What is an advance?
The word 'advance' means progress or improvement.
Advancing Your Writing Skills: The Meaning of Advance in Creative Writing
If you want to advance your writing skills, you need to make progress and improve your craft.
Writing is an ever-evolving process, and it is essential to keep advancing your skills as a writer. To do that, you need to put in the time, effort, and practice to develop your writing style, grammar, and vocabulary.
The word 'advance' comes from the Old French avancer, meaning 'move forward.' In writing, advancing means taking your work to the next level, improving your ability to communicate effectively with your readers and mastering the use of language to express your ideas.
From poetry to prose, the term 'advance' holds essential significance in creative writing as it marks progress and blossoming skills.
Here are two examples of authors who skillfully employ the word 'advance' in their literary works:
'Till then I'll sweat and seek about for eases,//And at that time bequeath you my diseases.' - Valentine
Valentine's witty quip in Shakespeare's play shows his frustration with the slow progress of his courtship, marked by the twin themes of advance and delay.
'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.' - Nick Carraway
This famous last line of 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald conveys the idea of advancing forward with intense effort and the inevitable pull of the past, like fighting against a strong current.