Exactly what I was thinking. You're already boxing yourself into linear thinking by believing there is some sort of code to be learned. It isn't. Just let your imagination run free. Just do it. Seriously. Don't be discouraged if the first thing you write isn't stellar. That's okay because writing is like anything else you have to do it in order to become better at it.
There's a strong tradition of scientists and mathematicians becoming writers, and I would argue that it's precisely because they understand that creative writing and the language of science, reason, whatever you want to call it, are more closely analogous than many so-called "creative" people would like to admit. There are patterns, there are rules, there are codes, but the only way you'll find them and learn to use them and elaborate on them is by beginning to write. The notion that there's something, anything, metaphysical about writing really irks me. Don't get caught up in that crap. Hold tight to your analytical nature and turn it to your advantage. Write, read, think, repeat. It really is that simple. And the more you write, the better you get, and the better you get, the more you'll enjoy it. I sound like a terrible self-help book.
I'm a programmer by profession, and a distinctly amateur writer. That should give me some context for what you're saying, but I'm having trouble understanding it. Part of what confuses me is that even _programming_ isn't all that cut and dried. Sure, you have syntax and rules and good practices and bad practices, but if you hand ten very good programmers the same set of requirements, you're going to get ten quite different versions of that code. That's with those ten programmers trying to complete _precisely_ the same task, and I'd say that it's going to be true even if they all went to school together, as long as school was over at least a couple of years ago. With almost any highly complex skill, the first classes, or even the entire college degree, is just the beginning of the learning process, and the rest of the learning is simply not that planned or predictable. If you're not going to school to learn to write, then that self-directed learning process is starting from the beginning. So it's up to you. There is a ton of advice out there about writing - books, forums like this one, blogs - enough to keep you reading for a very long time. But the advice will very often be contradictory from source to source, so you'll have to choose which advice to take. There's no commonly-agreed-upon path for learning how to write. Do you feel that your grammar is weak? Study grammar, and write a lot, and use what you're studying to evaluate and improve the grammar in your writing. Vocabulary? Study to increase your vocabulary, and write a lot, using those new words. Structure? Choose a highly structured form of writing, and write a lot, learning that structure. Pace? Read up on pace in writing, and write a lot, using what you're studying to evaluate and play with pace. You don't like your style? Try varying it, as you write a lot. Dialogue? Characters? Description? Play with them all as you, yes, write a lot. I don't think that you can really learn about writing without doing the writing. And while you can generally work on a piece of code until it's of good deliverable quality, you can't necessarily perfect a piece of writing until it's of publishable quality - I'd advise writing a whole lot of _different_ pieces, instead of spending too much time trying to perfect each piece. The other advice is "read a lot". Read lots and lots of writing, a wide variety of it. ChickenFreak
I'll have to say the same thing as others: just start writing. I am a construction engineer and I have grown up learning science and math. I always had the aspiration to write but never thought I have the ability to do so. But one fine day I decided to blog, sort of an online diary written in the form of short stories. Guess what, people liked it and I was even asked to write some articles for an American magazine based on my blog. That was three years ago. With the confidence that I can write a story I now am trying to learn, as Aaron89 said, the rules, the patterns, the codes.... So, write, write, write. When you read a 'how to' book on writing you might even find that you have followed the rules.
You need two things. You need to start write a lot. And to do that you need to more additional things. Love to write (however masochistically but you need to love it) or you must Need to write (to not go insane, to handle what you face in you life, to take a brake from reality, to went frustration etc.) The idea that you like to be a succsesful writer isn't enough. You need to be dedicated to the craft, not the goal. Your age isn't a problem. Loads of Nobel Prize winning writers didn't start writing to middle age or later. Start writing, and see if you can find the dedication to the writing process itself. If you do you will find a way to develop you skills, might be writing courses, might be books on the subject, might be forums, might be getting a lot of feedback from readers. The only step you need to be concerned about right now id starting to write, something, anything, poetry, shortstories, diary, blog, nonsense.... Just write.
...the same way every writer of any age has done... by writing something!... ...since you want to write a novel, you begin with an idea for a plot/story and then just start writing... if you're an obsessive type, you may want to start with an outline... if you're not, you'll probably jump right in and bang out some sort of beginning and take it from there... ...it's really that simple, though not really that easy... you don't have to make it any more complicated than that, though from your first post, i'm guessing you probably will... ...as one of my own 'greatest lines' goes: "Nothing is impossible till you quit and nothing is possible, until you start!" ...if you've read enough good novels, you should have some idea of what goes into one... if you haven't, then that's where you need to start... love and hugs, maia
"Also, be aware that posting a piece of writing on any public site, including this one, will greatly diminish your chances of selling it for publication. Removing the writing later does not alter that fact - once posted, it is irreversibly considered published. So do not post anything more than a small excerpt of any piece you are planning to submit for publication." Plenty of people have their work reviewed online. For example, I go to a site called The Next Big Writer, in which people post novels, short stories and poetry and everyone gives and receives feedback. People get published after work shopping on that site, and I'm sure there are plenty of other sites that are just as good. There is so much writing out there, if your stuff is good, it seems unlikely potential agents or publishers will read it and think, "This is good, I would work with this guy but I happened to see he posted his work on writingforums.com, so I won't work with him now." Chances seem pretty small they would even know you posted it online, let alone turn you away because of it.
Screenplays I have posted for critiques and work shopping on Zoetrope and TriggerStreet have been optioned even though one of them won the Script of the Month on TriggerStreet. There is a shortage of great original material, certainly in the script market but beware there is not a shortage of average material. If your work is outstandingly original nothing will stop you except yourself.
Technically if you post your work online in a non-password protected area, you have just "published" it electronically and have then used up the first electronic rights at the very least, or so I've been given to understand. It's a bad idea to post significant portions of work you intend to sell online. If you have posted it, you should probably tell wherever you sell it to that it was previously posted, because accidentally voiding your contract could be costly (even if you think the chances of someone finding out are small)...
I have read over some guidlines while searching for places to submit and sometimes they will include what to do if already posted online. While you might be able to find a place to sell it but I wouldn't count on it. So could you? Sure. Likely? Probably not. Why would you want to cut your chances before its even being read? Its best to keep what you want to publish offline and post what you don't want to publish instead. It helps to keep the market a bit bigger, especially when you are new. EDIT: My advice? To start writing and reading. Is it just me or is it starting to sound like a broken record in here? But thats because its great advice. Start reading lots of books. lots and lots of books.(oh and pick up a book on grammar... which I probably should do myself. ) Also start writing. You might want to read up on some of Cogito's blog posts. He talks about some dialogue and Showing vs Telling(I think that was his blog post) Also reading up on short stories and what makes up a story. Which can be done through a few easy google searches. But start reading books. I am sure you can find all sorts of good recommendations on this site. so basicly. Start reading. Start Writing. Its never to late to start.
To parrot everyone else, reading is important. For a personal viewpoint: When I decided to start writing seriously it was freshman year in High School. The first thing I asked myself was who I wanted to emulate, who my hero was. Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck just happened to be our focus that year, so I picked up For Whom the Bell Tolls and it was one of the most amazing pieces of fiction I'd ever read. I started to read everything those two wrote until I was blue in the face. Later, I read "A Moveable Feast" by Hemingway, which is a bunch of personal accounts from his life, he discusses at length the books he read and what was powerful to him. He also names a writer, Dostoevsky, who he claimed was "one of the most horrible writers" he'd ever read, but somehow, because Hemingway was like that, Dostoevsky was also Hemingway's hero. Further research indicated that many American novelists from the disillusionment era favored Russian authors and their orthodoxies. So, the following summer I went and spent around 180 dollars on the Russian classics. I was forced then to immerse myself in the intellectual debate of translating these works. I read many essays on Constance Garnett and her contemporaries, as well as on the new translations that promised to reveal more of the author's particularities. My first book from that was A Sportsman's Sketches by Ivan Turgenev, another one of Hemingway's favorites. After I had finished the book I realized something amazing, Hemingway had copied Turgenev's style very finely. The point of all of this is that instance made me feel very small as a writer. Though my ego was constantly boosted by teachers and their fondness for me and my work, I came to terms with the fact that my hero was just another man who had his own heroes, and he was just trying to do what I had been trying to do. He just happened to be more successful. So, if you want to be a writer, find another writer who inspires you. Just like painters, writers form "schools" of thought, and these school's headmasters are the long dead trail of cloaked figures from Hesse's Steppenwolf. What I mean by that is, you can say you're following Shakespeare, but since Shakespeare copied the stories of Greek authors, and in more than one instance reworked an ancient story into a modern play, you'd have to go further back in time and copy those writers. I think, if you try hard enough, everything just falls flat on Virgil, Homer, and their kin.* Eventually the many faces that follow the original fade into the a kind of snaking trail of men, all guided by the ones who came before. *That is if you're into modern English and American works. Every country and culture has their own Greek equivalent. "The Tain" or the "Tao Te Ching" or "The Analects" or any of the number of stories that have come out of ancient philosophy from Ireland to China, Arabia to New Zealand, have also influenced countless thousands.
Your background in analytical things such as computer programming is not the hobble you perceive it as. Every field has its own language whether it is engineering or cooking and a pattern for doing it well. Find the parallels between the strategies you know for one and apply them to the other. No one writes without structure or strategy, they are only unaware of them in many cases as they focus on other aspects, remember that beautiful music and beautiful math can be as simple as two different expressions of the same thing.
Writing does not have a age limit. You are never too young nor too old to write. It is as simple as having something to write about and then writing it. I can't say about every other writer out there, but for me, I like to write about things I would like to read about. I never write about anything that would not interest me as a reader because I would get bored with it and thus the actual writing itself would suffer as a result. You should read a multitude of genres to see what works and doesn't work for you and then go from there. This IS the site to use if you wish to improve yourself. I suggest reading a few of the stories in the Review Room, critique them (Note to self - Practice what you preach.), and then try to write up something of your own to post. To improve you have to have something that needs improving and that starts with a single word. If you need help that is what the other sections of the forum are for and I'm sure people would be more than willing to help if nicely asked. Happy writing.
If you had to choose only one way to better yourself as a writer what would it be? Through critiquing, reading, observing, practicing? Or maybe something else? e: Maybe my post was confusing? I, like Cogito said, meant the best way to improve, not only way.
Reading, reading and reading some more. I'd say critiquing as well, but you do that when you read anyway. Or i do anyway.
As a scriptwriter, the transition from amateur to professional has been the best learning curve I have experienced. The first thing is realising a screenplay is a working document that other creative individuals use as a plan to construct another work of art in a completely different dimension. Having to edit your work to meet the requirements of others is a tough lesson in discipline, that and having to deliver rewrites to a deadline. Finding the balance between your own writer’s ego and having to accommodate the egos of others; certainly those who are going to pay you for your work, is a lesson that every writer needs to learn. It is one thing to write to please yourself; it is another to write well enough to be considered a writer worthy of commissioning.
is this a trick question? Writing. Writing is, in the end, the only thing that will make me a better writer. No amount of reading, thinking about writing, critiquing, etc... will help unless I'm putting words down myself.
I agree. Writing is what helps me. If anything, reading just discourages me and confuses me more. If anything came in second, it would likely be movie watching since I always develop stories mentally first like they were a movie. But the first place for me is definitely writing.
Writing without reading isn't an effective way to improve. It will only result in the repeating of the same forms, the same ideas, the same structures, the same style, with perhaps the occasional accidental development. Reading is crucial to developing as a writer, and while you obviously need to strike a balance between the two, I don't think its possible to overstate the importance of reading.
Read critically. Don't read only to absorb the story. Pay attention to how the writer achieves the mood, constructs dialogue, develops character and plot. Also study where and how the author misses the boat. Even the best writer will have off days, and leave weak scenes in his or her writing. Learn from all of it, the good, the sloppy, and the positively outstanding.
Oh god yes, do this. Write too ... and go out and live life! Don't just sit scribbling in your room, go and have your heart broken, get drunk and wake up under a bridge with jam on your face, just go out and live, and then come back and use your experiences in your writing. It really does help make your writing fresh and interesting when you do use your own life in it.
