or poems or write the numbers of chapters like: Chapter "so many ears you have" (2) or Chapter "so many toes and fingers you have" (20). You can also try to think of something witty, even a bit provocative like chapter "so many time has mr Jones cheated on his wife" (the previous was 15, so the reader won't have to guess many times)
One more thing about distractors... I loved appendixes like comments, "making of", dictionaries and lexicons, pictures and conceptual art in novels. I had something short to read or watch on my way back from the library or during the pause that was too short to continue reading the novel.

Rule no.18:"Be careful when it comes to the choice of words"

This may seem obvious but it's not always so. I remember that I used the expression "he was just like legions of newly born babies". I meant "legions" as a large population, large group, but it sounded like the babies would form a batallion or something like that. Another time I used the word "incunable" because the Thezaurus suggested it as a replacement for "book". Recently I found out that "incunable" means book, but... a mediaeval one. And the one wasn't a book like this. I just didn't understand the word "incunable". A friend of mine wanted to replace a german expression meaning "to arrange furniture in a flat and looked for it in a dictionary of related words and found the word "vermoebeln" which conatined the word "moebel" (furniture). She read her essay and the teacher told her that "vermoebeln" means "to mug someone, to damage someone's body intentionally etc." So you better watch out with words, you don't understand completely yet.

Rule no.19:"If you're working on a novel you'll probably spend a lot of time thinking and doing nothing"

I advice you to keep something open in the backgound, a website or game you can interrupt and return to at any moment. You'll probably waste a lot of time just by sitting in front of the computer or holding the pen, so have something near what can keep you busy while you think of the way you can write or improve your novel. Remember that you'll spend at least a year on your novel if you write two or three pages a day. Don't forget that there will be moments when you won't feel like writing anything. It's okay as long you have fun. Don't force yourself to anything and don't write just because you have to catch up or make the daily norm like a miner in some kind of communist state.

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.
When DA is down: Interesting websites #3(2 favs)
Tutorial:ABC of style. Writing for everyone #3(5 favs)
Tutorial:ABC of style. Writing for everyone #2(6 favs)
How to: a good summary to present your novel(5 favs)
You inside of Tetris:how to avoid artist's blocks(7 favs)
When DA is down: Interesting websites #1(4 favs)
Tutorial:ABC of style. Writing for everyone #1(6 favs)
What medias do you use? Music!(3 favs)
When DA is down: Interesting websites #2(1 fav)

total: 37 favs-9 articles so far