I heard at a writer's forum that the best thing to do, as already recommended, is to just end the agony and put it aside for a month or two, then go over it ONCE more. After that, you may have qualms and an uneasy feeling about it FOREVER, which will never go away if you think about it, so don't think about it, always focus on writing something new when a piece has gone through the process of writing and editing. Be done with it.
As usual, Mallory nailed it. Working on something else allows you to really detach from it. And don't worry...when you go back later to read it through, you will probably say to yourself, "Hey, this is good!"
The putting it away is good advice and well worth doing. I have a very different criteria I use. It's not any kind of official criteria but a vibe (which means it will be impossible to explain...). I have this 'thing' about when reading mine or others writing; I think I perceive that there are these mechanisms that budding amateur writers (like myself) use that make the work seem a little amateurish. The key to it is using language that you wouldn't otherwise use in your own conversations. I remember seeing a friend's writing and it had the following line (well, close anyway): "She was flitting about the beach as I tried to keep my attention more firmly ensconced in my chosen beach book" Not a bad line at all. However, who has ever actually used the word 'flit' when talking to their friends? It's that kind of usage where I see writers maybe trying to write for other writers and not the average person who is reading it for the story. So my criteria is to wring out as much of the 'writing for writers' as I can. For me, those kinds of things detract from the story. They pull the reader (or at least me) out of the story with an odd word. Unless it's with the context of a character's dialogue, using 'not common' words in writing I think can be a little distracting. Thing is, my friends will tell, I have a ridiculous vocabulary. It's neat to have lots of words at your mental disposal but it doesn't mean that they need to be used. I guess I feel that things like the above example, (or even just the way I see how some writers say things in their writing) I see that 'thing' where it reads more like a good creative school writing project then a professionally written novel. So, that's kind of an example of what I look for in my own editing. Things that pull the reader away from the story. Once I feel that the story reads naturally, then I happy. Ok, I'm never actually happy...but I have found detente with my writing...
I disagree. There is nothing wrong with using a more extensive vocabulary than you might use in normal conversation. In fact, I think many beginning writers often make the opposite mistake - they write in the same way they would speak. At the same time, you can't go overboard and use lots of words straight out of the thesaurus, because then the writing doesn't flow. So, in your sample sentence, I think "flit" is fine, but "ensconced" would be out.
JeffS65, ahh yes, I have this too! I find elaborate words distracting when they're plonked in the middle of something to say 'look at me, I know what this means', but even though novels written a long time ago can get away with this, I think even historical fiction written now has to be understandable. I think the key is just making it sound natural, not necessarily everyday, but in the same vein not absolutely forced. Some people just speak more fluently, and fluency can be achieved with a huge vocabulary, or a tiny one. I read a quote from someone who said something like: "When editing, I cut out everything that sounds like writing," and I've thought it was so sensible that I stuck to it ever since. There is nothing so off-putting as pontification!
Noya above quoted something that stuck with me too and really exemplifies what I mean; cut out everything that sounds like writing. To me, that makes sense...to me. It doesn't have to apply to everyone but it works for me. It was a hallmark of Hemingway's style and I feel that it allows the elements of the story to be most effectively digested by the reader. I think my point is that sometimes writers want to impress other writers more than they want to tell a good story and when I see that, it is a sore spot for me. That said, there is definitely validity to what you say. Not everyone wants to read a book the way I think it should be written and that's a good thing. Without variety, we wouldn't have the array of authors to enjoy.
Ah, it's never good enough. But that's the way it goes with all ideals. Once you get into details, they're no longer perfect. The solution? I don't have "the" solution, but "a" solution...one that works for me. Imperfection is character. Charm. Personality. Without it, things would be boring.
What parts of writing comes easy to you, and what parts do you have to struggle with? Plot? Planning? Characters? Language? Pacing? World building? Themes? Motivating yourself? Or something entirely different?
I find plots, characters, themes, world building etc incredibly easy it is just a case of turning on my inner three year old and asking lots of why questions. I am good at visual scenes, dialogue and action scenes - the bits in between I struggle with. Also find humour and emotion easy to write. I don't plan so no idea if I find that hard or not - it has yet to be a component of my writing. My biggest struggles are - pacing although that is improving, punctuation which is again improving. Too much plot - I always have way more plot than I need for a story and too many plots. Demotivating is a struggle switching off from the story and not writing. I cannot yet do rhythm, rhyme, meters etc for poetry.
I'm almost too good at plotting Anything can give me ideas for new stories or for the story I'm working on, and that spirals out of control sometimes. And because there is so much plot in my stories, pretty much everything is important to the plot and that makes cutting things difficult if it gets too long. I'd say what I'm best at is characters. I feel all my characters are deep and interesting (to me) and I spend a lot of time developing them, and do my best to stay true to them throughout the story. What I'm worst at... action scenes. I can describe well enough, my dialog is good and calm scenes where characters are talking and revealing themselves to the reader, I'm awesome at! But things like fight scenes? I suck. I simply can't describe things that happen suddenly. And sadly, there's a lot of scenes like that in my main work. Well, that's one of the reasons why I don't want to get published yet anyway. I want to grow as a writed for several years to come.
My fight scenes got better after getting advice on how to write a good sex scene. Remember all the senses, make each movement personal, how do they feel to the person, what is their body doing etc.
I think plots, planning and characters come quite easily, so does the language ingeneral, but sometimes i find i repeat certain words or phrases a little too often because i cant come up with a better way to say it. motivation has always been strong and the problem might be descriptions and "flowery" prose, i have a tendency to write kind of concise and directly to the point which im working on to improve my writing. I would say the biggest problem of them all is self confidence, i always think what i write is crappy and that no-one will ever wanna read it except for me. but thats ok, i mean at least i enjoy writing it. but if would be so nice to be (rightfully) confident and knowing that what i write is actually good.
I'm going to ramble a bit, because talking about myself is easy. Also makes it easier to criticize certain aspects about myself and get to work on fixing them. My best scenes are typically those that are kinda heavy on dialogue. I'm always able to find a pace that works for that scene pretty easily, and I've never read one of my stories from the past year or two that had a ridiculous line that made me go, "Oh, come on, who talks like that?" I'm also pretty good at getting a scene exactly the way I want it on my first attempt. Even if I end up not using the scene, I still get it out in a way that at least matches my expectations. This is a result of my formative writing years being spent on fan fiction: writing a chapter, employing some basic editing to remove the most obvious shortcomings, leaving most of the text as is, and uploading it to my site of choice. It naturally evolved so that I produce my best work in the rough draft. My earliest works were pretty horrible, but whose aren't? It was fun, and I'm willing to put up with the embarrassing writing on my hard drive if it gives me a valuable... Well, I don't know if it's really a skill, but that's what I'll call it. By contrast, I'm terrible at opening scenes. Particularly opening scenes in stories I intend to share. I keep cycling through hundreds of possibilities, experimenting, wondering which would work out best and attract the most readers instead of just writing it and finding out... It's a habit I'm finding impossible to beat out of me. The other thing is motivation. This is more a problem with me in general, not just my writing. If I'm not in the mood for something, I have zero motivation to do it. Zero motivation means, in the case of writing, garbage. I don't mean writing that's simply unsatisfactory, I mean pure and utter garbage in the truest sense of the word. I'll read over what I forced myself to write later on and find nothing worth salvaging. But on the bright side of this, all it takes is a single witty sentence or clever word choice to give me my motivation back, as if my brain suddenly remembers, "See? You can do this!" So it's a win-loss.
That's a good idea. Haven't thought of that before. And my bff claim I'm good at sex scenes (she makes me write man on man modern warfare porn...)
Characters are easy. Good writing is easy. Starting is hard, as is finishing. I find that without a plan I'm 100% behind, I can't write much more than the first ten consecutive pages convincingly enough to feel like writing the rest.
Characters, plot, ideas, and motivation are easy for me. I usually have far too many ideas, actually. I generally don't have any trouble writing things down (except for one specific scene atm, but there are reasons for that), and I think I do fairly well at action, dialogue, etc. My biggest problem is tense. I have the hardest time picking a tense and sticking! I constantly catch myself screwing that up and have to go back and fix tons of errors. Drives me insane!
In terms of story creation, I feel I excel at most aspects. I can come up with unique plots and characters and realistic worlds and cultures. I struggle the most with maps in world creation though, as I can't draw, and language creation, as I am no linguist. In my writing itself, I find descriptions and portraying emotions of characters through body language and the like to come very easily. I can make a character show that he is feeling guilty, sad, angry, etc., without needing to come out and say it. I really struggle with action sequences and (though I've improved considerably) dialogue. For the longest time I struggled with motivation, which is why I have been working on this book for years. Very recently though (within the past month or two), I found out how to write without motivation and I am very proud of myself for doing so. When I sit down to write, it doesn't matter if what I'm writing is terrible trash, I write it regardless. On those nights, I usually end up deleting everything that I'd written the next day, but by making myself write the scene, I am forcing my brain to think about the scene. The next day I come up with something better and replace it.
Male characters and dialogue come easiest to me. In terms of actual writing I've been told my strong points are style, tone and imagery. The thing I find most difficult is creating non-stereotypical female characters and writing from a female perspective. My biggest issues are indecision and never being happy with what I'm producing.
No for the first two - I can come up with concepts and ideas for stories, and set them in motion fine. I can get 60 pages in, however, without actually knowing where it's going, even working off my vague assumptions, hints, etc, and more likely than not it crashes and burns until I take a good long time off to figure out what I actually wanted to do with it. I guess a lot of people don't have the dedication to see a project like that through and usually stop after three pages and either quit it or plan it, but some of my best stories appeared not knowing what was happening three lines ahead of my pen, so I stick with this method. Characters, never ever been an issue. Their dialogue is awesome too. However, the actual language of writing is pretty hit and miss. I don't want to fall into reams of purple prose, but I know that in short story form I can apply myself, move people to tears, and in only a thousand or so words create amazing things. I love that feeling of the writing I do, but I can't carry it on for more than a few pages because it requires minimal dialogue, highly symbolic action, and tight, tight plotting. Once I start writing novels it's very relaxed, human presence is good, and everyone's chatting away. I can't make a balance between it - the characters would be unrelatable on the long term - you'd want to shake them and yell "Pull your symbolic head out of your symbolic something else!" and, to be honest, I'd run out of pretty imagery. But in my novels, I am much more practical, and try to get things done, so I only have bursts of good description, and the rest is pretty basic language. Everything else I do fine. Motivation seems lacking sometimes, but I think I hold myself to stupidly high standards, and everyone always drops their jaw when I mention how much I've written in a month, so I think I might just be a bit harsh on myself.
