Writting tips...

you should always plan it....read it over at the end?? i dont know??

Write it how you like it. Use your imagination. Don't be afraid to do something original.

If you're writing fiction, know how you want the book you're writing to end early on. That way, you'll know where it's going. And be origional. Don't be afraid to break the mold.

start by writing everything - poems, songs, short stories, short stories that turn into long ones, everything. As you go on you'll discover what your strengths are, what you like most, what you want to do with it. Write everyday, even if it's a journal, and start to read:everything! Classics, new, every genre, especially 'foreign' (Garcia-Marquez, Zola, Solsnitzen) everything, and you'll decide what you like and find your voice.

Hey, I've read some of your posts & expect what you write will be full of surprises! The writers above offer good, sound advice, obviously. Here's mine.

First tip for new writers: (THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY) Learn to spell "writing".

Second tip: Read everything, from lots of genres & lots of eras. Keep a writing journal and note the things that intrigue you. For instance, in Robert Frost's works, I found phrases that were identical or similar in poem after poem. I noted them, then worked to see if I could fit something else in that sounded right, that sounded like his writing. Looked for similar themes, compared those to another writer's poetry or prose. You'll be amazed how thinking about someone else's thinking expands you!

Third tip: The free-writing is recommended by nearly everybody, including some exciting writers in this forum. Set a timer & hit it.

Fourth tip: Keep in your personal library a few good books about writing. I've recommended these elsewhere in this forum, I think, but once again: if you are a Christian, read Madeline L'Engel's Walking On Water: Reflections on Faith & Art; for anyone, John Gardner's The Art of Fiction; two books whose authors I can't remember, Writing Down the Bones and Bird By Bird; three incredible references, The Writer's Market (current year), Strunk & White's Elements of Style, and The Chicago Manual of Style (most current edition); and keep on hand a good dictionary, thesaurus, famous quotations, and Bible; a book of well-known mythological figures and tales, fairy tales, American legends, and Mother Goose, all in brief and concise thumbnail sketches; and a best-loved or "canon" of poems and prose. I also keep information on poetic devices (internal rhyme, metaphor, alliteration, etc.), a rhyming dictionary, and a book listing baby names, what they mean, and country of origin. (Actually, I have three. One deals mostly with popular American & English names, another of Biblical names, and one of African-American names, including tribal and Muslim names. If I get "writer's block," I'll sometimes pick up one of these books, thumb through it, and kick-start my thought process.)

I realize much of this has been said by others, but keep in mind that lots of publishers pay by the word. (THIS TOO IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY.) cb

Alright, I may have a few tips for you. Always happy to help enother writier, and more so those that are first spreding their wings.

Getting Started:
Tip 1: Draft characters. In writing there are two basic types of characters, Flat and Round Characters. A Flat character tends to be static, or, non-changing. There is no learning throughout the book. Their persona never changes, nor do they learn. If you want math thrown in then write, Flat Characters = Bad. Round Characters tend to be rather 3D, they have a good deal of complex emotions. like, they can be happy and sad about something at the same time. They tend to reflect the natural person as a whole.

Your protagonist (main character) you will want to be a Round Character. Add two or three others who tend to be round as well. Then other characters will act more like furniture in the book. They can be static, flat, or whatever, because they have not so much bearing on the emotional working of the story.

Tip 2: Find conflict. What makes a good story a good story is if there is conflict. Whether it's man vs. nature; man vs. beast; man vs. man; ect.. There needs to be some form of conflict. Your protagonist needs to have reached the end of their rope to some extent. Good stories contain conflict of one sort or another. Because, in the end, good stories will have an epiphany, or a point where the character learnes something. .You cnanot write a good story if nobody learns anything. This may work in life, but not all that well in writing.

Tip 3: Avoid clichés in writing. These are phrases that are overused and have become tired. They work well in day to day conversation, but not all to great in written literature. If you use them, make them strange..

"We'll think of that bridge when we bump into it." is a way of making one strange..

Tip 4: Find the point of view. Will your story be first, third, thrid all-present, ect. person.. This will drive your story.

I'll with-hold more for now, as to allow you to get started

Other tips -

Tip 1: Read alot, but be careful what you read. Taking ideas from another's work, or writing styles, is ok; find something that works. But work on it and bend it so that people cannot tell where you got it from. Reading other works may expand your ideas on what works well, and is working..

There is a down-side to this. If you read too many formulaic books 9Those that do not possess literary qualities) it will only drag you down. You may think somehting is good reading, but, whther something is pleasent to read or not does not judge dgood wriitng. I will venture to say that all romance and most western novels are good examples of this.. Burn them! I would suggest reading such authors as..

William Faulkner
Flannery O'Connar
John Updike
John Cheever
Edgar Allen Poe
Tim O'Brian
Sherman Alexia
Kate Chopin
Ralph Ellison

Note: not all of these authors are good in sense of their content. Some is quite vulgar actually. Be weary of Tim O'Brien's works, he uses ALOT of foul language. But these are all good authors in the mechanics they use, and all fit into the literary canon.

Tip 2: Get a friend to write with you and read over your stuff as you write it. Brain storm with them alot as well. Some ideas that may seem good to you, you may favor solely on the grounds that they are your own.

Tip 3: Get into a normal wriitng sechedule. If you start a work, you don't have to finish it. Don't be afraid to pick up osme things and just try them for a little while before dropping them. This is good practice. I owuld say work for about 30 minutes every day at least. The more you write, the better you will become. I went from writing 200-400 words a day to writing over 5000, all being much better quality then when I started two years ago. Just start small and work big.

i would suggest keeping both a reading a writing journal. Write what you thought about what you read, and write things for yourself.

Tip 4: Find your groove. What time of day are you most alert and ready to go? Adjust the setting to make it better. I write well at night, with coffee and dimer lighting. Make yourself comfortable, I say...

Tip 5: Write somewhere where you will not be distracted. Lock yourself in a room, disconnect the internet.. Make yourself write. Good writing comes with much discipeline... Make yourself sit for shorter amounts of time, and slowly expand those.

Tip 6: It's never over until you've revised it. Know that when you are wriitng, you will never be done until it's been revised and edited over and over. So, write out the first draft for ideas alone, and then come through and edit grammar and language on the third or fourth..

I do have many, many more, but I'm bushed right now.. Bed for me I hope some of these helped..

Plan out everything first. I usually daydream about my story all the time when I first come up with one.

Same with me.

Great tips guys! I actually learned a bit from this. I think about all I can say is:

Think of your story as a peice of boring, old clay. Then you have to mold the clay and use the right tools- such as making unexpected twists like making the guy who was supposed to be the dangerous criminal is actually living next door to the main character and he doesnt know it -will make your story come to life in the readers eye. Always make sure you describe everything. That is the most important thing you can do while writing a book. Such as:

Jimmy Bartolly sat on the gray cement bench in the park. It was a lovely saturday afternoon and Jimmy was just finishing his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Jimmy smacked his lips and took a long drink as he finished off his cold, white milk. Setting the cup down on the table, Jimmy ran lightly across the mulch that covered the playground with a spring in his step, joining his playmate in the sandbox.

Hope this has helped .

P.S. What kind of name is Jimmy Bartolly? I dunno, I had to think of something.

Observe. Watch how people interact with eachother. Notice the differences of their dialogue between friends and strangers. Stuff like that. I myself always carry a notebook to write ideas and descriptions in. And finally, when you're more revved for writing, find a place and time of the day where you're most comfortable writing.

You are so fortunate! These tips, if you follow them, will put you so far ahead of the rest of us! In fact, I'm a published writer (small scale) but printing each one so I can keep your recommendations in my writing notebook. (Not to steal, but to help me in my own writing.)

Let me tell a story about the formulaic (romance) books. I was flipping through one because an acquaintance had left it, and I started to cry. My husband was there, and I said, "I can't get published, and to think somebody actually BUYS this garbage!" Now, if I'm Sylvia Path, he's Ernest Hemingway. He shrugs his shoulders, and says, "So write garbage."

I sputtered. Shook my head. Then I began my "research" at used book stores, and finally figured out the most commonly used gimmicks and where to place them so I could end at 189 pages. At the time, most publishing houses were moving away from "sweet" romance & into "steamy"; I wanted to avoid that. Short story: My sweet little romance was returned/rejected so many times because it was "sweet"! I finally got a promising response; almost a year later they returned my ms. with an apology: they were shutting down and would come back later with their "steamy" line of books. My grandmother, a Christian, said, "So, steam it up. Everybody does." (I could not believe it! Maybe she was suffering a small stroke, but that's what she said.) I went back through my ms, blushing as I typed, and taking plenty of breaks to wash my hands.

I submitted it again and began another course of rejections. Then I was privileged to attend a writers' conference where one of the Silhouette editors was speaking. She admitted that theirs were formula-driven books, but said even they had some standards. She listed the character types and the situations and events that were too over-used to ever get past the mailroom. Then she proceeded to list every character, plot device, situation and event that I had used. Boy. I'd done such a good job studying the genre that I penned the penultimate bad parody of it.

In short: beware. cb

Plan out everything first.

Click to expand...

I don't entirely agree with this. Short stories, if you have a good idea, can sometimes be written in one sitting. Poems too.

But the thing that makes a story or a poem good is usually re-writing. I often write first drafts (of poems, in my case) in a rush, then re-write slowly, going over every word, every line, to see if they rhythm works, or it makes the kind of sense I want it to make (not always logical sense!)

Try imagining the kind of person you'd like to read your stories/poems: how would you like them to react? Where are they from? etc.

Do not listen to everything you read in one of those "Hot to Write" books. Not all of it will be useful. Just get what you need.

And just write. Finish something. Do not get caught up in daydreaming about it and thinking it over. Get in on paper. And be disciplined; writing isn't an overnight thing. My advice sucks but it works for me so it doesn't suck.

But the main thing: get to the core of the story. Write from the inside out. Forget fancy writing, style, structure- you'll eventually get to those. Write from the insiede out. Simple.

Well, it depends on what you're writing.

I write a lot of short-medium length stories. The only important things that you need are structure and grammar. Everything else is entirely up to you. There are no specific "rules" to how you write it. If it's YOUR style, the more original. Don't try to duplicate your work so that it's like someone else's and I mean, even the format.

For example, whenever I write my stories...I write them so that they're detailed, so detailed that they read like a movie in words. The dialogue of the characters to their movements/actions to their emotions to their individual personality traits, etc.

I finished writing an 84-page story called "Expectancy" in February of this year. It took me only one week to finish it. Originally, it was a comic book series but I decided to make it into fictional text format with many adjustments. It's 8 Chapters long and it's the first volume.

I'll be working on the second volume during the summer. Anyway, if you have an idea or if you can dream a story even...write it down! Use those ideas to build whatever you can. The best part about writing is that it's totally up to you and you're in charge of creating the characters, plots, settings, etc.

Use your imagination Creativity, Diversity and Originality!

One thing I do, when writing fiction is draw up a profile of my character first! I get their full name, a description of them, their family, their home, the town they live in. I get everything I could possibly need to know about them (and then some more!) I usually have 4 or five pages of information about them, that way if I'm writing and a situation arises I can just check my notes and remember all about them!

Write for your enjoyment and not with the mindset of whether it might be published someday. If you are writing fiction, write about characters who you enjoy and love and want to see traverse through the conflict. In my stories, I am geninuely anxious to see what happens to them. Although I know what the outcome will be, it still is intriguing to see what suddenly comes out to attack and to inevitably mold the characters.

If your book has villains, write a villain who you loathe. The reader will see just how evil/bad this person is and will want to see retribution fall on them like no other. So many great novels have an antagonist that they despise.

Other than that, just write. If you are a writer, you cannot escape it.

I always start with my characters, like others have said. Characters are the most important aspect of your story, as they decide what kind of conflict happens. Characters should always develop a conflict on their own, based on how people interact, or the conflict may not seem probable.

Make a what-if list. Like what if tiny aliens lived in calculators?
Or play with title ideas. Thief: The Ultimate Thief, A Thief's revenge, or Thief secrets.
You can also try making a top 10 list.

If you get writers block, try making a list of what could happen next. Think of the results of what happens.

Tips? Read a lot. Pray even more. Jot down idea or sentences the second they come to you. (If you wait, you'll probably forget the idea...or at least I do.) Sitting and staring out your window can help writer's block, although not a lot of people back me up in this.