hi jive! i want to pursue my writing hobby and wanted to ask if you had any uh, start up tips i guess. i wrote&published two fanfics and they aren't getting thaaaat much attention. do you have any tips/tricks on how to improve writing? maybe things you've learned as you continued writing? thank you!
Oh man, I wish I had better advice for you than to just “Keep going and don’t give up” and some really basic stuff like the following:
It’s normal to want validation for works you’ve made, but keep in mind notes and hits and the like are not measures of your success. If you constantly weigh your works based on how “well” they do, more often than not, you’re going to end up sorely misjudging and discouraging yourself.
Write about topics and ideas that you enjoy! You’re way more likely to keep going with a fic if you like what you’re writing about, rather than something that you think will get you popularity. Don’t make writing a chore for yourself.
Get someone to beta for you and/or give you feedback! Having published fics that have been betad and fics that I publish solo, I can definitely tell you that the fics that are betad and reviewed by someone else read better and also are received better by readers. A good beta will help you determine which parts of your fic need to be improved, which parts to clean up, what mistakes your reader might make due to mistakes in structure, grammar, or setup that you might not have seen no matter how many times you go over it by yourself.
I’m serious about the beta. You can tell the difference in quality between my fics between beta’d work and un-beta’d work quite often.
I know a lot of writers out there like to do the “release into the wild” thing with their fics and never look back on it because they’re so ashamed (I myself am one of them sometimes). Fight that urge! Every now and then reread your own works from a reader’s perspective. Think critically. Some things that may have been obvious to you and your beta might very well be also some of the things that are easily missed by the reader due to writing.
ACCEPT THAT YOU WILL FORGET THINGS AND WRITE YOUR IDEAS DOWN THE MOMENT YOU HAVE THEM. I DON’T CARE IF YOU THINK YOU HAVE A STEEL TRAP MIND, BELIEVE ME, YOU WILL FORGET THOSE BRILLIANT GEMS AND THEY’LL ERODE AND THEN YOU’LL BE LEFT HOLDING A SHINY ROCK AND WONDERING WHAT THE HELL YOU WERE DOING WITH IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. It’s better to have more ideas written down so that you can revisit them later than to struggle and frustrate yourself trying to recall what you’ve forgotten, or worse, scramble to find a gem that was never there to begin with.
On the same note, repeat after me, it’s okay to cut ideas out and reserve them for later or not use them at all. Sometimes puzzle pieces just don’t fit into the story and that’s okay. It’s important to know when pieces fit and are necessary, when pieces fit but are extraneous, and when pieces just don’t fit at all.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and an easy way to trick yourself into getting better, but you’ll never improve if all you’re doing is copying the styles of your favorite writers. Get analytical! What do you like about this writer’s style? What techniques do they use to help bolster it? What do you think they could work on improving? I’m not saying to tear down your writing idols, but incorporate their techniques into your own writing and learn what works and doesn’t work for you!
TAKE BREAKS. You are not a creation machine. You are not a failure if you are not creating. You are human. You need to recover every now and then.
Don’t expect to improve overnight. Writing is a skill, and like all skills, it takes time to develop and improve - especially when it comes to a writing style and finding your “voice” so to speak.
HAVE FUN. Unless you are a paid, professional writer or are working on commission, remember that writing is something you do for fun and for free and as a hobby. If you’re not having fun as you write, you’re not gonna feel like it’s worth it, which is not a feeling anyone wants to have while they’re doing anything
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