It sounds like the problem may be that you can't decide which story to pursue. I don't think that's an atypical problem. Take a piece of paper and make a list of your ideas - one-sentence descriptions only. Then read it through and see which one you think you really would enjoy writing. That's the one to start on, right now. You may find it daunting at first just getting started. You can start by just sketching out some ideas. Who would the main character be? What kind of person is he or she? What happens to him/her? Why? What happens next? Who else is involved? What is that person like? Etc, etc. In the end, you write the way you walk, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. Are you ready to take a step? One foot forward...now...
hi- I am hoping to learn the technical aspects of writing (grammar, structure, development, etc) and welcome input on best methods. I am trying to find a course although it is surprisingly difficult in my area (which is a college "locale" with 5 colleges but limited continuing educations opps). I live in western, ma (amherst area) and hoping to find a local group to join to aid my development. Any recommendations on courses, groups, or books to begin my journey? thanks
For learning that kind of technical stuff, you can actually just look into books. Most [good, and imo] writing classes aren't going to spend a lot of time on fundamentals like grammar or structure. Here's a list of books that might be of interest. They're about teaching writing (which is a great way to learn), grammar and revision, and cover a ton of technical/fundamental stuff. Penny Kittle Write Beside Them: Risk, Voice, and Clarity in High School Writing Jeff Anderson Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer’s Workshop Georgia Heard The Revision Toolbox: Teaching Techniques that Work Nancie Atwell In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing, Reading, and Learning Harry Noden Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing Barry Lane After the End: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision Or The Reviser’s Toolbox Harvey Daniels, Steve Zemelman, and Nancy Steineke Content Area Writing: Every Teacher’s Guide Constance Weaver Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing*** Donald Murray The Craft of Revision Troy Hicks The Digital Writing Workshop Michael Smith and Jeff Wilhelm Getting it Right: Fresh Approaches to Teaching Grammar, Usage and Correctness Barry Gilmore Is it Done Yet?: Teaching Adolescents the Art of Revision Cathy Fleischer and Sarah Andrew-Vaughn Writing Outside your Comfort Zone: Helping Students Navigate Unfamiliar Genres Amy Benjamin Engaging Grammar: Practical Advice for Real Classrooms Katie Wood Ray Writing Workshop: Working through the hard parts (and they’re all hard parts)
I found an old floppy disk and the first story I ever wrote in 1998, when I was eight years old, was on it. And I wrote it in paint, lol. It's fun because I didn't realize I began writing that early, though what I wrote back then was mostly stories about me owning horses and being awesome. I didn't start writing proper stories until I was 11, but my writing was horrible back then... Must say it's a great inspiration to see how much I have improved over the years. When I was 11 I also started what has now become a roughly 4500 pages long Buffy fanfiction. But it made me curious, when did you all start writing? And what was your first story about (if you remember)?
I wrote one story about blowing up New York by flying spaceships into the twin towers - the month before 9/11. I had intended it as a satire when I got fed up people saying because there was no archaeology it wasn't possible. I also wrote some short stories and labels etc for a job at a museum. Apart from that hadn't written anything really since school or university. Picked up a pad and pen last February. My first story is the novel I am currently rewriting.
Not exactly writing, but I was making up stories and making them into drawings or animations when I was about 6 or 7...was something about magic girls xD Anyway, I wrote my first real story when I was 10 but didn't finish, was like 36 pages (of rubbish). Now I'm rewriting it, making sure I finish this time. I'm not always a writer but I am always a story teller.
Yeah, I was definitely a story teller long before I started writing too. I made up all kinds of weird stories when playing by myself. Hated playing with friends because they would mess the story up
I don't really know, I can't remember myself, but my mum said that I've always been scribbling away as long as she can remember so it must be when I was quite young.
I remember the first story I wrote, it was a horror story called Caged Demon about a prisoner who escapes his cell and falls in love with a previous victim of his. I was only about eleven at the time! I wish I still had it - I bet I'd laugh at it now.
I wrote my first story like in the 90's. I forgot exactly how and what date I started writing my first story. It was called Let There Be Light. It was about a small family who struggled to support themselves, and they barely had enough money to keep their bills paid for, which explains why they continued to have power outages. I'm not sure if I even have that story anymore. It's been a while. Then I left writing for a while until I started back in November 2010. The one I'm working on right now is Manifestation, which is a good returning startup for me, I guess.
at 2 or 3, when learning the alphabet... ;-) if you mean 'seriously' [as in for others to read], that would be in high school, when i wrote columns for the school newspaper, on which i was also an editor having to fix up everyone else's writings... if you mean 'for money' that would be in my mid-40s, when i wrote a novel and started my writing consultant business, while writing just about anything that took words for both myself [to sell] and my clients [for fees of up to $150/hr]... in between, i wrote poetry, various things for the political campaigns i worked on, and assorted other rabble-rousing stuff...
Wasn't until about the sixth or seventh grade did I start writing. Hopefully I have improved since then. But I do and still have one of the first stories I have ever written. It was called 'The Mountain' Basicly in third grade we had to write a short story for picture books we were doing. The teacher each gave us a blank book that we could draw/write in. Look exactly like what a picturebook would look like except it was well blank. Not a clue what I was thinking. It was about these 3 boys who wanted to climb a mountain. So they pool their allowance together and bike to this awesome mountain. They climb it, they meet a snake and I think they threw it off the mountain. Poor snake. They climb back down and it was done!! I was amazed when I found it in a closet. I was also really really sad. Not because 'I wish I was a kid again' and all that. But it was because of my handwriting. Its almost exactly the same since then. Senior in high school with the same handwriting as my 3rd grade counterpart. How sad. Oh I never did learn how to draw people since then either. But yeah theres my story. But like I said it wasn't until 6th grade or so did I consider writing and then it was only backstory to a character I created in a MMORPG. Much of my fantasy writing is sadly still taking place within that same world. But alot of the names for cities/towns are still the same. Sad I know. But never been good with naming.
It's all quite complex, actually. I began to storytell (which I what I like to call myself rather than a writer, since I am still unsure if I want to tell my stories through writing) since I could talk. An empty house across the street held my dream family and in Kindergarten, I was a SuperGirl against the Shark. I began to write before I knew the English alphabet with scribbles in some notebook. It was like a secret-spy/journal kind of thing. I continued to write like that as a journal until I was 8 when I lost the drive and took up my addiction - internet gaming.
First started when I was a kid -- but then my life got kind of chaotic, so I didn't really stick with it. Then I tried again in Jr. High and High School. But I never got very far -- I was self-conscious, because couldn't get over the feeling that "Issues" that I didn't even know I had were manifesting in the writing in ways I wasn't even aware of. (And looking back with the perspective of an adult: boy, were they EVER ) In college, I used the excuse that I didn't have time. After college, I tried several times to start writing again, but couldn't get past the fear of writing. Don't know what I was scared of, exactly. But it was there. So, it's only the past few months that I have actually been writing (almost) every day, rather than just kind of poking at it and then backing away again. I've always had stories floating around in my head wanting to be told, though. So it feels good to finally be giving them some space.
First grade, I wrote a collection of short stories to cope with the death of my first dog. He came back as a dragon..and then a caterpillar....:/ I may not have always written constantly but I have considered myself "a writer" ever since.
I started mostly the same way these people have: from the moment I could verbally describe my dreams and fantasies. Both my parents worked full-time when I was still a toddler. That's not to say they neglected me, they were great. But they had to take me to work sometimes, or hold me while they worked on the computer. Because my grandmother read to me very frequently, I learned how to speak well really quickly (in fact, one of my earliest memories is learning how to articulate the 'r' sound by listening to others). Combine those two things: frequent reading and watching computers, I started writing stories on an old Windows 3.1 machine when i was 2 years old. I decided I loved telling stories when I finished the first Commander Keen (google it) for the fiftieth time, and instead of getting the next game, I opted to draw storyboards and plans for my own video games on an old etch-a-sketch board. That's probably why I'm really good at programming these days. But I only really started writing when I was twelve. My fifth grade teacher read to us a story about the chinese creation myth. And I had recently finished Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Combine those two in my mind, which often chose to go on flights of fantasy than do school work, and I decided to write a novel. So there, that's my answer.
The first time I remember writing was when I was in second grade. We 'published' books about our lives and I wrote one about my dog. When I was in third grade, we were told to write a story and I wrote one about Harry Potter finding out he had a sister (this was back in 2002) and my teacher told me that it was illegal to write about books like they were your own. That kind of put me off writing for a bit but I've always known I was a writer. When I was in the fourth grade, we had our first writing exam and they explained that the grading was on a scale of six, one being awful, and six being impeccable. Only a couple of sixes were ever given out each year. You can guess which number I received. (not bragging...that was just something I was always proud of). In sixth grade I found fan fiction and started writing Harry Potter fan fiction. I still do today as an eleventh grader but I became interested in original fiction last summer. I always have new ideas rolling around in my head. So I guess I've been really writing since the summer after my sophomore year in high school, but I've been writing in general since second grade.
I've always made stories up in my head, ever since I can remember. The first story I actually wrote down was when I was around eight or nine, I believe. After I discovered the joy of writing down a story so others could read it too, and so I didn't forget it, I began several stories. The first actual novel I completed was when I was seventeen, and since then I've written about six books of varying length, some full novels, some not. So, depending on your definition of when someone began writing, I began either at eight or seventeen. ~JM
I began to write my first novel two years ago, but I've always been an storyteller. I've always been more like an "image" person, if you know wat I mean. I like drawing and animating characters, so that's what I've always done since kindergarten with my little stick figures Two years ago my main character popped into my mind, with full personality and bad taste for clothes. Strangely, I couldn't seem to make a satisfactory drawing of him. Yet, his story continued to unfurl in my mind. That was when I decided to give a try on the words and let the pencil rest for a while.
Started writing in primary school. We had creative writing classes, and were given the task of writing a story about finding some interesting object that we found while digging the school pond (something we were actually doing at the time). Most people wrote 1-2 pages. I spent weeks, writing 52. Needless to say, the story got completely out of hand, rapidly going from some children digging around in the soil, to them creating a private army on a remote island and fighting other nations. I still have this "book" in various forms, hand-written, typed, and digital. Oh yes, I've been there as well. I have piles of funny images with stick figures in my folders. And there was another episode when I was drawing small cars that behaved much in the same way as lemmings...
I was around eight. I wrote quite a few stories. One was about a female astronaut who had to leave her daughter/family, one was kind of an adaptation of 'Sindbad and princess sail the seven seas' (me the princess, of course...), one about a city underwater, then there was something I wrote for my brother about him being stuck in 'Gameboy land'. It was the late 80s... When I was 13, I got into music and started writing poetry and song lyrics. When I was 24, I wrote my first would-be novel.
I remember writing a story about my family for a project when I was in grade three. It was terrible, naturally, but the parents who read it were kind enough to say they enjoyed it, lol. Then when I was in grade six we had to write a couple of short stories. Mine were about a detective looking for a lost dog, and a group of scientists looking for a jewel that had been stolen from a native tribe, originality was clearly my goal, lol. I did all my own pictures and published them and they got a good reception from classmates. They now live somewhere in the house and every time I find them I can't help but laugh at how innocent sounding they are, and not written too poorly either. Writing then sat in the background until about six years ago, when I was fifteen, when I took it up again and have been attempting to write ever since. Writing as a kind was sooo much easier then writing as an adult, it's not fair!
Last year I started to write somewhat more seriously, I was 16 then. Before that, I had done some writing assignments for school, but that's about it.
I started to write, properly about a month and a half ago. Before that I tried to write, or I'd start something and never finish it. Then I finally decided to get cracking and write properly. Fortunately I have friends with plenty of knowledge on military tactics/hardware and stuff. So I am able to write more than I ever was. And thankfully I've found all of you, which has helped immensely.
