Greetings all, I am a fellow writer (not professional) looking to get myself out of a motivational slump. I've been writing on and off for the past few years (starting and never finishing) and I'm hoping that joining a writing forum will get me motivated to start writing again as I have been very neglecting of my word count for the past few years. My proudest accomplishment was getting a 40k word story cranked out during nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) of 2008. Surprisingly, when I re-read my story a few months back, I still found myself somewhat proud of it and wanted to try editing it and perhaps making it longer. I have never published anything outside of my high school news paper, but would really like to try writing fiction and getting at least ONE book published. If any of you guys have any advice for getting past that motivational block (the voice that says "dude, this sucks. Stop writing,"), it would be greatly appreciated. I have lots of questions about various things relating to writing, reading, publishing, etc., so I hope to get a chance to talk to a few of you guys later. -Lorravan (I apologize if my grammar is a bit off. I'm a bit rusty, but itching to get back in the ring. Also sorry for all the parenthesis. ))(())())())
Welcome! I find some of the best motivation is when I've read a published book that is horrible and I think, "I could write something better than this!" All you have to do is keep trying.
Being a member of a community such as this one will help you get motivated. It's also a good idea to pick a book on writing novels.
Do you have any recommendations? I really need something to help with dialogue. ";lkasd;klj" she said and "halksa;dlkjfas" he said adjectively sounds so stale.
We all have that inner voice, and just ignore it as best you can. The whole point of the first draft is to get your idea out of your head and onto the page. Crafting good dialogue begins in the second draft. It's easier to fix bad dialogue than write good dialogue from scratch, so just sprint to the end of your story. You'll fix it all later. "The first draft of anything is sh*t." - Ernest Hemingway
That's an awesome quote. Yeah, I do have that annoying habit of editing while I write. I really need to stop doing that and just write. The more I edit, the more I feel unmotivated. I just need to keep telling myself to not look back. Editing will come later.
I'd recommend Writing The Breakout Novel by Donald Maass. While it does not deal specifically with dialogue, it does deal with some of the mistakes made by neophyte writers. For what it's worth, in his book On Writing, Stephen King advises to stay clear of adverbs as much as possible (adverbs being a way of telling instead of showing). Most of time, you'll be better off with he said and she said.
That's very interesting. I never would've thought to avoid adverbs. I've already gotten so much advice from this site and I've only been here for 2 hours! I'm really starting to like this place!
Welcome to Writing Forums, Lorravan! I hope you find what you're looking for here, whatever your interests in writing. This forum aims to provide the best workshopping resources on the internet, and to that end we have a few rules which you should familiarise yourself with before you get stuck in. The main section of the site is the Writing Workshop, where members can post their writing in order to receive critique of their work. However, before we allow members to post their work, they must have met some basic requirements. Firstly, you must have been a member for fourteen days, and have made twenty posts on the forum overall (please note, posts in Word Games do not count towards this). This is so that members, when they post their work, have familiarised themselves with the forums and contributed to them (as well as hopefully learned something for themselves). Secondly, members must provide two constructive reviews of other people's work for each piece of their own that they wish to post. This is because we believe that the focus of workshopping should be equally upon giving reviews as receiving them, as they allow a writer to practice and improve their editing skills, which they can then apply to their own writing. Beyond the Writing Workshop, you will find that we have extensive forums for discussion of aspects of writing, as well as a community area for general discussion. We also run periodic short story and poetry contests, which are good for challenging yourself and expanding your skills. The requirements of the Writing Workshop don't apply to the contests, so new members are allowed (nay, encouraged!) to get stuck in and enter! We also have a growing short story club (think book club, but with short stories!), which you can find stickied in the Book Discussion forum. If you have any questions or problems, then the moderators (myself, Lemex and Dante Dases) should be your first port of call. Any technical problems with the site itself should be directed to Daniel, the site administrator and owner. I would recommend you have a look over the rules so that you know what to expect, and what is expected. But aside from that, I hope you enjoy your time here. Banzai
