A Goodreads user asked Roshani Chokshi:

How did you learn how to write so pretty?

Roshani Chokshi THANK YOU SO MUCH! I'm glad you think my writing is pretty :)

When I first started writing, my writing was pretty, but hollow. I could wield big words but they looked gangly and awkward. They didn't enchant a reader but only served to reflect my own pompousness. It was just form serving form rather than function.

I taught myself by turning to writers I admired.

I devoured the works of Catherynne Valente. Here's some of my favorite lines from her most recent novel, RADIANCE:

“Night poured itself down my throat. Night was my wine and my meat. Night wed me and bedded me, widowed me and murdered me and resurrected me whole a thousand times over with each hour.”

I sipped from the cup of Vladimir Nabokov's exquisite absurdity. Here's my favorite passage from LOLITA:

"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.”

I guzzled the world building of Laini Taylor. Here's one of my favorite passages from DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE:

"The wind carried the memory of magic, revolution, violins, and the cobbled lanes meandered like creeks. Thugs wore Motzart wigs and pushed chamber music on street corners, and marionettes hung in windows, making the whole city seem like a theater with unseen puppeteers crouched behind velvet."

And after I devoured, sipped and guzzled...I mimicked.

I practiced how they wrote. Sometimes, I'd describe the sky. I'd write a description and push myself past the comfortable adjectives I'd used in the past. I'd scrabble at my sentences until I found something deeper. I'd think about the setting, the scene, the person until I had bent the world building to serve the story. I tried to harness magic. I waded knee-deep through horrific drafts until I stumbled upon my own voice.

So. That is how I learned. I read widely. Wrote exhaustively.

And eventually found my style :)

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