hi babe, do you have some writing tips? 👉🏽 👈🏽 love you 💋
hi, love, how are you? yesss, i'm happy to share the things that work for me when writing!
i tend to daydream and ruminate on ideas for a long time, so first i try to put what's in my head into words. personally, it helps me to explain the whole idea, with the beginning, middle, and end if possible, and i write it in spanish, which is my first language, as if i were explaining what happens in a movie to a friend. i don't care if it reads well, sounds poetic, or is aesthetically structured. what i need is to create as much mental space as possible. so the first thing would be to write down what you have in mind as if you were telling a friend about a movie or book.
from there, i break down the main idea into more concrete ideas. what is the main conflict? what conflicts arise from it? it might be very overwhelming at first, and you might feel like giving up (i've been there :c), but the more you break down the main idea, the easier it will be to address and develop it.
if you want to write something with multiple parts or chapters, give each part a goal. i find it helpful to map out the parts of a fic with situations or events to address in each part. in guilty as sin, for example, i knew the main idea, and in part 1 i wanted to address their first encounter.
for oneshots or fics that have only one part, it's helpful to divide them into "sections" (i also do this in guilty as sin because the parts are very long). each section then has a goal or a question to answer, a question you might ask yourself but that doesn't necessarily have to be explicitly stated to the readers.
that's when i start writing, tackling the goals of each part or section. the first draft is always… questionable. you'll cringe when you read it, and you'll eventually read it so many times you'll know it by heart. don't overthink it, it might be messy, unhinged, it might not cover everything you want to cover, it might have plot holes. it's the first draft, after all; perfectionism only ruins your mood for writing. write it, and write it badly. the important thing is to write.
if writing the beginning is what's holding you back, then start somewhere else. i don't always start by writing the beginning; often i begin by writing the key scene of the chapter or the scene that inspires the main idea. from there, things fall into place, or i arrange scenes or descriptions.
i like to describe what the character perceives with their physical senses and what's happening in their mind. generally, what happens in our minds is a consequence of the stimuli we perceive. so i ask myself: what is character feeling at this moment? what does x see, what does x feel through touch, what does x hear, what does x taste, what does x listen to? what does x feel in their body? how does x process this in their mind?
you can play with the senses depending on the situation. in a tense situation, you might feel certain senses heighten, like pressure in your ears or a stinging in your eyes from wanting to cry. in a more romantic situation, perhaps your sense of smell becomes more acute, your heartbeat is more noticeable, or you feel the touch of something against your skin.
use your human experience to your advantage. while the characters are fictional, we want them to evoke something in the readers, and what unites us are bodily experiences and how we process them mentally. if you were in the same situation as your character, how would you react? and how would a friend of yours react? this helps me prevent the characters from feeling flat and allows the reader to empathize with them (an excellent technique, in my opinion, for x reader fics).
don't be afraid to do research. it's logical that we aren't walking encyclopedias and we need to research a topic if necessary. personally, i see it as an investment. i don't care if i didn't write a single word that day; if i spent five hours researching something related to the plot, then it's not a "wasted day."
speaking of which, i don't believe there are "wasted days" in the writing process. don't stress about not sitting down to write or not having made any progress. this is something i'm working on, but i've realized that the more pressure i put on myself, the less i feel like writing. so don't pressure yourself, just go with the flow. there might be days when you write for four hours straight, and other days when you just think about things and go to sleep with a question you don't know how to answer.
have fun! use words to your advantage, because you are describing something that only exists inside you. also, keep a water bottle next to you lol because when you're writing you're too lazy to get up and get water.
i hope these help, nonnie! if you want more tips, ask me or send me a dm and i'll help you however i can! ily ( ˶˘ ³˘)♡