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Are there any worthwhile online courses for novel writing, paid or otherwise? I've never had anything like a writing class, outside of the standard ones required as part of education curriculum, and I wouldn't mind having a class that maybe results in me stumbling around blindly a little less.
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Aug 5, 2017 18:36
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Thanks for all the suggestions, goon friends. I'm watching the Brandy Sandy lectures right now and they're really helping to clarify some things. Also reading through Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, and while he tends to put things a little too prescriptively for me, I think there's a lot of value I can take away from it. Question regarding discovery(pantsing) vs outlining writing styles: I'm trying to write my first book, after a couple of false starts with NaNoWriMo and a self-imposed second attempt at a novel in a month. I'm still unsure whether I would really fall in the camp of discovery writing or more strict outlining. I think I'll most likely settle somewhere in the middle, but is there a value, as a newish writer, for just going wholeheartedly at one approach or the other and seeing where it gets me? In the past I've been pretty successful, as far as word count and getting ideas on the page is concerned, by just writing and not worrying about it too much, but both of my aborted attempts were largely because I hit a point where the story just got totally lost and the easiest fix will be starting over on both of those attempts.
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Aug 7, 2017 21:30
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sebmojo posted:I'm a discovery writer and I got stalled halfway through two books so far. I'd take one of your half books and try the snow flake method on it. Yeah I was peeking at that when someone linked it above. I think it'll at least help clarify where the book feels like it should go. So far what feels most natural to me is to just sit down and write, honestly. I very pointedly don't go back and rewrite stuff as I'm going though-- I feel like it makes more sense to just get to the end of a first draft, and jot down notes on the way if I realize I could make changes in past chapters that would help or whatever. I also don't feel that natural outlining at all, but I do find very early on I get a sense of how I want the book to end, and major events that need to happen over the course. Sometimes it feels pretty apparent what order they should happen in, and then the writing mostly becomes about orienteering myself towards the next natural "plot point". Regardless, I've found in the past when I do outline stuff, the characters end up wooden and perfunctory. For all their faults, the characters in my two book-a-month attempts feel much more natural.
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Aug 7, 2017 22:07
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:For me, the whole point of index cards (post-its) on the wall is so I CAN explore multiple possibilities easily, while still keeping track of the overall structure and story. I have multiple possible, sometimes contradictory, plot lines/scenes that can be stacked up and viewed all at once to evaluate. It's easy to stick new ideas in and take old ones out, or rearrange them, or put an old one back in again. I'm really starting to understand what you mean about that last point. I can't do written outlines, but something akin to shifting around notecards or post-its does make a lot of sense to me. I know this is getting a little navel-gaze-y, but I think it does come down to a lot more than "are you a pantser or a plotter." The more I write, the more I'm finding it's not a continuum with those two options at the extremes, it's much more personal. I've overthought the question for a long time and what I'm coming to is a conviction that you're best off just trying whatever works, be it a mess of post it notes or mailing yourself plot points or asking your dog for advice. Do it til it doesn't work, then find something else. Temper that with intentional work on areas where you don't do well and I think it'll keep you propelled through a lot of writing. I write god-awful dialogue and I hate reading about writing dialogue but every time I do, I can see some improvement, even if it's kind of marginal.
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Aug 11, 2017 18:37
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anime was right posted:also dont forget there are pretty good odds that no matter what method you use you're just going to suck at writing long stories until you do it a few times and learn from your mistakes Oh definitely. I'm maybe a quarter of the way through my third attempt at a novel, and there's a lot that I'm not happy about. There's also a lot I'm actually pretty excited about. But it's all terrible writing. I think I'm past the point where i'll chuck it and try something else, though-- even if I finish this book and don't feel like it's good enough to be marketable, I think there's a ton of value in finishing it. And even if it's not great, I think I may go through the process of editing it and maybe workshopping it too. As a novice writer it's hard for me to envision the benefits and lessons to be gained from the editing process, and I think I need to go through it pretty rigorously once before I can confidently tell myself "yeah this passage I'm writing sucks now, but I know I can fix it later."
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Aug 11, 2017 19:11
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So I've successfully been writing a minimum of 1500 words a day, every day, for a few weeks. And the conclusion I've come to is... dear lord my writing sucks, Gonna just keep powering forward and finish something that vaguely resembles a book, though, cuz like we discussed above, it is seriously teaching me a lot about how to approach the next one. Interestingly, it's also teaching me a ton about what I need to look for when I'm reading. I've kind of developed a big mental laundry list of stuff to check out in books that I really enjoy in terms of how they approach dialogue, action, structure, voice, etc.
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Aug 16, 2017 02:17
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So on the subject of finishing, I've been chugging away at a book, I'm about 35k words into it, and it turns out I'm some horrible amalgamation when it comes to plotting vs discovery. It's taken me about this long to figure out what/who the book is really about, and the 35k words I've written so far don't feel like they're at all going in the right direction. My instinct now is to start over, because I feel like a) I'll get up to that same word count relatively quickly now that I have a better sense of the story and plot, and b) what I'd write the second time around would likely take significantly less editing to be not-abjectly-terrible. At that point, starting fresh is probably the right move, yeah?
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Aug 21, 2017 16:59
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anime was right posted:finish it, learn what you hosed up, apply it to a new book. you need to figure out how to land the lane, not just get it in the air. And I definitely understand that, but I'm finding it very very hard to work on a draft that's probably less than half done and not at all near the book I actually want to write, when I know I could trash what I have and start over and be significantly more likely to finish. This isn't just a matter of wanting to rewrite what I have, it's that what I have isn't worth finishing. Is there really that much value to finishing a book that I know I'm just going to trash as soon as it's done and start over with the story I actually wanted to write immediately after? That's a genuine question, I'm not trying to be combative. I definitely understand the value of finishing for the sake of getting in the habit of finishing, but I also feel like that advice comes from a place of people trying to help new writers avoid a bunch of false starts, when I feel like I needed a false start to figure out what the hell I wanted to write in the first place.
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Aug 21, 2017 17:28
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HIJK posted:I understand how you feel. But the important part here is to develop self-discipline. You can't start over on a work every time you hate it, and sooner or later we all hate what we write. For sure, I follow what you're saying. This isn't so much about developing self-discipline, for me, as much as it's been about learning how to even structure a story well and develop characters that are worth writing about. I don't hate what I've written so far, I'm just more excited about what I think it could be, and that's a lot easier to write than forcing myself to muscle through a "test book" that I'm not going to do anything with. As for thinking of the time I've already invested, well, it's less than a month, and that feels like it's sailing dangerously close to sunk-cost fallacy for my taste. Not saying that it's not a worthwhile consideration. I'm not sure what the right choice is here, so I'm not really committing one way or another. Maybe I'll keep at it for a few days and see how it feels. I suspect if I finish I'll end up with mostly the book I want to write, with a 35k word vestigial limb that will do nothing but complicate a second draft.
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Aug 21, 2017 17:41
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HIJK posted:I'd say finish the current chapter or section you have and take a break from it for a week or so. You might feel differently coming back orrrr you might feel the same. This is actually the tail end of a week away from it already. Yeah I'm really not sure what to do. I feel like it took me the writing I've done already to figure out who the main character is and how to even structure a novel-length story in a remotely competent way. I stepped away from it because I feel like nothing in the current draft bears much resemblance to what I actually wanted to write, but it took me a month of writing to figure that out. It's a frustrating spot to find myself in.
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Aug 21, 2017 18:16
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I guess the question is, then, how often do you end up with a first draft that quickly feels like it won't bear much resemblance even to the next draft, much less the final product? I'm not talking little differences here-- almost every element of this first draft will probably end up on the trash pile. Characters, structure, general plot, a lot of thematic elements, even the setting and main character don't feel at all right anymore. I'm still very new to this, so I accept this may just be how the process is. But then the question is, setting aside developing discipline and finishing for the sake of finishing, what am I likely to gain from powering through this first draft?
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Aug 21, 2017 19:26
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After The War posted:Yep. Hard as it is to hear, it's a feature, not a bug. Since no one else is going to read it in this form, why not have fun with it at this point? Take it in a totally different direction you do find interesting, and build it out that way. Then you've got a better way to approach the next draft, or totally different project. That makes sense. I guess the sticking point for me is that if I do continue on with this draft, I think I'm going to hit a point where in order for it to feel like a "finished" draft, i'm still going to end up excising most or all of what I've got at the moment and replacing it wholesale. So I'm just trying to wrap my head around the advantages of using what I've got as a (crappy) scaffold and treat the process of dealing with the lovely, out-of-place third as Draft 1.5, or starting over knowing that I'll have more momentum and enthusiasm, without having lost any usable text and not much time, on the grand scale. edit for clarity. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Aug 21, 2017 |
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Aug 21, 2017 19:50
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:I was typing a new response, but I realized I was just rewriting my answer from the first posts: Hey, I was just rereading this! (Thanks for the fantastic OPs, btw). I think reading what you said about "Should I finish everything I start?" has confirmed that I'm very much in the same place as what neongrey was talking about above. I definitely understand what everyone is saying about the value of finishing for the sake of finishing, but honestly I don't think I'm at risk of starting a bunch of books I never finish, I've just never dealt with creative projects that way. Given that I feel like the heart of the book I want to write isn't reflected in what I've got down so far, I'm going to treat what I've written as lovely, Aimless Draft #-1 and move on to Still lovely, Marginally Less Aimless Draft #0. At this point, forcing myself to finish when I know I'm going to scrap everything I have so far feels a bit like Dad telling me I should shovel the driveway because it builds character. It may be true, but snowblowers exist. I'm not sure where that metaphor was going but it makes sense in my head, dammit! Burkion posted:Think of it this way I don't even... do people do this? No one will ever see my first couple of drafts on anything, ever. I don't care how long ago I wrote them or if something actually ends up being successful. I need that mental agreement with myself to not constantly edit and censure my own ideas. The thought of someone reading through a first draft instantly makes me clench my imagination in the worst way.
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Aug 21, 2017 21:02
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neongrey posted:If it helps too, for my thing I was able to re-integrate about half the original text during this phase. Not as-is and not just because I changed tense, but you can probably reuse a fair bit of stuff. Now, as I was about 3/4 of the way through the process it felt like an agonizing slog (but I also swapped it a pov character too, late in that process) but I pushed through and the work is better for it. Yeah I'll keep that in my back pocket as an option-- there's a couple of scenes that might be worth salvaging. But that said, my early drafts are very much "get poo poo on paper" drafts so nothing about the language or descriptive text or word choice is ever anything like final and frequently is pretty trash. That might be a bad habit too-- I don't know, maybe I should be shooting for a little higher-quality than I am for the first pass.
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Aug 21, 2017 21:43
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Megazver posted:Think you might have to create one of your own and, like, explicitly advertise that you're creating a serious critique group for people who are trying to get published in the other groups. This is what I'm doing and a lot of people are coming out of the woodwork telling me they have had a hard time finding a group with that focus. I suspect this doesn't apply to Naerasa so much, but for everyone else who is thinking about starting a writing group with a professional aim-- please please please be honest about where you are as a writer. I've gotten some false starts in writing groups because the person leading it has never written, much less published, an entire novel, but wasn't upfront about that fact, and actually kind of misrepresented himself. When the group met the first time, it instantly put a bad taste in everyone's mouth that I think wouldn't have been there if he had just said that he was putting together a group for professional writers or people looking to publish, but that he himself was not published yet. On another note, for you more discovery-writing types, how do you approach structuring a book? Do you even bother thinking about pacing and tension and hitting specific structure beats until you're done with your first draft?
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Aug 25, 2017 16:24
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Naerasa posted:I just had a friend who runs a writing group ask me to come talk to the group about the process of getting published, and I do not for the life of me understand why she's asking me to do it. You wouldn't want to hear a minor league washout tell you how to get to the major leagues, so why would you want to hear a writer who hasn't been able to get published talk about getting published? Yeah that was kind of how it felt. He really meant well, and had clearly read a lot about publishing and the process of finishing a book, but it immediately felt disingenuous. It was the blind leading the blind and he seemed to be the only one who didn't realize it. I forgot to say, I had the opposite happen and it was similarly weird. I found a local, private writing group on Facebook that seemed friendly and welcoming, with a focus on new writers. But it was run by a very experienced and published writer who I think mostly wanted the opportunity to show off. I'm not sure why he didn't just make it a formal class and say so, but as a group it also felt dissonant and weird.
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Aug 25, 2017 16:51
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Pardon the double post, all.HIJK posted:I keep Dan Harmon's story chart on my phone and I consult it regularly so that I put in a story beat whn it feels right. Then I just continue until it feels like I should hit the next beat. I figure I can cut or expand parts in editing. Is this the one you're talking about? http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_Basic_Shit It seems like a good, loose structure to kind of use as a course-correcter while discovery writing.
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Aug 25, 2017 18:15
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HIJK posted:yeah that one. Though I don't course correct while writing, that's for editing. Course correct is probably the wrong way of putting it. I more mean I like that diagram a reminder that nudges you more towards a structure that will take you somewhere useful. I've been adamantly refusing to actually go back and change anything until I'm done with the draft and I think I'll continue to do so. I have a whole lot of notebook pages filled with notes of how I might do things differently, but I haven't actually applied them. I think I'd run in circles if I did.
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Aug 25, 2017 19:08
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HIJK posted:Sorta yes, sorta no. I've tried doing the "okay time to insert this story element here" thing before and it paralyzes me for some reason, I can't figure out why. The story circle works because it is tenuous, like you said, and that's much less pressure. But the way I write things is a lot more uh, instinctual. Honestly I'm drifting in that direction. It's hard to say given this is my first really dedicated attempt at a novel, but I'm finding I can't structure things out all that well ahead of time. I do find moments or scenes or plot points that I know will fit in there somewhere, but it's a bit like seeing a distant landmark on the other side of a dense wood. I know where I'm going, but who the hell knows how long it'll take me to navigate the forest or what'll be in there. Stuff like the story circle or Dan Wells' 7 Point Story Structure work with my brain because more often than not I'll get to whatever landmark scene or moment I pointed myself at and kinda get a little lost on where to head next, and they're vague enough that I will just look at them and go "oh hey I haven't really hit this idea at all yet, things are going well for this character, time to gently caress poo poo up" or whatever.
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Aug 25, 2017 19:38
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HIJK posted:
I am kind of amazed how much writing is just gut-checking for me. I tend to be a hyper-ordered person in other areas, and when I've tried to outline short stories or the like, it usually ends up that there's some logical part of my brain that'll start going "you need to move to this plot point soon! This is where it needs to happen!" But if I just relax and write, I'll get strong intuitive feelings about the structure. Like, I know scene B needs to happen before too long, but it's just not the right time yet, so what needs to happen instead? Where is the character in their arc? What makes sense on a gut level? So most of my learning has been figuring out how to listen to those gut feelings and work with them. Not to say that it'll actually work out in the long run, but hey, I'm having fun for the time being so who cares.
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Aug 25, 2017 19:59
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I always come up with godawful titles for everything I write because I need to call it something during long one-person conversations with myself about what I want the book to be. I've never come up with a good title, even for anything I've actually finished. I think there's an art to it that I just don't have. Though one title I like, because it's at once vaguely clever and kind of cheesy while still being accurate and fitting for the book (which would seem to be an appropriate combination for a horror novel).
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Aug 28, 2017 21:02
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I was talking with a fellow writer last month about style and prose, and we got in an interesting discussion concerning how in some cases, more descriptive language (as long as it's precise and not totally superfluous) can actually make prose "flow" faster for a reader. I can't remember the exact book my friend used as an example (I think it was a horror novel), but he was basically pointing out how some book was pretty sparse in descriptive language until a really tense and fast-moving scene, where subtly amping up the sensory details increased how "fast" the scene felt while actually being quite a bit longer than you'd think while reading it. Wish I could remember what he used as an example.
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Aug 30, 2017 04:10
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I've written about six or seven short (3-6k word, hard to tell for sure) stories in notebooks. I think it's actually valuable to try that every once in a while. Sometimes the restrictions of writing stuff out by hand will slow you down enough that it'll change how you think through prose as you're writing it.
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Aug 30, 2017 20:37
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Carve your stylistic magnum opus into the side of a historic building using a swiss army knife. Or don't, just don't use not having a computer as an excuse not to write. There is literally nothing that is as helpful as writing. Speaking as someone who has had false-starts on multiple books, I'm finally just forcing myself to finish a novel and not give a poo poo about quality or prose or structure and it's kind of amazing. Painful, I admit, but I can literally see my writing improving over time. Not to mention I'm learning what questions to ask myself, and being more aware of how published writers approach the problems I'm having.
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Aug 30, 2017 20:47
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CantDecideOnAName posted:I get story ideas from different things. Sometimes it's questions like why is necromancy always bad? What if the police used it to find killers? Sometimes it's little things that I find interesting. I jot them down in an idea list (what's known as a commonplace book, actually) and let them simmer and then I pull from it if something strikes me. Here's a little chunk: I'm in the same spot as you magnificent7 and I've found this ^^^^ to be immensely helpful. I keep a small notebook on me at all times and it's become my commonplace book. Any time I have an idea that in any way intrigues me, even if I literally go "Hey what if-- nope, that's bad" I'll still jot it down. I think there's a certain amount of conditioning you can do where you "train" yourself to trust your imagination. If you treat the ideas you come up with as worthwhile, eventually you'll start to get out of your own way. You'll still have terrible ideas, but the balance does seem to shift towards less-terrible ones. It did for me, anyway, after a couple of months of carrying around the notebook. I will also do what HIJK said above too, I'll occasionally just grab one of those ideas and write about it. Not with any purpose in mind, just a quick sequence of events, or a scene, or even a bit of description. I find that writing down whatever comes to me relieves a lot of the pressure to perform, and my writing tends to loosen up and feel more natural as a result. Also, get bored. Seriously, this has been a revelation for me, as someone who is chronically over-connected to the internet. I have a habit of constantly being online or having music or movies on or whatever, and when I forced myself to just leave everything off and re-experience boredom, gradually my imagination kind of woke up and I'd land on some interesting story ideas. I think our modern tendency to stay constantly stimulated is kind of a detriment for creative work. Edit: though I should qualify, I'm still very very new to writing myself so this is all super-anecdotal. Also I've hit some weird point in my writing where the English language just seems to stop functioning in my brain. You know where you say a word too many times and it kind of loses all meaning for a while? I feel like that's me lately, all the time, with every word.
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Sep 6, 2017 18:14
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Burkion posted:My biggest problem is, I'm not sure if people are really going to like it or not. That's what beta readers are for. I've been one for a couple of writer acquaintances and it seems like it's hugely helpful to get feedback on your novels that way. But please, dear god, do a revision or two and have someone proofread before you put anything in the hands of beta readers. Constant spelling mistakes or glaring grammatical errors will kill their experience and some people (myself included) have a hard time offering substantive feedback because they get so fixated on mechanical problems.
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Sep 6, 2017 20:59
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sebmojo posted:relatedly, I've let my long walk monthly fiction I would find it useful, didn't really know there was anything like it, honestly. I tend to work well with external motivation, and I've never  'ed for anything before because I'm a lame person, might be time to start failin'.
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Sep 7, 2017 15:46
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Naerasa posted:It's saying more than that, though. Not only is it saying "write more", but it's also saying that writing poo poo is an important part of learning to write well. Producing work you hate isn't a sign of failure; it's an opportunity to figure out why you hate it and work towards something you love. To condense that down to "write more" misses the point, which is that bad work isn't wasted work, but work towards future success. Also condensing it down to "write more" diminishes the role of time. I took a longish hiatus after my last attempt to write, and I can tell with absolute certainty I'm a better writer now than when I gave up on my first book. I haven't done a ton of writing in that time, but I've thought a lot about it, I've read a lot, I've spent time considering what drives me to write and what I do and don't enjoy or focus on in all different kinds of media. I don't think there's a formal, intentional way to develop your instincts, and that will always be mostly a factor of time. To boil it down, yes, write more, but trust that you will develop over time. You cannot force yourself to be a bestselling author through an 18-month plan, it will take time regardless of what approach or daily wordcount pain-gauntlet you subject yourself to.
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Sep 7, 2017 18:06
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Echo Cian posted:Read More, Write More is good basic advice but there's more to it than just that if you actually want to get anything out of it. Plenty of people read and write a lot, but only copy the things they read without understanding why they liked it beyond "dragons are cool!" and don't improve because they don't know how to analyze the content (and, usually, react to even gentle criticism like you murdered their puppy). I write down short, one sentence questions that strike me while I'm reading and answer them later. If nothing else they serve as reminders of stuff I want to revisit/reread. It's been working well so far. On a different note, dear jeebus I'm terrible at writing dialog. Who writes good dialog? I've been skewing too much towards natural, realistic spoken dialog and on the page it reads as way too stilted and halting. Even when I'm consciously not writing "realistic" dialog it still falls pretty flat, though. I think I'm just not good yet at conveying character through dialog, so any good examples of that would be helpful.
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Sep 7, 2017 21:45
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magnificent7 posted:Old cemetery. It's the best for names, and they can't sue you. I live near one with some fantastic names, i'll have to jot some down next time I'm by it. It also has some very... unique tombstones, such as "Soldier who Fell Off RR Bridge," "Baby that Died in the Fire," and my favorite, "Man the Bank Fell On"
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Sep 14, 2017 20:19
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You could also come up with dumb white people names and see what, if any, equivalents exist in other languages. Behind the Name is good for that too.
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Sep 15, 2017 03:16
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I've been having a weird problem where I've been reading so much horror and trying to write a fair bit myself that lately nothing feels that scary. I think my TD effort seriously suffered for it. Not sure what to do but take a break from the genre for a while.
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Sep 19, 2017 03:16
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I'm finally over the bump of writing regularly, which is great. I no longer feel like the barrier is actually getting words to paper. But writing regularly has kind of left me realizing how lovely my writing is quality wise. That's fine, because I feel like a lot of mechanical stuff I can learn to improve, but I feel like I have a deeper problem where my ideas and story concepts don't really go anywhere. They're all pretty half baked and lack much in the way of impact or arc or anything. I alway run with an idea that's intrigues me, then when it doesn't really take off, I tell myself "I'll fix it in the edit" but it doesn't get appreciably better, really. Is this just business as normal for a new writer? Do I just power through and trust that I'll start coming up with better concepts? Is there a way to deliberately improve? I know I'm too in my head, and that's contributing. I was super disappointed with how my TD entry turned out and it's got me second guessing recent stuff I've written.
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Sep 20, 2017 07:27
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Djeser posted:Part of learning to write is learning how to take an idea full circle and make it satisfying to read. So no, you're not struggling with something other people haven't struggled with. Thanks for the response, this is really helpful. I think I'm having exactly the problem you're talking about, where I have a couple of scenes or a mood or beats that I want in a story, but lack a larger context for them. I think additionally I have the problem that I really want to write horror, which tends to be so mood dependent, so I get wrapped up in trying to make the story ~*spooky*~ that it doesn't work on a basic storytelling level. I obviously don't know how to write great horror, but I think that may need to come after figuring out how to write a great anything. I think I might revisit my TD entry, pull it apart and expand it, see if I can't turn it into a story that's a little more interesting and satisfying. Maybe I'm off the mark here, but it seems like figuring out how to basically tell a story and make it satisfying might be worth figuring out with short-form work, since jumping into a novel without some foundation in fundamental storytelling is probably an exercise in frustration.
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Sep 20, 2017 15:55
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Naerasa posted:I don't know poo poo about horror, so this may be bad advice, but it seems to me like the key is to figure out your main character first, and then figure out what horror is to them. What's scary/creepy to you may not work if the characters aren't moved by it and vice versa. Make sure their horror aligns with the horror of your story and you should be in a good place. Burkion posted:Also don't play things too close to the chest as I found out! These are both great thoughts, thanks! I've been mulling on this a lot, trying to figure out what it is that makes horror good. Not necessarily scary, just good. The moments where I read horror, even really great stuff, and actually have a physical creep-out reaction is pretty rare, so I think it's a high bar to shoot for and obviously really subjective. But I think these are both key ideas that I'm going to focus on. I'm reading The Elementals right now, and the actual scares aren't that creepy unto themselves, it's more the characters and their own uneasiness about whats happening that lends it this undercurrent of dread. sebmojo posted:hit up any of the regulars for a crit, people will normally be very happy to look at your stuff for you. Oh, cool, I think I will definitely do that. I'm still at a place in my writing where I need to do some serious self-schooling, and I'm finding it can be very easy to overlook obvious issues in your own writing until you know what to look for.
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Sep 20, 2017 21:57
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Xelkelvos posted:If I'm just getting into writing (like within the last few weeks), would it be wise to sign up for the Thunderdome even though my writing skills probably have as much polish as week old cow pie? I'm still very new to this and just did my first TD entry. It was a really good motivator, and you get some good crits in the thread, though they don't really treat anyone with kid gloves. Personally that's what I was looking for, my writer friends give decent feedback but they're terrified of being honest where it hurts.
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Sep 21, 2017 16:31
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Honestly I'm kind of masochistically excited for the day I get a loser av.
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Sep 22, 2017 00:57
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Taciturn Tactician posted:Why did they save every rejection letter to be able to weigh them? Does this man just have a sack of sadness that he reaches into to pull out a rejection letter to read and feel bad about? Stephen King talks about keeping all his rejection letters in On Writing too, and I've heard of it from a lot of other established writers. I think holding onto them is some people's way of both thumbing their nose at the universe and keeping humble about their own work. Plus years later, when you've got multiple NYT bestsellers, you can look back and see how far you've come.
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Oct 2, 2017 16:42
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I've got a question on ideas/premises, specifically, how do you come up with better ones? I know the general wisdom with writing is that premise is usually far secondary to execution. Setting that aside, though, I find my story ideas tend to only have one or two interesting moments or shards of an idea, or just feel flat and reminiscent of lots of other things I've read/seen/whatever. Is there any way to "practice" coming up with better story concepts? Is it just something you get better at with time and experience? Am I looking at my problem of flat story ideas all wrong?
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Oct 3, 2017 15:56
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 05:02 |
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There's also webapps like Grammarly (for dum dum grammar mistakes and basic mechanical errors) and Hemingway (for clarity, brevity, and general readability) where you can just copypaste your writing into them and they'll do more than just basic spellcheck level proofing. Neither will really make bad writing good, and by no means should be your only method of proofreading, but using them for a while may be a good way to learn what your common mistakes are. Hemingway in particular may not be what your style of writing needs, but it's useful for making you realize how much you love the smell of your own literary farts.
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Oct 18, 2017 00:15
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