Top laners win their lane and lose the game more than anybody else, and it happens the same way every time. The fix is knowing what the longest lane on the map is really asking you to do.
League of Legends Guide
Top Lane
Things Nobody Tells YouTop lane is the longest walk on the map and the most isolated seat in the game. Both facts cut in your favor and against you, and almost everything about playing it well comes from accepting the second half of that sentence.
The matchup was decided in champion select
More top lanes are settled before minions spawn than in the lane itself. Some pairings simply aren't a fight, and no amount of good play turns one of those into an even game.
Don't dodge over it. Know, before the game starts, whether the next ten minutes are about winning or surviving, because those two plans look nothing alike and switching between them halfway is how people die at level six.
Where you leave the wave decides who gets ganked
A wave sitting in the middle of the lane is an invitation with your name on it. A wave near your own turret is a trap for whoever comes to visit.
You choose which of those exists, and most top laners think about the wave purely in terms of farm. Who is allowed to walk up to you is the more expensive half of that decision.
Trades are about cooldowns, and ganks are about price
Being ahead doesn't win the next exchange and being behind doesn't lose it. What decides a trade is what each of you has available right now (and that changes every few seconds). Whoever just spent something is briefly a different champion, and the lane is made of those windows.
Ganks work the same way. Granted, nobody avoids them forever in the longest lane on the map, so the question is what it costs the enemy (a summoner spell, thirty seconds of jungle time, a counter-gank they walked into). A gank that trades their whole rotation for your Flash is a fine outcome. One that catches you mid-lane with everything down is a decision you made ninety seconds earlier.
Plating expires, Teleport doesn't have to
Turret plating is one of the few things in this game with an expiry date, and it's worth a real chunk of your build. A lane where you were ahead and never touched the turret converted nothing, and standing back while somebody takes them uncontested funds the exact champion you'll be fighting for the next twenty minutes.
Teleport is the opposite kind of resource. Burning it to return to a lane you already lost is usually the worst available use. The lane is a few waves, and what you spent was the ability to be somewhere else when the game turned. A top laner who saves it for a fight nobody expected them at has done more than one who used it twice to farm two minutes earlier.
A won lane you never leave is a wasted lead
Top laners are the likeliest players in the game to win their lane and lose the match, and it always happens the same way: the lead stays in the lane. You keep farming, they keep dying, and nobody else on your team ever benefits from any of it.
A lead is worth what you convert it into. Shove and take an objective, or cross the map. Or shove and make somebody come deal with you (itself a service to the other four players).
Top lane is a negotiation over what the side lane is worth to both teams.
The short version
Decide in champion select if the lane is about winning or surviving, choose where the wave sits, take the plates while they exist, and spend the lead somewhere other than the lane.
For the plating math, our turrets guide covers what each plate pays, and our losing lane guide covers the half of the matchups you were never going to win.
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