Over the last few months I haven't written a lot, but I have undertaken a couple of different activities to help improve my writing.

For starters, I took a class offered by Community Ed here in DesMoines in order to begin the process of familiarizing myself with the YA/Middle Grade scene in the city.  This class was mostly review from prior classes and conferences that I have attended.  However, it was helpful to be reminded!  Plus I got to meet some of DesMoines' writers and found out about DAWG (DesMoines Area Writer's Group), which I have attended once and found that it would be nice to attend again in the future.  I hope to go to the next meeting this week.  The teachers of the class also suggested we read books about writing, so I found a book at the library and began reading it.  This was probably more helpful than the class, and I will likely look it over again in the future.

Also, I have been trying to read more, not just for pleasure but to analyze the story elements of the story.  Recently, I read halfway through a book, but the story wasn't compelling enough for me to want to keep reading.  The voice of the character initially caught my interest; I enjoyed the author's style.  However, the reason I put the book down was because the main character and her main love interest weren't original enough (think of all the stories where the girl falls in love with a boy who is already taken) and the main character behaved in a way at times that didn't seem realistic to me.  What it boiled down to for me was that I didn't like either of them, and I didn't care about them.  Especially not the guy she was in love with; he just seemed like the macho man with good looks.

This week, I finished a book. The author did a great job developing her world and used each scene to help develop the overall plot.  However, there were many things she did that weakened her story.  First, in only a few scenes, she abruptly switched perspectives away from the main character; the first time this happened, the perspective change was completely unnecessary to the overall plot. Also, it happened so rarely that when it did happen, I was thrown off.  Second, character development for the main character was weak; as I read through the book, it was hard for me to describe what the main characters were like.  Third, the ending was disappointing; the main character did very little to solve the ultimate problem she walked herself into; instead, all the side characters, including an adult, stepped in to save the day.

Now, I've started reading another book.  So far, the pretense of the story has caught me.  But already, I am picking out areas where the story could have been improved: cut out the prologue; cut out the extra narrative and dialogue scenes that bog down the story;  imagery is great except when you're being overloaded with it

I ponder the pros and cons of these stories as I read them with the knowledge that my own writing needs a lot of work, and there's a reason these books are published.  Lately, I have been working on a serious revision of one of the books I finished, trying to apply the things I have learned about character development and plot.  It has been fun to looker closer at plot and character and revise scenes to make a stronger story.  Right now I am closely looking at each scene to see how it supports both the character arch of the main character as well as the overall plot.  By doing this, I feel that I have a stronger story.  Now, once done, all I have to do rewrite and revise and edit.