What is some good advice for writing?

[Pent]

Although this isn't a story or anything near that I figured it went in this forum since it's about writing. I was just wondering, since there seem to be alot of good writers here. What are some things, like tips and other stuff, for writing. I like to write and I'm usually pretty good at it. Besides the fact that I'm good at making up stories and that I'm a natural writer I run into every problem there is when writing. I can't start. I can't stop. I can't finish. I get writers block. I don't seem to have the time to write either. I get bored. My ideas go nowhere. My characters to, I can never seem to develop them at all. I can never make them real. Plus the fact that having a conversation between characters is tiring for me to write. I'm unsatisfied when I finish a chapter/paragraph/story. Sometimes I can never get any ideas for anything to write about so I go to "Christian Anime" websites and ask people for help!





So any tips or anything?

[K. Ayato]

Thing I'm learning is, just write. Don't worry if it looks awful or professional or what have you. You can tighten it up later. For me, I draft in a notebook and tighten up when I get on the computer. It may work for you, it may not. All in all, just start writing what comes to your mind. Oh, and sometimes it helps not to go over what you've written. Unless, of course, you've officially decided not to continue with the story.

[Alice]

My brother writes long things about each character before he writes, generally. Maybe something like that would help you. (The character's history, looks, likes, etc.)

I don't do that. For me, just writing helps. But usually when I'm dissatisfied with a story, there is a reason. Sometimes it's something like "not enough conflict," or "not enough character development."

Reading books about writing help you learn about some of the things that can go wrong, and how to fix or avoid them.

But writing, and just writing, will improve you a lot! It helps to write something fun. When I was your age, I was still writing stories about guinea pigs. They snuck on board the space shuttle, etc. The important thing wasn't that the stories were realistic, but that they were fun for me to write. And as I wrote, I learned about how to make characters interesting, and dialog interesting. (Hint: it helps if there is a certain level of argument. Even if the characters aren't arguing, having them disagree or not understand each other in some way creates conflict, which keeps people reading. I don't mean characters have to shout at each other all the time, but if they just agree with each other, and say "yeah, me too" a lot, it could get boring, the way it does when real people do that. ^-^)

So, I don't know this helped, but think about what I said, and if you have any specific questions, post 'em. I'm sure there are many people here who can help!

[THE ANIME MAN]

Some advice on my end are these.

First and foremost no matter what. Write what you, as the writer, want to write. Don't lsiten to people who say you should add this or your characters should do that. If you don't want them to, then don't. Writing is as much about the author as it is the reader.

Now for some general advice that I have given on any number of reviews I have left on fanfiction.net.

1. Detail is key. Unlike an anime or a video game, we writers only have our words to do what in those two other forms of media have moving graphics to do. This means we, as writers, must describe nearly everything, buildings, plants, surroundings, music, the air, characters, clothing, and anything under and including the sun.

2. Dailogue: I've been seeing it more and more around fanfiction.net on this particular point, but don't put more then one characters speech per paragraph. Thats not even proper grammar. However, you also risk confusing the reader as he or she is trying to figure out which character is speaking in what order.

3. Flow: The flow of the story is one of the most important aspects of a story. If at some point the flow changes to drastically or just seems odd it will kill the interest of the reader as much as the joy you have in writing the fic. And I'm not talknig about how often you update the fic but more with the progression of the story itself.

Hopefully these little tips help you in your writing.

[Photosoph]

I agree with MSP (-not Mr Smartypants, lol!). Hm... one of the things that has worked for me is if I'm at a stuck point, urge myself to continue. In other words, force myself to write on. Another thing is, you don't have to write down every single detail. In other words, say, for example, your guy is boarding a ship. Have a scene with his family saying goodbye and that basically outlines that he's going on the ship, but you don't have to write 'he walked onto the main deck... he walked into his room.... he passed several ppl on the way...' etc. If you want to have something important happen in his bedroom, do what the movies do -show him being farewelled, then show him in his room and carry on from there. Don't overdetail what happens in between.
Um... what else... generally if you're stuck, throw something interesting in (if the mood and style of your story can handle it). For example, I knew in this one story I was writing that the main character (a girl) was going to turn on the TV and see something important there. But I had a little writer's block. However I forced myself to write... and when she was about to turn the TV on with the remote, because she was really tired and didn't know what she was doing, she threw the remote at the TV. It may sound weird, but because my character was a throwing-star weilding heroine, it wasn't too out of style for the story, and writing what had happened after she realised her mistake got me out of my writers block. I just added the unforeseen action of her throwing the remote at the TV instead of pressing the buttons, and it helped me out of my writers block.

Sheesh. I hope this post doesn't get too long. I'm just trying to put down a couple of tips since I'm not sure what you have and haven't found out for yourself already.

Well... character development... that one can be a hard one. I suppose brainstorming about the chara could help -make up a few quirks, have a background to him/her, etc, but other than that, maybe even try to group the character into a certain steriotypical group or personality. Like... is he a serious person? And if he's evil -is he a serious evil person or a loony evil person? Is he/she shy? Are they friendly?
Invent what they do and say based on who they steriotypically are, and then later you can go back and change their style and speech and their actions to portray more of an original personality, after you've finished the story.
Also, one of the things that helps when I'm stuck on a story is to really imagine more about the places, people, animals, plot, etc. that's going on in the story. Usually I only start writing a novel after I've spent a lot of time really developing my world, but sometimes I just have a vague idea and start straight away. But whether before or during the novel, I like to imagine some original people/places/things to go in the story, or even if I don't mention them, to go in the world in which the story is set. For example, using the same novel with the throwing-star weilding heroine, I tried to imagine little quirky things that could give the main town a unique feel. So I made up a strange character who lived with the pigeons in the park, created what could be loosely called 'a social club' that was exclusively for heroes, thought of different crowds of people who would hang around certain places -like the hero fans who hung around the comic shop, people filming a documentary about the people in the town who could appear anywhere, etc. These quirky things can help me if I'm kind of 'stuck' in a scene -I just add them and it gives me something interesting to write about in that scene. A good way to get quirky or non-quirky ideas is to think 'if what's happening in my story actually happened in real life, how would if affect the world?' For example, using a humourous story idea I invented ages ago, if chickens were really aliens trying to get ppl to eat pork, and pigs were really aliens trying to get people to eat chicken, how would that affect the world? 1) there'd be a farmer somewhere who'd find crop circles with the writing 'chicken -the meat of choice!' in them, there'd be a certain place which would always end up destroyed no matter how many times it was repaired (because, unbeknownst to the town people, it's where the chickens and pigs duel each night), and certain intelligent farmers would hint that 'it's a baaaaad idea to put them two kinds a' meat t'gether, if'n you're askin' me.' etc. So sometimes you need to leave the actual writing out of a story for a while (before or during writing it), and really think about the plot, characters, and setting/settings until you've come up with more ideas that can help to fill scenes until they're interesting and fun to write about.

Another thing I haven't tried but which could work (well maybe; I don't know) would be to skip the scene you're finding hard to write and go on to one that will happen further on in the story but which you'll enjoy writing and write that out. So just go through and write different scenes that you enjoy writing, then after you've finished them write fillers to link them.

Just to help me get a better idea, what do you do when you write a story? Do you base it on an idea, do you plan out the plot in your head or plan it more thoroughly on paper, or what?

Btw, sorry if my writing was a little hard to understand or anything; my head feels a little foggy at the moment. Well, hope some of this helps!

[Mangafanatic]

Writing advice: MAKE OUTLINES!! I hate them with a passion, but they are a necessary evil. *stones outlines, then picks them out of the rubble and recesitates them.*

[K. Ayato]

Yes, sometimes I'm called "MSP" for short. But to eliminate confusion, you can refer to me as "MSPilot", like kaji does.

[Alice]

My brother and I read about something called "Funny Hat Syndrome." It means where the writer doesn't have something real to tell the characters apart. Just something like, a funny hat.

We laughed about that. (And both probably thought back to see if we'd done it already.)

He said later..... "You know of course now I have to go back and give all my characters funny hats."

[starwarsboy90]

As a fellow Author and Writer, the only advice I can give you is never give up on your ideas, and try anything to make your mind stay with the story, so you don't get bored or have writers block. Write your story out on paper (as an outline), then type it out as you go along, listen to music as you write and tyoe, or listen to your favorite anime show as your typing. You never know what things might help!

[Kaligraphic]

I would suggest the Kali Three-Pass Method.

Pass 1: Write the story.
Pass 2: Write the style.
Pass 3: Fix both.

Essentially, in pass 1, you just write out your story - you get the events down and don't necessarily worry about it sounding good.

In pass 2, you decide on a style for your story, and rewrite it in that style. For instance, you may opt for "light and fast-moving" or "dark and existential" or "extremely silly" or whatever. This is where you apply the feel, the details, the flavour - this is where you change it from events to story. Much/all of the dialogue will likely be rewritten in this pass as well.

In pass 3, you read through the results of pass 2 and fix any erroneous details (like a scar on the wrong side of the face or stuff like that), any unintentional grammatical errors, spelling errors/typos, and generally polish it a little. Dialogue may also undergo minor revision in this pass to make it sync a little better with the characters, but remember that this is like polishing a sword, not re-forging it. Don't make large changes in this pass unless you really have to, and if you do have to, make that pass 2b, and do pass 3 again. It's importand to be able to go through the story without having to change anything major.

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Now, I have been asked, "How do you write better plots?" and "How do you improve your style?" - well, the answers for those are pretty similar: read a lot.

I'm not talking about cheap novels, if you want to learn plot, read books with good plots. If you want to understand mysteries, read Agatha Christie, if you want to understand sci-fi, read Timothy Zahn and Arthur C. Clarke, writers in the genre. Of course, also read outside the genre - you may be able to bring something new into your stories.

For style, I'd suggest reading authors who are good at style - Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (both lived ~1700) are good authors to study to understand the use of language, Ernest Hemmingway was very good at making dialogue seem natural, and William Shakespeare was excellent at clever turns of phrase. More recently Roger Zelazny (d. 1995), primarily an author of fantasy, was very good at writing smooth, flowing narrative. You may find it beneficial to read some of his works. Likewise, any skilled author can serve as a model for style.

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Another thing that may be of help would be to create your setting and your characters, and simply extrapolate what they would do. Many writers design their worlds and characters, and then just "set them loose" in their imaginations to work out the plot. Note that this is slightly less effective for mystery novels, because you have to have someone do something in the past, in order to reveal in in the present, so you might need to start "before the story begins," so to speak.

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And if mobilesuitpilot is MSPilot, is Mr. SmartyPants MSPants?

[Michael]

Don't think too much.