If you're up for sharing more writing tips, how can I tell if what I've written is actually any good? With writing I get stuck in a cycle of feeling like I'm the next Shakespeare while writing but then I'll look over my work a few days later and absolutely hate everything and think it's the most cringe shit ever, then I'll leave it a bit longer and think eh it's not as bad as I thought but still not great and so on. I feel like being forced to write for a grade during school and having everything be marked and assessed and assigned a particular value has robbed me of the ability to critically analyse my own work in a way that's objective and accurate but also fair and realistic. I can analyse other peoples' stuff till the cows come home but I lose all rational thought when it comes to my own stuff
Adding onto that, how do I get to the point where I can stop looking back at my old work and hating everything and wanting to delete it all? Realistically I know finding fault with my old stuff is good bc it means I've grown and improved from where I once was etc but at the same time I wanna enjoy stuff I've made in the past without cringing every time I read it
Hey there Nony, I wanted to let this one percolate a little bit before answering because I've been where you are. And it's a rough time for sure. But aside from my own experiences, I also wanted to get the opinions of some of my writerly friends in the fandom, too, since everyone is a little font of wisdom in their own right.
So I'm going to share their advice alongside my own, because this is kind of a complicated string of questions you're asking. Long post ahead!
@paraparadigm says to Keep Writing: "Write more. Write so much (and so many different things) that eventually the sheer volume bulldozes over self-devouring ego, comparison twitches, or feeling lost, because you don't yet know your own baseline. Coupled with "read more, read everything, read things you enjoy and things you don't, read for the craft as much as the entertainment."
And: "I'd add that when revisiting old writing, it's helpful for me to differentiate between "ew the writing is not as technically solid as it is now" and "ah that's interesting, I guess that's where I was at then, emotionally and psychologically". Old writing is also a sort of archaeological record of your younger self, and that can, in fact, be a bit itchy to revisit, so learning to cherish that without passing judgement can be really helpful. I try to treat it like those little marks one puts on the door jamb to track a kid's height."
@mareenavee says "Part of it is writing more, as Para said and I will always second that. Another part is, honestly, the hardest part. It's to try very hard to get out of the habit of negative self-talk.... There's so much work involved with this but normalizing being proud of your work and having some grace with yourself is part of that answer."
@archangelsunited says "Early on, instead of going “this has to be a masterpiece” I would tell myself my only job was to tell a story. I couldn’t tell a story if I was deleting it. Also, talking about your work helps. The less ashamed I was of my writing, the more people wanted to read it. There is a need to hide your work, and that can lead to a downward spiral all its own. And, 90% of the time, you have to suck at something to learn to be good at something. The work you already wrote shouldn’t be the sum of all your skill, it should be one of those measuring sticks for the moment. Despite previous thought, you won’t be stuck at the same level forever."
@polypolymorph says "In addition to accumulating experience via reading and writing, you also have to be willing to reinvent the wheel. Unfortunately the Process™️ is unique to everyone, and even when you are deliberately mimicking a voice as, say, a ghost writer, you can't expect that 2+2=4 for you. Your process might look more like a Lotka-Volterra equation for the same type of work and that's okay. Trial and error is the best way to figure out what advice actually works for you--and if it doesn't, it doesn't mean you're wrong. Don't get stuck on pop writing advice like a sad roomba does on an upturned rug. Learn when to throw it out."
So there's some advice from some other excellent writers! I hope you've been able to find some value in their advice, because it certainly kicked me in the pants a few times.
As for me, I think, having been where you are, my biggest piece of advice is: Find joy in the craft. Get curious instead of critical. An artist shouldn't down themselves over a rough sketch when they're working out a drawing, so why would a writer do such a thing? Everything you write is practice. Everything you make has value because it builds up to the next thing you make.
At the end of the day, you are the only one who is capable of telling the stories that are in your head. This fact alone gives whatever you put onto paper value, regardless of quality. You are creating magic, in the most literal sense! Creating something out of nothing, conjuring images into someone else's mind from hundreds of thousands of miles away, transcending space and time. It's amazing!
Lastly, my final piece of advice is to just write for fun. Write things nobody else will ever see just because you wanted to get words onto paper. You have to unlearn what was drilled into you in school. You are more than a content creation machine. You are an artist, a wordsmith. And just know that there will never be a day when you look at your own work and say "That's it, I have achieved perfection."
Writing is a life-long journey. Just enjoy the ride!
This generally means setting a character up to deserve one thing and then giving them the exact opposite.
Kill a character off before they can achieve their goal.
Let the bad guy get an extremely important win.
Set up a coup against a tyrannical king. The coup fails miserably.
Don’t always give characters closure.
(Excluding the end of the book, obviously)
A beloved friend dies in battle and there’s no time to mourn him.
A random tryst between two main characters is not (or cannot be) brought up again.
A character suddenly loses their job or can otherwise no longer keep up their old routine
Make it the main character’s fault sometimes.
And not in an “imposter syndrome” way. Make your MC do something bad, and make the blame they shoulder for it heavy and tangible.
MC must choose the lesser of two evils.
MC kills someone they believe to be a bad guy, only to later discover the bad guy was a different person altogether.
Rejection is a powerful tool.
People generally want to be understood, and if you can make a character think they are Known, and then rip that away from them with a rejection (romantic or platonic) people will empathize with it.
MC is finally accepting the Thing They Must Do/Become, and their love interest decides that that’s not a path they want to be on and breaks up with them
MC makes a decision they believe is right, everyone around them thinks they chose wrong.
MC finds kinship with someone Like Them, at long last, but that person later discovers that there is some inherent aspect of MC that they wholly reject. (Perhaps it was MC’s fault that their family member died, they have important religious differences, or WERE THE BAD GUY ALL ALONG!)
On the flipside, make your main character keep going.
Push them beyond what they are capable of, and then push them farther. Make them want something so deeply that they are willing to do literally anything to get it. Give them passion and drive and grit and more of that than they have fear.
“But what if my MC is quiet and meek?” Even better. They want something so deeply that every single moment they push themselves toward it is a moment spent outside their comfort zone. What must that do to a person?
Obviously, don’t do all of these things, or the story can begin to feel tedious or overly dramatic, and make sure that every decision you make is informed by your plot first and foremost.
Also remember that the things that make us sad, angry, or otherwise emotional as readers are the same things that make us feel that way in our day-to-day lives. Creating an empathetic main character is the foundation for all of the above tips.
Two hungry cats saw a big fish on the frozen lake park. They excitedly jump straight to the frozen lake where the fish away, to the front paw is caught is flexible, persevering fish separated by a layer of ice, visible touch them, spent a long time effort, still to no avail. Finally, the only hope, fish sigh, the disappointing.
