Keep Writing

I hope this is allowed here, if not, feel free to remove my post, mods

My name is Richard Silva, I'm a young Brazilian writer(17) who just published their first book. Since I was a kid I wrote things, but for the first time, I made something I am going to share with the world. Currently, I'm finishing Brazilian integral high school, which in other words, wastes 9 hours of my day with mostly nothing. It's very stressful, and leaves me with not much appropriate time for actually writing quality content, so you might imagine how many reviews this book had to get before I felt like I was satisfied.

I would like to encourage you to read my book, and share your thoughts on it, of course, it's me first one, so constructive criticism is very welcomed. My desire is to be able to make a living out of my art, and when reading this book, you are helping me make this dream possible :)

And please, if you did enjoy it(even if it's a little bit), leave me a review on google play saying how much you like it, and why you like it. As for you, fellow Brazilians, a version in Portuguese is coming soon!

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) kicks off today!

I've got a couple hundred words in, mostly just hoping to write a bit every day. Anyone else participating? What are your goals?

Protip: If you're on Mastodon, you can follow a hashtag just like you can an account, and the #nanowrimo tag is pretty active today. :-)

I love writing. I love telling stories and putting all the fantasies and day dreams in my head down on paper. I write mostly for myself, though I share some with people and love it when they comment on it.

As much as I love it, I don't do it enough. I get pulled by my vices (video games and anime mostly) and spent way more time on that than anything else. Even when I pull myself away from them, I still have school and work that takes my productivity away, and by the end of it, even if I feel like writing, I don't.

I'd love to get back into it, especially going through my old stories and editing them to be better. It's hard. I want to improve, but often I don't know how. I want to keep doing it and write more, but I don't want to stop enjoying it. I've got so much I need to do, so much else I want to do, and even when I have the time I keep getting distracted.

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to vent.

This post might sound like an advertisement (which it partly is, of course, you don't try to get published if you don't want people to read your stuff) but I want to use this post to encourage other new writers.

It took a long time to find a home for this story and I thought about giving up on it when rejections started piling up in my inbox. I'm sure there are others who feel the same from time to time, but please continue to submit.

For those interested, here is the story: https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/milk/

Just a wannabe writer here. I've only ever strung a few paragraphs together, maybe an essay's worth occasionally. I used to work on blog posts in Evernote and I still use it for capturing stray thoughts. I use it as a place for ideas and that's exactly what happens. I never develop the idea, I just write down another one. Years ago I used Word, but thought maybe now there are apps better suited to the writing process. What do others use for an application/ platform?

"What’s your process like?"

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Me:

So everyone's different, and I am autistic. I have an extensive memory for details, quick and sometimes instinctive understanding of many fiction principles, and a lot of visual thinking. (I have my shortcomings too, especially over-thinking and over-explaining instead of showing.) But I think at least some of what I do can work for you.

1. Discipline is better than motivation. Motivation ends, discipline stays. Eventually, hopefully like me, you'll get to a point where you feel wrong if you didn't write every day (or 5 days a week in my case). This hugely helps keep you motivated

2. I am a one-trick pony with it; but I always started with a theme, a feeling, something important I want to share and say. For me it was a terrible childhood, my desire for healing and family, my idealism towards wanting a greater world, and how we all need to become better and happier people to achieve it. I wanted to capture that idea and feeling since I was like six. While for my novel the lesson may be larger than life, every fiction should have a point to make, even if that point is "things in this book are awesome; here, have a good time because you deserve it". Your point should be memorable even if small.

3. Once you have a theme, start coming up with characters and scenes that support that theme. Write down the things that look or feel awesome in your head, the things that you always wanted to share and show, and come up with your best scenes first. Try to build a story around them. If you have important messages to say, build your plot around them. Have the characters' stakes revolve around those scenes. Once again this is just my method; but I don't think you can go wrong writing heart first.

4. For me, I found it easiest to quickly just outline scenes and jot down what you want to happen, what you want said. Finish all the basic sentences, events, and ideas for that scene, move to the next scene. Once you have all the chapters, this will be your first "outline"— even if you end up doing a little (or more) prose in that outline, like I did. Once you have that full story (which probably won't be good yet!) you can start figuring out where it needs fixing.

   This is my first novel, and I'm technically still doing the second draft. But I learn very fast and retain a ton of helpful information; so I mostly know what my next phases and fixes are, all the way through my first and later drafts. I made a little changelog of each thing I want to focus on in future versions, all numbered in preparation, as if this was a piece of software.

5. Once I'm done with the versions that I call "outlines", I will finally start drafting in full prose, allowing me to focus on the flow and beauty and clarity of my words, since the story itself will already be figured out and awesome.

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One way I think of the whole process of noveling is this, modified from game development advice:

1. Make it function
2. Optimize
3. Make it pretty (write your prose draft)
4. Optimize again

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There's a lot of other advice I can give, but I wouldn't exactly know where to begin! The most important thing, I think, is to figure out what time of day your brain writes best, and create a routine around it. No novel was ever finished without persistence! <3

Also, I recommend reading https://mythcreants.com/ and getting lost in https://tvtropes.org/. They can really help! Try watching Lindsay Ellis on Nebula, or http://atopthefourthwall.com/. Some of these may not be about novel-writing, but you can learn a lot about good stories through any of these platforms, and all of that helps!

So my novel takes place in an afterlife and focuses on one major character, as they try to heal from childhood trauma, learn helpful mental health tools, and newly take in this beautiful universe.

The other major characters are also developing ethically and emotionally, and we need to see inside their minds and watch them learn.

Meanwhile the past was literally a different life, and there's not a lot of past talked about in the narration— more thought about or talked about by the characters.

So with that, I've decided that the best way to write my novel is first-person present tense with the main character; and then with the occasional times where I need to focus on other characters when the main isn't around, third-person present tense.

This is not a common choice, but I think it is the best choice for my particular novel. I think it's the best choice for my novel's sense of immediacy, for getting inside characters' heads, and for experiencing many new things from the main character's viewpoint.

Also also, I intend to make my main character Chris/Solemn completely-ambiguous when it comes to gender; so that really works with the first-person perspective.

Tell me your opinions or tangents!

So I'm on v2 of my novel. I could call it "second draft", but it's more of the second semi-prose outline. I have a fight scene in Chapter 13.

The fight scene involves an inexperienced demigod villain, an inexperienced demigod hero, the hero's kung fu master mom who is not a demigod, and their support android. It's all at the mom's house in front of the ocean. The demigods have flight, telekinesis, increased strength, and semi-invulnerability when they maintain their personal body forcefields.

Either way, here's a few things I learned while writing this fight scene, off the top of my head:

1. Fight scenes really aren't natural to me. I always wanted to write this science fantasy action piece, and I'm learning that I'm much better at philosophy, and at painting a picture of wonder, than I am at action. I already instinctively understood how to pace a fight scene quickly with terse sentences and good flow, and to not focus on choreography. But planning out the actions is still tough.
2. I kinda knew this, but: never focus on choreography. The individual movements of characters, while necessary, are— in isolation— the least-important part of a fight. What's important is keeping tension; turning the fight into a mini-plot with stakes, problems to solve, solutions, and probably character and plot development/reveals; and having some kind of novelty in the fight if you can, in order to keep things interesting. The actions that characters do should display their personalities and mostly lead up to a development of some kind, instead of just looking cool.
3. My present challenge in writing a fight scene is finding the balance between interesting fight environments and actions, making sure characters behave and fight in-character, and directing the fight to develop and end a certain way. This takes a lot of brain power for me.
4. I found myself taking longer to write these chapters with fight scenes in them than many of my other chapters; because using this much brain power means I must end my daily writing early to regain my mental energy for the next. There's been a lot of times where I revised a chapter of my novel in one day; and so my first impression was that I would be revising most of my chapters in only one or two days. But revisions like these are taking me a week, and I'm learning to let myself be okay with that— that I'm not slacking, I'm just burning the creative energy candle faster.

Anyway, that's all I got for the moment. Happy writing! <3

I guess the way that my brain works is that I try to plan out the best ideas, the best scenes, the best actions first. I focus on what excites me and what will function the best. This uses a lot of brain power, and I can only do it for a bit before I get exhausted and end that day's writing.

After that when I edit, all I have to do is cut and rearrange things, make the dialogue better, stuff like that. (I'm not doing the full prose yet.) At times where I will have to punch up or completely rewrite scenes, that will be tough again.

. . .

I'm writing my first novel, and it's a blockbuster of a literary mental health work set in a space-age afterlife universe. I have full faith in it, but I'm always learning during the process. I pantsed for part of my first draft/pre-draft, but man does pantsing give me bad results. Now I just semi-prose outline the full novel, until the whole story works.

So among the other things I've discovered about writing and about my own processes, my philosophy is this— an edited version of something I read about game design:

1. Make it function
2. Optimize
3. Make it pretty
4. Optimize again

That "make it pretty" part is where I do the full, proper prose. That won't be for a few drafts down the line. I've almost gotten my full story finished now though! (Which is v2. "v1" had a lot of story gaps.)

Made by me.

I was inspired by S. Horwitz who transcribed Rowling's post of her outline of OoP and posted about it on his site/blog. And I quite liked this Grid.

He calls it an 'Expanded Series Grid', and was seemingly upset when Rowling described her chapter action sumaries on the grid as 'plot'. He calls them 'series' which is not something I'm familiar with, but his advice seems pretty good so I'll take his word for it.

I started by using MS Word, to open a document, go to layout and set margins to narrow. And orientation to landscape.

edit: I forgot to put in instructions for Libre Writer: for Writer, go to Format> Page Style> Page, and click landscape and halve the margins.

I took the image and ran it through an online service (extractimage) to get a usable table. It was mostly correct, so I copied the result and pasted it in.

The result is pretty good method of compiling factional subplots, timing and the resulting chapter summaries imo. if you like I can update you on how my own personal efforts go.

| No. | Time | Title | Plot | Prophecy | Cho / Ginny | Order of the Phoenix | Dumbledore's Army | | ------ | ---- | --------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------- | ----------------- | | 13 16 | Oct | Plots and Resistance In the Hog’s Head | Harry has a lesson scheduled with Snape, but he skips it to go to Hogsmeade with Ron and Hermione..._ | Harry sees the Hall of Prophecy (in a dream). Voldemort is still formulating his plans;... | Cho is in Hogsmeade and wants to join Dumbledore's Army. | Tonks and Lupin | Recruiting | Harry skips his lesson to recruit for Dumbledore's Army. |

A template to get your table started.

:)

I want to share an experience I had the other day that fundamentally changed the way I think about my writing and the way I process feedback.

One night before I went to bed, I had a spark of inspiration, a new idea that would finally give me a satisfying way to tackle a project that had been bouncing around in my head for a long time.

I'm a fan of constructed languages-- stuff like Klingon from Star Trek and the Elvish languages from Tolkien. One language in particular I thought would be a wonderful experience to let people learn together as a group, if only there was a way to make it enjoyable for people who weren't particularly interested in linguistics. So, for several months, the idea stuck with me, never feeling complete. Then, that night, I realized an RPG might be the perfect medium to deliver the experience of learning a fictional language in a fun, engaging way.

So, the next day I had a lot of creative energy, and I started fleshing out my ideas-- writing out rules, roles, and mechanics, imagining scenarios of people playing. After a while, I had gotten the bones to a place I felt comfortable with, and decided it was time to settle on a setting, and went with something generic with the intention of developing it further later.

Finally, I had a draft/pitch to a point where I wanted to share it and get some feedback from the language's community. Much to my surprise, I saw the creator of the language themselves had even replied to it! Unfortunately, their comment wasn't one of interest-- instead, they found that my setting had some unfortunate implications, marginalizing certain groups of people, and expressed that that didn't reflect the spirit they intended for the language.

I immediately felt deep, deep embarrassment. I hadn't meant to make any stereotypical depictions... but that was what I had done. And instead of feeling energized and excited for developing my project further, I felt completely creatively drained and upset that I had made something that went against the spirit of the very work that I was trying to promote.

After a few days of ruminating, though, I tried to forgive myself and be honest about my intentions. Though I had made something that was not inclusive, I hadn't intended to do so. I was just trying to explore the themes I was interested in, and had failed to be aware of my own biases.

So, the reason I wanted to share this story with you all was to underscore that point. If you ever make a mistake or poor creative decision that causes you to be ashamed of something you create, try to be kind to yourself. Be honest with your own intentions, and rather than being hurt by negative feedback, try to listen to it, learn from it, and grow. And more than anything, always try to exercise empathy while writing, and try to think of your messages not just in terms of what you see in them, but also what others will see in them.

Thanks for reading, I'm a pretty long-winded storyteller. Has anyone else had an experience like this before?

Before summer holidays i decided to try to start writing a book, or at least, a long and engaging story. I wrote some months ago a short fanfic and the few people that read it like it very much.

However, writing something original sure is much harder. I was about to start writing before noticing i would need some world building beforehand. I started brainstorming what fantasy races, cultures, etc... i want. I took some notes in Obsidian of how i want the world & characters to be: Their flaws, their strengths.... Writing fanfic is much easier in my opinion, you have already all the fleshed out characters and detailed world.

Anyway, i didn't write a single line of the actual story and feel like i am wasting time planning everything about the world. It can be frustrating.

Did you guys get stuck world building too? What approach do you have with it?

> You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. > > -- Octavia E. Butler

> The easy-looking, and the simple things in all art matters are more difficult than the complex and intricate. It is a rule that easy reading is hard writing, and to construct anything that the mind takes in without effort, and without being puzzled by it, is a triumph of art. > > -- Charles Allston Collins, 1860

In 1876, Leo Tolstoy lamented to a friend that the book he was writing had become “sickening to me,” “unbearably repulsive,” “terribly disgusting and nasty,” and “a bore, insipid as a bitter radish.”

After nearly two years without making any progress, a concert sparked an intense surge of inspiration. Tolstoy wept as the music surged. Reinvigorated, Tolstoy returned to writing, viewing his characters with newfound empathy.

After two uninterrupted weeks of writing, Tolstoy completed what would become his most influential -- "Anna Karenina".

article / mirror

Do you struggle to write every day? Come join an accountability team and compete for the prize of most consistent writers!

Last week's contestants: please reply with your score. Everyone else, keep reading!

Here's how it works:

1️⃣ Reply to this message seeking an accountability partner, or reply to another user's request. Each team must consist of exactly two members.

2️⃣ This coming week, keep track of the number of days you have spent at least fifteen minutes working on your book, blog, or other writing project. The number of successful days is your score.

3️⃣ Add your score together with your partner's. The maximum number of points a team can earn is 14.

4️⃣ Next week on Sunday, a new announcement will be posted. One member of your team must reply with the team's score. Be honest. If you lie, your pants will spontaneously burst into flames.

5️⃣ The team with the highest score will be declared the winner! In the event of a tie, the winning team will be chosen randomly.

Remember, the goal is not to write a million words. Rather, the goal is consistency—writing every day.

🎉 Prizes! 🎁🏆

• An all-expense paid trip to your own restroom (toilet paper not included)

• Bragging rights

• Becoming a better writer

• Two links of your choice (one from you and one from your partner) will be pinned in a comment at the top of the following week's announcement.

This week's competition will begin once we have at least two teams signed up.

Happy writing!

> The soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism.

> All ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.

> When a great orator makes a great speech, you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men—but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington’s battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone, or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit, and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did.

-- Mark Twain

If you're interested in the context behind this letter, I wrote an article (mirror) about it.

I watched an interview with J.K. Rowling, and the interviewer found it hard to believe that she didn't know Harry Potter would be such a huge success.

The interviewer kept on asking how Rowling envisioned what it would be like to get famous, but she kept denying any visions of grandeur. "You are wasting your time," she said at last when asked for advice to writers who are sure they're destined for the top, "Just get on and work."

When we start writing, it's easy to imagine our stories becoming bestsellers, adapted into blockbuster movies, and gaining widespread acclaim. But fantasies don't finish drafts. The path to becoming a successful writer is paved with hard work, determination, and the willingness to face the challenges head-on.

The reader doesnt need sympathy for the characters. just empathy. they don't need to like them, just believe in them as consistent entities.

If you're struggling to keep in the habit of writing but bounce off of even relatively light requirements, try writing a single sentence a day. You might be surprised by how well it works.

And this was his response:

> I won the 2004 Hugo Award for Best Short Story for an H. P. Lovecraft /Arthur Conan Doyle mashup fiction, so fanfiction had better be legitimate, because I’m not giving the Hugo back.

> Or the 20O5 Locus Award for Best Novelette. I’m not giving that back either.

source

Yes, I understand you want your chapters to end up thousands of words long in the final copy. But for your first draft? Just get the basic plot done. Save the finer details for later.

Being overly negative about your own work will prevent you from seeing the parts of your project that need to stay the same, or should be highlighted. Otherwise, you're just making something other people enjoy, not you.