#writing.advice

[alceg0]

sometimes u just gotta write shit and love it regardless, bc who else could have created that same shit? absolutely no one. the shit is urs. embrace it.

[tamsanni]

Do you have any writing advice?

this is always such a tough question to answer bc i think everyone should have freedom when they are writing, so giving advice from my personal experience and perspective is definitely not the best way to go about learning how to write. because at the end of the day everyone can write you just need to be able to follow your own rules that you let for yourself, and also obviously know basic grammar and stuff(which is always important).

but like something i think helps people get better with writing(first in terms of diction) is reading. whether it is fanfiction or books, or other things. by reading you’re simultaneously expanding your own vocabulary and also learn different writing styles that then can help strengthen your own. this is something that i personally love and i think has helped me the most.

i know a lot of people like to use pictures as visuals to help write a certain scene. i don’t do this because i prefer to use my own experiences and knowledge(that i’ve acquired through reading and watching things).

music can help you get inspiration. a lot of the time when i’m listening to a song it gives me an idea to write something based around it or it can inspire you to finish something you’ve grown tired of writing.

if you are looking for how to get better at writing i recommend lots of practice. even in a short amount of time if you practice enough your writing skills might improve faster with lots of practice. but that all depends on you! try different styles and stuff.

just find something that helps you, something you enjoy. and don’t force yourself, because if you do, you might get burnt out and start to dislike writing and the process of it—because it will seem more of like a chore rather than something you enjoy doing and want to do.

[alceg0]

i think one of the most important things about your development as a writer isn’t your technical skill or developing your style; it’s learning to fall in love with the act of writing. complaining about being stuck, or about how difficult it is to get words out is fine, don’t get me wrong, but to make the most out of your writing experience you can’t just focus on the shining golden specter of your completed wip hovering in the background... it’s so far away, and comparing your project to its most ideal state isn’t always productive. instead fall in love with the act of writing, with putting words on a page and making something where before there was nothing. love the process, and nothing you write will have been a waste.

[prempanix]

What interests me about crime stories is they usually take your average people and put them in a very extreme situation. They’re never boring stories. Any great narrative has conflict, and you can’t have more conflict than a crime story—or especially a murder story. That just fascinates me—that sort of conflict and what people do in situations that they might not normally be in, or what pushes them to that extreme. Exploring that is fascinating. And then exploring wrongful convictions in particular is fascinating to me for obvious reasons. It’s just because I can’t imagine ever being in that position myself. It’s such a subversion of how our system’s supposed to work. So that’s fascinating. It’s fascinating on a policy level, and it’s fascinating on a personal level.

Pulitzer-winner Pamela Colloff on writing, true crime, and the tension-points between advocacy and accuracy

[prempanix]

One girl, probably six or seven years old, asked how Mrs. Pierce dealt with writer’s block. Precocious, indeed, but that moment made me think—almost every aspiring writer struggles with the terror of a blank mind and a blank page, from time to time.

The cure for "writer's block"? 

Write.

[prempanix]

You are full of your material—your family, your friends, your region of the country, your generation—when it is fresh and seems urgently worth communicating to readers. No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of bringing news. Memories, impressions, and emotions from your first 20 years on earth are most writers’ main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. By the age of 40, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings.

John Updike on point

[prempanix]

The idea of a feature isn’t to tell readers all the info about something. It is to create a world. People should understand the subject of the feature; just telling them lots of cool facts and formative moments isn’t enough. It’s only halfway there.

Priceless advice from Wright Thompson on writing -- particularly, writing for scene

[prempanix]

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your reader will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an ego maniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.

Kurt Vonnegut on the art of writing is much goodness. Consider this other bit of advice, seemingly simple, yet the hardest to follow:

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.