How Do You Improve Flow?

I'm pretty satisfied with characterization, plot development, dialogue, and descriptions.

But I tend to majorly fail with flow. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it flat out flops over like a dead flower.

Help? Anyone have any good excersies or something I could to do improve?

Here's an article on flow: http://www.timetowrite.com/powerful.html#flow
It has other writing tips, but just click the link that has the word "flow" in it.

And a book that I don't own, but seems to have okay reviews about flow is Writing in Flow: Keys to Enhanced Creativity

If you're talking about flow in your prose, then one thing that has often been suggested to me, and which really helps is reading your stuff out loud.

No one has to be listening.

Just read your piece out loud to an invisible audience. You'll start to get a feel for the things that don't "flow" in your writing, and hopefully, that'll help you start to fix it.

Once you get comfortable with that, the next step is to have someone else read your piece aloud to you. This is more to get a sense of what other people see when reading it. It really helps because we, as the all powerful, all knowing authors, tend to read what we want to read when going over our prose. We read things the way we imagined them when writing. By getting someone else to read your piece, you get a feel for what does and doesn't feel right to the reader. Any time they stumble over the words, or go back to reread, you know you've got something to fix.

Anyways, that's just my two copper pennies.

~Annie

A lot of authors have problems when it comes to flow, but no fear, there is in fact a way to make flow come to you.

Flow is when you get so caught up in your writing, that you forget all about everything, else, right?

Well when you write a novel, know your beginning, have an idea of where you want to go, and have an idea of where you want to end, then fill in the blanks. Whatever's inbetween doesn't have to be planned. You can have just bits and pieces of ideas you want to incorporate.

If you observe things around you, you'll be able to make your own flow in the way thay you'll have so many thing you want to add to your story. That's a good thing.

However you don't want to put anything that's not contributing to your plot or that's not necessary. You can make any event from TV, your life, school, or whatever somehow help you make scenes in your story, but you have to remember that you have to make it somehow contribute to later events in the story.

Try listening to music, imagining the setting of your story and the people within it, and watch or read anything that seems similar to the world you're creating. Make it as real as possible in your mind or else you'll never be able to show it in the readers' minds.

Hope that helps
-Shina