I am very new to writing, so I don't know very much about it. All I do konw, is that one comes up with an idea and tries to convey that idea in words and discriptions. My writing process is usually typing/writing down what comes to my head as it comes to my head. I have not used an outline before (in writing) and I'm not too sure how it helps. Im wanting to increase my writing ability and skills, but I'm kind of stuck. If any of you out there in Interweb Land would like to share how you write, it would probably help alot. Things like: where you get your inspration from, the thought processes behind how you write, How you go about coming up with the concept for a story, how much planning goes into your stories, do you sit down and detail out the world around your character(s) or does it just flow forth from your imagination? Im wanting to compair my writing style with whatever style the rest of you use (Should you be kind enough to respond, of course ^_^). Thanks a bunch and here's hoping for a good read!
~Shades McQuaid
Comments
Here are a few things I've learned
An outline can be great, especially for longer stories. It helps you to remember where you want to be at whatg point in the story. You need to be flexible, though. It's only an outline! Stories evolve and change. Work with it!
Stop, take a breather and read what you've written out loud. It makes sense on paper, but reading it out loud helps you to hear how it sounds, and you can catch a lot of minor mistakes that way.
Don't force it, let it grow. If you get in a hurry, you cheat yourself and your readers.
If you get stuck, you can a)ask for help. Editors, beta readers, whatever! b)walk away for a while-let your imagination relax! c)try writing a different story for a while (goes with b)
Lastly, have fun! If you don't like it, your readers might not either!
Good Luck!
Wren
A to Z
When I get an idea for a story, I know where it starts, point A and where it ends, point Z. The hard part is filling in the rest of the letters which some days flow like water and other days as if I had a bad case of constipation. I wish I was organized enough to outline a story, but that isn't me. Good luck to you and just write. Remember writing is like cooking, some dishes come out great and others end up in the trash. Either way, at least you tried and it didn't hurt anyone, Arecee
How I write
I am no where near a pro, but I have now published several stories here that seem to have been well received.
I tend to get my inspiration from reading other stories and thinking up variations on existing themes. For example my first story was set in the Center universe, as I was inspired by the settings and the thought, 'What if the change could go undetected?'
I wrote 'The Secret Garden' after reading the original story and thinking it would make a good setting for a TG story, having the child be a girl in the garden and a boy outside of it.
The one I'm posting at the moment, Simone, isn't based on an existing story, but is a more vague concept of stringing a whole load of ideas together. When I start a story I don't necessarily know where it is going to go. This is definitely the case with Simone. The original plan was that the main character would turn up at school as girl, without anybody knowing or initially realising, this would cause a big bust up with the parents when she is found out, and the story would end with some form of reconciliation.
From that basic idea I then came up with a series of idea for events that could happen. I then wrote these scenes down and then tried to fit them into a timeline, editing them so they fit together and filling in the gaps in between.
The first story I did, 'A Spirited Beginning', I posted as I wrote it, with only a small number of episodes as a buffer. I found this to be limiting as I couldn't go back and change events to preempt events later in the story. All my other stories I have only published after they are fully complete. The slight exception being Simone as the was a logical break I could publish the first half before starting on the second.
I tend to imagine an event and play it through a couple of times in my head before typing it up. I don't write using paper, I instead type straight into Word. I find this a lot easier than writing with pen and paper as I can instantly edit and rearrange sentences if they don't sound right first time. I also rely heavily on the spelling and grammar checkers to make sure I'm making sense.
Once I have the story written, I then read it back to myself several times, correcting any errors I find and making any improvements I can think of. I'm very good at typos and I sometimes accidentally switch between 3rd and 1st person. I also sometimes get in a muddle between past and present tense when describing events. In addition I have to watch out for similes, e.g. I often write site instead of sight. This process also gives me the opportunity to make sure I'm not repeating the same words too often. I have just had to stop myself from writing 'I also' as the start of the last three sentences.
One of the checks I do is to have the computer read the story to me out loud using text to speach software. Often I think I've written one thing and it turns out I have actually written something entirely different, possibly leaving a word out for example. When I read it, I don't always spot it, but
My final step is to send it to another user here who acts as a proofreader/editor. This person, who has asked to remain anonymous and hence uncredited, checks that I haven't made any stupid mistakes before I then post to the site.
The story I'm currently working on is an Aunt Jane/Seasons universe story. My inspiration after reading the existing stories is 'What would happen if a girl was accidentally sent for petticoat punishment?'. I know this isn't likely to be a popular story, but I'm having fun writing it, and that is the most important reason to write.
Having posed the question, I then thought up a scenario of how could this come about. One of the problems I found in writing my first story is that I'm British and I was trying to write a story set in America. I was therefore stumbling over transatlantic differences. Because of that, I decided the character is English, but forced to live in American with her estranged father. This also gives me the opportunity for a rather silly assumption to make the story work. The child is intersexed and registered with both governments as a boy (having dual nationality). He is then discovered to be a girl, and his UK identity is change, but this isn't carried forward to the US.
The girl goes to live with her father, but he insists that she be his son, despite no longer being male. The child beats the father up with a baseball bat and ends up at Janes school where she thinks the child is a boy and puts him through petticoat punishment. It should be fairly obvious that usual techniques aren't going to work as planned.
The Seasons universe has a set pattern of events, the Aunt Jane method, which underpin the story, so the is plenty of material to call on for a sequence of events. Unusually for me, all the events I've written so far are in chronological order.
I don't know where this story is going yet or how it will end. I have a vague idea that somebody, possibly a journalist, tries to expose the school somehow, but the lead character saves the day by proving that she is a girl and not a boy in a dress as expected. Whether that will be the actual ending or not I don't know. Neither have I decided what happens to the child in the end. I literally don't have any further detail other than what I have just written at this point.
I hope this answers your questions and you find it useful.
D.L.
"Do Something Different"
Oddly enough, that's the philosophy behind my tales.
However, unlike D.L., who can churn out oodles of words at a time, I'm very bad at motivating myself to write, so the majority of my tales are shorts that went from idea to published in under a day, and are usually in the 1,500-2,000 word mark.
A couple of years ago, there were a couple of authors who posted forced fem type tales. Although I didn't enjoy them, for some arcane reason I read them anyway. I grew increasingly frustrated that the male character either (a) doesn't realise he's being set up, or (b) is a complete wuss with no backbone whatsoever.
Petra (and associated spin-offs) was my first attempt at tackling that. What if the male character realised he was being set up before the exposé, but instead of accepting fate or moving out, decides to do something about it?
Blackmail (how not to...) centres around a telephoned blackmail demand. Unfortunately, the caller doesn't realise that although the protagonist isn't full time, has already 'come out' to the family / friends / work.
Trope: Averted has the crossdressing protagonist ordered to wear a maid's dress by his significant other. However, as the title suggests, I've yet again "done something different."
On other themes, but still sticking with my philosophy, The Genie is actually helpful, for a change; A Life Changing Experience! is an email spam/scam with a TG twist, and the various shorts making up Musical Motif Mayhem! are fairly self-explanatory.
Then there's the Comics Retcon Universe. There were quite a few high-powered characters roaming around, but there weren't many outside the "Premier League". There were already characters with supremacy over land and air, so I instead looked to the water and somehow decided upon AquaGirl. In the spirit of the universe however, I severely watered down (groan!) her powers to more credible levels.
Finally, there's the drabbles - two fairytales retold with a TG twist in 96 / 97 words respectively, and Reunion was told twice - once in 95 words, once in 737 words.
Go on, give 'em all some love, kudos and comments! :) Also, can you blame me for taking this opportunity to shamelessly plug the dozen or so tales I've written so far? :)
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
My inspiration usually comes
My inspiration usually comes at about 4 am, with a little germ of an idea, which grows and grows, and then fills my mind. In my mind, I start plotting out who does what to whom and where the story will go.
Nine times out of ten, this germination will disappear within a few days as another germ of an idea occurs. If it does not, I simply start writing at the beginning of the story and carry on.
I try to write quite a lot every day, so that the inspiration from the mind is got down onto the computer - it's a mistake to let the mind get to far ahead of the writing, and one of my greatest problems is not being able to devote sufficient time to keep writing the story as it occurs in the mind.
I have experimented with Outlines, but have always found they tend to make writing boring and produce boring writing. It's whatever works for you.The downside of that is that sometimes my plots go up a dead end, and I'll sometimes delete significant parts of my writing to get the story going again.
The thing that's more important than anything else is that I love writing, creating wonderful things out of words.
Good luck with your writing and I hope you enjoy.
Charlotte
Write down ideas as they happen.
I always try to write down ideas as they come to me, even it's its a rough recollection of a dream or a 200-word outline of something that came to me. I leave them all in a folder, and when I come to write a story I often add to the idea of that story by going back and stealing other ideas I may have otherwise forgotten. I also try to get the whole thing done (or at least the skeleton) so I can fix back-references.
In all the time I've been writing...
I have never known two author's to use the same mechanisms. While I may be new to BC/TS, I've actually been writing stories significantly longer. This is not a topic for which your mileage may vary. It WILL vary.
With the above disclaimer out of the way, here's how I generally approach things:
First, I generate my major characters. Yes, for me, this is step one, and I cannot vary it.
Second, I decide on a prompt. My stories generally have to do with people growing and changing, however, no one ever makes a change in their life before some outside force prompts them to.
Second step, addendum: depending on the prompt, this determines whether I need to create any extraneous systems. A world, a magic system, some form of advanced magic? If my prompt cannot occur naturally, then I need to create a setting in which it can happen.
Third, I flesh out the precise setting. Where exactly does my character live? What do they do for a living? Who does my character generally associate with?
Finally, I start writing. Or not. How long do I expect it to take for my character to "grow up"? Is it just a quick "slice-of-life" type of lesson? Or is it something longer? Depending on intended story length I will sometimes use a loose outline, just to have a general idea of where I should start things, when to place my climax, and how the story has to end.
Currently, I'm experimenting on writing a longer story without benefit of an outline. Just because.
Just a brief note, I tend to write something sometimes referred to as poetic prose. Basically, the prose is very heavy and has layered meanings. This style tends to be disfavored by most modern readers, and my writing preparation sort of favors it.
Abigail Drew.
Hmmm...
That's a good question...
Like the good consultant (which I am, or try to be, in RL) says, it depends...
I'll start with the assumption that you've an "idea" you think should (or could) be a story or two... The first thing I'd suggest is WRITE (or type) it down (else you might forget part). (This can be anywhere from a few phrases to a few pages, but isn't the story.)
Then, take a step back and ask you a number of questions:
Who? Who's involved.
What? What is going on? What happens?
When? When does it happen & how long does it take.?
Where? Where does it take place?
Why? Why does it happen?
How? What are the "nuts" & "bolts" that make the story happen?
If those questions look familiar to you (or others) they should. I learned them in a class where one section was on news reporting where the teacher told us about the five (5) Ws and the H...
They take you to such areas as Character definition/building; plotting and prose/dialog.
The amount of time you put into each, depends on how big your story. They also lead to more, and more. (BACKGROUND!) To a certain point, the more detailed your background, the richer your story can be. For example, if you know stuff about your "character's" personality, it can help you write text that reflects the personality. The more varied your characters (from each other) the easier readers will have to keep them straight for example.
The "bigger" the writing project (story) the more it benefits from detailed background work. I've known people that develop "forms" where they describe each major character in a consistent way, and even some minor character - BEFORE they use them in their stories. If your story takes place in a KNOWN location (New York City, London, Yosemite National Park, etc.) then it helps if you get maps and understand the lay of the land (how long it takes to get from Penn Station to Time Square...) This lets you add a layer of realism to your story that aids in readers suspension of disbelief. Even if you have a made up village, town, city, country, world, etc... It helps to have some notes about the place so that you can be consistent. (It can distract some readers if you say that you get to Times Square from Penn Station in 15 minutes walking in one place, then have it take an hour for two (2) minutes elsewhere - unless you provide an explanation for the difference.
Can you go overboard with background? Probably - but (in my opinion) only if it keeps you from ever writing. An example of this was a friend. She developed a VERY rich world, complete with societies, calendar and even languages (though, she had help on this from a friend) - all told, over 200 pages of background material, before she even started writing her story. As she was writing, she'd be pulled back into adding more background as it occurred to her. (One I particularly recall was when she added climate to her world, as I helped her define it.) I was blessed with getting to edit the first twelve (12) chapters of her book. They told a VERY compelling story, let me tell you! Only, she succumbed to Cancer and never finished (so, you all miss out). So, I guess she took too long developing background (almost 20 years) and never got around to write.
Tolkein put similar efforts into building the background of his "Middle Earth"... And, that he "finished" it and it eventually was recognized as the work it is, is partially due to that very rich background.
That "outline" you've heard tell of? That can be a good TOOL for writing, but, it can also get into your way. Taken in conjunction with the other background elements I've described, it CAN help you stay on track in your story. IMO - more often than not, letting your subconscious direct the story is NOT a good idea - in the long term. Short term, YES! But, if you have no map for your story, just writing can derail it and/or take it off into some new and uncharted direction. This can be fine if you're writing a serial but, most novels benefit from some organization.
I'm not saying rigidly follow your outline. But, have a very good reason for sliding off course. If you do, then decide if the rest of your outline is still valid or needs major revision. If you're mostly sticking with the outline (table of contents) then you need to figure out how to get back from any divergence. Some people consider ANY divergence from the plan (that doesn't get you closer to the "end") should be cut from the story (as they're distracting).
The shorter the story (to some extent) the more of the above you can "skip". For longer stories, having all that rich back story material can help you keep writing - and can help you over "slumps" when the inspiration isn't there.
I'm far from an expert (a quick perusal of my stories will tell you this). MOST of the above, though, isn't just from my experience. I've talked with pros (people with MANY published novels). I've read what others have written about what they do and don't do... And, I've edited for a few people over the past 15 years (outside the TG area - stuff that's been published fan-fic, with the author's approval) and seen what worked for the writers and what didn't.
Good Luck, it's a lot of fun (for me) writing... And, I need to find time to write some more... (BTW - I don't know that I recommend publishing that background kinda material... At least not here. My experience is that most readers really don't care for it and would rather you spend time on the main story - that's the almost universal reaction I've gotten from my readers. That said, the background material isn't lost, even if you don't post it in that form... The richer the "world" you define, the easier it is to write more stories in the same "world" (universe). :-)
Sorry for the rambling... I'm kinda tired and am avoiding some "work".
Anne
writing tips?
Someone over at another site was also asking for some advice on writing. Her question was more specific though, about how to not make her stories too simplistic.
Here's what I posted there last night: http://www.fictionmania.tv/webmessage/reply.html?uniqueID=98...
Sorry for my typos. It's a little ironic that my advice to her about writing was full of typo errors. Heheh. Guess I was a little sleepy when I posted it. Anyway, what I told her might help you, too. :-)
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To see Bobbie's stories in BCTS, click this link: Â http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/14775/roberta-j-cabotÂ
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Thank you, one and all...
For the comments and the advice. Hopefully I'll be able to put at least most of it to good use in my future writings.
There is no knowledge that is not power.
Peace be with you and Blessed be