If you want to improve your creative writing, the best way to do so is to learn from others. Especially if those others are best-selling authors considered by most to be the masters of their craft.
Brandon Sanderson is an author that I greatly respect, and I (and many others) consider him the "gold standard" when it comes to fantasy writing. Not just the structure of his sentences, but world-building, character development, and most important of all, magic systems!
(Come back next week to find out about the Three Laws of Magic…)
Most fantasy readers will be familiar with the name (if you're not, go Google him and you'll see how many top-rated books he's put out), but they may not be familiar with his series of lectures.
A few years ago (prior to 2010, I believe), he gave a series of lectures on the craft of writing. They were all EXCELLENT, but the video quality was iffy at best. However, in 2015, he recorded another series of lectures and posted them all to YouTube.
Find them here…
It's a simple 8-video series, but each of the videos is about an hour long. They delve into every element of crafting excellent novels (not just fantasy, though fantasy is the focus). This includes elements like:- World-building
- Magic systems
- Character development
- The business of writing
- and more…