I have a good deal of free time now, so I'm considering writing a book, novel, short story or something. After my recent novel binge (I can't help it, I'm addicted), I have been considering writing about a little topic that's been haunting my mind for a few years.
So, to get to the point: does anyone have any tips on improving one's writing style? Currently, I can write fairly well, but I can't keep a flow that all authors have that allows them to keep their readers interested. I guess this skill has to do with not falling into too many unimportant tangents, or not using funny little metaphors, but I'm not sure. It's more like a magic trick that no one is willing to show me how to perform.
If you have any tips, tricks, secrets, mystical chants, or know of any fun sites that can help a sad little man improve his writing style, please post it.  Â
Edit: Yes, I know I could just as easily go browse the web or study the writing styles myself, but you must have guessed by now that I'm lazy and enjoy having other people perform little tasks for me.
/me tips his hat
Well, I write a lot of stories and scripts myself. Even if I haven't got anything published yet (apart from some Internet site) I got some tips to you.
A: Write a short story or a chapter for a story and set a link to it in Crictic's lounge.
B: Write the story and show it to your parents, relatives, buddies, your teachers (if you still are in school that is) or others. Let them read it, ask them for crictique and they will give you tips and hints.
C: Don't be afraid of being inspired of others. Myself my writing to my own book, the Legend of the Togastone, I try to get inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien.
D: Follow the storyline you have chosed. Try to not break down the story too much by unimportaint stuff.
Well, that's all. Good luck!
Well an important thing is, it's usually best not to edit and write at the same time. If you're worrying about style a lot whilst you're writing, you might end up reordering sentences and changing words a lot as you go, which can really get in the way. Leave perfecting the sentences til you've got a draft in place.
If you're writing a novel, you could edit each chapter as you go, or just get the whole thing down then take that on to edit once you've finished. But try not to let your editing side get in the way of the creative side. I think a lot more gets done and better that way, but as with everything in writing, you may find different. People have their own ways and things aren't usually better or worse in any general sense.
Parallel structure is a good flowing tool. If you use good grammer and nice sensory detail and I think you will be fine. Choosing a kind of writing style really depends on your audience and the tone, which affects mood, you want to set.
Now, for I myself like to write, where might one get their novel/book/writing/comic/etc. published? Does one just send their work following some guidlines to a publishing company?
RE, I think it is a little hard to give you tips this way, outta-the-blue. I think that it would work much better if you actually show us something you have written and we will criticize it.
I graduated with a degree in Creative Writing at the University of Victoria (home to many excellent Canadian artistic writers), and have had the priviledge of attending some excellent classes from some great writers. I'll tell you what I learned:
nothing.
Okay, that's at least half kidding.
There are numerous tricks you can use, but ultimately none of them work unless you're ready to write anyway.
If you want to write for fun, don't write a novel expecting to get it published. Writing is fun without that pressure, but with that, it's hard work. Hard work of writing can be fun as well, but writing a novel with real intent to finish something is not easy.
Start by writing. Writing a lot. Writing daily if possible, as much as an hour a day, starting small and building up. Almost all good novelists make it a daily regimen, sometimes a full 8 hour work-day. But it doesn't have to start like that. 10 minutes might be a good start. This is the most important part. Write and write, and re-write. Even if you don't have an idea, come up with a stupid exercise. Describe something in your room so someone who has never been there can see it when reading. Write dialogue between imaginary characters. Just be sure to practice like you would with any serious hobby, juggling, kung fu, piano or guitar, etc.
The second criterion is genre. I don't mean fantasy or science fiction, I mean historical fiction, artistic-fiction, genre fiction or non-fiction (from which there are creative-non fiction, biography and at least a dozen others). If you're writing artistic fiction, you really need to start planning, central images, ideas, narrative structure. For this I would recommend a course, or at least a serious critical workshop (writing groups are no good, most people are stagnated more than anything else, and the people are not nearly critical enough to help you improve). Don't plan out metaphors or symbols, these should rise naturally through the work on your first or second draft.
If you're writing genre fiction, such as fantasy, western, mystery, etc, play around with as many scenarios and ideas as you can, what you'd like to do with the genre, etc. Be sure to analyse your own experience. It may seem too personal or too banal, but the best authors turn really banal experiences into things that work (maybe an injury you get turns into a sectret sigil, a lost wallet becomes the start of a mystery, things get blown up or the details get so precise you get interseted in them). Especially for something like a mystery, your daily experience can really be turned into a setting if described in a unique way.
Once you get started, you may want to set up a scedule. Invent your characters and situations, brainstorm for scenes and passages of description, then plot it out. A good example one of my profs used was to take really cheap wallpaper that's white or beigue on one side and arrange it into 3 sections, then into the number of chapters, with a guess that a chapter is about 10 pages or so (unless you're Kurt Vonegut), and pace out the character development, the plot, the scenes, the images, etc. Tack it up on the wall and get writing. This is really useful in case ("in-case" -- heh) you get stuck, lost or frusterated. There's your plan, up on the wall. That's just one method, but it's good to get organized, but in a way that works for YOU.
Don't give up on chapter 5 when you get bored with the premise! Keep going! It's better than you think!
Rewriting is as important as writing. A good novel goes through about 7 drafts before its finished. About 5 of those may be complete re-writes (at least for a first novel). This seems like a lot of work, but if you think about it, it's really freeing. You don't have to worry about anything being perfect on the first time through. In fact, it shouldn't be. There's a saying, "toss out your darlings" or more 'directly', "kill your babies" (no offence meant). Basically, if you see something and love it so much you just HAD to include it after a draft, and people are telling you it doesn't quite fit, either re-organize, or just toss it out. Don't be afraid to kill that bit you absolutely love. You can always write another novel and put it in, or a short-story or whaterver.
Take all criticism as a sign that something is wrong, and take excessive praise with a grain of salt. Some criticism can seem cruel or the advice stupid, but generally, it means there's something wrong there, even if the person giving the advice is wrong about the specific changes they want.
Save every writing-related snippet you think of, on a notepad, or on your computer or something. Don't trust yourself to remember it later.
Finally, keep reading. It will help you improve, enspire you and remind you of things you had forgot. But read with purpose. Think about how the author pulled that effect off. Is there another way to use that same technique?
When you're ready to publish, you can go the self-pub way like Phil Reed, or you can get an agent and send in your manuscript to a publisher. There is no value differnece in either method, though one is more lucrative, but has a higher level of failure. You should take rejection slips at face value. If they say, "We don't need this right now," they're not being polite. Send it in again later. If they say, "we didn't like the main character" press for details. Maybe there's a way you can fix it. Finally, avoid having too many other people read each chapter independently. One or two briliant readers or editors who don't love you too much to criticize is all you likely need.
I say these not as commands, but so you can remember them if and when needed. I hope that's helpful. There is no magic trick, no secret, just playing, working and thinking all the time.
And don't forget, anything you use for your writing is tax deductable. You're an entrepeneour now. You don't even need to turn a profit to do this.
http://pub34.ezboard.com/ftheofficialjackforumfrm5?page=2
This one especially: http://pub34.ezboard.com/ftheofficialjackforumfrm5.showMessage?topicID=69.topic (http://pub34.ezboard.com/ftheofficialjackforumfrm5.showMessage?topicID=69.topic)
For all of my old, horrible fanfictions. In case you didn't guess already, my nickname there is 'Robert Eric'
This might be obvious to some, but I think it's worth pointing out: The skill of 'keeping a flow' is, I'd say, not by far as much about vocabulary and sentence constructions as it is about story-telling. Suspense (which, I might add, and this is rather important, essentially means letting the reader know what's going to happen in advance), where in the narrative to switch tracks, what to actually tell the reader and what to leave to his/her imagination, and so on.
An author's skill in keeping this flow (and, I think, in fictional writing in general) is noticed by how well he does the above stated things, not by how varied his/her vocabulary is and how many subordinate clauses he/she can handle.
Grammar and Structure
http://rina.go-gaia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=311999
There are lots of good points there.
Writing Help Links
http://rina.go-gaia.com/forum/viewtopic.php76893
Good links for reference.
Hey, those were neat words of guidance, Bspeers.
At some point I started wondering whether you also contradict this fallacy about writers working in a straight line from beginning to the end of their stories or books. I never do this, I usually write the ending pretty early.
So, I find funny all those scenes in movies (like, recently, Hours) when there is some writer who finally, after nights and days of labour, writes "The End", stands up and collapses, or whatever.
Btw., do you know of any artistic-fiction forum on the net? I'm looking for something rather serious, for people already published, etc.
Yes, you can start and end anywhere. The final image can write the whole story, or the first image, or something in the middle. But at some point you are going to have to go back through from the start of the "book" to the end, and write out a straightforward version of the plot (say on index cards or something) or else you are going to end up with something that is needlessly off in all directions. But the book can be written backwards or sideways, what-have-you.
As for serious, published author websites, my understanding is that many artistic writers (apart from a few notable exceptions) are very computer illiterate. Film school profs seem on the techno-ball, but writers seem still to prefer typewrtiters or a pen, or at least cutting and pasting bits of text manually for the hands-on feel. As far as I know, there is no such forum, but perhaps ones exist--I have never really looked. I would assume they would be heavily linguistically biased as well (I mean, biased towards one or another particular language).
There are books about the writer's market that come out every year in most countries. Sometimes these list web resources as well, so you might want to start there, at your local library.