Young Writers Society

Hi, I know I'm 18 and should know all of this already but I have dyslexia - so I find it a little hard to focus on how words should be ordered etc.
Do you know of any way I can improve my ability to make a full sentence, every time? 'Cos when I am focusing I normally do OK, but if i am writing a story or something I struggle.

Please help.

Okay! So I have a couple of questions for you...

When you focus on your sentences, what happens? I'm an auditory learner, which means that I tend to "hear" what I want to write. Like, for me when I write sentences, I'll usually hear the sounds come in my head and I write the sounds I hear. For me, it has to sound pretty. But you may have a different learning style! So what kinds of things happen when you learn?

When i imagine a scene, it appears to me like a movie. It is all visual. I don't think about the words I won't to say/write. They simply manifest... If i want to describe it verbally I can do without any problems, but if I want to write it. Ideas get jumbled up etc...

I am a lot better than I used to be. Only thanks to the teaching support i received at college, but now I have left I don't know how I will continue my progress.

I hope this has helped...

When you start writing, you need to first get the words to match the scene. Don't worry about writing sentences yet... what you want to get the words out as quick as you can. Brainstorm! Come up with words that occur to you and just write all of them down, not just nouns and verbs as well. Then put the words together on paper. Does it match what you're imagining? Get somebody to read it and see what images can come up to their minds.

Finally, writing is about conveying an image more effectively. Don't get tied up on sentence structure too much... focus on what you want to convey.

The best advice I can offer on learning sentence structure is this: read a lot. It may be different in your case, since you have a learning disorder, but I still think that it will help you. It's how I learned to write, anyway. The more you read, the more the different authors' voices begin to coalesce in your head into your own, personal style. You also get proper mechanics beat into your brain, that way. XD