From experience, what tidbits of wisdom would you share with newbies who want to become authors (fictional)?

[Hey Please]

One of my greatest desires in life is to become a full time sci-fi writer. However, the online sphere is abuzz with myriad and often disjointed ideas on how to become a good one. If there are folks here who have had experience dabbling in writing works of fiction, I would love to know some of their key takeaways that would be most beneficial to newbies.

For example: Perhaps self defeating but every time I think about writing I wonder to myself whether I need to peruse and memorize all the different "literary devices", "logical fallacies", "tropes".. and these are just some known knowns and known unknowns, I haven't even conceived of what unknown unknowns would be. And then I feel overwhelmed.

 

[Ulysses Cheeks]

I've written four novels, published twice and make a decent side income from it. The biggest advice I can give is to just develop a writing routine and stick to it. For example, every Saturday go to a coffee shop and write for as long as you can. It might be for ten minutes or it might be five hours, the key is just going there and doing it every weekend until you hit the point where you feel off if you spend a Saturday not doing it. 9/10ths of novel writing is just sitting down and doing it.

Besides that, a few other takeaways:
1. If you enter your stuff in contests, don't get too discouraged about not winning. Also, if critiques are provided, try to look at them objectively to determine if there are beneficial tips you can use in your novels.
2. Be prepared to delete 90% of what you write. Think of it as chiseling a sculpture out of a slab of stone. You want to keep picking away at it until it becomes an actual thing and not just a block.
3. If you value plot consistency and hate plot holes, never write about time-travel.

 

[EdibleKnife]

Probably stick to reading about how to write once every other month. I too get bogged down thinking I have to learn as much as I can before I'll be ready/qualified putting pen to paper but it's literally impossible to not just read but grasp absolutely every word about writing advice in regards to theme, character, tropes, plot etc.

If you want to start just pick up a single book about story structure like Save the Cat Writes A Novel or Robert McKee's Story and start putting your ideas to paper while you start reading on the side. You'll probably finish one of those books by the time your draft is done and in editing you can start to figure out if your work is structured or even just move on to what you want to write next and applying what you learned to that future work.

The number one thing any writer will tell you is that if you have an idea, start writing. Surfing TV Tropes or buying a stack of writing advice books won't in the end put the words you want to say on paper. Don't worry about much else until you get what you want to say down on your pages. The rest will come with revision , repetition and of course reading writing advice and regular books in and out of your genre.

 

[DriftingSpirit]

I'm going down the same road. I want to get into writing with a focus on sci-fi. Best of luck with everything.

As far as your second point, you want to get to where those techniques naturally blend with your writing. It isn't something you should be thinking about. That will only come from going through the tough part of writing and writing and writing and writing. It'll come to you with experience.

I've written four novels, published twice and make a decent side income from it. The biggest advice I can give is to just develop a writing routine and stick to it. For example, every Saturday go to a coffee shop and write for as long as you can. It might be for ten minutes or it might be five hours, the key is just going there and doing it every weekend until you hit the point where you feel off if you spend a Saturday not doing it. 9/10ths of novel writing is just sitting down and doing it.

Click to shrink...

I really need to work on this part. I've made some decent progress as of the start of this year but I can do much better. As it is usually the case with me, the toughest part is getting the ball rolling. Once that happens, the rest seems to come together.

 

[Sabretooth]

The biggest advice I can give is to just develop a writing routine and stick to it. For example, every Saturday go to a coffee shop and write for as long as you can. It might be for ten minutes or it might be five hours, the key is just going there and doing it every weekend until you hit the point where you feel off if you spend a Saturday not doing it. 9/10ths of novel writing is just sitting down and doing it.

Click to shrink...

This cannot be stressed enough. You have to show up and write no matter how you feel or how inspired you feel. If you can do that, everything else follows.

 

[Ulysses Cheeks]

This cannot be stressed enough. You have to show up and write no matter how you feel or how inspired you feel. If you can do that, everything else follows.

Click to shrink...

Bingo. Even at a slow pace, you should have a completed draft ready by the end of the year as long as you just show up.

 

[Deleted member 14518]

Write everyday. Don't over think it. It takes a lot of time and practice to "level up".

 

[weemadarthur]

There's some advice in this hangout if you need more distractions from writing itself. :P

WritersEra |OT| Publish before you die, writing writer writes OT

Support our own published authors

www.resetera.com

 

[m_shortpants]

Thanks for the thread. I started writing a few chapters for an idea I had and just sort of fell off because I missed a few days.

Need to get back to that.

 

[cbrotherson]

2. Be prepared to delete 90% of what you write. Think of it as chiseling a sculpture out of a slab of stone. You want to keep picking away at it until it becomes an actual thing and not just a block.

Click to shrink...

This. This this this. Super invaluable advice.

I've been writing fiction across multiple mediums for about 13 years professionally (mainly graphic novels, but recently screenplays and games) and if there's one thing I wish I knew when I started as a student was that your story only really comes out in the edit. Sometimes that will be a couple edits, but it can take lots, at times. One of my more recent stories was a short which had been drawn, and I only became happy with it after re-writing it 4 times, about 60% of it long after the visuals were completed. Not ideal, but it worked out.

You won't create a glittering, perfect piece of work on your first, second or even fourth draft. It will always feel perfect in your head compared to when it's on the 'paper'. But until you actually finish something, you'll never even get close. And it's super easy to get lost in the mechanics and think you've written something super tropey, but get that first draft done and re-write it until you're happy (or your deadline hits).

Don't get too bogged down - focus on giving the story an emotional core centred around a universal, human experience. If your can make your audience care about your protagonist (invoking empathy is key), put up front nice and early their core wound (the lie they believe to be true) which drives their main goal/want and then have them realise what they actually need (thus helping heal that core wound) by the end, you've got a good template for a character arc that you can build the rest of your story around.

As will come up a lot in this thread, Robert McKee's Story is a great book to use, but Film Courage on YouTube is also great for bite-sized tips on storytelling. I also really like Film Crit Hulk's Screenwriting 101.

Just keep going, OP. And best of luck.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

Build writing into a habit, something you do every day or at least most days a week. Set goals that are achievable and then achieve them. I do 2 single-spaced pages a day when I'm working on a novel. If I do more, awesome. I never do less. Gets me a first draft done in about 100 days, usually a bit more.

READ AS MUCH AS YOU CAN! Def check your genre out--so scifi--but jump around too. You'll learn so much by simply reading novels.

Don't stress your first draft. It will suck. Your second won't be much better, but do not get hung up on little shit on your first draft. You can fix that all later.

Getting published is a fucking crapshoot. I haven't been, though I've gotten positive feedback here and there. Markets play just as big a role as genre and writing abilities in some cases, so just don't get too broken down if you get tons of rejection letters.

Oh. And have fun with it. Writing should be fun, or I think it should be fun.

 

[ScoobsJoestar]

Legit? Don't get too caught up by writing advice. Some of the worst writing times of my life were when I was part of the crowd that went "Ah, but Stephen King once said this one thing in 'On Writing' so I shouldn't do this. And also this other thing I read said I shouldn't do this other thing....oh this adverb would be really useful here but the internet told me they are the devil so even though it fits, I should remove it." There's this internet crowd that loves to preach immutable writing rules and I was a hardcore believer for a bit when I was younger until I went "…Wait, what am I doing?"

 

[Hey Please]

Thank you kindly to everyone who participated and provided their piece of advice thus far. Looks like being consistent with writing, reading and not getting too attached to the first draft are key components.

weemadarthur Thanks for the link to the OT thread.

 

[Deleted member 58401]

Most of the advice is what I would say, too.

I've written two novellas, which originally were novels that I cut roughly 300 pages from. So, delete almost everything. Editing is way more important than writing.

Read all the time and in a wide variety of styles and subjects. If you do this enough, you won't need to memorize any of the things you're worried about above. Literary devices and stuff, at least for me, appeared naturally as the story developed. You can tighten how you deploy those tools on an edit, but they'll show up uninvited if the story moves.

Don't do it to get published. You probably won't, and it's a good way to not take the actual writing seriously enough. It's hard, and if you're like me, you'll want to quit, start over, and decide you're never writing again about 37 times per writing session. If you're doing it to get published, odds are pretty good you'll eventually talk yourself out of finishing.

Edit: someone above mentioned don't listen to writing advice. This is a good tip, too. It can go too far and it takes a certain amount of confidence and skill to break away from the expected or the conventional rules, but that's the fun of making something. It's liberating to remember that you make the rules when you're the writer. And if you read old Paris Review interviews with authors or whatever (super inspiring, do this) you'll see that they all had their own way, stylistically and in work ethic/process. Listen to them, but find your own.

 

[meowdi gras]

Become a student of humanity. Live among it. It may make you suicidal, it will improve the verisimilitude of your characters.

 

[Osahi]

Finish. That's the most important. Seeing it trough to the end is the most important of all.

And then edit.

And never forget that even a work that in he end turns out bad will still have been a learning process that will make you do better the next time.

 

[Coriander]

Professional author here, and instructor of writing. My advice is as follows:

1) Write regularly and consistently. Every day, if you can, even if it's only for a half hour.
2) Finish your first draft. If SF novels are what you want to write, write a novel from start to finish and don't ever fall into a pattern of rethinking the first three chapters over and over again.
3) Set your draft aside for a month, when you're done. Start on a new project.
4) Be willing to edit your draft ruthlessly, once you look at it again. Know that nothing about your manuscript is sacred; the editing process is indeed where the book takes shape. Even the crappiest first draft can be transformed into a beautifully-finished work, with diligent editing and rewriting. (I'm totally willing to embrace the crappiness of my first drafts, knowing they can be improved.)

If legitimate publication is a serious goal for you, I recommend:

1) Write the best manuscript you can, and rewrite it into an even better book.
2) Develop a great query email and synopsis for your book.
3) Seek a legitimate literary agent to represent your writing, using that query you wrote.
4) While you're (very slowly) seeking representation, start another novel.
5) Keep writing novels and sending out queries until you get yourself an agent who'll represent your project for you.

Writing can be a solitary and even lonely commitment, but maintain momentum as much as you can, without getting bogged down in worrying about whether you're 'doing it right,' or whether you're using the right tropes. If you've been reading good books and watching good films and television, you've already been attending a life-long class in storytelling.

 

[Darkspellmaster]

Throwing a few things out there:

A. start a writing journal, and note things down that spark an idea, or a character, a scene or dialogue. Like an artist has a sketch book you should have something Similar.

B. White board, note cards and corkboard or just stickies on a door. Use these. Put your plot down on this and you can move things around to see how it flows.

C. Have a note book just for characters and info about them. Even things that you won't use put it I'm the note book so you know your characters. Same for locations and plot points if possible. Organization is rather important.

D. Observe people talking. If you're writing a teen go to the mall and listen to kids talk. Same for adults and kids. If you have to record people. Listen to their accents. Learn lingo. Slang. Or anything else that is going to make you're dialogue sound real.

E. Research. I can't stress this enough. Even if your doing a fantasy always research how the world and land and culture works. Political drama needs an understanding of politics, musical magic would need music knowledge. Your gonna have the characters camp out, check out a camping video or two.

F. Edit, edit, edit.

G. Music can help in visualizing something so have a play list for certain moments to set the mood in your head.

Everyone else gave damn good advice so, hope this helps.