Writing a Book

[Tommy T]

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.

[Deleted]

Why don't you just write in your native language?

[Deleted]

Write a novel, let a few peeps who ain't your close friends read it and see what they say. Profit.

But if your English is grammatically horrible pile of smoke you might be in for a problem.

EDIT: And as the poster above said, is English your second language? If yes, just write in your mother tongue.

[madethisfor1post]

There are a few members of these forums who are published writers.

Crawford comes to mind. Maybe he'll notice this and come in and help you out.

[Tommy T]

Why don't you just write in your native language?

English is my native language. Just because you can speak a language fluently doesn't make you a master of it.

[Deleted]

there is a guy called terry goodkin who is dyslexic and his novels are insanely terrible, like its actually painful to read.... and he has sold 25million books, so if you have a decent story i dont think it matters about how good your style is, I mean just look at the top ten best sellers, they arent going to win any awards...

[Deleted]

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.

To write a decent book by whose standards? By mine, yes. By yours, who knows?

How old are you exactly? Usually makes the process a lot easier.

[Bitterguy]

If you have friends/family that know English better than you definitely have them proofread it as you right it, nothing distracts me more than obvious grammatical flaws that could have been fixed

[Deleted]

J. K. Rowling mangaged to write a few decently selling novels without being a master of the English language, as did Dan Brown. The big obstacle for you, Lampard, isn't the usage of language, but to get a publisher. They want the big names, they want the big works, they'd rather import something foreign than discovery something new. Which is where you have your advantage - you've got stories, you've got creativity. if you have something unique, someone somewhere will publish it. And for the most part, the grammatical errors and whatnots will be corrected by people who are hired by the publishers to do just that.

The big tip is; make a synopsis first, a very summarised version of your work, send it to publishers and if anyone are interested it is time to write the big 50.000 words+.

Good luck and I hope you'll see your words in print soon.

[Deleted]

English is my native language. Just because you can speak a language fluently doesn't make you a master of it.

Well then i think you should do what Origano suggested. Write a novel and showw it to your friends family, let them read it and tell you what they think. The more you write the more you will improve so i guess the best way to move forward from the point you are at now is just to start writing

[Isrozzis]

If you are writing in english and your english isn't fluent, the story isn't going to flow well. I wouldn't way you have to be a master of the language, but you need to know it very well.

[berkay1212]

good my friend

[zoefschildpad]

I read somewhere (I think it was a signature on this forum actually) that writing the beginning and ending of a book is easy, it's the middle 4/5ths that's hard. That's definitely true. I'm working on a novel myself at the moment, it's the fifth one I've started, furthest I ever got was three chapters before writing myself into a corner. I have more hope for this one though. Give it your best, but don't expect to pen a bestseller on your first attempt.

[Lovestar]

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.

Someone else can always clean up your ideas if you're a little rough with structure and flow, but only you can provide a story you feel passionate about. And you can't fake passion. Until it's there, you'll always just be "trying to write a story" — not writing your story.

Put another way, writing a book is just a mechanical process. There's nothing meaningful or special to it. It's like sex: if you just set out to do it, mechanically, following all the checklists and guidelines for what it's supposed to look like — you won't be having one of those cozy "oh god" movie afterglow scenes, trust me.

Telling a story, on the other hand, is a passionate process that comes from the heart with the help of your head. You can tell a story in lots of ways: film, animation, sock puppets, cardboard dinosaurs. Some people just choose writing as the most comfortable way to do it. Like sex: there's lots of ways to express to someone what you're feeling. It's not the specifics of the method, it's how much passion and heart is sincerely in it that determines how good it is. Rough edges can always be cleaned up and improved with time and feedback, but heart transplants are a bigger issue.

If you're telling a story you care about, you won't need all the anxietal trappings and formatting guidelines to reassure you — you'll be too busy telling it. The rest is just formality.

[Blueobelisk]

I've written a few short stories, as well as other more formal pieces, such as research papers for the kind of thing I experiment in lab as well as research regarding philosophy, theology, etc, and the one thing I'd say for a creative piece is make sure your "voice" is distinctive. When I write my creative pieces I always narrate informally the way I normally speak in real life. That doesn't mean the work is poor, far from it. It's not ghetto vocabulary and speaking, it's more of the way you convey the personality of your narrator.

I also try to make the flow of the story smooth and continuous (unless I'm purposefully slowing the pace). This actually causes me to lose a few details here and there and slightly limits what I can say, but I feel it makes the story so much better if you can make it work.

I hope that makes sense lol.

[Arcilux]

Not published yet, but have finished a few novels and am working on one again this year for NaNoWriMo.

Advice:

1) READ! Most important thing you can do. Read good books. Read bad books. Read poetry. Read essays. Read, read, read. Learn what works and what doesn't, what words authors choose, what dialects they give their characters. Look at how different authors use dialog vs. prose.

2) Write. I don't care if you think your story is a steaming pile of crap. Finish it. Editing and fixing up plot holes is easier than just getting a novel done from start to finish.

3) Don't get caught up on length. If your novel is to short it can be a novella, too long it can be split into a series. That being said, novels are typically around 75K-150K words. It seems daunting, but if you just finish the book (see point 2) you can go back through and add explanation. Add more visuals to the story.

4) If you don't know what is going to happen next, that can actually be a good thing. Let the story take you, let the story tell itself to you, don't try and force the story into doing what you think it should. The story should be natural.

5) Find a community. NaNoWriMo is great for that, as are different writing groups you can find. Encouragement and advice are excellent to any budding author

[Haven]

Language matters, a lot. It's the material of your creation. The difference is like between carving a statue from marble or from frozen shit. What can you do to improve your language? Read. Read a lot. You'll absorb it.

[vizzle]

I've written 3 books in the last year (800 pages, 400 pages, 100 pages respectively), each one is many times better than the last. There are no tricks, no tips, no special things to make you "get it", all of that really is bullshit for people who don't think they can do it. You just do it. If you really want to be a writer, all you have to do is read and write. You can't become an artist if you never pick up the brush. You will get better if you just do it.

---------- Post added 2012-11-12 at 10:25 AM ----------

J. K. Rowling mangaged to write a few decently selling novels without being a master of the English language, as did Dan Brown. The big obstacle for you, Lampard, isn't the usage of language, but to get a publisher. They want the big names, they want the big works, they'd rather import something foreign than discovery something new. Which is where you have your advantage - you've got stories, you've got creativity.

Good luck and I hope you'll see your words in print soon.

Eh...

if you have something unique, someone somewhere will publish it. And for the most part, the grammatical errors and whatnots will be corrected by people who are hired by the publishers to do just that.

No. If your manuscript looks like it's written by someone who has no hold over the English language, agents will not want to work with you. Yes you can have a few typos, but it still needs to be top notch.

The big tip is; make a synopsis first, a very summarised version of your work, send it to publishers and if anyone are interested it is time to write the big 50.000 words+.

No... the only time that ever happens is if you're already an established and proven best selling author.

[Bluesftw]

give it a try, cant be worse than twilight, eh? ^^

[Adam Jensen]

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.

In this business, you can polish a turd into a diamond.