First steps in writing

[Landing]

Hey guys I just started doing some fiction writing for fun I was wondering if yall would have any advice for someone new to writing. Tips and tricks you have learned, things you should read about writing, things like that and things you have learned since you first started.

I have got about 5k worth of a story written down since I started a week ago, how much writing did yall get done when yall first started? how have yall improved since then?

[Josh]

What are you wanting to write? Short stories? Novels? Is your goal to keep it "just for fun" or do you wonder about trying to get published someday?

A few of my goals when I first set out were (keep in mind, this was with the intent of eventually making a career out of writing):

1. Write a little bit each day. Make a habit out of it.
2. Read as much writing advice as I can and figure out what works for me and what doesn't. You can find tons of advice in places like this forum, or in many of the books out there for writers. For a list of excellent books, check out the bottom of the Fiction Writer's Virtual Toolbox on my site.
3. Set goals for yourself. When do you want to have your story drafted by? What's the word count you want to hit? What do you want to do with it? Who will you get feedback from? Answering these types of questions and setting goals will help you gain focus.

[Dom]

I'm not sure if this will help, since it's not easy advice such as "read this book" or "write only when the moon is full".  But the one thing that I know I didn't get at first was that writing fiction utilizes several discreet skills.  Learning where to place a period is only the most visible portion of writing; there's a lot more going on.

There are three parts to writing fiction:

1.  Your basic English class spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, etc...the "nuts and bolts" of putting words on paper

2.  The art of constructing your characters, world, plots, etc, from ideas

3.  Combining the two above in a way that makes sense on paper

Number 1 is the easiest, because it follows something of a rulebook.

Not meaning to be a jerk here, so please do not take this the wrong way, but if I take your opening sentence in this post and deconstruct it I see a few things:

Hey guys I just started doing some fiction writing for fun I was wondering if yall would have any advice for someone new to writing. Tips and tricks you have learned, things you should read about writing, things like that and things you have learned since you first started.

You're running some sentences together, and are missing an apostrophe (although, some may argue with me on this).  Here's how I'd write it, with my changes in bold, and words that are repeated or "wishy washy" in precision underlined:

Hey guys!  I just started doing some fiction writing for fun, and I was wondering if y'all would have any advice for someone new to writing.  Tips and tricks you have learned, things you should read about writing, things like that, and things you have learned since you first started.

I realize a forum is by nature less formal, but if you go through your fiction work and look for issues like the ones I pointed out there, that will be one step into fulfilling Number 1 above--getting the "nuts and bolts" of writing correct.

- Watch your commas--both in failing to put them in, and over-using them.  People tend to start out missing a lot of them, then they overcompensate and put them in strange places.  Commas are pauses, so if you read something out loud and pause where the commas are, it should sound normal.  If you start stuttering as you read out loud, you probably have too many commas.  If you start racing forward without a single pause, you're running sentences together and should put some commas in.

- The word "y'all" has an apostrophe in it because it's a contraction of "you" and "all".  You put the apostrophe in when letters have been taken out.

- The words "things" and "stuff" are typically understood in informal communication (on a forum like here, in face-to-face speech, etc.) but when you start actually writing a story, they don't tell the reader anything.  So keep an eye peeled for informal words like those creeping in and stealing precision from your story.  Your reader can't visualize what a "thing" looks like; you have to tell them.  Also beware of repetition, in the same way you beware of commas; beginners often repeat a specific word too much, then they get paranoid and take out a thesaurus and toss in the most bizarre variations and metaphors.  What you're really looking for is balance.

Number 2 you work on by brainstorming.  Some people sit down and brainstorm ideas in one big go, others train themselves to come up with ideas as they walk through day to day life, and still others do bits of both.  Find what fits you.  Personally, I ask "what if?" for various situations, and use what I know about the various components of the situation to arrive at a conclusion that is both plausible but exciting or different enough to fit into a story.  To start easy, ask "what if" about "obvious" stuff.

"What if" it was a hundred degrees outside, and a large man was standing in the middle of a crowded square in a down coat that had odd bulges?  In this world, nearby policemen would get suspicious, because normal people don't wear down coats in a hundred degree weather.  Ok, that makes sense, but is mundane.  So let's add another "what if?" on top of it.  "What if" the man in the down coat had something else going on with him where he actually needed the coat for warmth?  Well, what could that possibly be?  Would he have some rare disease where he couldn't regulate his body temperature?  What if he wasn't human but some sort of alien or magical creature that found this world too cold, even in summer?  Or what if the policemen looking at him suspiciously are right, and there's something wrong with him?  What if he has bombs under the coat?  What if he's hiding a kidnapped child under the coat?  Or what if he's incredibly naive about how he looks, and is actually hiding a surprise under his coat for his girlfriend, and everything is innocent?

Now, one "what if" won't cut it.  You'll need to learn how to stack several "what ifs" together to come up with something complex enough to be interesting.  You'll actually hone your prediction skills over time doing this, because the really good ideas come from recognizing how real life works...and making certain tweaks here and there to change the formula.  The difference in predicting your wife will be furious and scream at you for forgetting her birthday, and predicting your wife will turn into a literal demon for forgetting her birthday, is how the one "variable" is tweaked.  She could be angry, turn into a demon, go into cardiac arrest...or she could be tolerant, or forgot she even had a birthday, or could be lost in something else, or could be visiting her identical twin who also shares her birthday, etc.  Just keep flipping the possibilities for that one little thing over and over and over again until you find something you like.

Then repeat a bazillion times as you make decisions and shove your story and characters and world along.

Number 3 is the marriage of the Mechanics of writing (Number 1) and the Ideas (Number 2).  It's really only attained by writing, writing, reading what you wrote, editing what you wrote, reading how other people wrote similar things, throwing out what you wrote, and writing again.  Find a computer.  Find a chair.  Find a bottle of glue.  Find your butt.  Apply glue to butt, and butt to chair.  Apply fingers to keyboard.  Write write write.  Then chill out by reading and reading and reading.

You're really struggling to convey these wonderful ideas and characters that you brainstormed up in such a way that your reader is dazzled too.  And it's hard, because English is imperfect; if you do it "wrong" your readers won't get what you're trying to tell them.  They'll give you a hundred different reasons for why they "don't get it" so it's not easy to fix what's going wrong.  It's a lot of trial and error.

Writing really all about being persistent.

[Snowleopard]

Your best bet is to just keep writing, landing. There's a quote somewhere - "Just get black on white."
Every writer writes differently.  Different times of day, different amounts, set amounts, whatever feels right.  You kinda have to feel it out and see what works for you.  As for grammar and the like, do the best you can then find a friend who's killer with grammar or a software program that double checks for you.  As you'll note, grammar is not my forte.
There are two books that are good for grammar and the like.  "The Well Tempered Sentence" and "The Transitive Vampire."
Along with writing - reading is good.  Read to see what styles you like or dislike.  Read the good, the bad, and the silly.

[jeno]

I started writing fairly recently, too. Some practical things that helped me:

1) Write down every little idea you come up with. Seriously. You need material to work with in order to create anything, works of fiction included. When I first started, I thought, 'Oh, I have lots of ideas - I'm sure I'll be able to put something together. Piece of cake!'

*shakes head sadly*

Turned out I didn't have quite as many ideas as I thought I did. At least not enough that were workable or could honestly hold my attention for very long. At some points I felt like I was squeegeeing my brain for every last drop of inspiration. (And squeegeeing your brain? Not as fun as it sounds.) You need ideas that are compatible with what you want to work with and are able to stick together in a coherent whole.

So write everything down. Eventually you'll get to the place where everything just starts clicking and snapping together as you think about what to put in your story, but it takes a while to get there.


2) When you write your little ideas down, don't stop there. Dig into them a little bit. Don't just write a sentence when you can expand that sentence into a few well thought out paragraphs. Not only will this help your writing in general, but it could also help you develop more ideas as offshoots of the first one.


3) If you're looking to get published, read agent and editor blogs from people who work with the genre you want to publish in. There's tons of information there that will not only help you with the business side of getting published, but will also help your writing by informing you what standard is needed to get TPTB's attention. A personal favorite of mine is the Query Shark blog - an agent takes sample queries and rips them apart in critique, showing what one author did well and what one did horribly wrong in their query.


4) Write write write. Once you write enough, you'll be able to figure out your personal way of crafting a story. Do you need to plot everything in advance or do you feel better just winging it as you go? Do you need to know your character inside and out before setting a word to paper screen? Do you have to know the ending before you start or do you prefer discovering what happens along the way? Once you figure out how you work, the process of writing gets a bit easier, as opposed to impossible.


5) Read this.

Find the time or don't.

Now make a choice. And whatever you decide, make sure you're comfortable with it. You'll have to keep making this choice every day for a long time.

[Snowleopard]

Another thing is, idea's will come from everywhere.  Keep a notepad handy and also, if a little news article catches your eye - cut it out and save it.  In lettering it used to be called a Swipe File - examples of different types of lettering that you might use or adapt.