As a successful writer, one of the things I've been asked a lot over the years, either personally, or in various seminars and writers talks, is "How do I improve my writing?"  Well, there are a number of ways to do that, and this is my top ten list of things you should do to help improve your writing.  These are probably suggestions you've seen from other authors or speakers, and if so that's good, because they're all important.  So, without further delay, here's the list.  (PS, this list is in no particular order of importance)

The Tips
1. Love writing.

I can't tell you how many times I've preached this fact to writers and potential authors.  In order to become good at writing you must love to do it.  Don't do it for the money (trust me, you really don't make much, if anything at it), and don't do it for the fame (it's not all it's cracked up to be).  If you do you're just banging on a keyboard, and if you're doing that it'll become monotonous very quickly, and you'll do more to harm yourself and the writing arts than help either.  If you've done this, you've taking a huge first step.

2. Love Reading.

The looks I get when I say this are comical and somewhat disconcerting.  People who ask me how to improve their writing find it rather odd that I'd mention reading as being important.  There's two reasons for this.  One, if you don't like reading, why are you writing in the first place?  And two, reading books by other authors in either your preferred genre, or even one you're not found of (Yes, I kid you not.) can and will help you improve your own writing.

Why?  Well, for one, while the story or the genre might make you want to gouge your eyes out (ie, Twilight, Harry Potter, etc), you may discover that they've done something rather interesting with the plot, the characters, or other things like that which may actually be a teaching or guidance tool you can use to improve a weaker part of your own writing.  For example, Lord of the Rings will teach you description skills (and how not to apply overkill like Tolkien did). CS Lewis will teach you how to make it fun.  Orson Scott Card will teach you how to properly handle drama and intrigue in a sci-fi setting.  Asimov will teach you world building.  EE Doc Smith will teach you space opera.  Clive Cussler for military adventure.  And the list goes on and on and on.

So read often, and be sure to take notes as well, even if you're not a note taker, because the things you find in there may be beneficial to your writing efforts and your future improvements.

3. Experiment

Don't be afraid to experiment with your writing.  The methods you may use usually vary from one person to another, but experimentation is still important, as it helps you practice new ideas, styles, etc in a much safer setting than if you were writing a book or story for publication, because it allows you to make mistakes and learn from them without any real negative side effects or kickbacks.

One of the ways I used to do experimental writing (and still do to some degree) was to read a book, and then literally copy the author's writing style down to the inflections, the way they described scenes, etc.  I'm not talking about outright word for work copying their story, but rather mimicking them as accurately as you can.  The things you learn by doing that are absolutely astounding.

For some, copying a story word for word (read it from the book and then type it out) helps them get better, as it gives them a feel for what it was like creating the story.  IE, they get behind the author's eyes to some degree.  Another method I've seen used is to create fan fiction.  That's where you take another author's world, and their characters in it, and create a unique and separate story of your own creation.  

Still another way is to yank a character from a book you've recently read and literally plunk them down in the middle of another entirely different world that's from a genre completely opposite of the one they came from.  For example, taking Legolas from Lord of the Rings and putting him into a murder mystery or a sci-fi.  Now the trick with this is that you have to not just carry over the looks and the name, you also have to carry over the personality and everything else intact, and accurately write the character's responses and everything just as though the original author did it.  While this is probably the hardest form of experimentation, for those who can successfully achieve it, the benefits are outstanding.

But regardless which way you chose to do your experiments, it's best to write them as short stories (5000 words or less), because if you haven't learned anything by then, there's no point going any further.  Ie, if you can't learn it in 5000 words, you aren't going to learn it.  But if you do, then you don't need to go any further anyways.

4. Write often.

Another thing I tell writers and potential authors is to write a LOT.  I'm not talking once a week for twenty minutes.  Or even an hour a day.  I'm talking every single chance you can get.  If all you can spare is an hour a day, that's fine.  The idea is that you write every chance you get.  This goes along with item #1 in this list.  If you can't do this, and do it consistently, you may want to question whether you truly love to write.

As a writer who loves writing, I do it as often as I can, when I can, wherever I can.  I actually wake up looking forward to being able to write that day.  I do however take breaks, as is a good idea to do (I take all of Sunday off and do absolutely zero writing as a rule of thumb), but the rest of the time whenever I've got freetime I write.  The frequency and consistency will help you get better by always keeping your work in the front of your mind.

Because, if you're going to be writing three hours a day, six days a week, you're going to very quickly be able to identify problems in your story, character conflicts, plot holes, etc.  But if you don't write a lot, or as often as you can, you'll start forgetting details, characters will undergo unwanted changes or drifts in personality, details, etc, plot holes will appear, and so on.

5. Don't be afraid to make mistakes.

I've run into too many authors who are actually afraid to make mistakes.  If you are, don't be.  It's all part of the learning process.  No matter how many years you've been writing, and how many books you've written, you can always get better.  The only reason you don't is if you've given up or settled for "good enough".  I admit that on any story you publish, you have to reach a point of "good enough" before you can release it.  But that doesn't mean that your next book can't be better, and the one after that better still.  The point here is, make mistakes, learn from them, grow, improve, and then do it all over again.  In a strange way, it's actually kinda fun.  

6. Get peer reviewed.

One thing that's important for improving your writing is to periodically be peer reviewed.  I'm not talking about family and friends.  I'm talking about complete strangers, or people on the internet who you don't know personally.  In other words, computer friends.  While some you may know in real life, the majority are just a username on your screen that you interact with through a webpage.  Because of this they will tend to be far more honest than if they knew you personally.  So where do you find people like this?

On writing related sites, such as writing.com, mobileread.com, etc, where you can talk with other authors and/or readers, and get feedback on your works.  The things they will tell you, for the most part, will be good, and help you to improve your writing.  You'll get a few sour apples in with the juicy ones, so don't let those get you down.  Also, be sure to have a tough skin.  

If you don't accept criticism well, writing is not for you, because it's criticism that helps us improve.  Yes, there will be the good, the bad, and the really ugly, but overall the majority of it will be very beneficial to you.  So don't be afraid to get reviewed once in a while.  Don't do it every day, but certainly on a regular basis.  One idea is to post a chapter a week of a story you're working on, get some feedback on it, make the changes or improvements that are suggested, and when the story is done, share it with the world!

Which leads me into my next point...

7. Share your stories.

I'd say realistically that, out of every story you write, only about one in five should ever go to publication or be sold for money.  The other four should be works you create, tweak, polish and preen, then give away free to anyone who wants them.  Why?  Well, for several reasons.  One, it helps you create a backlist, and that's a hugely important part of any author's portfolio.  Your backlist is your best friend.  It also engenders better relations with your readers, and may even draw in new ones who otherwise wouldn't read your books if they had to buy them first.

In other words, these are the kind of people who stick with authors they know, and will only buy books from them.  But if they're given a free book, they'll snatch it up and read it.  If they like what they read, they'll be open to buying your regularly published books.  A backlist of free books is also a great way to attract potential agents or publishers.  If they get the free books and like what they see, you're more likely to get picked up than if they have to buy the book to find out about you.

The free books are also a great way to encourage reader feedback.  So when you give away the book, as for them to read it and give you their thoughts on how you did.  Probably only one out of a hundred will do that, but when they do, they'll give you a treasure trove of great advice.  Not all of it will be something you can use, but if they can talk with you and know you're listening to them, it's also a great way to improve reader relations, which will help you down the road, as well as help improve your writing in the present.

8. Write outside your comfort zone.

One area that many writers don't think about is writing in different genres.  Case in point.  I love sci-fi.  I write sci-fi like it's coming out my ears.  I however not all of what I write is sci-fi.  Sure, its the style I'm most familiar with, and thus most comfortable.  But it's not the only genre I write in.  I've got two short story anthologies that include kids stories, fantasy, adventure, intrigue, and more.  I've also got a religious teaching booklet, and I've done considerable volumes of technical writing (mostly computer related) over the years as well.

I also have come to enjoy writing stories that employ heavy use of fusion genres.  A fusion genre is, by technical definition, not a genre at all.  It's more or less a blending of multiple different genres together into one.  In reality, writers have been doing this for ages.  For example, a sci-fi novel can have adventure, spies, politics, and thriller elements to it, and still be classified as a sci-fi.  

A fusion genre on the other hand goes a step farther than this.  Instead of a single genre with slivers of numerous other genres in them, these are stories where they're a full on blend of two or more genres.  For example, you could have a political murder mystery, or even a sci-fi murder mystery.  I've seen stories where they mixed fantasy and historical genres (elves and trolls in the wild west) together.

Now technically these are not a new way of doing writing, as they've been around in limited forms for years.  But they're becoming far more popular of late.  In fact, in another decade I expect to see fusion genres to be the ruling story style, which will probably last for a long time before going back to pure genre books.  This is mostly because genres tend to trend over periods of time, and each gets their time in the sun for a while before people grow tired of them and move on to a different one for a while.

But if fusion genres aren't your thing, try finding another genre outside your comfort zone that you can write in.  The general idea here is simple.  If you write in your favorite genre for too long, you get bored with it, or you start becoming lame and cliche.  Going outside your preferred genre is, to the writer, a form of "palette cleansing", similar to how eating bread or a cracker will clean your "palette" allowing you to better taste the unique and distinct flavors of each new food item. The bread and/or crackers trick is used often in fine dining and wine tastings to ensure that no flavors carry over from the previous item to allow for a more accurate assessment of the item being consumed.

Writing outside your comfort zone does exactly the same thing.  It forces you to throw aside your cliches and pull out your entire writing toolbox to take on this new writing adventure.  Because, while some things will carry over from one genre to another (personalities for example), most will not.  There's different ways you describe things, different ways you allow characters to interact, and so on.  In doing so it'll shake you out of the complacency that grows from working within one genre for a long time, and in turn teaches you even more neat little tricks and skills you can draw on at a later date for another book that may need exactly that skill in order to be the best it can be.

9. Get professionally edited.

One of the things you'll need to do at some point is to get your book professionally edited.  Usually you'll want to reserve this honor for the book you plan to publish, as editing, outside of a publisher, tends to be a bit expensive, but sometimes you'll want to do this for an intermediate piece just to see where you are in your skills.  Case in point.  Years ago I had written a story I thought was out of this world, fantastic, and an immediate New York Times best seller hands down.

The editor didn't think so.

In fact, I think the reply was, "This is a joke, right?"  Yeah, it was that bad.  But, it helped me get better.  Sure, the story (a short fantasy tale as I remember) looked like a red ink factory had exploded on the page, but I learned from it.  To prove a point, my most recent professionally edited work received rave reviews from the editor.  The most memorable of her comments was, "That was the easiest job I've had in years!"  So yeah, I've improved a lot since that day, and suffered plenty of red ink along the way as well.

But that's the thing I like about professional editors.  They don't mince words.  They work in a similar way to peer reviewers, only more powerfully.  Where a peer reviewer will give you a firecracker's worth of advice, a professional editor is going to come in with the big guns, and maybe even a few WMD's.  But, despite having your prized possession run through a literary meat grinder, you're going to learn stuff you didn't even think was possible.  Professional editors love straining for gnats, and trust me, they'll find them.

Now, like peer reviewing, don't do this too often, as this level of editing is best reserved for books you plan to publish at some point.  But if you're brave enough, it's also another (albeit expensive vs free peer review) way to get feedback that will help you improve your writing.  If you're good enough, you should be able to walk away from a professional editing with less than 300 errors for the entire novel.  If you have less than 100, you've pretty much done what most authors can't, and should be proud of yourself.  Of course, if you do, then your new goal is to shoot for zero errors.  

10. Research, research, research.

If you're going to write about anything, do your homework.  Lots of it.  Do it till your eyes bleed.  Knowing the area you're going to be writing in is important.  Now this doesn't necessarily mean that you need to know everything under the sun, but at least understand everything you're going to write about.  For example, if you're writing a fantasy story with horses in it.  Don't have them able to run three hundred miles and hour and never sleep.  That's completely unrealistic and will completely kill the story.

Ok, sure, you might have some magical stallions in your story who can do that, but then that runs into another problem which involves the rule of balance.  It states, "For every strength there must be an offsetting weakness."  In other words, if your horses have the ability to fly, limit them in some way, such as being unable to fly above a given height, or they're easy targets for dragons, etc.

Now if your horses are realistic, you will want to research how horses move, act, run, etc.  But at the same time, while knowing how they operate, temper the amount you learn about them against your needs in the story.  For example, if the horses are only bit players that ney a few times and are mentioned only in passing, you probably could watch a nature show and get enough information for what you need.

But if the horses are a key player in the story, learn about horses inside and out.  Learn how they think, run, act, etc.  If you write sci-fi, know the basic laws of physics, what are the current theories, what are the known laws, and much, much more.  If you write murder mysteries, learn a little criminal law, police procedure, etc.  The idea is, don't go into any story or topic assuming you know everything.  Research and make sure you know what you're writing about before you do.

Sometimes, depending on what you're writing, you may not know what you will need to research.  In cases like this, I'd actually suggest first writing the story outline, and I mean a detailed outline.  Essentially write out the story in long detail before you do anything else.  Yes, for some this is more or less "writing the story before you write the story", but if that's what you need to determine what you need to learn or research, do it.  You'll thank yourself later.

Conclusion
Well, that's it.  Now there's obviously a lot more you can do to improve your writing.  But if you can master these ten starting skills, you'll find that your writing will improve by leaps and bounds, and eventually you may be able to go at it knowing what you need to improve in the future without anyone telling you.  Probably not, but there's still a chance.  

Anyhow, I hope this has helped you, and that through this little article you'll be able to become a better writer.