What I've Learned About Fan Fic Writing
There are some important things I have learned about writing over the last six years.
Some writers like to be writing police. They think they have struck on the way to write and they tell you that is what you must do. They think they know what good stories are because they are the stories that appeal to them. I tell you there are no rules to writing. You do what works for you and to heck with the writing police. They tell you things like you have to go away from your story to edit it properly. Heck, if I do that, I forget what it is that I wrote and why I wrote it. They tell you to write and to come back and edit later. Hogwash. I edit as I go because I like to build my structure from the bottom up. If thereâs something missing on the bottom, I canât keep going. Thatâs my way. Itâs not the right way. Itâs just one way. Theyâll tell you too that a first draft canât be a good story. Interesting that they can make blanket statements about stories they have never read. They must be omniscient. Theyâre probably something else but I wonât call them that here. The rest of this consists of my ideas of what to do about writing. If you donât like it, feed it to the hogs. Itâs up to you if you want to accept or reject any of it. Remember that whenever you read a review or anything anyone says about your writing.
Some writers struggle with their stories and say they donât know where itâs going. Hey, they should have decided that before they started writing. They seem to think the story will tell them the ending and then they wonder why it is so hard to write. Duh. Figure out how it should end and then build to it. Itâs not that hard to do. Can you imagine Michelangelo saying he was going to chip away at the marble and see what emerged? What a crazy looking world it would be if architects and engineers started building to see what would develop from what they put down. Would the great classic artworks even exist without a plan in the mind of the artist? So plan, and writing wonât be so difficult.
Writing requires writing even if itâs bad, and stories need to be finished. Sit down in that chair and write something and finish that story. Life gets in the way. Yes, it gets in the way of everything. If youâre a writer, you write. Just like you do everything else thatâs important to you. If you donât, then stop. Youâre only torturing yourself and everyone else when you complain about how you donât have time to write.
Some days are better for writing than others. Go with the flow. Thereâs no point in fighting it. You might have planned to spend the whole day writing, but the sun is out and you have all sorts of other ideas of what might be fun to do. So do it. Writing is supposed to be fun. If it isnât, then go do something else for a while. When you canât wait to get to the keyboard to get all those ideas added to your story, then go ahead and write a thousand words per hour until you have exhausted all the new ideas you have. Maybe on another day, you write two hundred words. Thatâs fine. Youâre practicing your craft either way, and practice will make you better whether itâs four thousand words or two hundred.
A writer is in command of the story. The writer gets to decide what happens. Readers can offer opinions but it is up to the writer to decide what to do with the characters, the dialogue, and the action in the story. Readers read. Writers write. Readers sometimes get confused about their role. They can read or choose not to read. It is not up to them to decide how to write the story. They can tell me they think my story is doodoo. Why they read it at all if that is their opinion leads me to think I shouldnât take much of what they say seriously when they criticize my writing. I would like the opportunity sometime to criticize their reading habits, but I donât have the time to waste. I have stories to write.
