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Wouldn't this be a useful writing tool?

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Wemibelle

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#1  Edited By Wemibelle

I have this thing (and I know I'm not alone) where I think most of the things I write are boring and poorly written. Either I'm too used to my own style and am unable to parse actual quality out of it or I really am just that bad. I feel it's fairly hampering to my writing ability, considering most of what I do end up writing doesn't get read by anyone but me. I try to improve my writing but it can be hard to tell exactly what it is that I'm doing wrong.

An idea just struck me and, while I know that it would be hard to pull off, I would love some kind of place where professional editors would read submitted work and show what changes they would make to the original piece. This would be an extremely useful tool to help teach aspiring writers what it is exactly that they need to work on. The sheer manpower it would take to read any and all submisions, plus make edits, would be mind-boggling and is probably impossible. Still, it's a neat idea that I thought had enough merit to share.

Oh, and I mostly mean for gaming-related writing. Editing for stories or something longer would be out of the question entirely instead of just improbable.

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Andorski

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#2  Edited By Andorski
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Jumanji

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#3  Edited By Jumanji

University.

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Wemibelle

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#4  Edited By Wemibelle

Bitmob does do that but they only do it to articles they find good enough to put on the front page and they don't show you or tell you why your aritcles were edited. Ruins some of the point.

University classes are helpful and I'm already taking those. Still would like a place more geared towards games criticism and coverage.

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Rudyftw

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#5  Edited By Rudyftw

Ok?

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tim_the_corsair

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#6  Edited By tim_the_corsair

The Escapist used to provide marked up copies of articles, including suggestions as comments. I think that experience really helped me improve, especially when compared to the feedback I received from other publishers (Hyper magazine, for example, was a paragraph or two in an email, then the Editor making the changes himself). As a fiction writer now, I have cottoned on to the concept of beta readers and writers groups. I believe equivalents of these would help in a journalistic scenario as well.

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Fajita_Jim

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#7  Edited By Fajita_Jim

Try here, the non-fiction board perhaps.
      
I know what you mean about being overly-critical of your own writing. I find myself going through my shit and stripping out what I consider 'excess fat'. You know, stuff like changing "sanguine sunset" to "sunset". I have to keep telling myself "It's a story, not a poem."
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DarthOrange

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#8  Edited By DarthOrange

Stay in school and don't slack off in you classes, your writing will be fine.