Finding out your “writing level” can be super helpful.
You might be spinning your wheels in the mud getting nowhere, and finding out that there’s other things you could be doing to improve can be beneficial.
So what level writer are you? Let’s find out!
During the last stream, the subscribers voted that we talk about “writer levels.”
Watch the full video here or scroll down for the highlights.
Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Level Writers
Writer Levels
- I’ve used the terms “beginner, intermediate, and advanced writers” before, but what actually are the differences between them?
- Finding out your level isn’t about feeling cool/superior, it can help you figure out what some good next steps/goals could be for your writing!
- So let’s discuss the different levels and figure out what they are.
I based my level chart on the chart that I used to gauge levels of students when I taught Japanese. Here’s the chart I used for that:
Foreign Language Levels
Beginner
- Has studied the language a little (1-2 years)
- Knows some words/grammar (0-50%)
- Can understand some things/express some thoughts (0-50%)
Intermediate
- Has studied the language a lot (3-5 years)
- Knows most normal words/grammar (51-99%)
- Can understand most things/express most thoughts (51-99%)
Advanced
- Has studied the language extensively (5+ years)
- Knows all normal words/grammar (100%)
- Can understand all things/express all thoughts (100%)
Master
- Lives the language
- Understanding/expression is indistinguishable from own native language
- Would be thought of as a native speaker over the phone
Now let’s use that skeleton to talk about Writer Levels! Remember, this is NOT definitive, it’s MY opinion only
Fiction Writing Levels
Beginner
- Has written a little (1-2 years)
- Finished some short stories/poetry, but none published
- AND/OR finished a novel, but no requests from agents
TO GET TO THE NEXT LEVEL
- Finish the damn story! Don’t start a new one every few months, finish it.
- Read books on story structure (KM Weiland, Peter Elbow, etc.)
- Edit/revise your stories, and spend just as much time on that as it took to write them.
- Share your work with other writers and incorporate their feedback.
- Read daily, study how the stories are written.
- Try writing in some mediums that you haven’t before (short story, poetry, etc.)
Intermediate
- Has written a lot (3-5 years)
- Published short stories/poetry in exclusive magazines/contests
- AND/OR had a request for novel from an agent
TO GET TO THE NEXT LEVEL
- Don’t give up! You’re at the point where you know enough about writing to know you’re not spectacular, but you will get better!
- Try to build an audience online, start networking with editors, authors, agents, etc.
- Don’t get stuck in your ways, really take other people’s feedback to heart and edit your writing.
Advanced
- Has written extensively (5+ years)
- Published short stories/poetry in prestigious magazines/contests
- AND/OR traditionally published a novel
TO GET TO THE NEXT LEVEL
- Concentrate on marketing/platform to get out the word about your book(s)
Master
- Published many short stories/poetry in very prestigious magazines/contests
- AND/OR traditionally published many novels
- Admired by their writing peers
TO GET TO THE NEXT LEVEL
- Bask in your own divine glow
Be sure to check out the video for more details, anecdotes, and comments from chat!
After that we wrote a story based on combining these two prompts that chat voted for: “You’re friends with a one-eyed girl,” and “Due to climate change and rising sea levels, city buildings have grown legs and started hiking inland.”
Here’s what we came up with:
No one visited the lonely cathedral. She sat alone on a forgotten street in an abandoned neighborhood, all windows and doors boarded up and shuttered away from the world. Except for one.
Her stained glass circle, spiraling with colors and shapes like a kaleidoscope of diamonds, was the only eye she had left. Inside, it filtered sunlight like a rainbow of sparkling fireflies in the dust and rubble, but outside it only let her see how no one paid her any attention anymore.
Until the boy came to visit. She felt a tickle in her foundation when he pulled away one of the boards, and then the familiar tingles of his footsteps through her empty halls. He walked through the broken pews, up to the moldy pulpit, as she waited with her breath held in suspense. Was he a thief, come to take what little she had left?
The boy sat down underneath her eye and began to paint. He pulled out paper and paint brushes from his knapsack, stared right into her pupil, and brushed away. With him right beneath her eye, she could see every stroke. The boy wasn’t very good, certainly not as talented as the architect who had drawn the cathedral or the artists who had come to visit her years before, but they had abandoned her. He was here now, and she loved him.
When he left, she pined for him in her walls, creaking and crumbling as she contracted all around. Her first visitor in so long, she had hoped he would stay for longer. But it was not meant to be, and she seeped with sadness.
But the next day, the boy came back. With renewed joy, she swept the darkness into a corner and shone light through her eye as brightly as possible, trying to show him the same sights that had inspired thousands before. Eagerly, the boy burst out his supplies and started painting again.
Still, his paintings were not very good. The lines were wobbly, the shading was nonexistent, and the perspective was askew, but the passion was clear in every stroke. He even took some creative liberties, adding legs to one drawing of the cathedral, showing it walking around in water, avoiding the flood. Her walls shuddered and creaked with laughter when she saw it, making the boy turn around in confusion and blame the sound on the rats.
Every day, the boy came back, painting more pictures of her. And every day, the water levels rose. Outside, the waves lapped against her sides. First her toes, then her heels, now her shins deep in the muddy brine. The poison began to seep inside her, soaking carpets to moss and wooden walls to putty.
She feared for the boy’s safety, but still he visited. The dry places to sit were becoming fewer and fewer, but he still found them, still painted. She could sense danger in the waters bumping against her body and tried to warn him, but he didn’t understand her language of lights and whispers.
When he went to leave, one of the fiends bit him. A long, slithery thing hiding in the muck. He tripped, fell face-first into the evergrowing goop, and didn’t get back up. His knapsack floated away from his body, opening up and leaking out his pictures.
His beautiful pictures that she loved.
The paints swirled away, bleeding out their life into the indifferent water. The paper dissolved into pulp. She screamed from her every edifice, spidering cracks up and down her walls, and for the first time, she closed her eye.
In the darkness, she saw his painting of her, with legs, wading through the water. Summoning every remaining prayer and hope that had been mortared into her walls over her lifetime, she rose from the ground, and walked away.
The boy had drawn her with legs. But he hadn’t drawn the vengeance she would take once she got them.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso (edited by me)