…amateur writing communities[' output is] just as valid as commercially published works. But in that enclosed environment young writers emulate what they see.
Which is learning a ruinous style?
I learned to write by reading SF&F novels all through my teens, mostly 3rd person, mostly from what were the big authors of the time: Anne McCaffery, Andre Norton, Frank Herbert, Poul Anderson, Fredrick Pohl, etc., and emulating their style. (I was a C- English student; I didn't know grammar from a hole in the wall.) I had been writing since the mid 1970s until I burnt out in 2001 (which I think is from trying to emulate C.J. Cherryh's style, which I adore but is terrifically hard to do).
Yet...
In 2015, I turned to writing fan fiction to practice writing in 1st person (and jettison my issues that caused my burnout), learning I could do all that I noted in the original post. I agree online is a valid community for writing, but also acknowledge that I had a goal of refining my writing toward commercial publication, not to fit in. That meant that my prose style had to have rhythm and make use of rhetoric and elocution.
Which is why I read everything outloud. If I couldn't "orate" to a room of listeners and keep their attention, then it can't work on the page.
And there, those last three sentences is also a tip of how to avoid I I I I repetitiveness.
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