The most difficult thing about writing stories in a non-native language

And how can we develop

When you learn a foreign language, writing is the most challenging part. Listening and speaking are not so tough, and reading depends on whether you are familiar with the alphabet of the language you are learning. In comparison with them, writing is not straightforward.

When writing stories in a non-native language you need to assemble different skills for the target language; a wide range of vocabulary, knowledge of the grammar, understanding the writing structure and creativity.

What I feel is the most challenging aspect of writing in a second language is the description. Describing things just enough or not too much, is not easy even in the mother tongue. If you don’t explain enough, the readers cannot understand what’s going on in your story, but if you explain too much, the readers can get bored and lose their interest.

Besides that, when it is not your mother tongue, you are lack of vocabulary to describe things like how your heroine’s appearance is, how she dances, how she sings, or how her food tastes like.

How can we empower our description in a foreign language? I think reading in the target language helps a lot. We need to absorb more vocabulary to get a more powerful expression. Reading in our mother tongue even helps as well.

Next, we need to practice. Some people don’t know how to describe the taste of wine, even if it is their favourite. They need to practice. You can borrow somebody’s words or comments at the beginning and then you can be more creative later.

After inputting the new words and expressions, we need to try and use them in our stories. Write a short story regularly. Medium is the right place to do that. Write and write and write. Ideally, ask a native speaker to look through your writings.

You don’t have to write a big scaled drama. You can start a short story or even a tiny ‘tweet,’ but more importantly, it is better to keep your writing frequency. Accumulation of small things can bring a significant change. I think it is also a good idea to write poetry when you start writing in a second language.

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