Writer's Corner: Writing for fun and profit (but mostly fun)

[Yora]

Anyone of you writing on something? Or considering to start to write something?

I've been spending about the last three weeks learning about things that are useful to know and common mistakes that are easy to avoid. But I am just not having the right idea to start writing. It's not that I don't have any good ideas, but when I think about them some more, they become so good that I rather want to keep them for later when I am better and not waste them now.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Trust me, ideas don't run out. Write your ideas now, and you'll get better ideas for later.

I'm actually a bit ashamed I haven't made more of my writing, but I do want to change that. I'm currently starting work on a fantasy short story that I'm planning to shop around, and I want to write other standalone stories set in the same world that I could send to other publishers. Not for big money, but hey, getting published.

[Piggy Knowles]

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I played the publishing game a lot more, mostly with short stories. Never got any money worth mentioning, but managed to get a few things published. I keep thinking about getting back into it, but inertia is hard to fight.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

By the way, if you're looking for some punchy writing advice, look up Chuck Wendig's blog, Terrible Minds. He's rather...crass...and his posts would generally not be appropriate for GiantITP, but he's sharp as a knife and knows what he's doing.

[Mx.Silver]

Write something. If you are not writing something then you are not a writer.

That is the single most important thing you have to know. Advice on how to be a better writer is all well and good, but it requires you to be a writer in the first place.

It's not that I don't have any good ideas, but when I think about them some more, they become so good that I rather want to keep them for later when I am better and not waste them now.

You are not going to get better if you are not writing anything now. Not only that but if you are not using an idea then that idea is being wasted. Yes, it will most likely be bad. All early attempts at writing are bad. That's why nobody publishes the first draft of a story.

If you're still concerned about 'wasting it', remember that there is nothing stopping you going back to that concept later down the line if you still think it actually is worth using. Because that's the other point, unless you're writing, you will not have a good idea of whether or not your concept actually is good.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Another thing I thought of: if you write something just to keep writing, and never wind up publishing it, you could definitely cannibalize it later if you're writing to get published. And if you don't aim to be published period, who cares if you re-use stuff?

[Yora]

Brandon Sanderson has given two classes on writing that were recorded and uploaded on youtube. I think the account is "Writing about Dragons" or something like that. Really useful stuff for people not familiar with common components that are used in stories as we're used to them (and maybe to people who know a bit already as well).
Much of it is really quite simple advice, but things you don't necessarily come to realize by yourself. Things like "a character who can be terrible person still appears likeable when we see him mostly from the perspective from his friend" or "characters appear much deeper if they have at least one interest that is unrelated to his goal in the story". I very much recommend checking it out.

To bring up a specific question: Naming things!

I have a pretty good idea for a world with a rough geographical layout and different cultures, but it's just so impossible to give names to any of these. When I have a vague idea of a character from "that place", who travels to "those mountains" and runs into one of his peoples enemies from "that other place", I always feel that I have to go back to the name list (not that long, only about 50 items) and first name all these places and cultures.
And it takes ages to get just a single name, and that one usually sounds terrible.

[jseah]

I write for fun (more like, I would like to write for profit but between a day job and other interests, I will never write enough to get there =( ).
My current projects are a Transcendence alternate endings fanfiction and original work Twin Faces of the Sky (link from my signature is the old version, I'm currently stalled at 2/3 of the way through a ground up re-write). My most proud-of work is original work Time is Like a River.

One thing I noticed after a few years was that I have too many story ideas and not enough time to write them all. Most aren't good enough to develop into a story and so sit gathering dust until I accrete enough related ideas to combine them (with alteration) into a story-worthy idea. Even so, I have so many scraps and notes collected that I could have no ideas for the next five years and have writing as a day job and I still wouldn't run out of ideas.
You never run out of ideas to write about. A story idea that could occupy you for a year pops up at a frequency of maybe once a month.

[AdmiralCheez]

Biggest, most obvious piece of advice for writing: just write something. Even if you think your skill isn't ready for some of the ideas you have, write them out anyway. That's called a rough draft, something that never, ever gets published. You can always refine it later, start it again, or publish it and reboot it later on. And do write down everything, even the smallest thoughts. I always carry a small notebook and a pen with me at all times just in case I think of something. I've filled five books with nothing but ideas. Okay, sometimes I write down other important things like addresses, or grocery lists, but they're mostly writing ideas.

Another tip, don't be afraid to ask for help developing ideas. Some of the things I'm most proud of only got that way because I consulted with someone, like a writing workshop, or a close friend that also happens to be a writer.

As for what I'm working on, recently I've been doing a boatload of research for a setting I'm creating, though I haven't decided if the story will be prose or graphic novel/webcomic. I'm also in the revision stages of a screenplay I was commissioned to write. I'm excited about this one, since there's a really good chance that it'll be produced.

[Zrak]

I would also advise to never take too seriously or as gospel any given piece of writing advice. Most writing advice is, ultimately, bad, since one can write a masterpiece without adhering to the advice in the least and a miserable piece of garbage by following the advice to the letter. It's always good to keep advice you've heard in mind, but always remember that it is choice, rather than an obligation, to follow it.

For example, the "character depth by unrelated interest" ploy is pretty easy to see through as a reader-who-writes, often nearly as shallow as "character depth by speech quirk," though almost always less abrasive.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Another tip, don't be afraid to ask for help developing ideas. Some of the things I'm most proud of only got that way because I consulted with someone, like a writing workshop, or a close friend that also happens to be a writer.

I would especially recommend the "close friend" route, if you can. It's much less scary in a lot of ways. Great for a budding writer. Move to workshops once you have more confidence.

As for what I'm working on, recently I've been doing a boatload of research for a setting I'm creating, though I haven't decided if the story will be prose or graphic novel/webcomic. I'm also in the revision stages of a screenplay I was commissioned to write. I'm excited about this one, since there's a really good chance that it'll be produced.

Exciting!!! What sort of market is it in? TV? Movie?

(I've also mulled over maybe starting up a webcomic, but one thing at a time, I think.)

[Yora]

As for what I'm working on, recently I've been doing a boatload of research for a setting I'm creating, though I haven't decided if the story will be prose or graphic novel/webcomic. I'm also in the revision stages of a screenplay I was commissioned to write. I'm excited about this one, since there's a really good chance that it'll be produced.

I think one mistake that appears to be quite common, is assume novels as the default form of writing fiction. I think it's probably even the hardest option you could pick (the exception being a whole series of novels). I am personally much more in favor of smaller scope stories of a losely connected episodic format, as it's common in Sword & Sorcery. It allows you to write one story with one idea and one plot line, and when that idea has reached its conclusion, you have a finished work to present and can start at the next one. Weaving multiple plotlines together to have enough material for a full novel or three seems much more difficult, and you're probably much more likely to give up along the way as there is no end in sight.
And if you're looking towards print publication, you're also not forced to have the full story within a certain word-count. You can just write the stories as long as it seems appropriate for the idea, and then you put either 4 or 6 of them into one book, depending on how long they all turn out.

[BWR]

Neil Gaiman's advice is this: Write. Finish what you start.

You will never learn anything unless you write. Even if you have no inspiration, write something. Make another version of seomthing you've already written, rewrite someone else's story, write something in the style of someone else, but write. Finish what you begin. How often has something been started then abandoned? You have a period of inspiration, then abandon the project once the inspiration runs out or you run into a snag. Making a single finished product will teach you more than a dozen abanadoned ones. Even if you hate the finished product, even if the ending is terrible and you just want to forget it, finish it.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

That's the main reason I decided to start writing short stories. What I want to do is publish them separately, and then collect them into an anthology.

[Yora]

I think in theory, it might also help to get people giving your work a try, even though they never heard anything about you. Reading something that takes a hour or two is a much smaller commitment than trying a whole full-sized novel.
However, this only works if you have ideas that call for short length. If you would rather write a novel, it's probably better to write a novel, since you'll have much more fun doing what you want to do instead of what you think a necessary chore.

[BeerMug Paladin]

I've been working on a novel for quite a while now. I've found that idly browsing places like TVtropes can give good ideas for how to implement your ideas, and also if you're working on a scene, it helps to explain what is happening with the story in that scene. To another person, that way you'll be less inclined to be distracted by tangents.

As for good ideas, I think when you start thinking of things, you can kind of keep coming up with more ideas than you could ever really use. Just choose the one you think is best right now, and stick with it.

[AdmiralCheez]

Exciting!!! What sort of market is it in? TV? Movie?

The screenplay is going the indie film route for production, but I have no idea what the plans are for distribution. I have been instructed to leave it open to sequels or possibly a series, though. It should be an interesting project, considering the producer just emailed me and pretty much gave me a blank check on special effects and action scenes.

I would also advise to never take too seriously or as gospel any given piece of writing advice. Most writing advice is, ultimately, bad, since one can write a masterpiece without adhering to the advice in the least and a miserable piece of garbage by following the advice to the letter. It's always good to keep advice you've heard in mind, but always remember that it is choice, rather than an obligation, to follow it.

I absolutely agree. Sometimes it can help get you get past a stuck spot, but other times it tries to force your story into their formula. There's no one specific way to write a story, which is why we have thousands of "how to write" books. Ultimately, all advice is subjective, you just have to find the stuff that works for you.

I think in theory, it might also help to get people giving your work a try, even though they never heard anything about you. Reading something that takes a hour or two is a much smaller commitment than trying a whole full-sized novel.
However, this only works if you have ideas that call for short length. If you would rather write a novel, it's probably better to write a novel, since you'll have much more fun doing what you want to do instead of what you think a necessary chore.

Agreed again. That's one of the harder parts of writing, is choosing which medium is best for the story you want to tell. Most of my stuff is short stories because I know there is no way I would be able to pad it out to novel length. It also helps to know your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. For instance, one of the reasons I was considering graphic novel for a story is because I know it will require a lot of action scenes and a lot of descriptions of architecture. I don't think my ability to describe them in prose is going to be sufficient, so I was thinking of putting my drawing skills to the test.

[Mx.Silver]

I would also advise to never take too seriously or as gospel any given piece of writing advice. Most writing advice is, ultimately, bad, since one can write a masterpiece without adhering to the advice in the least and a miserable piece of garbage by following the advice to the letter. It's always good to keep advice you've heard in mind, but always remember that it is choice, rather than an obligation, to follow it.

A word of caution: if you're going off the accepted writing wisdom on what constitutes good writing, the odds of your work turning into a masterpiece are vanishingly small compared to the odds of it ending-up a miserable piece of garbage unless you happen to know what you're doing.

I think one mistake that appears to be quite common, is assume novels as the default form of writing fiction.

A related one is assuming your story needs to be a trilogy or a series of novels. Because it very probably doesn't.



One other thing: make sure you also read a fair amount, and not just in your preferred genre. At the very least attempt to add some 'literary' books to your reading list, even if that's not what you intend to write.


All of this of course is secondary to 'Write something'.

[Yora]

A word of caution: if you're going off the accepted writing wisdom on what constitutes good writing, the odds of your work turning into a masterpiece are vanishingly small compared to the odds of it ending-up a miserable piece of garbage unless you happen to know what you're doing.

To some degree. Every common rule of thumb can be broken, but usually you should have a good reason why you chose to do so. If there's no real need to not do something unusual, it's usually safer to just go with the default option.

[Dhavaer]

I do some writing, some of the results of which I post in my blog, linked in my sig. I'm planning to publish something on Smashwords soon as well (the full text of Piercing Darkness. the introduction/prologue to which is on my blog).

I'll support the general theme of 'just write something' and add to it that it should get longer every day. Not necessarily by a lot - I gave myself fairly modest minimums of 50 words on work days and 250 otherwise - but enough that you won't get lazy.

Also, don't delete your old stuff. Keep it around just in case.

[JCarter426]

Writing? I write. Well, I try to write. It's been a few years since I genuinely completed a story, but I do have a few stories in various stages of development. I have this problem with focusing on one project at a time. I start developing a story, and somewhere down the line I realize there are inherent contradictions in my ideas, or I run out of ideas for some key area, or something else causes me to lose enthusiasm, and I switch projects. Then the same thing happens with that one, and so on. I've heard it said more than once that the first rule of writing is to decide what you want to write. I'm a very bad example of that. I don't abandon my projects, though... I've returned to most of them at least once, so after a few repetitions of this I've ended up with several partially developed stories, rather than a collection of random ideas, at least. Keeps me busy, at least.

Another problem I have is my incompetence in other areas. Writing is the only form of medium that I can work in on my own. This doesn't prevent me from getting ideas I feel would suit other mediums. I like comics as a medium, and I'd love to write my own comic, but my art is not nearly good enough. Even the stuff I can do would take too long for an ongoing comic to be plausible. I had a few such projects, but at some point I realized that I could write the scripts several times faster than I could compose the art, so I ended up converting a couple projects to prose. I also have one idea for a video game, but in that case I don't think another medium could do the story justice. The entire premise is interactive... and I'm definitely not writing a choose your own adventure. I can convince myself the medium doesn't really matter that much for some ideas, but not for others.

I do like short stories but I have trouble writing them. Most of my ideas just tend to be long - apart from ideas for comics, which may be individually short but are still part of a long series. But most of ideas for prose are long. I can try to write a novel and end up with more ideas than would fit in it. In a few cases, I have more ideas for sequels than for the first story. That's not a good place to be. If you can focus on writing short stories, do it. You'll prevent that mess.

Writing short stories can be more difficult in other aspects, though. A short story has little in the way of plot, so it has to be strong in all other areas - character, setting, etc. You may think if you're going to go to all that effort into developing all that, you're not getting enough payoff, as a writer. But publishing anthologies is an option, and you could revisit those elements in another work - tell another story with the same characters, or tell story again, only differently... keep what works, change what doesn't, etc. There are plenty of series that originally started as short stories - most stuff written by Asimov, for example. I also enjoy reading series that are a mix of short story and full length novel. Short stories can develop the characters better, because of aforementioned lack of plot... plus, not every idea can fill a novel anyway. It's nice to see some side adventures, sometimes.

Writing short stories seems like it would be a good way of developing all those elements for a novel - for example, write a short story focusing on each character... but unless you have solid characters already, it's not actually going to help. It's kind of paradoxical. But if your character is too weak to carry a story, that might make you notice things you have to fix. It's still a good exercise.

[Yora]

My target length is somewhere in the middle; 20,000 to 40,000 words. Long enough for a good story, but only so long that you can work with a single plot idea. That's about the length of Shadow over Innsmouth or Red Nails.

I am assuming most here are writing fantasy or science fiction (or thinking about it). What's your approach to nonhumans? From what I've been seing the last couple of years, these seem to be almost limited to RPGs with barely any presence in literature and even movies.

[BeerMug Paladin]

I'm doing fantasy. My approach to intelligent nonhumans in this world is that they are the same psychologically as humans. Even though they may have different physical abilities as a result of their bodies. (Flight, swimming, underwater breathing, or so on.)

While I find it might be interesting to think about how a non-human intelligence might be different or unique from humans, I don't feel the concept is worthwhile for its own sake as a part of a story. Humans can already differ quite a lot from one another without introducing fantastic elements into their thinking, so in a strictly fantasy world there's no reason for a more exotic element to even be necessary.

The alien psychology thing would probably make more sense in a standalone, small setting where it is the main theme of the entire plot.

[Yora]

The common, and somewhat justified question to this is, "why not just have them be humans then?"

My answer is "because I want to". But I feel like I could greatly improve my stories if I were able to pin down why I like having nonhumans in the first place. .If you can identify why you like something, it's probably much easier to effectively include these things to improve the work as a whole.

[Dhavaer]

I don't have any biological intelligent non-humans (apes/squid/cetaceans excluded) but I do have spirits that range from almost mindless to rough parity with humans. They're distinguished by having very little interest in anything outside what they're a spirit of: a hunger spirit wants to eat, a storm spirit wants to cause storms. They're inherently flat characters.

[GPuzzle]

I've been writing a story for quite a while but school slowed me down for quite a while.

Well, that, and Civ V.

CURSE YOU, SID MEIER. CURSE YOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

[Mx.Silver]

To some degree. Every common rule of thumb can be broken, but usually you should have a good reason why you chose to do so. If there's no real need to not do something unusual, it's usually safer to just go with the default option.

The reason why I bring it up is because I have seen quite a few amateur writers whose response to being informed about basic writing guidelines which they need to follow is to scoff at them rather than consider revising concepts based on this advice. This does not lead to good writing.


Now, getting hung-up on an imaginary checklist of things your story has to include is also a trap*. I am not saying it isn't, just making it clear that there is another trap you can fall into by going in the other direction.



*related note: TVTropes.org is not a 'how-to' guide on story-telling and should not be used as one.

What's your approach to nonhumans? From what I've been seeing the last couple of years, these seem to be almost limited to RPGs with barely any presence in literature and even movies.

The approach to non-humans depends for me depends on why they're in the story in the first place. What is their presence saying? How do they tie into the story's themes?

As always, the question you need to be asking yourself is: "Why am I putting this in my story?".



Also: write something.

[Math_Mage]

I can't discuss alien perspectives without bringing up Larry Niven, particularly The Mote in God's Eye, Ringworld, and the Draco Tavern series of short stories. I think Niven's key insight is that aliens and humans can be mutually comprehensible while still being alien to each other--each can intellectualize the perspective of the other, but differences in natural circumstances should lead to fundamentally different instinctive value systems. In this way, Niven avoids the usual pitfall of presenting aliens as particular stereotypes of humanity, such that humans are the only race with mental flexibility; we, too, are products of our natural circumstances (or not-so-natural circumstances, as the case may be).

On a related note, Vernor Vinge presents a variety of interestingly alien perspectives, both human and non-human. A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness In the Sky are the relevant books. Vinge's work also has more pathos in it than Niven's does; Niven reads like a fun intellectual exercise, Vinge a bit more like a thriller (though his actual thriller novels are The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime).

[BeerMug Paladin]

The common, and somewhat justified question to this is, "why not just have them be humans then?"

My answer is "because I want to". But I feel like I could greatly improve my stories if I were able to pin down why I like having nonhumans in the first place. .If you can identify why you like something, it's probably much easier to effectively include these things to improve the work as a whole.

This is a fairly reasonable question. On some level, your answer is all that's really needed to justify doing it, but to be particular, there's actually a good narrative reason to justify some of my choices. I'll provide an example.

Spoiler: Mostly irrelevant justifications.

Show

Elves have a mostly tribal society with a natural spiritualist culture. Their creator god doesn't like humans corrupting nature with invention/pollution/industry. Since those things are a part of human nature, the god made a non-human race specifically to provide additional psychological distance from humans and ensure their culture remains separate from humans so their society remains tribal hunter-gatherer (or early agrarian) as long as possible an in balance with the natural world.

Effectively, it's meant as a measure to prevent other cultures/philosophy from mixing too much with elves and corrupting the creator god's original intentions. This sort of explanation could be used to justify any non-human or unique race's purpose in any general setting (ones with creator gods, at least). But I feel that this particular use is especially sensible because it ties into the creator god's sense of a moral philosophy needing to resist the evils of being out of balance with nature, so to speak. There's one other non-human race that exists for that same reason.

There's also a couple aquatic races around because they were created to live within an oceanic region. So they exist that way to make the best use of their given native habitat.

There's minor things like flight having a symbolic meaning for a race of fliers and their sense of a freedom-y moral philosophy, but it's not really the sort of thing that is strictly necessary for the culture to make them physically distinct from regular humans. In that case, the symbolism is there, but it's not quite the same as the elven god's intentions for the race partly being backed by their creation.

Although there's not necessarily a strict literary need for these choices, I think it also adds flavor to a setting and makes it feel more fantastic, colorful and full of life. And that for its own sake, is another perfectly valid reason.

[Zrak]

A word of caution: if you're going off the accepted writing wisdom on what constitutes good writing, the odds of your work turning into a masterpiece are vanishingly small compared to the odds of it ending-up a miserable piece of garbage unless you happen to know what you're doing.

I think it depends a lot on the rule. I brought it up more with regard to ideas like giving characters an interest unrelated to plot; it's not exactly bad advice, but following it really won't help make a bad work (or even just a bad character) any less bad and breaking is rarely the reason a bad work is bad. It's useful to keep in mind, but there's really no obligation to follow it.

I will say, with regard to following and diverging from conventional wisdom more generally, diverging from conventional wisdom is probably more likely to lead an inexperienced writer to produce a bad product, but I think it's more likely to produce a bad product they can learn from.

The reason why I bring it up is because I have seen quite a few amateur writers whose response to being informed about basic writing guidelines which they need to follow is to scoff at them rather than consider revising concepts based on this advice. This does not lead to good writing.

I don't know if I've ever scoffed at them in the context of revising a concept, really. I think I just kind of scoff at them in general.

I remember on one of the first days of a high school creative writing class, my teacher told us you couldn't kill off the main character if the story was told in the first person; otherwise, how would they be narrating it? This wasn't in response to me, or anyone else in the class, having done so or planning to do so. It was just a guideline we were given one day, I maybe even as an example of how there are "rules" of writing. I don't really recall the circumstances, I just recall the color of her face when my "finger exercise" that day was a scene depicting two goofy academics discussing their perspectives on Sunset Blvd, As I Lay Dying, Survivor, The Lovely Bones, and so on.