Writing a Book

[Slammin Shaman]

I've always been a creative person and have often been singled out for my great imagination in my English classes when I was younger. I've always been good at thinking up unique plots and stories but often struggle when it comes to writing it. I wouldn't say I'm a master at the English language, far from it, I often make small errors and spelling mistakes which is the main reason stopping me from writing a book.

Anyway, I've been reading up on creative writing techniques lately which has inspired me again to start my book. Have any amateur authors got any advice for me in terms of writing styles or narration. My friend who is very much into creative writing as well says in his words "The English language is my bitch". Do you NEED to be an artist of the English language to write a decent book? Is the story more important?

Any advice would be great. Thanks.

Spelling errors and minor punctuation problems are nothing. An editor will find those and let you know what to do. Sit down and start writing. Related to the whole "writing" thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA Ignore the dark and depressing parts

My advice is to just sit down and start writing. Take excerpts every now and then and see what friends or peers think. Hell, put it on here because none of us know you so we're more likely to be honest and not sugar coat it.

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

The two most important things are a) having a good story and b) being able to tell that story well.

You don't need to have an extremely large vocabulary to write a good book. Oftentimes people try to use more fanciful language and end up missing the mark because they overcomplicate the text by doing so. That isn't to say that you don't want to have a good vocabulary for the book, just that you don't want to try to force it because that will hurt you in the end. For example, words like 'stupendous' aren't things you want to replace words like 'great' or 'impressive' with on a whim. The word needs to fit into the situation. To describe something as stupendous, it needs to be that much more great or impressive or you will just give the wrong impression to your readers. If you find yourself looking up synonyms, make sure you understand the weight that the word carries before using it.

Another part of being able to tell your story well is your writing style. You need to be consistent with it for whoever is telling the story. If the story is being told by a single narrator, the entire book should be of the same style, but if the story is being told by multiple people, then the style may have some room to vary between those people, but should still be consistent in terms of keeping the same style for each narrator.

[Kerath]

From the viewpoint of an avid reader -
I doubt your grammar and punctuation have to be perfect - even after the editing process, I still catch typos/errors in published books that I read. However, being able to write concise prose that sets the scene well enough for the reader to visualise what you're trying to show them, without being overly 'wordy' or losing its flow is definitely a skill that's hard to master. God knows, I've read enough published authors that need to work on that skill :P

Also dialogue can be difficult to get right. Quite a few times I've started to read a piece of fiction, gotten to the first piece of dialogue and cringed because it just feels so wooden and forced. Either that or the style is completely inappropriate for the character's age/social status/education etc. Get to know your characters intimately, think about their history, their future, their lives, and they should speak for themselves. That's definitely as important as the plot, as far as I'm concerned. Your characters need to have depth, be interesting and feel real to the reader.

Perhaps I should stop reading amateur fiction, because I swear - the next time I see a supposedly well-to-do character say something like 'anyways' (anyway, anyway, ANYWAY - where the eff does the 's' come from??) I'm going on a rampage :P

Good luck and have fun

[TJ]

I'm not a very big reader when it comes to books and stories but I think it's obvious to say that what words you use to describe a situation are going to have a huge impact on how it is received, I don't think you need to be a "master" as you say, but you definitely need an extensive vocabulary and a "way with words" if you like in order to get your story to sound its best.

Best of luck.

[Deleted]

As someone said earlier, just write down the basic story first. No fancy words or grammar, just something like ''I went to the shop. I left the shop'' and then refine it into more detail, like ''I entered the shop to find a brutal murder. Heart pounding, I raced out of the shop.'' and even then that isn't it's best potential. It takes longer than doing a perfect story first time, but the end result will be much better.
Good luck! I've always wanted to write one, but I can't be bothered.

[Kraenen]

Any advice would be great. Thanks.

Just write.

[semaphore]

Well the problem is most people just don't fucking write. What you need to do is sit down and write the story. Just write it beginning to end. Don't worry too much about whether the writing is good or whether the plot makes sense or too much about details. You just want a basic story idea in words, clay if you will, to be molded into something great. So write the story, don't worry about it being bad, read the story, be critical about the story then refine the story.

This is the best advice IMHO. Like all things, writing improves with practice. The important thing is to actually be doing it. Set a reasonable goal to reach everyday (say 2 pages a day). If you keep it up, you'll have a book in no time. And if you can't manage that, then perhaps writing for a living isn't the way to go.

[Collegeguy]

I use to write quite a bit when I was younger. My grandfather was a writer for a newspaper and did his own work. I never had the time to really finish anything since real life keeps me pretty busy.

One place I used was writing.com
Good place to get you stuff read by other writers and rated. Get their opinion on your material and improvements.

[Endus]

If you're trying to write, you don't have a story to tell yet.

When you've got something really worth writing, it will flow to you. Even if the writing itself isn't easy, you should be able to, for example, tell a voice recorder (or friendly listener!) all about it from start to finish.

The advice I've read from pretty much every major author is basically the opposite of this.

Sit down, write. If you can't write your book, write something else. Write. Don't go back and putter with the first chapter until it's "just right", write. Sitting around waiting for inspiration will often leave you with nothing but blank pages to show for your time. It's not like the movies, where they mope about their apartment for three months and then go "AHA" and write for 2 days and have a 600,000 word manuscript to show for it.

There's also a host of different techniques. Some authors do storytelling-type writing, where they sit down and write the story from start to finish. Others prefer something like the Snowflake method, where you rough out each branch (chapter), then flesh it out, and feel free to bounce around as the story fractally builds itself. If you find yourself stuck on how to write a chapter but think it'll come to you later, the Snowflake method or something similar may be the better way to go, but it requires being able to track in your head what happens when, so you don't write something in Chapter 14 and have them refer to it in Chapter 12, just because you wrote 12 after 14.