I won't suggest any books to read or anything like that. But I will say what works for me.
Don't try to copy anyone else's style. Find your own voice. By all means, read other work, take inspiration from it, but if you find a style you're comfortable with, run with it. Take on board criticism and feedback, use that to fine tune your style.
Have an idea of the plot worked out before you start writing. Let the story unfold at it's natural pace, you can always go back and edit it later if a read back feels like it's not quite working. Often I find the characters themselves reacting with the story, and sometimes writing how they respond causes the story to veer off in a completely different direction than originally planned. If this happens, don't force it back with a hammer. Keep writing those characters, let the situation play out naturally. You may find yourself coming up with new plot threads and directions you would have never thought of before. If you really want that ending you came up with, there'll be plenty of opportunities to guide the story back on track. Naturally, this becomes easier to do as you learn and develop the characters more.
If you're not in the mood to write, don't. This is for fun, not business. I find my writing is terrible if I'm not in the right frame of mind. And when I am in the mood, the story can be written fairly quickly. Have fun with it. If you have fun writing it, people will have fun reading it.
If you want some ideas for stories, have a look in the Literary Challenges, and the unofficial ones. Use them as a starting point for your characters, use that to help draft them and their crews, and once you have a good handle on them, you may have come up with larger plots for them. Alternatively, use in game missions as inspirations for stories. Write those missions from the perspective of your crews.
Like I say, this is what works for me. It won't work for everyone, but I hope at least some of it is helpful.
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A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
One trick that I learned recently that can start you up if you are really stuck...write 5 words. Don't worry if it is a complete sentence. Why five? That's just enough to tease you into something more. The rest of the sentence? From there a paragraph? A whole idea? But instead of being paralyzed staring at a blank page with what seems like an insurmountable goal, that little trick can sometimes get the engine going again.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I won't suggest any books to read or anything like that. But I will say what works for me.
Don't try to copy anyone else's style. Find your own voice. By all means, read other work, take inspiration from it, but if you find a style you're comfortable with, run with it. Take on board criticism and feedback, use that to fine tune your style.
Sorry, wasn't quite clear in my last post. I meant that other stuff can give you good ideas for what works and what doesn't, but you have to watch out that your own style doesn't become too similar.
I would say the opposite of this, actually. No disrespect to the poster -- and I agree that not every method works for every person -- but writing is essentially a skill that requires a degree of discipline. If you, let's say, book two hours (or five, or one, whatever) every evening, morning, or night to just sit down and write, then hold yourself to it. Even if you "don't feel like writing" or "don't have any inspiration," keep doing it. Even if the writing is total garbage.
Why? Because you are training yourself to include writing as part of a routine, and setting these kinds of goals will help you. There's nothing mystical about writing; it's a skill that requires constant practice and training, just like any other skill. If Terry Pratchett sat around waiting for inspiration to hit, nothing would have gotten written. He sat down every day with a goal of 500 words. Even when he finished a novel one day, the next he'd be in his chair plunking down another 500. When ideas and inspiration hits, by all means scribble it down on whatever's available, but stick to a set word/time limit and hold yourself accountable.
Also a valid way to do it. It's all about finding what works for you. When I've tried to force myself to write when not in the right frame of mind, it's always come out utterly lifeless and gets re-written at the earliest opportunity. As such, I don't bother. That's not to say I don't work on plot threads and movements in my head during those times, but nothing gets typed.
For fanfic and online forums kind of writing, yeah. But for going into something professionally, I agree that the discipline is required and forcing to write a bit every day is a good step. It all depends on what level of writing the author is looking to get into.
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A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
Yeah, I agree that the level you choose to write at (which IMO does not always correspond with skill, but with preference) does have an effect on what is and is not necessary to do. I choose to mainly keep writing as a hobby and not to maintain professional levels of discipline. It doesn't mean I don't know how I would do it if I ever chose to.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Isaac Asimov used to treat writing like his job - he'd put on professional clothing, go into his office, and from 8am to 5pm write things. He wrote many different things, so if he goet stuck on one he'd work on another, with the end result that he eventually published over 500 books in his lifetime - everything from textbooks to classic SF to mysteries to Biblical commentary to collections of jokes.
For myself, I think the situation through, try to (in the words of Heinlein) "chase my characters up a tall tree and make them figure out how to get down." When I can envision an entire scene in detail, the story's usually ready to go, although a couple of times the scene I envisioned didn't make it into the end story. As an example of the sort of thing I mean, my first Grunt story, "The Last Voyage of the Hybrid", was written in response to a Literary Challenge here, so I knew what elements it had to include - but the scene that came to life for me first, and led to the story getting written, was the image of a Borg arm going through a brig force field like it didn't even exist. Then I had to work out how that came to be, and how they reacted, and the rest of the story unfolded over a period of less than an hour.
Some folks work best with plotting the story out in detail beforehand. (In my experience, such people tend to assume their way is the only way, but it's not.) Find what works for you, and run with it.
Freewriting is a good way of just scribbling ish out without any internal censor, but I think, what it all comes down to, is drafting.
I was at a conference/reading recently with some creative writing professor at Harvard (not that the Harvard creative writing program is anything prestigious -- it doesn't even take a top 50 spot nationwide), who said that his first draft is usually a pile of TRIBBLE, but, by the sixth, seventh, tenth drafts, the stories and essays generally take shape, get interesting, and work better for the readers. He called it just a matter of "TRIBBLE in chair" time. Get your TRIBBLE in the chair and work. King said something similar in "On Writing."
Not that this should be surprising to anyone -- more drafting = better work, but I think that many people view writing as a product-driven enterprise. The product is all that matters. From A (blank page) to B (finish, published work), but a lot of writing pedagogy now centers on a "process-based" approach, where you have A (the blank page), B (draft 1), C (peer review), D (draft 2) and on and on until, finally, there is a final product (Z). I think there are drawbacks to both approaches. With product-based writing, there is no focus on process; however, most professional and creative writing is geared for a finished product. With process-based writing, one can feel like there is never a finished product; one must continually revise and revise, draft and draft, but when is a story ever "ready?"
There are plenty of famous authors who wish they had never published their work in the state it was in, despite the success of the work.
I dunno, I think there's something to be said for a happy medium.
Well... Tolkein rewrote his stories more than once AFTER they were published. Yeah, he published stories, then between printings tweaked them, and the next printing had the tweaked version. This of course means that certain editions are even more rare because they are version of the stories that probably won't be printed ever again.
Speaking as someone who falls into a similar trap, I think the best frame of mind to keep is that no matter how good you are, no matter how well you think things out, no matter how much time, effort, and energy you put into something, it will NEVER be good enough to the harshest critic there is: yourself. Months, weeks, days, hours, even minutes after you write something you'll look back on it and say to yourself "this could be better." It's the bane of creators and honestly, there's no real surefire way to stop it. However, a little perspective can help curb it.
As a wise man once said "a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." Well, writing a 1000 page story begins with a single word.
Also... "different strokes are for different folks" this is actually a swimming allusion., But the principle holds true. Certain writing styles work better for certain people than others. Personally I tend to think out stories in pieces then try to make a whole later.
Also... certain people like to read different things than others.... some people would be bored out of their skulls if they tried to read a book where the author spent a full page describing each scene, other would love it.
As an example of the sort of thing I mean, my first Grunt story, "The Last Voyage of the Hybrid", was written in response to a Literary Challenge here, so I knew what elements it had to include - but the scene that came to life for me first, and led to the story getting written, was the image of a Borg arm going through a brig force field like it didn't even exist. Then I had to work out how that came to be, and how they reacted, and the rest of the story unfolded over a period of less than an hour.
Hah, I think I do that too. Certain scenes just pop in and let me build the whole story around them.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Tips...are what writers live on until they become published...mostly dropped into their hands by people rushing by on the street who try not to look them in the eye.
That being said, Show. Don't Tell. Always end a story where it started, to give completion, or closure. Oh yes...a writer can only write what he or she knows. So...if you don't know much...you will never write much.
I tossed a story out this morning. I don't know if it's any good or not. It kind of just jumped into my brain all by itself and had me write it down for its own good. Give a look if you like:
Tips...are what writers live on until they become published...mostly dropped into their hands by people rushing by on the street who try not to look them in the eye.
That being said, Show. Don't Tell. Always end a story where it started, to give completion, or closure. Oh yes...a writer can only write what he or she knows. So...if you don't know much...you will never write much.
I'm going to assume this is a (weak) attempt at humor, as if not this is not very good advice at all. "Only write what you know", for instance, would instantly shut down science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and a good sampling of other genres.
"Show Don't Tell" is good advice - for a weak writer. A good writer can tell you things they haven't shown you. Now, it's easy for a bad writer, like me, to get bogged down like Dickens in this sort of thing - but compare that with, say, Austen, who could weave a word-picture while discussing the rules of inheritance in Victorian England, or Heinlein, who managed to make a monologue about calculation of orbits interesting in The Rolling Stones (although admittedly, this did have to do with getting the mother, a doctor, to a liner that was having an outbreak of an unpleasant disease on board...).
And that other one? Never heard it, and it makes no sense except in episodic television where there's no multi-episode story arc (it's important then to put the pieces back in the box for the next writer).
Jerry is a very good driver. <--tell
Having Jerry navigating heavy traffic, avoiding an accident, etc. <--show
If later in the story, Jerry does something amazing while driving - does one want to rely on somebody remembering "Jerry is a very good driver." or do they want to have the connection and memory of the scene that showed it? Perhaps it's not even about the driving, perhaps it was really about showing how Jerry handles stress. You can show a bunch of things by doing a scene rather than presenting a laundry list of adjectives/accolades that might put the reader to sleep.
It also gets into the point of view. Is the narrator actually there or is it more of an omniscient narrator? It's one thing if the narrator is Tom, an actual character who offers his opinions and tells us things versus it being the invisible eye in the sky telling us something.
Having one of the characters say something about another character can act as a form of foreshadowing of events to come - a scene that will actually be played out. Dialogue can show.
Bluto bought cheap rope. <--tell
Bridging scene where Popeye is helping Bluto pack up the SUV for their trip, where Popeye notices a lot of rope and Bluto says it was on sale, Popeye says oh yeah, and Bluto says it was an amazing deal. <--show
It's worked into the story as part of something else going on...and in a cliche world, Bluto dies from his cheap rope. Perhaps a twist, Popeye dies from Bluto's cheap rope and Bluto becomes a changed man...showing growth...heh, still kind of /facepalm.
What does showing versus telling or even telling versus showing offer the story...it's not quite a commandment by any means, and some folks will say, "Show don't just tell." instead; which gets into the gist of it, where many beginning writers might otherwise write something as thrilling as reading the ingredients off of a box of cereal.
What does showing versus telling or even telling versus showing offer the story...it's not quite a commandment by any means, and some folks will say, "Show don't just tell." instead; which gets into the gist of it, where many beginning writers might otherwise write something as thrilling as reading the ingredients off of a box of cereal.
I'm going to assume this is a (weak) attempt at humor, as if not this is not very good advice at all. "Only write what you know", for instance, would instantly shut down science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and a good sampling of other genres.
Not so at all, as a writer can always research or (if the genre allows) make up details required for a story. But some things, do require personal experience to be able to write well. Romance, for example. Someone who has never been in love, or never been in a relationship, isn't going to be able to handle romance/interpersonal scenes beyond trite pleasantries, and attempts at such work, IMHO, lacks emotional authenticity which make the scenes read hollow. Research can cover a lot, but personal experience does come into play as well... :cool:
or Heinlein, who managed to make a monologue about calculation of orbits interesting in The Rolling Stones (although admittedly, this did have to do with getting the mother, a doctor, to a liner that was having an outbreak of an unpleasant disease on board...).
r).
Just as a counter-opinion on showing and telling - the section prior to Mars when getting to the liner ship was the slowest in the Rolling Stones/I] in my opinion.
And in comparison, we see the Martian legal system by them going through it, and then come the flatcats.
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Just as a counter-opinion on showing and telling - the section prior to Mars when getting to the liner ship was the slowest in the Rolling Stones/I] in my opinion.
And in comparison, we see the Martian legal system by them going through it, and then come the flatcats.
yeah... trying to "show" something that the audience doesn't care about makes the book boring.
For example: a guy buys a train ticket, do you describe the ticket? Obviously you can, but the crux of the matter is whether the description is useful and interesting. You can write a description that's, shall we say, non-clinical, and thus make it interesting. But, if you have no need for a description then it might be better to not bother describing the ticket.
Comments
Don't try to copy anyone else's style. Find your own voice. By all means, read other work, take inspiration from it, but if you find a style you're comfortable with, run with it. Take on board criticism and feedback, use that to fine tune your style.
Have an idea of the plot worked out before you start writing. Let the story unfold at it's natural pace, you can always go back and edit it later if a read back feels like it's not quite working. Often I find the characters themselves reacting with the story, and sometimes writing how they respond causes the story to veer off in a completely different direction than originally planned. If this happens, don't force it back with a hammer. Keep writing those characters, let the situation play out naturally. You may find yourself coming up with new plot threads and directions you would have never thought of before. If you really want that ending you came up with, there'll be plenty of opportunities to guide the story back on track. Naturally, this becomes easier to do as you learn and develop the characters more.
If you're not in the mood to write, don't. This is for fun, not business. I find my writing is terrible if I'm not in the right frame of mind. And when I am in the mood, the story can be written fairly quickly. Have fun with it. If you have fun writing it, people will have fun reading it.
If you want some ideas for stories, have a look in the Literary Challenges, and the unofficial ones. Use them as a starting point for your characters, use that to help draft them and their crews, and once you have a good handle on them, you may have come up with larger plots for them. Alternatively, use in game missions as inspirations for stories. Write those missions from the perspective of your crews.
Like I say, this is what works for me. It won't work for everyone, but I hope at least some of it is helpful.
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Sorry, wasn't quite clear in my last post. I meant that other stuff can give you good ideas for what works and what doesn't, but you have to watch out that your own style doesn't become too similar.
Also a valid way to do it. It's all about finding what works for you. When I've tried to force myself to write when not in the right frame of mind, it's always come out utterly lifeless and gets re-written at the earliest opportunity. As such, I don't bother. That's not to say I don't work on plot threads and movements in my head during those times, but nothing gets typed.
For fanfic and online forums kind of writing, yeah. But for going into something professionally, I agree that the discipline is required and forcing to write a bit every day is a good step. It all depends on what level of writing the author is looking to get into.
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
For myself, I think the situation through, try to (in the words of Heinlein) "chase my characters up a tall tree and make them figure out how to get down." When I can envision an entire scene in detail, the story's usually ready to go, although a couple of times the scene I envisioned didn't make it into the end story. As an example of the sort of thing I mean, my first Grunt story, "The Last Voyage of the Hybrid", was written in response to a Literary Challenge here, so I knew what elements it had to include - but the scene that came to life for me first, and led to the story getting written, was the image of a Borg arm going through a brig force field like it didn't even exist. Then I had to work out how that came to be, and how they reacted, and the rest of the story unfolded over a period of less than an hour.
Some folks work best with plotting the story out in detail beforehand. (In my experience, such people tend to assume their way is the only way, but it's not.) Find what works for you, and run with it.
Also... "different strokes are for different folks" this is actually a swimming allusion., But the principle holds true. Certain writing styles work better for certain people than others. Personally I tend to think out stories in pieces then try to make a whole later.
Also... certain people like to read different things than others.... some people would be bored out of their skulls if they tried to read a book where the author spent a full page describing each scene, other would love it.
My character Tsin'xing
Hah, I think I do that too. Certain scenes just pop in and let me build the whole story around them.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
10 characters
That being said, Show. Don't Tell. Always end a story where it started, to give completion, or closure. Oh yes...a writer can only write what he or she knows. So...if you don't know much...you will never write much.
I tossed a story out this morning. I don't know if it's any good or not. It kind of just jumped into my brain all by itself and had me write it down for its own good. Give a look if you like:
http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/Dayviid/1515565/
"Show Don't Tell" is good advice - for a weak writer. A good writer can tell you things they haven't shown you. Now, it's easy for a bad writer, like me, to get bogged down like Dickens in this sort of thing - but compare that with, say, Austen, who could weave a word-picture while discussing the rules of inheritance in Victorian England, or Heinlein, who managed to make a monologue about calculation of orbits interesting in The Rolling Stones (although admittedly, this did have to do with getting the mother, a doctor, to a liner that was having an outbreak of an unpleasant disease on board...).
And that other one? Never heard it, and it makes no sense except in episodic television where there's no multi-episode story arc (it's important then to put the pieces back in the box for the next writer).
Having Jerry navigating heavy traffic, avoiding an accident, etc. <--show
If later in the story, Jerry does something amazing while driving - does one want to rely on somebody remembering "Jerry is a very good driver." or do they want to have the connection and memory of the scene that showed it? Perhaps it's not even about the driving, perhaps it was really about showing how Jerry handles stress. You can show a bunch of things by doing a scene rather than presenting a laundry list of adjectives/accolades that might put the reader to sleep.
It also gets into the point of view. Is the narrator actually there or is it more of an omniscient narrator? It's one thing if the narrator is Tom, an actual character who offers his opinions and tells us things versus it being the invisible eye in the sky telling us something.
Having one of the characters say something about another character can act as a form of foreshadowing of events to come - a scene that will actually be played out. Dialogue can show.
Bluto bought cheap rope. <--tell
Bridging scene where Popeye is helping Bluto pack up the SUV for their trip, where Popeye notices a lot of rope and Bluto says it was on sale, Popeye says oh yeah, and Bluto says it was an amazing deal. <--show
It's worked into the story as part of something else going on...and in a cliche world, Bluto dies from his cheap rope. Perhaps a twist, Popeye dies from Bluto's cheap rope and Bluto becomes a changed man...showing growth...heh, still kind of /facepalm.
What does showing versus telling or even telling versus showing offer the story...it's not quite a commandment by any means, and some folks will say, "Show don't just tell." instead; which gets into the gist of it, where many beginning writers might otherwise write something as thrilling as reading the ingredients off of a box of cereal.
As opposed to making it such a broad scope that it's meaningless so as to support your point?
Cause you know, when folks are generally talking about it...it's the folks doing that "limited" thing that I was talking about.
You know, that whole...
...why would folks say it when it obviously doesn't apply?
...why wouldn't folks say it when it obviously does apply?
edit: Course, I kind of already said that in what you quoted...
Just as a counter-opinion on showing and telling - the section prior to Mars when getting to the liner ship was the slowest in the Rolling Stones/I] in my opinion.
And in comparison, we see the Martian legal system by them going through it, and then come the flatcats.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
For example: a guy buys a train ticket, do you describe the ticket? Obviously you can, but the crux of the matter is whether the description is useful and interesting. You can write a description that's, shall we say, non-clinical, and thus make it interesting. But, if you have no need for a description then it might be better to not bother describing the ticket.
My character Tsin'xing