#studying writing

[bluebirddiary]

Thoughts on Magic.

Magic is about feelings. The fantasy (which is in an of itself a feeling) that our feelings can change The Rules. We are all sadly bound to this earth and victims of physics as a whole. Magic lets us ask “What if we weren’t tho?”

Magic systems change depending on how writers express these feelings and how what they feel they might impact the world. A persons magic system in a book often tells one about the author, the cost of writing a magic system is the cost of being Known.

Is the magic a narrative means to an end? Is it perhaps something that is rigid and must fit The Rules? Or is it a soft magic system that has a small sticky note behind it saying “I do what I want?”

Magic is about what we feel we need and how we may in the vaunted halls of sorcerous fantasy, accomplish what we need at any given time. Runes, chants, ley lines. Those are all common tropes but not necessarily the whole. We are social animals as human beings, our psyche is impacted by what came before. Is the written word a magic in itself for conveying these ideas? Is the written word therefore a system dedicated to describing systems?

If that is true we have a magic system here on earth. It causes hallucinations of grandeur or gritty grim dark visions. It gives us windows into the perceptions on how a writer solves problems, and how the consequences of those problems may manifest. The consequence of magic is to be known for how we would plunge into these unknowns as individuals.

The consequence of escapism is other people learn how to run away with you.

[thomcantsleep]

The Cheat Codes for Being a Fiction Writer (Some Of Them)

I’ve recently finished my Master’s course for Creative Writing. In fact, I handed in my dissertation at the start of the month, sealing off the educational period of my life possibly for good. I can’t say I learned a lot about being a writer but what I will say is that you pick up a great deal of extremely useful tidbits. The artistic university experience is food for thought and not sustenance for the starved. You’ll be plodding along for a few weeks and thinking that what you’re doing is a waste of time and then, suddenly, you’ll be presented with something that could massage your brains in a way that you weren’t expecting. It might be an experimental poem with a bizarre format or it could be an entirely new form of writing that you’d never heard of before.

Casper David Friedrich - “The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog”

The one thing you won’t find at university (from my experience) is how to actually do the writing bit. There is a lot of debate about whether or not you can even teach it as a subject at all which is an argument you’ll probably never hear the end of. I certainly won’t be able to teach you either but, like music theory, there’s some pathways to the craft that open your brain a lot more to the process.

1. Less is More.

Sounds like a pretty old adage but it’s one of the most useful attitudes when it comes to what is called a “writing economy”. You have to be economical. Any artist in any avenue will sympathize with the compulsion to always add more to a piece of work when you should be taking more out. If you can get the same feelings out in less words, than do so. One of Matt Groening’s directing philosophies behind The Simpsons is being as funny as possible in as little words as possible - even if that means no words at all.

Obviously, there’s a limit to this philosophy that you’ll quickly get to grips with. It’s like changing gears in a car. You have to know when is the write time for what. Read it out to yourself. Is it too long? Are you running out of breath before the end of the sentence? The economy and quickness is also relative to the mood of the piece.

2. “Places need you to go to them“

Credit: u/dienaked

Setting can be easy to overlook if the centrepoint of whatever you’re writing about isn’t the setting. The place exists in your head but you need to let the reader go there and feel what you feel. Use the senses. Think about the possible small fixtures of the room and what they would add if you let the reader in. Like the last point, there isn’t a need to be meticulous because you have to allow the reader’s imagination to imagine.

If you’re thinking about an entire town, my go-to would be Derry in Stephen King’s IT. As you can see from the fanart (u/dienaked on r/stephenking) is that the world is so richly drawn that one is able to produce a map like this at all. I would recommend the book and the latest movie to take notes on how Stephen King makes more than just a backdrop.

3. Understand You’ll Make Mistakes.

An important lesson about making art is that failure is part of the process. Whilst I include the grim acceptance that you don’t have the Midas touch, I specifically mean that it takes a while to get it right. I forget about the first two points sometimes and get swept up in the hotbed of my own brain. It’s easily done. It actually took a few years of me being told those two things to fully get my head around what they properly mean.

I've probably made some mistakes in this very post.

You aren’t God’s gift to the medium; without fault and above judgement. I’ll pack into this point that it does help to get your work read by someone who will be honest with you. It doesn’t have to be a writing professional but someone who reads a moderate amount. Ask them for specific things you want feedback on like story, structure, form and themes.

4. Be Obsessed With Your Characters.

You have time. You don’t have to but it does help to get to know your characters as much as you can. What is their favourite food? Where were they born? What was their childhood like? It helps because it makes dialogue a whole lot easier to write and how they behave come off a lot more natural in your writing. You won’t find yourself arriving at a point where you would be asking yourself: What would they be like in this situation? How would they react?

I say again that you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. It is especially useful if you’re constructing a fantasy or sci-fi world or any kind of series.

5. You Actually Have to Read Books.

Joseph Heller - Catch 22

Yes. I’m sorry but you could really do with reading books fairly regularly. You can’t really get away with not doing it. I thought for the longest time that the books that I had read up to my point in university would be enough to carry me because I’m incredibly influenced by all of them. You get it into your head that you’ll be compared to all the great writers as unfavourably as possible but it just isn’t true.

I have even said to myself that I’ll just end up subconsciously “copying” whatever I’ve read which isn’t really true either. Essentially, if you’re a creative person, anything you will ever do will have some connection to something that you’ve absorbed previously. You can tell yourself that isn’t the case or come up with any excuse not to read. But you really should. Just pick up a book before bed and do half an hour, twenty minutes.

This is all aside from the other obvious benefits of reading.

6. Each Chapter is a Short Story.

Taking this philosophy in your structure will make writing a novel a whole lot easier. Plan out each chapter like a short story. Work out what the conclusion is and what will be the crux of the chapter. It will ease you into the habit of planning generally because you have to plan to some extent.

You’ll also find from taking this advice, you’ll be taking the entire process one step at a time and it could help those who feel bogged down by a project.

7. Be Ruthless.

The editing process is nearly more than half the writing process and you have to be ruthless with what you cut out. There will be times where you come up with something incredible. Your brain will come up with the goods unexpectedly but you have to pause for a moment and question if it really works with what you’re aiming for. If it isn’t then you have to be brave enough to delete it. Nothing stopping you from saving it for later though.

“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” —Stephen King

This also counts for any of the building blocks in your story. If something doesn’t work, you have to be prepared for the possibility of scrapping the lot. You can afford to let the cards collapse.

8. Do What You Like

This is the best one. The greatest thing about being an artist is that you can do what you like and go about it however you want. You are in control of your process and there are so many different methods to get your engine running. I implore that you experiment with all the incentives and prompts that you’ll easily find on the internet for free. Try stuff out and see what works. Personally, my favourite thing to do whilst writing is listening to music or ambience. There are thousands of playlists on Spotify that are specifically for writing/studying/whatever so why not give that a bash. On YouTube, you will not be able to get enough of 10-hour ambient noises that folk have made.

There will be always something that suits your mood and way of working. You just have to find it. Read how other writers go about their process because it won’t be a secret.

My final tip would be that you’re always learning all the time. I’m still learning how to do this Tumblr thing and how to put these kinds of articles together. Your job is to allow the information that you’re taking in to stick to you and put it to use.

Some Books I Would Recommend:

Jeff Vandermeer - Wonderbook

Stephen King - On Writing

Joseph Heller - Catch 22

Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five

Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner

[jay-eddy]

The Truth About Studying Writing and the Lies They Tell You

In my experience, studying writing helps you develop the craft, teaches you ways to approach different writing styles that you may have never explored, teaches you how to add more depth and details to your work, and teaches things like editing, story composition, anthologies and collaborations,and publishing--things that will be helpful to you as you write.

But with all the help studying offers comes a lot of lies that they try to ingrain in you.

1. “There’s a right and wrong way to write.” - Tutors and professors will give you reference material for you to study and emulate and it’ll all be Classics: Dracula, Frankenstein, Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, etc. And while they may be good reads, they are not the be-all and end-all of writing. There isn’t a ‘wrong’ way and a ‘right’ way to write--there is only your way and everyone else’s.

On that note, a lot of people give the advice to read a lot of books, and I absolutely agree. Read around, find genres and tropes you like, let their writing styles inspire you, but don’t compare your writing to others.

2. “Stories have to have meaning”/”Stories have to have a message.” - If you want to write a story with a message, go for it, but stories do not have to have a message. Often stories do have messages, but that comes naturally from the writer’s ideology, world views, and politics; it flows naturally into their writing. The meaning of your story can be interpreted differently by different readers, but trying to write your story around a meaning or force a meaning into your story can end up putting too much pressure on you or make it harder to write. 

Sometimes the meaning behind your story or the message you want to drive across doesn’t have to be something massive. Rick Riordan wrote the Percy Jackson series because he wanted to write bedtime stories with a protagonist who had ADHD and dyslexia so that his son (and kids like him) could feel seen and empowered by representation.

3. “Writing in the hopes of being read is arrogant.” - No. You write in hopes of sharing your stories; that’s not arrogant. If it were, then no one would publish their writing and the stories we know and love would only ever exist in the minds of the writers, not on the page.

4. “Writer’s block isn’t a thing.” - Yes it is, but it’s not because of a lack of motivation or a lack of inspiration, it’s because something in your story isn’t working. Try going back a few lines, a few paragraphs or even back a chapter and re-read it; see where the flow of your story stopped and try reworking it, play around with it and see if you can get it back on track.

Sometimes, stories don’t end up going the way you planned. Don’t be discouraged, just go with the flow and get the story down on the page--you can rework it once it’s done.

5. “Write every day.”/”Make a schedule and stick to it.” - For some people, this just isn’t possible. Some people can make a schedule and stick to it (and if that’s what works for you then go for it) but, whatever reason there may be, not everyone can do that. Instead, try writing when you can. 

Find what works for you. If you find that setting a word limit helps you, then set a goal and work towards it. There’s a fantastic website called Fighter’s Block that can help with that. If you find that working to a time limit helps, then there are apps and websites that can block other apps or internet/websites for a time limit so that you can focus on your work. 

Another version of this one that I’ve heard is “Write X words a day.”. The number is usually 500-1000, sometimes more. But that too might not be possible for a lot of people. One of the biggest things to remember is that progress is progress, whether you write 5 words, 500 words, or 5 thousand words, you should be proud of yourself for making that progress.

[tenoko1]

How do you study writing? And are there any books you would suggest to someone who wants to become a better writer?

Here is a post I made detailing this answer, including books I recommend and pictures of my study materials and process.I hope it helps, and you are more than welcome to send me any more questions you have.

(Send me an Ask)

[jay-eddy]

In my opinion, studying writing is good and it’s bad. Studying writing helps you refine your craft and teach you about different styles of writing, formatting, editing, and all that jazz, but it kills your motivation and creativity. Tutors start limiting your creativity because they want cookie-cutter assignments and they grade you subjectively. Some tutors are great; they’re supportive and encourage you to write what you want to write, but there are others who will tear you to shreds and break your spirit--they’ll make you want to give up.

If you are thinking of studying writing, please don’t let this dissuade you; just prepare yourself. If you are studying writing, please stay strong. You are doing great and you’re going to do great things. Write what you want to write, bend if you have to in order to get the assignments done, but but don’t let them break you.

[emwrote]

Subject of writing lectures is asking yourself "why not?" and trying it.

I sort of did that, and now I'm lazily studying erotica and splatterpunk writing techniques.

Pushing your boundaries a bit/a lot can be good practice, even if you don't release anything.

[emwrote]

I need to read Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys. It's a story about a deadly alien artifact on the moon and people send clones to investigate it.