Advice for a First Time Author

1. Start before you're ready.
2. Don't confuse the reader.
3. Don't burden the reader too much.
4. Write imaginatively.
5. Edit ruthlessly.
6. Come back to it later. (A passage can seem wonderful when you write it, but after a few days, when you look over it, you may think, 'what on earth possessed me to write this?')
7. Read it out aloud quickly. If you find yourself stumbling over the worlds, you probably need to choose some different ones.
8. Take other people's comments seriously. Then fix the text until no one can find any faults with it.

 

I don't own a tv. True you can just about watch anything online, but I'm never sitting down in front of the television. I enjoy reading over watching. Getting rid of my tv turned out to be better for my writing than I thought it would. Very glad I did it.

 

I'm a little confused by the first bit of advice. It sounds like you may have been having some issues with sentence structure. But glad it helped. As a few other people have said, it would be great if you could explain this a little more. It might then also help someone here.

As for the additional advice, newspaper writing is very different than other writing. It's also changed a lot. I've seen the inverted pyramid come and go out of style. It used to be you needed the who, what, when, where and why needed to be in the lead. It still needs to be there, but it's not always in the first line. You usually will still find the nut graf (usually the second paragraph but sometimes a few short paragraphs down). Long-form journalism and more narrative approaches have changed news writing. The reason it used to be important to prioritize was so that editors could basically cut from the bottom and the story word still work. It's kind of a dated way of thinking. This was before everything was online, which eliminated space problems. And styles change. Still, you want to write well. It doesn't hurt to be economical in any form of writing. Was that the piece you took away for your fiction writing?

 

I don't know if it was the most helpful, but it's right up there...

Write for an audience of one. Pick someone you're telling the story to and write as if you're talking to them.

What this did was it made me aware that I had to maintain comprehensibility and engagement with every word I wrote. It's made me go cross-eyed from time to time, and put me to sleep more than once, but in the end, it really made a difference for me.

 

Hey everyone!

So I’m in the process of writing my first book & have been for about a year now, and I’ve really got my teeth into it so far. I’ve written a good 2/3 of it and I’m super proud of it - it’s rewarding and really bewildering to look at it and think that I created something like this! I’m having some trouble with the next step though. How do you get over showing your work to other people? I write with my boyfriend sat next to me a lot, and I always click away from the window or start doing something else when I feel him looking over. I’ve also not sent any of my work to anyone despite having offers to proof read and give feedback! I’m just terrified people are gonna think it’s dumb, it doesn’t make sense, it’s not enjoyable, all of the regular things!

I know it's a fairly irrational thing to be worrying about, because if I want to stand a chance of getting published or being recognised for my work then I'm going to just have to bite the bullet and put it out there. But I just have a lot of anxiety about it! This book is like my baby, and I guess I'm afraid of it being torn to pieces in the big wide world :')

Can anyone offer some advice on how to get over this speed bump? Thank you!

 

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but...your work probably sucks!

Now, the good news...everybody on this site wrote work that sucks at some point.

You write, you read it back, you get other people to read it back, you come to realise that they're not jerks when they tell what sucks and why, that they're only trying to help, and then you take what they've taught you and re-write it so it doesn't suck...as much.

Rinse and repeat.

After about a million words, you'll start to see something like a decent piece of work emerge, something that you can show without cringing. (Or, maybe not. Maybe you'll never get the feeling that it's good enough; plenty of artists in all forms feel like that.)

In the short term, this forum has certain requirements before you post anything for critique (basically, spend two weeks here, make twenty posts, and critique two pieces in the workshop - nothing like as tough as getting your driving licence!) so get those out of the way, and then post something to be critiqued. Possibly the start of your book (not too much - more than 2,000 words and you'll turn a lot of people away) or perhaps something you've written specially in order to save your magnum opus. You are as near to anonymous as you can be on this site, so you won't need to blush if I pass you in the street!

The big thing is to not try to cheat on your two critiques. Pick a couple of pieces, read them, and work out why you like them, or why you don't. (Be polite in how you say what you've got to say.) If you can work out what's wrong with somebody else's work, you've got a better chance of working out what's wrong with your own, and putting it right.

Good luck, and enjoy the journey!

 

I don't know if every budding writer experiences this, but I did. My solution was to edit, edit, edit some more, re-edit, and continue to edit until I felt like I'd finally gotten my work to a point where it was ready for others' eyes. Then you edit again after someone reads it and critiques it.

Eventually, once enough people read your material and tell you they like it, you'll have a better idea what you need to do to get your writing to its "finished" or "readable" state.

*Edited for SPAG

 

On the topic of critiques... check out this thread
https://www.writingforums.org/threads/i%E2%80%99m-not-here-to-make-you-a-better-writer.146679/

 

Well the only thing you can do is your best (plus a ton of editing). Perhaps having it Beta read before moving onto putting it out on the market, to get few different perspectives on what you have. By doing this you get feedback on the good/bad in it, and can adjust accordingly. As long as the Beta readers are being genuine with their findings in your work, this will be helpful. Also recommend doing a lot of proof reading and making sure everything is the way you want it (SPAG), and that it flows well with a decent plot and so forth.

Good luck, and don't worry what others think about it until you have allowed someone a chance to read it. Besides it can't be all that bad.

 

(Hi, I'm new...)

I don't think there's any easy way to do it. You just do it. It usually hurts, and you crawl away and lick your wounds for a bit, and then eventually you go back and write/submit some more. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I had a very bad experience at university where a creative writing teacher mocked my work so mercilessly I virtually stopped for years. (This was not harsh-but-fair critique. This was writing "OH, PLEASE" and "DO YOU THINK I'M AN IDIOT?" on my work. How am I supposed to edit and improve based on those observations?) Anyway, I felt very badly burned. The turnaround came when I started writing fanfiction online, under a pseudonym. It gave me a safe distance from my work: Anonymous, just-for-fun, can't be sold no matter how good it is, etc. Through that, I got amazing writing advice and encouragement and my confidence came back.

I'll say, though, that the best and hardest thing is to stop thinking of your work as your baby, and start thinking of it as your craft, your work in progress.

 

It was scary for me too but now I can't remember why. Not very helpful.

You just have to bite the bullet and do it. Would it help if it was a stranger who you'd never have to see or talk to again if they didn't like your work? If so, people here will critique privately (I've done it and would again). Or would you rather it was someone who trust, like your boyfriend or a friend?

It might help if you write something new, something you don't care about, so it won't feel so personal if someone doesn't like it. Maybe a 1,000-word short story. You can post it in the workshop and get feedback on your style, which will be applicable to your novel, but it doesn't expose the piece of writing you're most close to.

But however you do it... you have to do it, if you want to go anywhere with writing.

 

Thank you! I edit pretty much every day; it's my go-to task when I'm experiencing a block or just don't feel like creating anything new that day. I just go back over it and edit what I can.

 

Thanks! It probably would help if it was critiqued anonymously, yes, just so that the writing is being judged for what it is, rather than who's written it. My boyfriend barely reads at all so I think it'd be pretty wasted on him :')

 

On the other hand, people who don't read much tend to be incredibly impressed that you [general you] can string a sentence together. So if what you need is a confidence boost, he may be the perfect person.

Of course, the problem is that you don't take the marveling of friends and family to heart, because writers are much more critical than 'lay' readers. But... confession time... I have one beta reader I use every time because she adores every single thing I write. Her feedback isn't useful because it's all positive, but I do it for the ego boost. And because she loves to read.

 

Haha... Maybe you're right I think that's what's holding me back sending it to family. I know they're going to be impressed and supportive, even if what they're reading is genuine rubbish :')

 

Uhm.. just to put in my five cents with regard to 'family'. Depending on what you write you might want to be careful here. I am very sure that if my family would read what I write I would rapidly catch a lot of flak and probably would have a whole lot of troubles down the road So I don't tell them - it helps that they don't speak english quite as fluently as I and wouldn't be able to appreciate even if the topic would be to their liking

I stick to Alpha/Betas here in WF and I have found that they dissect, but only want to help my writing. Granted, the very first times with anonymous readers were not pretty but... it helped my style enormously. So jump in and take your lumps - I promise your writing will be all the better for it!

Welcome to the madhouse

 

I can't get my family to read my work. God knows I've tried - they outright refuse!

 

Consider yourself lucky then and find friends here in WF - we have some marvelous guys/girls here

 

It's a mixed blessing, really. The only critique they'd be likely to offer is "Yay" "Yuck" or "Meh" (and it's almost a sure bet I'd get the latter!)

 

Yeah, I'm keeping it from the majority of my family for that exact reason until it's published (?!). I'm going to stick with keeping it peer-read by anons online I think. It seems the more helpful option even if people are just going to be brutally honest. At the end of the day I think it's what I need!

 

Some ideas:

- Write stuff that isn't part of your book and submit that to the Review Room or other non-family/non-friend review. You're likely to be less invested in it, and therefore more able to absorb the criticisms.
- Submit something a little bit old. When the criticism comes in, you can tell yourself, "Well, I'm better NOW..." but, again, absorb the criticisms.
- Maybe start with something experimental. While you still want to put your best into it, if it's a different voice, different POV, nonfiction instead of fiction, different something, you can tell yourself that, of course, you're new at that, so it's OK that you didn't fully succeed.

Basically, I'm offering ways to rationalize any failure away, so that your mind will be less resistant to understanding the details of that failure. Once you're at the point where you can take criticism comfortably with these defenses available to you, you can start dropping the defenses and requesting reviews on things closer to your writing heart. Edited to add: And if you did absorb the previous criticism, and applied it to improve that close-to-the-heart work, then that work is benefitting from the process, even before it's exposed.

 

Greetings! I decided to give writing a go. Even if not for producing something half-decent, but improving my skill with English. Trying to make a habit of producing some material every day at the moment.

I’ve read about authors with self placed daily quotas on words. Does this system work for a beginner? If so, how high should I aim? Something around 1000?

 

All I can tell you is what works for me. When I give myself a specific word limit for a day, I struggle to hit it for some reason, but when I just sit down and do it without worrying about word count, I can usually blow any goal I had out of the water.

The best advice I have is to just sit down and do it. Don't worry about word count, just write. Enjoy it. Otherwise, you won't keep writing.

 

I think you should try to find a quota that works for you. Personally I could never write 1000 words in a day -- I'm happy if I manage 300.

Maybe you could try to write 1000 words and see how much it is and if you can keep it up. But don't be afraid to lower it (or maybe even raise it) if needed.

 

My beginners quota was always a scene, however long it turned out to be. It was easy, because I didn't want to stop writing and an end of a scene is a natural stopping point. But do whatever works for you.