How To Improve As A Writer (v2)

Thanks for this, I started writing lately but it's a bit stale. It's nowhere near good as the stuff submitted under this section so I might wait to improve myself before submitting something.

If you hold your work back from display, then the only person who can help you improve it is yourself. This forum is built for collective improvement, so if you have something, don't fear submitting it. This forum makes up some of the most constructive and friendly criticism you'll find on this site.

I'd like to make a small contribution, as there seems to be no advice on dialogue.

These tips were from some place I have forgotten but I they've been useful.


I'll also like to contest the issue of dealing with Writer's Block. I've taken this tip from my English teacher to heart.

Writer's Block does not exist.

It is all in your mind. Your mind discourages from writing usually due to the daunting scope of what you're doing, lack of motivation or lack of inspiration. The most effective way you deal with it is to just start writing. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad, you can always come back later to fix it, you'll have to proofread later anyway. Just start with a simple sentence. Go on from there, connecting the sentences as you go with a central idea to form the paragraph. Using that paragraph, go on to the next idea that would logically follow. Slowly you'll start shifting in to a writing mood and the words will flow out naturally. This works for non-fiction articles to analytical essays to speculative fiction, basically everything that you will mostly likely encounter as a writer.

The only thing I will warn against is when you're stuck in the middle of writing some fiction and you try to continue despite being bored of it. In that case, I suggest you put down whatever you're using to write and go do something else. Nothing good ever comes from being bored with your own writing.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the dialogue advice, but your bit about writer's block is contradictory since you say it does not exist and then describe what it is and give a way to get around it...

I wasn't arguing that its existence, or at least that wasn't my intention. I was simply stating the tip I've been given. Admittedly my wording is usually poor (there's at least one typo on my last post come to think of it). The steps I've used are from personal experience and I've never encountered or experienced Writer's Block ever since. So it no longer exists for me in a sense, I guess.

The term "block" just doesn't fit as well once you come to terms with the situation. It's more of a delay, since you've got to take a couple minutes and start writing at a lower caliber, slowly building back up to your "full power".

It is as it always has been: A concept of a state of mind in which a writer's capability is hindered in some fashion usually caused by their own lack of creational flow or ability to state. At least, that's what I've always considered it to be. The thing is, most people think of it like a physical hurdle one needs to overcome, but you don't run into it on set times, it's a negative and anti-creative state of mind that may be caused by boredom or perhaps even slight depression. I agree with Thaiberium's suggestion, though. The act of simply writing can cause one to overcome it occasionally. Whenever I don't know how to start the next sentence or paragraph, I begin to read the last sentence I wrote very slowly and slightly emotionally. That tactic has empowered my creative thought many times.

Not to disregard the current topic of "writer's block", but just because I had some personal thoughts about flat characters...

Mary Sueing is my delicious downfall. I write completely for self-service, not for any audience.

So I guess my roadblock isn't how to stop being a selfish writer, but whether I want to or not...

If I write a story from the perspective of a female, though I may put her through hardships or give her character flaws, I am still going to want to spoil her.

Well there's a distinction to be made here. If you write purely for self service, then the question isn't "Is the writing great?", it's "Does the writing satisfy me?"

So if you're spoiling your characters because you are the only one reading your writing and that's what you want to read, then by all means do so, because YOU are your audience. The difference appears when you want to publish something for other people to read. I, for example, used to write sex scenes whenever I had a really vivid fantasy I wanted to develop or remember for later. In these pieces, I was completely cliche with flawless sex and characters that could stay hard for unreasonably long, make girls impossibly wet, and cum quantities that I'm sure would qualify most porn as light bukkake. But that was because I was only writing for myself, as I had no intention of sharing these with other people. When writing a piece of writing AS a piece of writing, and not as a piece of self satisfying mental masturbation, I just changed my standards. So you don't have to stop spoiling your characters, but just understand that if you write something for an audience, your opinion on its quality no longer matters much, and the more analytical opinions of critics will weigh in much more strongly. So you must make yourSELF a critic of your work to stop yourself from writing it with only your personal opinions in mind. But it seems like you can already do that to an extent, in your realization of your flat characters as a fault, which is good, as the ability to analyze ones own writing as objectively as possible is an invaluable tool as a writer.

This necromancy makes me smile. Change the topic and I will throw more of my cents into the pot.

The thing I seem to be obsessed with at the moment is world environment creation. I tend to get very caught up in the character relationships and so focused on their actions that I may not pay a proper amount of attention to what's going on in the world around the characters. Which of course isn't fair, because regular people at least have an understanding of what's going on in their environment.

Considering the global climate, including weather, economics, currency, politics, and other factors can also influence the way your characters behave. So it's almost something you have to address when plotting out your character. Don't tell me that someone grew up in a small fishing village in Japan and then the character is suddenly wearing a baseball cap backwards. That makes no sense. What values and mannerisms would they have learned growing up there? What might they have rebelled against? Have they known poverty, civil war? Have they been directly involved in a disaster? Is their country currently in a war?

I'm not saying you need to include a history of the particular world's events, but it's important to keep them in mind instead of wrapping your characters up in an "ONLY FOCUS ON THEM" bubble. And not only bring out a description of the world environment when it's convenient.

I will add (taken from a website):

- Try not to get too obsessed with your story or characters. Know your characters, but don't let them rule you. You are the author.

- Critics are key to the overall success of your story, but don't let their views surpass your overall vision (this applies mainly to friends, not the editors). Again, you are the author, and only you know how your book functions.

well i started Writing about a year a go,and well the mos important problem i get is,Being trapped while writing,cause i get so many ideas they mix up and i just block myself what can i do for that,i Really enjoy writing and i have been writing and remodeling for a year,and well i need help in that part of it,cause it bugs me, I've been right now two months without doing a new chapter,so what can i do for this?

Ton of both common and uncommon advice here, nicely done everyone.

I do not have that many advice to offer myself so will just say the usual "Write what you know and care about".

This seems useful. I haven't read everything yet, but I will try to do so at some point. I'll also try and post some tips. For now just a few small things.


Repetition: There are tools to count the count of every word written in your story (weird sentence), just google it. I think Word even has it build in. Check your most used words. Make sure you don't overuse certain expressions / words. Try to vary it and use synonyms (use google for synonyms as well). Watch out for repetition in the same sentence / paragraph especially. This is something that will stick out to people and it will read a bit like you are stuttering or talking unprepared.


Punctuation: I'm not a native English speaker, so I'm not perfect (native speakers probably aren't either), but punctuation is so so so so so [...] so important. You have to get this right, it can make or destroy your story. Google this stuff up, it's so easy in today's time, and learn some proper punctuation. Get your commas right, learn how to use semicolons and colons properly. Use fullstops and go down on the exclamation marks, they always look cheap. Punctuation can literally change the meaning of a sentence.

Also important for Dialogue. Use one method throughout your piece: No punctuation, double inverted commas, single inverted commas, or angle quotes (guillemets, which you probably see in most novels). Secondly, always have punctuation inside of speech. E.g.

"I feel great," he said.

Not

"I feel great", he said.


Dialogue: This can be elaborated for hours. Just quickly I want to say: Dialogue is incredibly important. It's the tool you use to show the reader your characters, their emotions, and also (probably) to drive your plot forward. Good dialogue should be something between real speech and a formal speech. To explain this further, real speech is how we talk in real life. Formal speech is something a politician would read off when he speaks in front of an audience. It's hard to make an example, but let me try.

Real speech:

"Ah, yeah, I feel really good, great, yeah."

Formal speech:

"I am feeling marvelous on this day."

Dialogue:

"I'm feeling great."

Of course this varies on your characters, etc. but in general this is a guideline to go by. Real speech is riddled with stuttering and "Mhm" and "Hmh" and "Ah" and "Oh" and "Yeah", which you don't want in dialogue. So while it should feel real, it shouldn't be real. Just keep that in mind.


Enough for the moment. I will try and write more tips later.

In my humble opinion, I have to disagree with the way you described the tips regarding punctuation as I do feel the way you put it seems a bit rigid, I hope you take no offense of it as I do prefer things which sounds a bit more 'artistic' and 'dynamic' rather than what could be described as a somewhat 'formulaic' approach.

For me, the punctuation aspect by itself doesn't have to be perfect, as long the story were at least kind of understandable and easy enough to read in order for the readers to finally figure out what's going on. Though it would be great if 'these goodies' could be used in the way which would enable the readers to smoothly skim across the story from the start to finish based by the author's own estimations on how the punctuation could be used in an artistic way, in order to free oneself as a form of self-expression, rather than adhering towards what the experts thought of as this so-called 'best way'.

Okay, I'm no expert on this, and I didn't really have any backgrounds pertaining formally-written English structures - but I think for the authors, it's best if we took one step at a time; don't take things too seriously and try to have fun with the structures just like you're trying to express yourselves using words as a medium.

Still, I do agreed that the haphazard usage of punctuation, to some point, would destroy the story by itself as it would render the story almost unreadable - that which I assume was your point whilst conveying the tips, if I'm correct.

For the repetition, it's basically the things I tend to be annoyed with, although not as much as the story formatting which hurts my eyes while I'm reading it on-screen. Some authors tend to repetitively use the pronouns such as 'I', 'me', 'he', 'she', 'it' many times; in addition of the to be's to form many short sentences which kinda breaks off the flow of reading, and it at times tend to test one's patience while reading to the point it would made things kind of tedious, regardless of what prospect the story could offer us.

Let me use a more positive word for this, let's break off the paradigm of thinking about 'not using too much repetition' towards ' let's experiment on using as much variations as we could muster, in order to spice up the story, making things more fun to read' that's more like it.

I like putting things up in positive terms; at least it motivates us to look higher up than being pessimistic whether we would be able to achieve things or not - for me motivation is very important, it truly determines whether an author - regardless of the amount of support would be consistently improving themselves or not.

Letting all of these topics aside, the idea of experimenting with how you could put the variety of things into practice as you tried writing - or should we say 'crafting our own muse through the medium of words' - they were pretty much up to one's own creativity. As for myself, the help of punctuation aspects could be used in order to further extend the variety which I could use to write my passages. Personally, I like to use gerunds and relative pronouns to spice things up; probably I should look up to these grammar and composition references much further in order to help me tinker with stuff.

Anyway, thanks for your input FGRaptor, much appreciated for giving the 'food of thought' which would definitely benefit us all.

If you just started writing, I wouldn't focus as much on a personal style. Write a lot and let your style evolve over time. Do not be afraid to explore a lot of genres and styles. If you save all your works in the same spot, you can see the progess.
A thing I find funny is to redo texts you wrote a long time ago.
I guess what I'm saying is that practise makes you better.

Hey guys, I've been crazy busy with work and life so I've never finished stories/did stuff here... What I do have time for though is helping you guys.

I'd like to take it easy for now, but if you guys have various short stories, chapters, etc (please nothing too long) that you'd like proofread/grammar checked or want a second opinion, feel free to PM me a link.

I know I am fairly new to Fakku, and by that fact, my opinions are of somewhat less value for many on the community. Before joining Fakku, I lurked some threads, and this one was among the first I read. I loved it, I screenshot'd every piece of advice in this thread, and personally, I will keep it for as long as my memory card lives. As a matter of fact, seeing this thread motivated me to join after 2½ years of no internet connection. ^_^ Thanks.

So, I'd like to share my own way of writing, since I experience dissilutionment while writing, and usually trashed drafts. So I begin in a different way, I start creating the characters first, and then adapt the story for them.
To explain it better:
A gray old man, with unshaven face. He is missing an arm.
I proceed to decide how he lost it. War, accident, or birth defect? His beliefs, experiences, and/or social situation. Now, I make a setting for him, let's call him Ned, the first name that crosses my mind. Ned is at the supermarket, he is sad, depressed. Why is he at the supermarket? Is he stalking someone? Looking for a fight with a clerk? Or just seeking a food?
I find a block in my way, I skip to make another scene.
I create a new character: Rose. I make her appearance: she is mildly fat, a few years younger than Ned. I decide Ned is 35, and add him long hair. She has nothing to do with him yet. But why was she at the supermarket too? Maybe buying food or health products, or perhaps she is a compulsive shopper.
I cannot still make a scene to bring them together.
I make a clerk. He is young, perhaps a fool or needy for money. Make a stereotypical appearance.
Now back to making a scene: Ned bumps into the clerk, he thinks the Clerk did it on purpose, Rose intervenes upon seeing them. Ned meets Rose. Drama, tragedy, or romance may ensue as I develop thr characters and decide on their pasts.
Now I can begin a story. I make unorganized random situations, even without a timeline, and I make new characters. Finally, I seek a way to combine all the madness of scraps of situations together into a minor draft, which for of course, I am not satisfied with, so I continue adding more situations.
As a matter of fact, all of that I wrote was on-spot. (except a minor edit for 2 sentences and one typo).
I hope you can beat that feeling of giving up on your writings with this.

Boo. Back from the dead. Anyway I wanted to share an idea that I came across that really stuck with me. It's why I have trouble making myself write, and why I have little confidence in the work. Most of us read a lot, and so we have good taste in writing. We can recognize writing that makes our hearts freeze or accelerate. We can see when a writer has great turn of phrase or realistic worldbuilding. We can critique character development and point out well rounded characters and wag our fingers at the flat, listless characters that do not interest us.

But precisely BECAUSE of this high standard of reading, when we start writing, we can see what's wrong with what we've done. We know how to identify a flat character, but maybe not know how to avoid writing one. Because our taste is at a higher level than our ability, reading our own writing sometimes demotivates us, as we feel like there is an unbridgeable gap between our own technique, and those techniques we so revere in the authors we follow. The only way to beat this though, is sheer force. Reading advice will help develop your writing a bit, sure, but the only way to bridge that gap between taste and ability, is simply writing. A lot of writing. MAKING yourself write all the time.

It doesn't have to be something that you want to show people. It doesn't have to even make sense. Maybe it's a 5 minute poem you write between classes, or a silly little short story about a man who doesn't know the difference between shoes and gloves. These things are just the writing equivalent of a little workout to keep your technique constantly improving. Maybe keep a diary, and write about yourself. The important thing is to KEEP WRITING. When you hit a block, change to a different story. You're not writing a novel here, you're just practicing. It doesn't have to impress anyone, not even yourself, and that lack of pressure may give rise to new and wonderful things.

And maybe you'll have a really great idea that you can turn into a real story later on when you feel more confident. Anyway, here's the little speech that inspired this post:

I just can't help it when reading the above post.



I don't practice nearly all that much (I really should, since what I dish out is about all I write) but this is really it.