|
squeegee posted:I think this is the single most important piece of advice in the OP and I can't even count how many times this advice was given out in the old thread. A lot of people seem resistant to it-- "I don't like character-driven fiction, it's boring", "I don't have time to waste on reading things I'm not interested in," etc. First of all, anyone who says this just hasn't read enough outside their genre-- there's certainly something out there that will appeal to them. Second of all, you just can't be a truly competent writer if you don't broaden your horizons and read things in many genres, from many different perspectives, with many types of characters and situations and varying styles of prose. I guess if you've literally never read anything at all and start to write you might produce some kind of interesting outsider art due to lack of knowledge of conventions, ala The Shaggs, but you probably won't. You're not a special snowflake and neither is your pet project, so get your rear end to the library and you'll improve both in the process. I'm a very slow reader and I cannot help it. Is there a way I can maximize my reading efforts to becoming a better writer? I almost exclusively read character-driven fiction but sometimes I feel as if I'm too stuck in what I absolutely know to be good because we've had 50 or so years for us to process them(Henry Miller, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc in fact the most recent thing I've read was Blood Meridian). So, what kind of modern fiction of the same genre would be a good place to start? EDIT: While I'm here, I wanted to ask about my greatest problem starting out. I'm Belgian, and although I've been able to pick up on the English language extremely quickly from a very young age I'm stunted due to never having been around English speaking people for longer than several days at a time. I don't know how people actually speak in English, and I feel as if I can't write dialogue properly. In fact, due to my penchant for '20's to 40's literature my "voice" tends to be too solemn and even robotic at times(it's not been that bad in my current project though). The only thing I can think of to solve it is to find a way to go to England for a couple of months, probably via my college's erasmus programs. But does anyone have any advice for that? And no, I can't write in my own language for reasons I can't quite comprehend myself. NeilPerry fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Jul 15, 2012 |
#
¿
Jul 15, 2012 15:33
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 2, 2024 01:30 |
|
|
Geekboy posted:Great work so far in here, though thanks to my personal circumstances I feel like there should be something in the standard advice section about backing up your work. That's why I'm using evernote at the moment since it saves everything online automatically yet keeps it all on your computer as well(in case your internet is down). If I get this project finished I'll buy Scrivener instead though, since it's difficult to edit carefully in evernote.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2012 12:11
|
|
|
bengraven posted:Anyone already planning what to write for NaNo? I've started on the outline but I'm pretty scared of giving up in the first week because 1: I've never written more than a couple of pages for any project and 2: I'm in my last year of college and I can't guarantee I can write 2000 words a day. I do like the idea I have right now though. It basically combines a large amount of the ideas I've had over the years but it might add a certain level of entertainment to it as well. I've always dreamt of writing like Henry Miller but I don't have the genius or intelligence to write like that, and I don't know if I have the imagination to think up intricate plots. I just still have to decide to write it in either a diary format(which I really don't like the idea of, but will grant me much more flexibility) or simply in first person. I always find perspective to be the most difficult decision, and writing it out both ways never seems to convince me of either...
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2012 21:37
|
|