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t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzii666 | hziu750 | 1,646,524,697 | 1,646,530,480 | 2 | 3 | > Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Eh, my goal is certainly to be read. If my books will have the audience of one, then what was the point? I could've just let the book exist in my head and spent those hundreds of hours of writing time watching netflix. | Thank you, I needed to hear this. | 0 | 5,783 | 1.5 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzjec7m | hzii666 | 1,646,540,758 | 1,646,524,697 | 3 | 2 | Jesus | > Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Eh, my goal is certainly to be read. If my books will have the audience of one, then what was the point? I could've just let the book exist in my head and spent those hundreds of hours of writing time watching netflix. | 1 | 16,061 | 1.5 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzijbto | hzijd3n | 1,646,525,245 | 1,646,525,263 | 1 | 3 | >YOURSELF. He says "No." | Not me only writing smut with no real story because it just feels like adding any story to p0*n, without ever publishing anything because it feels so very private and embarrassing, finally feeling like yes, I’m the only one who needs to be satisfied with this. I can’t be the only one writing stuff like that that’s on here though, right? 😬 Thanks for making this motivational post! | 0 | 18 | 3 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzirwma | hzijbto | 1,646,529,382 | 1,646,525,245 | 3 | 1 | I needed this, thank you (っ˘̩╭╮˘̩)っ♡ | >YOURSELF. He says "No." | 1 | 4,137 | 3 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzis48n | hziu750 | 1,646,529,488 | 1,646,530,480 | 2 | 3 | I'm a bit worried about this "do it for u" thing, i mean. I'm not a writer , i'm just someone that loves writing,and sometimes tiny words, i usually write 1 page a day without particular goal ,just for the sake of writing and finding good comparaison/metaphor. Just for my self But i don't want to write a book, i mean, i could write a book, and thats would be great, but thats not my dream, even if i got every day plenty of idea, i can't focus on one idea cause i'm not really emotionally attached to this. For me , every piece of art u release (and writing is an art) is for validation, we can't fool us, why do u show this painting to someone, why do you make someone listen your new piano composition ? Why do you make ur brother read those pages you write for your new story ? Cause u want validation, u want someone to know that you did this, and that's totally fine, the problem is : trying to please to an audience and change yourself, you need to be you but with the intent to have an acknowledgement of your talent (that's my point of view) Also what would you think if you dream to be a writer and all your life you write but no one in the planet read it, even your parent dont read it ? are you a writer ? | Thank you, I needed to hear this. | 0 | 992 | 1.5 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzjec7m | hzis48n | 1,646,540,758 | 1,646,529,488 | 3 | 2 | Jesus | I'm a bit worried about this "do it for u" thing, i mean. I'm not a writer , i'm just someone that loves writing,and sometimes tiny words, i usually write 1 page a day without particular goal ,just for the sake of writing and finding good comparaison/metaphor. Just for my self But i don't want to write a book, i mean, i could write a book, and thats would be great, but thats not my dream, even if i got every day plenty of idea, i can't focus on one idea cause i'm not really emotionally attached to this. For me , every piece of art u release (and writing is an art) is for validation, we can't fool us, why do u show this painting to someone, why do you make someone listen your new piano composition ? Why do you make ur brother read those pages you write for your new story ? Cause u want validation, u want someone to know that you did this, and that's totally fine, the problem is : trying to please to an audience and change yourself, you need to be you but with the intent to have an acknowledgement of your talent (that's my point of view) Also what would you think if you dream to be a writer and all your life you write but no one in the planet read it, even your parent dont read it ? are you a writer ? | 1 | 11,270 | 1.5 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzijbto | hzis48n | 1,646,525,245 | 1,646,529,488 | 1 | 2 | >YOURSELF. He says "No." | I'm a bit worried about this "do it for u" thing, i mean. I'm not a writer , i'm just someone that loves writing,and sometimes tiny words, i usually write 1 page a day without particular goal ,just for the sake of writing and finding good comparaison/metaphor. Just for my self But i don't want to write a book, i mean, i could write a book, and thats would be great, but thats not my dream, even if i got every day plenty of idea, i can't focus on one idea cause i'm not really emotionally attached to this. For me , every piece of art u release (and writing is an art) is for validation, we can't fool us, why do u show this painting to someone, why do you make someone listen your new piano composition ? Why do you make ur brother read those pages you write for your new story ? Cause u want validation, u want someone to know that you did this, and that's totally fine, the problem is : trying to please to an audience and change yourself, you need to be you but with the intent to have an acknowledgement of your talent (that's my point of view) Also what would you think if you dream to be a writer and all your life you write but no one in the planet read it, even your parent dont read it ? are you a writer ? | 0 | 4,243 | 2 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzijbto | hziu750 | 1,646,525,245 | 1,646,530,480 | 1 | 3 | >YOURSELF. He says "No." | Thank you, I needed to hear this. | 0 | 5,235 | 3 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzjec7m | hziygxb | 1,646,540,758 | 1,646,532,595 | 3 | 2 | Jesus | You... Probably should talk to your spouse. Taking on the second job of writing requires support and time. Make sure they are willing to take that on. No one wants divorce over a 500,000 work bronyxmarvel fanfic manuscript | 1 | 8,163 | 1.5 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzjec7m | hzijbto | 1,646,540,758 | 1,646,525,245 | 3 | 1 | Jesus | >YOURSELF. He says "No." | 1 | 15,513 | 3 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzjd1vx | hzjec7m | 1,646,540,056 | 1,646,540,758 | 1 | 3 | I have legit never finished one of my books because only a few pages in I’ll realize that it sounds stupid. | Jesus | 0 | 702 | 3 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzijbto | hziygxb | 1,646,525,245 | 1,646,532,595 | 1 | 2 | >YOURSELF. He says "No." | You... Probably should talk to your spouse. Taking on the second job of writing requires support and time. Make sure they are willing to take that on. No one wants divorce over a 500,000 work bronyxmarvel fanfic manuscript | 0 | 7,350 | 2 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzijbto | hzm4ho0 | 1,646,525,245 | 1,646,596,569 | 1 | 2 | >YOURSELF. He says "No." | I honestly needed to hear this, the way that I write is very dark and can turn a lot of people away. That's why I don't ever tell people the kinds of things that I write because I am trying to avoid the look of judgement and people thinking that I am some kind of disgusting psychopath. | 0 | 71,324 | 2 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzm4ho0 | hzjd1vx | 1,646,596,569 | 1,646,540,056 | 2 | 1 | I honestly needed to hear this, the way that I write is very dark and can turn a lot of people away. That's why I don't ever tell people the kinds of things that I write because I am trying to avoid the look of judgement and people thinking that I am some kind of disgusting psychopath. | I have legit never finished one of my books because only a few pages in I’ll realize that it sounds stupid. | 1 | 56,513 | 2 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzjg8p0 | hzm4ho0 | 1,646,541,803 | 1,646,596,569 | 1 | 2 | That said, it's okay to write for market if that's what makes you happy. I like reading mystery-thrillers. So it made sense that, since it was a market I knew, writing mystery-thrillers was going to be both a) something fun for me to do, and b) something actually sellable. It's okay to write weird stuff, I've written things that I know will never sell via trad markets (and will sell via indie only if I get a rep for my more market-driven stuff), but it's also okay to write for market if the market you're writing for is one you enjoy reading (and presumably writing too). | I honestly needed to hear this, the way that I write is very dark and can turn a lot of people away. That's why I don't ever tell people the kinds of things that I write because I am trying to avoid the look of judgement and people thinking that I am some kind of disgusting psychopath. | 0 | 54,766 | 2 | ||
t7gsf1 | writing_train | 0.91 | There is only ONE person you have to get permission from to write your book… YOURSELF. And you are free to write whatever you so desire. Do not ask your mom, your dad, your teacher, your husband or wife, an editor or publisher, especially do not ask for permission on a subreddit— do not ask anyone for permission. Ask yourself. Write for an audience of one; YOU. No one else. Satisfy only one critic; YOURSELF. But don’t go easy on yourself. Do not be easily self-satisfied. Be the harshest critic you can can be. You’ve spent a lifetime developing your taste and critical eye, so now turn that inward. Make something that you actually think is good. Make something that you believe personally belongs on the shelf next to your favorite books. Or maybe the shelf below. Do not write for the market. Do not write with a payday in mind. Do not write to capture the eye of an editor or to get published. WRITE BECAUSE YOU LOVE WRITING. Write because you enjoy the process of exorcising the story demon you have in your head that is possessing your every thought. Do not write to be read. Write to have written. Write for YOU and only you. That’s the philosophy I live by. I struggled until I figured that out for myself. | hzkwvys | hzm4ho0 | 1,646,578,285 | 1,646,596,569 | 1 | 2 | Cheers! | I honestly needed to hear this, the way that I write is very dark and can turn a lot of people away. That's why I don't ever tell people the kinds of things that I write because I am trying to avoid the look of judgement and people thinking that I am some kind of disgusting psychopath. | 0 | 18,284 | 2 | ||
qngbb5 | writing_train | 0.71 | How much knowledge is gained from asking friends to read your writing opposed to actual writers and critics? Nervous to show my work widespread out of fear of people stealing it, as I’ve been robbed before in real life. But I’m also a bit nervous as I’m just starting out. How valuable is asking friends to read it as opposed to getting advice from a mass scale of fellow writers and critics? What are people’s best experience with getting valid criticism on your work without it getting possible stolen? | hjgdzwy | hjg265d | 1,636,140,609 | 1,636,136,129 | 3 | 2 | It really depends I think. As far as craft, obviously much more is gained from a good critique partner. I've adjusted stories and endings based on non-writer friends feedback, even though they weren't very specific and I wasn't asking for it. Another bit of valuable insight is when a friend shares with someone who I don't know, then relays the feedback. It might be as simple as "She loved it!" That doesn't mean you're done polishing, but it could be an indication that you have a solid story. | Depends on the friends. They may sense something isn’t working but not be able to tell you what. | 1 | 4,480 | 1.5 | ||
qngbb5 | writing_train | 0.71 | How much knowledge is gained from asking friends to read your writing opposed to actual writers and critics? Nervous to show my work widespread out of fear of people stealing it, as I’ve been robbed before in real life. But I’m also a bit nervous as I’m just starting out. How valuable is asking friends to read it as opposed to getting advice from a mass scale of fellow writers and critics? What are people’s best experience with getting valid criticism on your work without it getting possible stolen? | hjg265d | hjgjfvj | 1,636,136,129 | 1,636,142,643 | 2 | 3 | Depends on the friends. They may sense something isn’t working but not be able to tell you what. | I mean, have you even seen your friends? | 0 | 6,514 | 1.5 | ||
qngbb5 | writing_train | 0.71 | How much knowledge is gained from asking friends to read your writing opposed to actual writers and critics? Nervous to show my work widespread out of fear of people stealing it, as I’ve been robbed before in real life. But I’m also a bit nervous as I’m just starting out. How valuable is asking friends to read it as opposed to getting advice from a mass scale of fellow writers and critics? What are people’s best experience with getting valid criticism on your work without it getting possible stolen? | hjg265d | hjh1qav | 1,636,136,129 | 1,636,149,611 | 2 | 3 | Depends on the friends. They may sense something isn’t working but not be able to tell you what. | If your friends or family are talented writers in their own right or professional literary critics/agents, then it might be a good idea to get their opinion. I don't think it would be very helpful to ask just ordinary people though. Criticism is hard. It's easy to say 'I liked it' or 'I didn't like it', but to break down what works and what doesn't work is a skill. It's like a car; anybody can look at a broken car and say 'it doesn't work', but it takes a skilled professional with a lot of experience to say 'oh, there's a cracked gasket here and here's how you fix it.' | 0 | 13,482 | 1.5 | ||
qngbb5 | writing_train | 0.71 | How much knowledge is gained from asking friends to read your writing opposed to actual writers and critics? Nervous to show my work widespread out of fear of people stealing it, as I’ve been robbed before in real life. But I’m also a bit nervous as I’m just starting out. How valuable is asking friends to read it as opposed to getting advice from a mass scale of fellow writers and critics? What are people’s best experience with getting valid criticism on your work without it getting possible stolen? | hjh1qav | hjgw75b | 1,636,149,611 | 1,636,147,463 | 3 | 1 | If your friends or family are talented writers in their own right or professional literary critics/agents, then it might be a good idea to get their opinion. I don't think it would be very helpful to ask just ordinary people though. Criticism is hard. It's easy to say 'I liked it' or 'I didn't like it', but to break down what works and what doesn't work is a skill. It's like a car; anybody can look at a broken car and say 'it doesn't work', but it takes a skilled professional with a lot of experience to say 'oh, there's a cracked gasket here and here's how you fix it.' | i never ask friends or family. family don't care except for that one or two rare people. friends will just blow sunshine in your face. | 1 | 2,148 | 3 | ||
qngbb5 | writing_train | 0.71 | How much knowledge is gained from asking friends to read your writing opposed to actual writers and critics? Nervous to show my work widespread out of fear of people stealing it, as I’ve been robbed before in real life. But I’m also a bit nervous as I’m just starting out. How valuable is asking friends to read it as opposed to getting advice from a mass scale of fellow writers and critics? What are people’s best experience with getting valid criticism on your work without it getting possible stolen? | hjgw75b | hjh590j | 1,636,147,463 | 1,636,151,018 | 1 | 2 | i never ask friends or family. family don't care except for that one or two rare people. friends will just blow sunshine in your face. | It is good for general impressions from prospective fans, if you can trust them to be honest. | 0 | 3,555 | 2 | ||
syxbpa | writing_train | 0.95 | Basic stuff every writer is expected to know This post is intended for budding/novice/fledgling writers who might feel they're missing something basic. Writing 101. I have read mountains of short stories and book chapters written by inexperienced writers, and I have stumbled upon some patterns. In this post, I'll cover basic stuff like story, plot, tension, and briefly explain what mistakes amateur writers tend to make and how to avoid them. # Story and Plot What is story? What is plot? An easy way to distinguish between the two is to say that **plot** is a sequence of meaningful, causally-related events, while **story** is the journey through which we are presented with them. A story can be non-linear, jumping back and forth in time and exploring the perspective of a myriad of different characters, but its plot is rather straightforward: it's the stuff that happens. New writers often write stories where A happens, then B happens, then C happens, then ... You get the picture. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of South Park, suggest that all beats of a story should be linked by either "but" or "therefore". A happens, **therefore** B happens, **but** C happens, **therefore** D happens and so on. Causality is incredibly important in storytelling. Events in a story are meaningful *because* of their causal relationship to other events. And it's what makes readers *engaged*. Short story writer and teacher George Saunders argues in *A Swim in a Pond in the Rain* that stories are series of expectation/resolution moments. Imagine a person standing at the edge of a cliff. You might **expect** that he will jump off. Or perhaps he gets pushed. Placing him there builds an expectation in the mind of the reader, and it's your job as a writer to **resolve** the matter. As you might be aware, unless you are David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, doing something simply because it's unexpected is not very satisfying to your audience. You are supposed to *meet* their expectations, not warp them entirely. And that is why causality matters: the rhythm of expectation/resolution in your story makes your readers hungry for what comes next. Readers expect that events will have meaningful consequences. Otherwise, you are just wasting their time. This doesn't mean you should do *exactly* what readers expect. That would be boring. The trick is to strike the right balance. Too predictable? It's boring. Too surprising? It's frustrating. If you can keep your reader contained within a *Goldilocks zone of anticipation*, you can keep them engaged. # Tension According to Kurt Vonnegut, "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." Characters strive toward goals and they may be brought closer to them or further away from them over the course of the story. Tension grows both when the goal seems to be under threat, and when it appears to be within reach. Vonnegut also advised that a writer should, "Be a sadist!" with regards to their characters. Bring them to the edge of their desire, then take it all away in a brutal fashion. If this sounds like foreplay to you, that's exactly right. Both activities culminate with a climax, after all. The build-up, the anticipation; it's all there. Now, let's look at some common errors related to the sections above. # Error: Trying to be clever You want to appear clever. So you do something as a writer with that singular purpose in mind. What happens? Usually, your readers will groan. When you try to be clever there's often only one person left satisfied: you. # Error: Unresolved expectations When a writer brings something into their story, readers expect that they will matter. That there's a point to them. If you, as a writer, mention there's a rifle hanging prominently on the wall, your readers will assume that the gun will eventually go off. This is known as Chekhov's gun. If nothing happens and it turns out you didn't really have a reason for describing the gun? You will disappoint your readers. They will feel cheated. # Error: Meandering story This falls into the "A and then B and then C"-spiel I went into earlier. Do the events in your story really matter? Are they causally linked? You came up with a beautiful scene, sure, but is it really relevant to the story you are telling? Or is it just kind of ... there? When you ignore causality, your story will be perceived to be meandering; wandering about with no apparent purpose. # Error: Skipping the foreplay If you fail to build anticipation and tension, it will not be satisfying to see your characters achieve their goals. It will feel lackluster and lukewarm and your readers might choose a more skilled ~~lover~~ writer the next time around. # Bonus: The Thing About Genres I will close things off with a matter that is very common: writers mixing genres together with no rhyme and no reason. Novice writers might not even be sure what genre their story should belong to. "It's just a marketing term!" other hapless and inexperienced writers tell them. But genres do matter. Why? Because **genres consist of sets of highly-specific expectations**. These are ready-made expectations that are in effect before even the first sentence of your story. Readers will expect certain tropes, characters, plots, and if you try hard to be clever and original the most likely result is that you will disappoint and frustrate them. Your story, in its basic form, is a **resolution** to preexisting **genre expectations**. Here is a basic rule of thumb: readers generally want about 10% of originality. That might strike you as absurd, but it's true. The other 90%? That's stuff they've seen before. They don't want something entirely novel: they want a twist on something familiar. There are, of course, exceptions. But that's what people generally are like. Familiarity is comforting. Novelty is exciting. If it's too novel and original, you leave the Goldilocks zone (and your readers) behind. You might get a cult following, if you're lucky, but you can pretty much forget about having a mainstream appeal. # Conclusion And ... that's it. These things are all very basic, but it's often expected that writers will pick up on it through some sort of osmosis. I hope this might prove to be useful in your work and that it might have given you something to think about. These are very general ideas, but hopefully you can find a way to apply them to the specifics of your own stories. | hy1n2k7 | hy1s3jk | 1,645,580,916 | 1,645,583,198 | 2 | 13 | Do you have advice for new writers that has to do with contracts? I posted a question in this group about a writers agreement that they wanted me to sign, that I think has a couple shady things in it.... One is that they can terminate for any reason or no reason and the other problem was they do not pay unless the article is published but the original agreement was they're paying for me to write it. If they don't want to publish it that's their choice, but they should pay me when Ive completed writing it.Right? | 1000% on trying to be clever. it's so god damn soggy and obvious and self-indulgent and exactly right serves NO ONE but the author. be insightful maybe funny if you can and emotional but fuck being clever, pardon my french. | 0 | 2,282 | 6.5 | ||
syxbpa | writing_train | 0.95 | Basic stuff every writer is expected to know This post is intended for budding/novice/fledgling writers who might feel they're missing something basic. Writing 101. I have read mountains of short stories and book chapters written by inexperienced writers, and I have stumbled upon some patterns. In this post, I'll cover basic stuff like story, plot, tension, and briefly explain what mistakes amateur writers tend to make and how to avoid them. # Story and Plot What is story? What is plot? An easy way to distinguish between the two is to say that **plot** is a sequence of meaningful, causally-related events, while **story** is the journey through which we are presented with them. A story can be non-linear, jumping back and forth in time and exploring the perspective of a myriad of different characters, but its plot is rather straightforward: it's the stuff that happens. New writers often write stories where A happens, then B happens, then C happens, then ... You get the picture. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of South Park, suggest that all beats of a story should be linked by either "but" or "therefore". A happens, **therefore** B happens, **but** C happens, **therefore** D happens and so on. Causality is incredibly important in storytelling. Events in a story are meaningful *because* of their causal relationship to other events. And it's what makes readers *engaged*. Short story writer and teacher George Saunders argues in *A Swim in a Pond in the Rain* that stories are series of expectation/resolution moments. Imagine a person standing at the edge of a cliff. You might **expect** that he will jump off. Or perhaps he gets pushed. Placing him there builds an expectation in the mind of the reader, and it's your job as a writer to **resolve** the matter. As you might be aware, unless you are David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, doing something simply because it's unexpected is not very satisfying to your audience. You are supposed to *meet* their expectations, not warp them entirely. And that is why causality matters: the rhythm of expectation/resolution in your story makes your readers hungry for what comes next. Readers expect that events will have meaningful consequences. Otherwise, you are just wasting their time. This doesn't mean you should do *exactly* what readers expect. That would be boring. The trick is to strike the right balance. Too predictable? It's boring. Too surprising? It's frustrating. If you can keep your reader contained within a *Goldilocks zone of anticipation*, you can keep them engaged. # Tension According to Kurt Vonnegut, "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." Characters strive toward goals and they may be brought closer to them or further away from them over the course of the story. Tension grows both when the goal seems to be under threat, and when it appears to be within reach. Vonnegut also advised that a writer should, "Be a sadist!" with regards to their characters. Bring them to the edge of their desire, then take it all away in a brutal fashion. If this sounds like foreplay to you, that's exactly right. Both activities culminate with a climax, after all. The build-up, the anticipation; it's all there. Now, let's look at some common errors related to the sections above. # Error: Trying to be clever You want to appear clever. So you do something as a writer with that singular purpose in mind. What happens? Usually, your readers will groan. When you try to be clever there's often only one person left satisfied: you. # Error: Unresolved expectations When a writer brings something into their story, readers expect that they will matter. That there's a point to them. If you, as a writer, mention there's a rifle hanging prominently on the wall, your readers will assume that the gun will eventually go off. This is known as Chekhov's gun. If nothing happens and it turns out you didn't really have a reason for describing the gun? You will disappoint your readers. They will feel cheated. # Error: Meandering story This falls into the "A and then B and then C"-spiel I went into earlier. Do the events in your story really matter? Are they causally linked? You came up with a beautiful scene, sure, but is it really relevant to the story you are telling? Or is it just kind of ... there? When you ignore causality, your story will be perceived to be meandering; wandering about with no apparent purpose. # Error: Skipping the foreplay If you fail to build anticipation and tension, it will not be satisfying to see your characters achieve their goals. It will feel lackluster and lukewarm and your readers might choose a more skilled ~~lover~~ writer the next time around. # Bonus: The Thing About Genres I will close things off with a matter that is very common: writers mixing genres together with no rhyme and no reason. Novice writers might not even be sure what genre their story should belong to. "It's just a marketing term!" other hapless and inexperienced writers tell them. But genres do matter. Why? Because **genres consist of sets of highly-specific expectations**. These are ready-made expectations that are in effect before even the first sentence of your story. Readers will expect certain tropes, characters, plots, and if you try hard to be clever and original the most likely result is that you will disappoint and frustrate them. Your story, in its basic form, is a **resolution** to preexisting **genre expectations**. Here is a basic rule of thumb: readers generally want about 10% of originality. That might strike you as absurd, but it's true. The other 90%? That's stuff they've seen before. They don't want something entirely novel: they want a twist on something familiar. There are, of course, exceptions. But that's what people generally are like. Familiarity is comforting. Novelty is exciting. If it's too novel and original, you leave the Goldilocks zone (and your readers) behind. You might get a cult following, if you're lucky, but you can pretty much forget about having a mainstream appeal. # Conclusion And ... that's it. These things are all very basic, but it's often expected that writers will pick up on it through some sort of osmosis. I hope this might prove to be useful in your work and that it might have given you something to think about. These are very general ideas, but hopefully you can find a way to apply them to the specifics of your own stories. | hy2g8gs | hy2lzts | 1,645,595,198 | 1,645,599,014 | 9 | 12 | Please give some examples of "Error: Trying to be clever." | >When a writer brings something into their story, readers expect that they will matter. That there's a point to them. If you, as a writer, mention there's a rifle hanging prominently on the wall, your readers will assume that the gun will eventually go off. This is known as Chekhov's gun. If nothing happens and it turns out you didn't really have a reason for describing the gun? You will disappoint your readers. They will feel cheated. The gun could be serving another purpose. It could be a way of giving insight into a character. Are they a hunter, self-reliant, possibly to the point of paranoia? Are they rich, perhaps even callous to the common man? Is it an ancient gun, showing their historical acumen? Maybe the gun itself won't be used later, but a similar one will. The gun could also be a red herring. If everything you describe is used, then you will quickly become predictable. With that said, there is something to say for disappointing your fans. Whenever you subvert expectations, you should make the story better, not worse. | 0 | 3,816 | 1.333333 | ||
syxbpa | writing_train | 0.95 | Basic stuff every writer is expected to know This post is intended for budding/novice/fledgling writers who might feel they're missing something basic. Writing 101. I have read mountains of short stories and book chapters written by inexperienced writers, and I have stumbled upon some patterns. In this post, I'll cover basic stuff like story, plot, tension, and briefly explain what mistakes amateur writers tend to make and how to avoid them. # Story and Plot What is story? What is plot? An easy way to distinguish between the two is to say that **plot** is a sequence of meaningful, causally-related events, while **story** is the journey through which we are presented with them. A story can be non-linear, jumping back and forth in time and exploring the perspective of a myriad of different characters, but its plot is rather straightforward: it's the stuff that happens. New writers often write stories where A happens, then B happens, then C happens, then ... You get the picture. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of South Park, suggest that all beats of a story should be linked by either "but" or "therefore". A happens, **therefore** B happens, **but** C happens, **therefore** D happens and so on. Causality is incredibly important in storytelling. Events in a story are meaningful *because* of their causal relationship to other events. And it's what makes readers *engaged*. Short story writer and teacher George Saunders argues in *A Swim in a Pond in the Rain* that stories are series of expectation/resolution moments. Imagine a person standing at the edge of a cliff. You might **expect** that he will jump off. Or perhaps he gets pushed. Placing him there builds an expectation in the mind of the reader, and it's your job as a writer to **resolve** the matter. As you might be aware, unless you are David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, doing something simply because it's unexpected is not very satisfying to your audience. You are supposed to *meet* their expectations, not warp them entirely. And that is why causality matters: the rhythm of expectation/resolution in your story makes your readers hungry for what comes next. Readers expect that events will have meaningful consequences. Otherwise, you are just wasting their time. This doesn't mean you should do *exactly* what readers expect. That would be boring. The trick is to strike the right balance. Too predictable? It's boring. Too surprising? It's frustrating. If you can keep your reader contained within a *Goldilocks zone of anticipation*, you can keep them engaged. # Tension According to Kurt Vonnegut, "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." Characters strive toward goals and they may be brought closer to them or further away from them over the course of the story. Tension grows both when the goal seems to be under threat, and when it appears to be within reach. Vonnegut also advised that a writer should, "Be a sadist!" with regards to their characters. Bring them to the edge of their desire, then take it all away in a brutal fashion. If this sounds like foreplay to you, that's exactly right. Both activities culminate with a climax, after all. The build-up, the anticipation; it's all there. Now, let's look at some common errors related to the sections above. # Error: Trying to be clever You want to appear clever. So you do something as a writer with that singular purpose in mind. What happens? Usually, your readers will groan. When you try to be clever there's often only one person left satisfied: you. # Error: Unresolved expectations When a writer brings something into their story, readers expect that they will matter. That there's a point to them. If you, as a writer, mention there's a rifle hanging prominently on the wall, your readers will assume that the gun will eventually go off. This is known as Chekhov's gun. If nothing happens and it turns out you didn't really have a reason for describing the gun? You will disappoint your readers. They will feel cheated. # Error: Meandering story This falls into the "A and then B and then C"-spiel I went into earlier. Do the events in your story really matter? Are they causally linked? You came up with a beautiful scene, sure, but is it really relevant to the story you are telling? Or is it just kind of ... there? When you ignore causality, your story will be perceived to be meandering; wandering about with no apparent purpose. # Error: Skipping the foreplay If you fail to build anticipation and tension, it will not be satisfying to see your characters achieve their goals. It will feel lackluster and lukewarm and your readers might choose a more skilled ~~lover~~ writer the next time around. # Bonus: The Thing About Genres I will close things off with a matter that is very common: writers mixing genres together with no rhyme and no reason. Novice writers might not even be sure what genre their story should belong to. "It's just a marketing term!" other hapless and inexperienced writers tell them. But genres do matter. Why? Because **genres consist of sets of highly-specific expectations**. These are ready-made expectations that are in effect before even the first sentence of your story. Readers will expect certain tropes, characters, plots, and if you try hard to be clever and original the most likely result is that you will disappoint and frustrate them. Your story, in its basic form, is a **resolution** to preexisting **genre expectations**. Here is a basic rule of thumb: readers generally want about 10% of originality. That might strike you as absurd, but it's true. The other 90%? That's stuff they've seen before. They don't want something entirely novel: they want a twist on something familiar. There are, of course, exceptions. But that's what people generally are like. Familiarity is comforting. Novelty is exciting. If it's too novel and original, you leave the Goldilocks zone (and your readers) behind. You might get a cult following, if you're lucky, but you can pretty much forget about having a mainstream appeal. # Conclusion And ... that's it. These things are all very basic, but it's often expected that writers will pick up on it through some sort of osmosis. I hope this might prove to be useful in your work and that it might have given you something to think about. These are very general ideas, but hopefully you can find a way to apply them to the specifics of your own stories. | hy2ks78 | hy2lzts | 1,645,598,167 | 1,645,599,014 | 4 | 12 | These are all interesting points! I like the part about 10% originality. I’m writing a book that’s like 90% original concepts and because of that I doubt anyone will ever appreciate as much as I do. Doesn’t matter though. I couldn’t write a book that I wasn’t in love with, and authenticity is exhilarating to me. I wouldn’t enjoy writing if I didn’t let myself be as creative as I possibly can be, and most of the fun for me as a writer is about figuring out how to ground ridiculous premises. Edit: I wrote this when I was pretty tired last night and I realize in hindsight it reads as pretty pretentious… I like to think that I’m writing something pretty unique but 90% is pretty high. Either way, I like coming up with wacky shit and that’s the point I wanted to convey. | >When a writer brings something into their story, readers expect that they will matter. That there's a point to them. If you, as a writer, mention there's a rifle hanging prominently on the wall, your readers will assume that the gun will eventually go off. This is known as Chekhov's gun. If nothing happens and it turns out you didn't really have a reason for describing the gun? You will disappoint your readers. They will feel cheated. The gun could be serving another purpose. It could be a way of giving insight into a character. Are they a hunter, self-reliant, possibly to the point of paranoia? Are they rich, perhaps even callous to the common man? Is it an ancient gun, showing their historical acumen? Maybe the gun itself won't be used later, but a similar one will. The gun could also be a red herring. If everything you describe is used, then you will quickly become predictable. With that said, there is something to say for disappointing your fans. Whenever you subvert expectations, you should make the story better, not worse. | 0 | 847 | 3 | ||
syxbpa | writing_train | 0.95 | Basic stuff every writer is expected to know This post is intended for budding/novice/fledgling writers who might feel they're missing something basic. Writing 101. I have read mountains of short stories and book chapters written by inexperienced writers, and I have stumbled upon some patterns. In this post, I'll cover basic stuff like story, plot, tension, and briefly explain what mistakes amateur writers tend to make and how to avoid them. # Story and Plot What is story? What is plot? An easy way to distinguish between the two is to say that **plot** is a sequence of meaningful, causally-related events, while **story** is the journey through which we are presented with them. A story can be non-linear, jumping back and forth in time and exploring the perspective of a myriad of different characters, but its plot is rather straightforward: it's the stuff that happens. New writers often write stories where A happens, then B happens, then C happens, then ... You get the picture. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of South Park, suggest that all beats of a story should be linked by either "but" or "therefore". A happens, **therefore** B happens, **but** C happens, **therefore** D happens and so on. Causality is incredibly important in storytelling. Events in a story are meaningful *because* of their causal relationship to other events. And it's what makes readers *engaged*. Short story writer and teacher George Saunders argues in *A Swim in a Pond in the Rain* that stories are series of expectation/resolution moments. Imagine a person standing at the edge of a cliff. You might **expect** that he will jump off. Or perhaps he gets pushed. Placing him there builds an expectation in the mind of the reader, and it's your job as a writer to **resolve** the matter. As you might be aware, unless you are David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, doing something simply because it's unexpected is not very satisfying to your audience. You are supposed to *meet* their expectations, not warp them entirely. And that is why causality matters: the rhythm of expectation/resolution in your story makes your readers hungry for what comes next. Readers expect that events will have meaningful consequences. Otherwise, you are just wasting their time. This doesn't mean you should do *exactly* what readers expect. That would be boring. The trick is to strike the right balance. Too predictable? It's boring. Too surprising? It's frustrating. If you can keep your reader contained within a *Goldilocks zone of anticipation*, you can keep them engaged. # Tension According to Kurt Vonnegut, "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." Characters strive toward goals and they may be brought closer to them or further away from them over the course of the story. Tension grows both when the goal seems to be under threat, and when it appears to be within reach. Vonnegut also advised that a writer should, "Be a sadist!" with regards to their characters. Bring them to the edge of their desire, then take it all away in a brutal fashion. If this sounds like foreplay to you, that's exactly right. Both activities culminate with a climax, after all. The build-up, the anticipation; it's all there. Now, let's look at some common errors related to the sections above. # Error: Trying to be clever You want to appear clever. So you do something as a writer with that singular purpose in mind. What happens? Usually, your readers will groan. When you try to be clever there's often only one person left satisfied: you. # Error: Unresolved expectations When a writer brings something into their story, readers expect that they will matter. That there's a point to them. If you, as a writer, mention there's a rifle hanging prominently on the wall, your readers will assume that the gun will eventually go off. This is known as Chekhov's gun. If nothing happens and it turns out you didn't really have a reason for describing the gun? You will disappoint your readers. They will feel cheated. # Error: Meandering story This falls into the "A and then B and then C"-spiel I went into earlier. Do the events in your story really matter? Are they causally linked? You came up with a beautiful scene, sure, but is it really relevant to the story you are telling? Or is it just kind of ... there? When you ignore causality, your story will be perceived to be meandering; wandering about with no apparent purpose. # Error: Skipping the foreplay If you fail to build anticipation and tension, it will not be satisfying to see your characters achieve their goals. It will feel lackluster and lukewarm and your readers might choose a more skilled ~~lover~~ writer the next time around. # Bonus: The Thing About Genres I will close things off with a matter that is very common: writers mixing genres together with no rhyme and no reason. Novice writers might not even be sure what genre their story should belong to. "It's just a marketing term!" other hapless and inexperienced writers tell them. But genres do matter. Why? Because **genres consist of sets of highly-specific expectations**. These are ready-made expectations that are in effect before even the first sentence of your story. Readers will expect certain tropes, characters, plots, and if you try hard to be clever and original the most likely result is that you will disappoint and frustrate them. Your story, in its basic form, is a **resolution** to preexisting **genre expectations**. Here is a basic rule of thumb: readers generally want about 10% of originality. That might strike you as absurd, but it's true. The other 90%? That's stuff they've seen before. They don't want something entirely novel: they want a twist on something familiar. There are, of course, exceptions. But that's what people generally are like. Familiarity is comforting. Novelty is exciting. If it's too novel and original, you leave the Goldilocks zone (and your readers) behind. You might get a cult following, if you're lucky, but you can pretty much forget about having a mainstream appeal. # Conclusion And ... that's it. These things are all very basic, but it's often expected that writers will pick up on it through some sort of osmosis. I hope this might prove to be useful in your work and that it might have given you something to think about. These are very general ideas, but hopefully you can find a way to apply them to the specifics of your own stories. | hy2lzts | hy1n2k7 | 1,645,599,014 | 1,645,580,916 | 12 | 2 | >When a writer brings something into their story, readers expect that they will matter. That there's a point to them. If you, as a writer, mention there's a rifle hanging prominently on the wall, your readers will assume that the gun will eventually go off. This is known as Chekhov's gun. If nothing happens and it turns out you didn't really have a reason for describing the gun? You will disappoint your readers. They will feel cheated. The gun could be serving another purpose. It could be a way of giving insight into a character. Are they a hunter, self-reliant, possibly to the point of paranoia? Are they rich, perhaps even callous to the common man? Is it an ancient gun, showing their historical acumen? Maybe the gun itself won't be used later, but a similar one will. The gun could also be a red herring. If everything you describe is used, then you will quickly become predictable. With that said, there is something to say for disappointing your fans. Whenever you subvert expectations, you should make the story better, not worse. | Do you have advice for new writers that has to do with contracts? I posted a question in this group about a writers agreement that they wanted me to sign, that I think has a couple shady things in it.... One is that they can terminate for any reason or no reason and the other problem was they do not pay unless the article is published but the original agreement was they're paying for me to write it. If they don't want to publish it that's their choice, but they should pay me when Ive completed writing it.Right? | 1 | 18,098 | 6 | ||
syxbpa | writing_train | 0.95 | Basic stuff every writer is expected to know This post is intended for budding/novice/fledgling writers who might feel they're missing something basic. Writing 101. I have read mountains of short stories and book chapters written by inexperienced writers, and I have stumbled upon some patterns. In this post, I'll cover basic stuff like story, plot, tension, and briefly explain what mistakes amateur writers tend to make and how to avoid them. # Story and Plot What is story? What is plot? An easy way to distinguish between the two is to say that **plot** is a sequence of meaningful, causally-related events, while **story** is the journey through which we are presented with them. A story can be non-linear, jumping back and forth in time and exploring the perspective of a myriad of different characters, but its plot is rather straightforward: it's the stuff that happens. New writers often write stories where A happens, then B happens, then C happens, then ... You get the picture. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of South Park, suggest that all beats of a story should be linked by either "but" or "therefore". A happens, **therefore** B happens, **but** C happens, **therefore** D happens and so on. Causality is incredibly important in storytelling. Events in a story are meaningful *because* of their causal relationship to other events. And it's what makes readers *engaged*. Short story writer and teacher George Saunders argues in *A Swim in a Pond in the Rain* that stories are series of expectation/resolution moments. Imagine a person standing at the edge of a cliff. You might **expect** that he will jump off. Or perhaps he gets pushed. Placing him there builds an expectation in the mind of the reader, and it's your job as a writer to **resolve** the matter. As you might be aware, unless you are David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, doing something simply because it's unexpected is not very satisfying to your audience. You are supposed to *meet* their expectations, not warp them entirely. And that is why causality matters: the rhythm of expectation/resolution in your story makes your readers hungry for what comes next. Readers expect that events will have meaningful consequences. Otherwise, you are just wasting their time. This doesn't mean you should do *exactly* what readers expect. That would be boring. The trick is to strike the right balance. Too predictable? It's boring. Too surprising? It's frustrating. If you can keep your reader contained within a *Goldilocks zone of anticipation*, you can keep them engaged. # Tension According to Kurt Vonnegut, "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." Characters strive toward goals and they may be brought closer to them or further away from them over the course of the story. Tension grows both when the goal seems to be under threat, and when it appears to be within reach. Vonnegut also advised that a writer should, "Be a sadist!" with regards to their characters. Bring them to the edge of their desire, then take it all away in a brutal fashion. If this sounds like foreplay to you, that's exactly right. Both activities culminate with a climax, after all. The build-up, the anticipation; it's all there. Now, let's look at some common errors related to the sections above. # Error: Trying to be clever You want to appear clever. So you do something as a writer with that singular purpose in mind. What happens? Usually, your readers will groan. When you try to be clever there's often only one person left satisfied: you. # Error: Unresolved expectations When a writer brings something into their story, readers expect that they will matter. That there's a point to them. If you, as a writer, mention there's a rifle hanging prominently on the wall, your readers will assume that the gun will eventually go off. This is known as Chekhov's gun. If nothing happens and it turns out you didn't really have a reason for describing the gun? You will disappoint your readers. They will feel cheated. # Error: Meandering story This falls into the "A and then B and then C"-spiel I went into earlier. Do the events in your story really matter? Are they causally linked? You came up with a beautiful scene, sure, but is it really relevant to the story you are telling? Or is it just kind of ... there? When you ignore causality, your story will be perceived to be meandering; wandering about with no apparent purpose. # Error: Skipping the foreplay If you fail to build anticipation and tension, it will not be satisfying to see your characters achieve their goals. It will feel lackluster and lukewarm and your readers might choose a more skilled ~~lover~~ writer the next time around. # Bonus: The Thing About Genres I will close things off with a matter that is very common: writers mixing genres together with no rhyme and no reason. Novice writers might not even be sure what genre their story should belong to. "It's just a marketing term!" other hapless and inexperienced writers tell them. But genres do matter. Why? Because **genres consist of sets of highly-specific expectations**. These are ready-made expectations that are in effect before even the first sentence of your story. Readers will expect certain tropes, characters, plots, and if you try hard to be clever and original the most likely result is that you will disappoint and frustrate them. Your story, in its basic form, is a **resolution** to preexisting **genre expectations**. Here is a basic rule of thumb: readers generally want about 10% of originality. That might strike you as absurd, but it's true. The other 90%? That's stuff they've seen before. They don't want something entirely novel: they want a twist on something familiar. There are, of course, exceptions. But that's what people generally are like. Familiarity is comforting. Novelty is exciting. If it's too novel and original, you leave the Goldilocks zone (and your readers) behind. You might get a cult following, if you're lucky, but you can pretty much forget about having a mainstream appeal. # Conclusion And ... that's it. These things are all very basic, but it's often expected that writers will pick up on it through some sort of osmosis. I hope this might prove to be useful in your work and that it might have given you something to think about. These are very general ideas, but hopefully you can find a way to apply them to the specifics of your own stories. | hy1n2k7 | hy2g8gs | 1,645,580,916 | 1,645,595,198 | 2 | 9 | Do you have advice for new writers that has to do with contracts? I posted a question in this group about a writers agreement that they wanted me to sign, that I think has a couple shady things in it.... One is that they can terminate for any reason or no reason and the other problem was they do not pay unless the article is published but the original agreement was they're paying for me to write it. If they don't want to publish it that's their choice, but they should pay me when Ive completed writing it.Right? | Please give some examples of "Error: Trying to be clever." | 0 | 14,282 | 4.5 | ||
syxbpa | writing_train | 0.95 | Basic stuff every writer is expected to know This post is intended for budding/novice/fledgling writers who might feel they're missing something basic. Writing 101. I have read mountains of short stories and book chapters written by inexperienced writers, and I have stumbled upon some patterns. In this post, I'll cover basic stuff like story, plot, tension, and briefly explain what mistakes amateur writers tend to make and how to avoid them. # Story and Plot What is story? What is plot? An easy way to distinguish between the two is to say that **plot** is a sequence of meaningful, causally-related events, while **story** is the journey through which we are presented with them. A story can be non-linear, jumping back and forth in time and exploring the perspective of a myriad of different characters, but its plot is rather straightforward: it's the stuff that happens. New writers often write stories where A happens, then B happens, then C happens, then ... You get the picture. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of South Park, suggest that all beats of a story should be linked by either "but" or "therefore". A happens, **therefore** B happens, **but** C happens, **therefore** D happens and so on. Causality is incredibly important in storytelling. Events in a story are meaningful *because* of their causal relationship to other events. And it's what makes readers *engaged*. Short story writer and teacher George Saunders argues in *A Swim in a Pond in the Rain* that stories are series of expectation/resolution moments. Imagine a person standing at the edge of a cliff. You might **expect** that he will jump off. Or perhaps he gets pushed. Placing him there builds an expectation in the mind of the reader, and it's your job as a writer to **resolve** the matter. As you might be aware, unless you are David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, doing something simply because it's unexpected is not very satisfying to your audience. You are supposed to *meet* their expectations, not warp them entirely. And that is why causality matters: the rhythm of expectation/resolution in your story makes your readers hungry for what comes next. Readers expect that events will have meaningful consequences. Otherwise, you are just wasting their time. This doesn't mean you should do *exactly* what readers expect. That would be boring. The trick is to strike the right balance. Too predictable? It's boring. Too surprising? It's frustrating. If you can keep your reader contained within a *Goldilocks zone of anticipation*, you can keep them engaged. # Tension According to Kurt Vonnegut, "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." Characters strive toward goals and they may be brought closer to them or further away from them over the course of the story. Tension grows both when the goal seems to be under threat, and when it appears to be within reach. Vonnegut also advised that a writer should, "Be a sadist!" with regards to their characters. Bring them to the edge of their desire, then take it all away in a brutal fashion. If this sounds like foreplay to you, that's exactly right. Both activities culminate with a climax, after all. The build-up, the anticipation; it's all there. Now, let's look at some common errors related to the sections above. # Error: Trying to be clever You want to appear clever. So you do something as a writer with that singular purpose in mind. What happens? Usually, your readers will groan. When you try to be clever there's often only one person left satisfied: you. # Error: Unresolved expectations When a writer brings something into their story, readers expect that they will matter. That there's a point to them. If you, as a writer, mention there's a rifle hanging prominently on the wall, your readers will assume that the gun will eventually go off. This is known as Chekhov's gun. If nothing happens and it turns out you didn't really have a reason for describing the gun? You will disappoint your readers. They will feel cheated. # Error: Meandering story This falls into the "A and then B and then C"-spiel I went into earlier. Do the events in your story really matter? Are they causally linked? You came up with a beautiful scene, sure, but is it really relevant to the story you are telling? Or is it just kind of ... there? When you ignore causality, your story will be perceived to be meandering; wandering about with no apparent purpose. # Error: Skipping the foreplay If you fail to build anticipation and tension, it will not be satisfying to see your characters achieve their goals. It will feel lackluster and lukewarm and your readers might choose a more skilled ~~lover~~ writer the next time around. # Bonus: The Thing About Genres I will close things off with a matter that is very common: writers mixing genres together with no rhyme and no reason. Novice writers might not even be sure what genre their story should belong to. "It's just a marketing term!" other hapless and inexperienced writers tell them. But genres do matter. Why? Because **genres consist of sets of highly-specific expectations**. These are ready-made expectations that are in effect before even the first sentence of your story. Readers will expect certain tropes, characters, plots, and if you try hard to be clever and original the most likely result is that you will disappoint and frustrate them. Your story, in its basic form, is a **resolution** to preexisting **genre expectations**. Here is a basic rule of thumb: readers generally want about 10% of originality. That might strike you as absurd, but it's true. The other 90%? That's stuff they've seen before. They don't want something entirely novel: they want a twist on something familiar. There are, of course, exceptions. But that's what people generally are like. Familiarity is comforting. Novelty is exciting. If it's too novel and original, you leave the Goldilocks zone (and your readers) behind. You might get a cult following, if you're lucky, but you can pretty much forget about having a mainstream appeal. # Conclusion And ... that's it. These things are all very basic, but it's often expected that writers will pick up on it through some sort of osmosis. I hope this might prove to be useful in your work and that it might have given you something to think about. These are very general ideas, but hopefully you can find a way to apply them to the specifics of your own stories. | hy2ks78 | hy1n2k7 | 1,645,598,167 | 1,645,580,916 | 4 | 2 | These are all interesting points! I like the part about 10% originality. I’m writing a book that’s like 90% original concepts and because of that I doubt anyone will ever appreciate as much as I do. Doesn’t matter though. I couldn’t write a book that I wasn’t in love with, and authenticity is exhilarating to me. I wouldn’t enjoy writing if I didn’t let myself be as creative as I possibly can be, and most of the fun for me as a writer is about figuring out how to ground ridiculous premises. Edit: I wrote this when I was pretty tired last night and I realize in hindsight it reads as pretty pretentious… I like to think that I’m writing something pretty unique but 90% is pretty high. Either way, I like coming up with wacky shit and that’s the point I wanted to convey. | Do you have advice for new writers that has to do with contracts? I posted a question in this group about a writers agreement that they wanted me to sign, that I think has a couple shady things in it.... One is that they can terminate for any reason or no reason and the other problem was they do not pay unless the article is published but the original agreement was they're paying for me to write it. If they don't want to publish it that's their choice, but they should pay me when Ive completed writing it.Right? | 1 | 17,251 | 2 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htzbv67 | htzfcwi | 1,642,999,613 | 1,643,001,508 | 2 | 6 | I don't submit to agents or publishers until a novel is finished and I can't see any additional ways to improve it. Not much point until then, in my opinion. I expect, if I was interested in self-publishing, that I would do the same with a hired editor. From experience after selling a couple of books, that's when the real editing begins! | I don't understand. If you want to make changes to your novel why would you not make those changes before considering giving a draft to someone else for feedback? You want feedback on scenes you already know you're going to cut and throw away? If you're stuck on your story, and have done everything you possibly could for the manuscript, THEN give it to someone to read for help. And tell them you're stuck. If you have more to write on it then the novel clearly isn't finished. So don't give it to anyone yet. Once you're finished AND have revised it to the best ability you have in you (that is, you don't what else to do to it to make it any better) THEN give it to someone for feedback and tell them that--for all intents and puproses--this is the story and you want their feedback on how it reads. Final note: In order to gain solid feedback from people who seriously consider your work, you have to respect your readers. Don't give them work that isn't finished (UNLESS you tell them that's what you're doing and you're doing it for specific reason that you're hoping they can help you with.) Don't give them work you're going to cut down or add to. Make their experience the best you can. Respect their time. They're doing you a favor by reading your book, not the other way around. And Alpha/beta. No one gives a fuck what you call them. Published authors call their first betas all the time. People in trad publishing only care if you have a marketable story that they can sell. | 0 | 1,895 | 3 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htyrq0d | htzfcwi | 1,642,990,881 | 1,643,001,508 | 1 | 6 | Depends on a lot of factors. The first being your intended route to publishing. If you're going to self-publish and want feedback on a first draft, I suggest a developmental editor. They look at the big picture, character development, find plot holes, weak areas, etc. You can incorporate what feedback you like with your ideas and then revise. After that, you can send it to beta readers who provide the reader's perspective. You find what common comments they have, address those, then send it to a copyeditor/line editor. After that editor, you revise again, then begin the process of finding a cover, ARC readers, etc. If you are seeking traditional publishing, then I recommend self-editing and making all changes you want to make, then send to a few beta readers. After that, you revise based on their feedback, then query and revise based on any feedback you receive with each round of queries. | I don't understand. If you want to make changes to your novel why would you not make those changes before considering giving a draft to someone else for feedback? You want feedback on scenes you already know you're going to cut and throw away? If you're stuck on your story, and have done everything you possibly could for the manuscript, THEN give it to someone to read for help. And tell them you're stuck. If you have more to write on it then the novel clearly isn't finished. So don't give it to anyone yet. Once you're finished AND have revised it to the best ability you have in you (that is, you don't what else to do to it to make it any better) THEN give it to someone for feedback and tell them that--for all intents and puproses--this is the story and you want their feedback on how it reads. Final note: In order to gain solid feedback from people who seriously consider your work, you have to respect your readers. Don't give them work that isn't finished (UNLESS you tell them that's what you're doing and you're doing it for specific reason that you're hoping they can help you with.) Don't give them work you're going to cut down or add to. Make their experience the best you can. Respect their time. They're doing you a favor by reading your book, not the other way around. And Alpha/beta. No one gives a fuck what you call them. Published authors call their first betas all the time. People in trad publishing only care if you have a marketable story that they can sell. | 0 | 10,627 | 6 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htyta4z | htzfcwi | 1,642,991,505 | 1,643,001,508 | 1 | 6 | I've seen writers on YouTube say you should put the story away and don't look at it for a week, Don't think about it at all for 7 days so that your brain can rest and "forget" the story. After a week is up you read over the story and see if things still work or if you need to change stuff. After that first read, it's up to you if you want to send it to a professional or repeat the process 1 more time. | I don't understand. If you want to make changes to your novel why would you not make those changes before considering giving a draft to someone else for feedback? You want feedback on scenes you already know you're going to cut and throw away? If you're stuck on your story, and have done everything you possibly could for the manuscript, THEN give it to someone to read for help. And tell them you're stuck. If you have more to write on it then the novel clearly isn't finished. So don't give it to anyone yet. Once you're finished AND have revised it to the best ability you have in you (that is, you don't what else to do to it to make it any better) THEN give it to someone for feedback and tell them that--for all intents and puproses--this is the story and you want their feedback on how it reads. Final note: In order to gain solid feedback from people who seriously consider your work, you have to respect your readers. Don't give them work that isn't finished (UNLESS you tell them that's what you're doing and you're doing it for specific reason that you're hoping they can help you with.) Don't give them work you're going to cut down or add to. Make their experience the best you can. Respect their time. They're doing you a favor by reading your book, not the other way around. And Alpha/beta. No one gives a fuck what you call them. Published authors call their first betas all the time. People in trad publishing only care if you have a marketable story that they can sell. | 0 | 10,003 | 6 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htyr9re | htzfcwi | 1,642,990,691 | 1,643,001,508 | -1 | 6 | I would get eyes on it before you make overhauls unless you know there are major problems. Start with a writers group. They get to see it chapter by chapter- gives you time to edit as you go. Cheers! | I don't understand. If you want to make changes to your novel why would you not make those changes before considering giving a draft to someone else for feedback? You want feedback on scenes you already know you're going to cut and throw away? If you're stuck on your story, and have done everything you possibly could for the manuscript, THEN give it to someone to read for help. And tell them you're stuck. If you have more to write on it then the novel clearly isn't finished. So don't give it to anyone yet. Once you're finished AND have revised it to the best ability you have in you (that is, you don't what else to do to it to make it any better) THEN give it to someone for feedback and tell them that--for all intents and puproses--this is the story and you want their feedback on how it reads. Final note: In order to gain solid feedback from people who seriously consider your work, you have to respect your readers. Don't give them work that isn't finished (UNLESS you tell them that's what you're doing and you're doing it for specific reason that you're hoping they can help you with.) Don't give them work you're going to cut down or add to. Make their experience the best you can. Respect their time. They're doing you a favor by reading your book, not the other way around. And Alpha/beta. No one gives a fuck what you call them. Published authors call their first betas all the time. People in trad publishing only care if you have a marketable story that they can sell. | 0 | 10,817 | -6 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htyzns7 | htyrq0d | 1,642,993,974 | 1,642,990,881 | 6 | 1 | Okay, so this is a pet peeve of mine and I'm going to rant. The rant's not directed at you, you didn't do anything wrong. My rant is directed at the internet in general and its ability to spread misinformation so widespread that 99.99% of writers online have no clue a beta reader even is. My betas receive the physical proof copy paperback. So it's not only already gone through 4 to 7 self edits and 3 to 7 rewrites, it's also already gone to outside editors as well, and has already been formatted and type set. It's already been accepted by the publisher, and it's about to go to press with in a matter of days... NOT it'sabout to start query rounds to agents. I don't know where the internet trend of alpha readers being called beta readers comes from but, its alpha readers who read in the early stages. Not beta readers. There is so little accurate info online about how the publishing industry works and in what order publishing houses do things. Beta readers read physical proof copy paperbacks 5 to 10 days before the final editor paperbacks start shipping to bookstores. Their job is the check the printing and typesetting, to make sure the press machine isn't malfunctioning or the type set wrong. This is a way beta reading has been done since at least the 1920s. Reading a story and telling you their feelings and likes and dislikes and any errors they found, is the job of alpha readers (before publishing) and book reviewers (after publishing). I'm not sure what exactly staeted this weird trend the internet has with slapping unedited chapters and segments only and calling it beta reading, or how it became so prevalent that most every one on the internet accepts this is what beta readers are, because that's not what beta reading is in the actual real world publishing industry and every legitimate agent, editor, and publisher is going to tell you that. And if you want to traditionally publish, publishing houses expect you to know word definitions, we being authors and all, and they especially expect us to know the correct meanings of words specific to our career, and they know immediately a writer who knows nothing about the publishing industry if that writer mentions in their query they already had beta readers read the ms before querying. So don't mention beta readers in queries (you'd be surprised how often it's mentioned) because most big house publishers will auto reject without even reading the query if you do. Why? Because if they trust the writer to know the correct definition of writing career specific words, they won't trust the writer to get any words used in their manuscript correct either. Teens online reading unedited work for free is not beta reading. Beta reading is an actual job, often part time, but can be a full time career and actual beta readers charge $50+ per hour. Usually plan on 15 hours, 3 days of 5 hours each. With you getting your a 10page plus write up overviewing the book... note, I said the book, not the story. I plan on around $500 per beta reader and 4 per novel, so I budget around $2k per novel for beta readers who I self publish, but in trade you don't have to worry about beta readers as the publishing house will have a few dozen to a few hundred in house staff beta readers. By the time a beta reader has it the story should be 100% finished and error free. There should be ZERO errors in spelling and grammar and there should be no plot holes or need the changes anything. If the find those things they should tell you, but if they are finding those things then the book should not have gotten as far as a beta reader. Beta readers are your LAST line of defense before going to print. They are there to pretend to be real world readers and tell you their first impressions of the finished product... including to tell you any typos the typesetter made, and blank spaces in formating causing blank pages in the book, any places where signatures are accidentally doubled (for example the beta reader would say something like: 2nd signature page 36 to 48 is doubled, and instead of going to 49, starts at page 36 again, and there is no page 49 to 52 at all as a result)... telling you if the bleed is wrong or colour is off on the cover. The beta readers primary job is to check the formating and typesetting of the paperback edition and point out any last minute changes needed. It is NOT their job to be looking for spelling or grammar errors and if the book is in such a state that plot holes are found than it has gone to beta way too early. Beta readers are not editors. Editors look at grammar, spelling, and plot holes. So, for this reason, when I self publish, my beta readers get the physical proof copy paperback of the book and are expected to return their response in 3 days or less, and are paid for the job they do. | Depends on a lot of factors. The first being your intended route to publishing. If you're going to self-publish and want feedback on a first draft, I suggest a developmental editor. They look at the big picture, character development, find plot holes, weak areas, etc. You can incorporate what feedback you like with your ideas and then revise. After that, you can send it to beta readers who provide the reader's perspective. You find what common comments they have, address those, then send it to a copyeditor/line editor. After that editor, you revise again, then begin the process of finding a cover, ARC readers, etc. If you are seeking traditional publishing, then I recommend self-editing and making all changes you want to make, then send to a few beta readers. After that, you revise based on their feedback, then query and revise based on any feedback you receive with each round of queries. | 1 | 3,093 | 6 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htyta4z | htyzns7 | 1,642,991,505 | 1,642,993,974 | 1 | 6 | I've seen writers on YouTube say you should put the story away and don't look at it for a week, Don't think about it at all for 7 days so that your brain can rest and "forget" the story. After a week is up you read over the story and see if things still work or if you need to change stuff. After that first read, it's up to you if you want to send it to a professional or repeat the process 1 more time. | Okay, so this is a pet peeve of mine and I'm going to rant. The rant's not directed at you, you didn't do anything wrong. My rant is directed at the internet in general and its ability to spread misinformation so widespread that 99.99% of writers online have no clue a beta reader even is. My betas receive the physical proof copy paperback. So it's not only already gone through 4 to 7 self edits and 3 to 7 rewrites, it's also already gone to outside editors as well, and has already been formatted and type set. It's already been accepted by the publisher, and it's about to go to press with in a matter of days... NOT it'sabout to start query rounds to agents. I don't know where the internet trend of alpha readers being called beta readers comes from but, its alpha readers who read in the early stages. Not beta readers. There is so little accurate info online about how the publishing industry works and in what order publishing houses do things. Beta readers read physical proof copy paperbacks 5 to 10 days before the final editor paperbacks start shipping to bookstores. Their job is the check the printing and typesetting, to make sure the press machine isn't malfunctioning or the type set wrong. This is a way beta reading has been done since at least the 1920s. Reading a story and telling you their feelings and likes and dislikes and any errors they found, is the job of alpha readers (before publishing) and book reviewers (after publishing). I'm not sure what exactly staeted this weird trend the internet has with slapping unedited chapters and segments only and calling it beta reading, or how it became so prevalent that most every one on the internet accepts this is what beta readers are, because that's not what beta reading is in the actual real world publishing industry and every legitimate agent, editor, and publisher is going to tell you that. And if you want to traditionally publish, publishing houses expect you to know word definitions, we being authors and all, and they especially expect us to know the correct meanings of words specific to our career, and they know immediately a writer who knows nothing about the publishing industry if that writer mentions in their query they already had beta readers read the ms before querying. So don't mention beta readers in queries (you'd be surprised how often it's mentioned) because most big house publishers will auto reject without even reading the query if you do. Why? Because if they trust the writer to know the correct definition of writing career specific words, they won't trust the writer to get any words used in their manuscript correct either. Teens online reading unedited work for free is not beta reading. Beta reading is an actual job, often part time, but can be a full time career and actual beta readers charge $50+ per hour. Usually plan on 15 hours, 3 days of 5 hours each. With you getting your a 10page plus write up overviewing the book... note, I said the book, not the story. I plan on around $500 per beta reader and 4 per novel, so I budget around $2k per novel for beta readers who I self publish, but in trade you don't have to worry about beta readers as the publishing house will have a few dozen to a few hundred in house staff beta readers. By the time a beta reader has it the story should be 100% finished and error free. There should be ZERO errors in spelling and grammar and there should be no plot holes or need the changes anything. If the find those things they should tell you, but if they are finding those things then the book should not have gotten as far as a beta reader. Beta readers are your LAST line of defense before going to print. They are there to pretend to be real world readers and tell you their first impressions of the finished product... including to tell you any typos the typesetter made, and blank spaces in formating causing blank pages in the book, any places where signatures are accidentally doubled (for example the beta reader would say something like: 2nd signature page 36 to 48 is doubled, and instead of going to 49, starts at page 36 again, and there is no page 49 to 52 at all as a result)... telling you if the bleed is wrong or colour is off on the cover. The beta readers primary job is to check the formating and typesetting of the paperback edition and point out any last minute changes needed. It is NOT their job to be looking for spelling or grammar errors and if the book is in such a state that plot holes are found than it has gone to beta way too early. Beta readers are not editors. Editors look at grammar, spelling, and plot holes. So, for this reason, when I self publish, my beta readers get the physical proof copy paperback of the book and are expected to return their response in 3 days or less, and are paid for the job they do. | 0 | 2,469 | 6 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htyr9re | htyzns7 | 1,642,990,691 | 1,642,993,974 | -1 | 6 | I would get eyes on it before you make overhauls unless you know there are major problems. Start with a writers group. They get to see it chapter by chapter- gives you time to edit as you go. Cheers! | Okay, so this is a pet peeve of mine and I'm going to rant. The rant's not directed at you, you didn't do anything wrong. My rant is directed at the internet in general and its ability to spread misinformation so widespread that 99.99% of writers online have no clue a beta reader even is. My betas receive the physical proof copy paperback. So it's not only already gone through 4 to 7 self edits and 3 to 7 rewrites, it's also already gone to outside editors as well, and has already been formatted and type set. It's already been accepted by the publisher, and it's about to go to press with in a matter of days... NOT it'sabout to start query rounds to agents. I don't know where the internet trend of alpha readers being called beta readers comes from but, its alpha readers who read in the early stages. Not beta readers. There is so little accurate info online about how the publishing industry works and in what order publishing houses do things. Beta readers read physical proof copy paperbacks 5 to 10 days before the final editor paperbacks start shipping to bookstores. Their job is the check the printing and typesetting, to make sure the press machine isn't malfunctioning or the type set wrong. This is a way beta reading has been done since at least the 1920s. Reading a story and telling you their feelings and likes and dislikes and any errors they found, is the job of alpha readers (before publishing) and book reviewers (after publishing). I'm not sure what exactly staeted this weird trend the internet has with slapping unedited chapters and segments only and calling it beta reading, or how it became so prevalent that most every one on the internet accepts this is what beta readers are, because that's not what beta reading is in the actual real world publishing industry and every legitimate agent, editor, and publisher is going to tell you that. And if you want to traditionally publish, publishing houses expect you to know word definitions, we being authors and all, and they especially expect us to know the correct meanings of words specific to our career, and they know immediately a writer who knows nothing about the publishing industry if that writer mentions in their query they already had beta readers read the ms before querying. So don't mention beta readers in queries (you'd be surprised how often it's mentioned) because most big house publishers will auto reject without even reading the query if you do. Why? Because if they trust the writer to know the correct definition of writing career specific words, they won't trust the writer to get any words used in their manuscript correct either. Teens online reading unedited work for free is not beta reading. Beta reading is an actual job, often part time, but can be a full time career and actual beta readers charge $50+ per hour. Usually plan on 15 hours, 3 days of 5 hours each. With you getting your a 10page plus write up overviewing the book... note, I said the book, not the story. I plan on around $500 per beta reader and 4 per novel, so I budget around $2k per novel for beta readers who I self publish, but in trade you don't have to worry about beta readers as the publishing house will have a few dozen to a few hundred in house staff beta readers. By the time a beta reader has it the story should be 100% finished and error free. There should be ZERO errors in spelling and grammar and there should be no plot holes or need the changes anything. If the find those things they should tell you, but if they are finding those things then the book should not have gotten as far as a beta reader. Beta readers are your LAST line of defense before going to print. They are there to pretend to be real world readers and tell you their first impressions of the finished product... including to tell you any typos the typesetter made, and blank spaces in formating causing blank pages in the book, any places where signatures are accidentally doubled (for example the beta reader would say something like: 2nd signature page 36 to 48 is doubled, and instead of going to 49, starts at page 36 again, and there is no page 49 to 52 at all as a result)... telling you if the bleed is wrong or colour is off on the cover. The beta readers primary job is to check the formating and typesetting of the paperback edition and point out any last minute changes needed. It is NOT their job to be looking for spelling or grammar errors and if the book is in such a state that plot holes are found than it has gone to beta way too early. Beta readers are not editors. Editors look at grammar, spelling, and plot holes. So, for this reason, when I self publish, my beta readers get the physical proof copy paperback of the book and are expected to return their response in 3 days or less, and are paid for the job they do. | 0 | 3,283 | -6 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htzbv67 | htyrq0d | 1,642,999,613 | 1,642,990,881 | 2 | 1 | I don't submit to agents or publishers until a novel is finished and I can't see any additional ways to improve it. Not much point until then, in my opinion. I expect, if I was interested in self-publishing, that I would do the same with a hired editor. From experience after selling a couple of books, that's when the real editing begins! | Depends on a lot of factors. The first being your intended route to publishing. If you're going to self-publish and want feedback on a first draft, I suggest a developmental editor. They look at the big picture, character development, find plot holes, weak areas, etc. You can incorporate what feedback you like with your ideas and then revise. After that, you can send it to beta readers who provide the reader's perspective. You find what common comments they have, address those, then send it to a copyeditor/line editor. After that editor, you revise again, then begin the process of finding a cover, ARC readers, etc. If you are seeking traditional publishing, then I recommend self-editing and making all changes you want to make, then send to a few beta readers. After that, you revise based on their feedback, then query and revise based on any feedback you receive with each round of queries. | 1 | 8,732 | 2 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htzbv67 | htyta4z | 1,642,999,613 | 1,642,991,505 | 2 | 1 | I don't submit to agents or publishers until a novel is finished and I can't see any additional ways to improve it. Not much point until then, in my opinion. I expect, if I was interested in self-publishing, that I would do the same with a hired editor. From experience after selling a couple of books, that's when the real editing begins! | I've seen writers on YouTube say you should put the story away and don't look at it for a week, Don't think about it at all for 7 days so that your brain can rest and "forget" the story. After a week is up you read over the story and see if things still work or if you need to change stuff. After that first read, it's up to you if you want to send it to a professional or repeat the process 1 more time. | 1 | 8,108 | 2 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htyr9re | htzbv67 | 1,642,990,691 | 1,642,999,613 | -1 | 2 | I would get eyes on it before you make overhauls unless you know there are major problems. Start with a writers group. They get to see it chapter by chapter- gives you time to edit as you go. Cheers! | I don't submit to agents or publishers until a novel is finished and I can't see any additional ways to improve it. Not much point until then, in my opinion. I expect, if I was interested in self-publishing, that I would do the same with a hired editor. From experience after selling a couple of books, that's when the real editing begins! | 0 | 8,922 | -2 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htzwqnw | htyrq0d | 1,643,013,209 | 1,642,990,881 | 2 | 1 | An editor works with a finished story. So, 3 or more edits in, no more spelling and grammar errors. A beta reader would typically be the same, maybe starting with only 2 edits in. What you are looking for is a writing group where you can present clearly unfinished work. | Depends on a lot of factors. The first being your intended route to publishing. If you're going to self-publish and want feedback on a first draft, I suggest a developmental editor. They look at the big picture, character development, find plot holes, weak areas, etc. You can incorporate what feedback you like with your ideas and then revise. After that, you can send it to beta readers who provide the reader's perspective. You find what common comments they have, address those, then send it to a copyeditor/line editor. After that editor, you revise again, then begin the process of finding a cover, ARC readers, etc. If you are seeking traditional publishing, then I recommend self-editing and making all changes you want to make, then send to a few beta readers. After that, you revise based on their feedback, then query and revise based on any feedback you receive with each round of queries. | 1 | 22,328 | 2 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htyta4z | htzwqnw | 1,642,991,505 | 1,643,013,209 | 1 | 2 | I've seen writers on YouTube say you should put the story away and don't look at it for a week, Don't think about it at all for 7 days so that your brain can rest and "forget" the story. After a week is up you read over the story and see if things still work or if you need to change stuff. After that first read, it's up to you if you want to send it to a professional or repeat the process 1 more time. | An editor works with a finished story. So, 3 or more edits in, no more spelling and grammar errors. A beta reader would typically be the same, maybe starting with only 2 edits in. What you are looking for is a writing group where you can present clearly unfinished work. | 0 | 21,704 | 2 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htzwqnw | htyr9re | 1,643,013,209 | 1,642,990,691 | 2 | -1 | An editor works with a finished story. So, 3 or more edits in, no more spelling and grammar errors. A beta reader would typically be the same, maybe starting with only 2 edits in. What you are looking for is a writing group where you can present clearly unfinished work. | I would get eyes on it before you make overhauls unless you know there are major problems. Start with a writers group. They get to see it chapter by chapter- gives you time to edit as you go. Cheers! | 1 | 22,518 | -2 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htyr9re | htyrq0d | 1,642,990,691 | 1,642,990,881 | -1 | 1 | I would get eyes on it before you make overhauls unless you know there are major problems. Start with a writers group. They get to see it chapter by chapter- gives you time to edit as you go. Cheers! | Depends on a lot of factors. The first being your intended route to publishing. If you're going to self-publish and want feedback on a first draft, I suggest a developmental editor. They look at the big picture, character development, find plot holes, weak areas, etc. You can incorporate what feedback you like with your ideas and then revise. After that, you can send it to beta readers who provide the reader's perspective. You find what common comments they have, address those, then send it to a copyeditor/line editor. After that editor, you revise again, then begin the process of finding a cover, ARC readers, etc. If you are seeking traditional publishing, then I recommend self-editing and making all changes you want to make, then send to a few beta readers. After that, you revise based on their feedback, then query and revise based on any feedback you receive with each round of queries. | 0 | 190 | -1 | ||
sbamcy | writing_train | 0.87 | How "Done" Should a Novel be Before You Hand it to an Editor/Beta-Reader? Like after the first draft is done and checked for grammar obviously. There are many changes I want to make to my novel. Take parts out, put scenes in. I want my story to be good as possible before people read it, but I wonder how much having a second pair of eyes looking at it while it's still in development may help me. Thoughts? | htyr9re | htyta4z | 1,642,990,691 | 1,642,991,505 | -1 | 1 | I would get eyes on it before you make overhauls unless you know there are major problems. Start with a writers group. They get to see it chapter by chapter- gives you time to edit as you go. Cheers! | I've seen writers on YouTube say you should put the story away and don't look at it for a week, Don't think about it at all for 7 days so that your brain can rest and "forget" the story. After a week is up you read over the story and see if things still work or if you need to change stuff. After that first read, it's up to you if you want to send it to a professional or repeat the process 1 more time. | 0 | 814 | -1 | ||
sfdpac | writing_train | 0.8 | Can the reader be confused in a good way? Is it worth the risk? (Story Structure Question) The story I'm working on now features 2 POV characters, one of which has a very scattered mind and amnesia. The story swaps between the POVs with every chapter (Ch1 = pov1, ch2 = pov2, ch3 = pov1 and so on), where the none amnesia character's story, lets call her T, taking place well before the amnesiac, lets call her I, but eventually revealing by the end not only that there is a significant difference in time between the two stories but also that T and I knew one another and where T's story ends in the last chapter, I's story begins in the first chapter. It's a bit convoluted and written to be intentionally confusing to the reader, while still throwing out clues that you'd notice on a second read through. Essentially my goal is for the reader to technically have all the information about the story, regardless of where they are in the book, but with only the amount of context that the amnesiac has at that point in the story. For example the reader may know from T's pov about various characters and locations, but because I hasn't recovered that information from her memory yet, the reader will be unaware of the prescience of the same characters and locations in her pov (again the info is there, descriptions and such, but not names and specifics). I realize this is a risky way to write the story, is it too confusing? Is any amount of confusion too much even if it serves a purpose? | hupf4lf | hupbpoj | 1,643,452,678 | 1,643,449,965 | 3 | 2 | There is a difference between a reader not knowing the answer to a question, and wanting to find it out, and the reader being confused about what is happening. The latter will make the reader not want to read on, in fact it will make the reader think it is a bad book. You want to make clear what the questions are, and what the characters are doing to get the answer. | I have written a book using alternating 1st POV for two MC's. Similarly one MC knew more than the other. I wrote in this way, not to confuse readers, but to make it clearer what was "really" going on. My concern would be making it deliberately confusing just for the sake of it. Even avid readers have a limit to how much they will endure before putting a book down. And it's not like TV/movie where you can easily rewind to check what you missed. Could you not write in 3rd person and use narrator as gatekeeper to what readers need to know? | 1 | 2,713 | 1.5 | ||
sfdpac | writing_train | 0.8 | Can the reader be confused in a good way? Is it worth the risk? (Story Structure Question) The story I'm working on now features 2 POV characters, one of which has a very scattered mind and amnesia. The story swaps between the POVs with every chapter (Ch1 = pov1, ch2 = pov2, ch3 = pov1 and so on), where the none amnesia character's story, lets call her T, taking place well before the amnesiac, lets call her I, but eventually revealing by the end not only that there is a significant difference in time between the two stories but also that T and I knew one another and where T's story ends in the last chapter, I's story begins in the first chapter. It's a bit convoluted and written to be intentionally confusing to the reader, while still throwing out clues that you'd notice on a second read through. Essentially my goal is for the reader to technically have all the information about the story, regardless of where they are in the book, but with only the amount of context that the amnesiac has at that point in the story. For example the reader may know from T's pov about various characters and locations, but because I hasn't recovered that information from her memory yet, the reader will be unaware of the prescience of the same characters and locations in her pov (again the info is there, descriptions and such, but not names and specifics). I realize this is a risky way to write the story, is it too confusing? Is any amount of confusion too much even if it serves a purpose? | hupf4lf | hupds6f | 1,643,452,678 | 1,643,451,603 | 3 | 2 | There is a difference between a reader not knowing the answer to a question, and wanting to find it out, and the reader being confused about what is happening. The latter will make the reader not want to read on, in fact it will make the reader think it is a bad book. You want to make clear what the questions are, and what the characters are doing to get the answer. | You confused me, but that's an interesting challenge :) Let's say there's an absolute timeline of events: E1, E2, E3, ... E8. T: no amnesia I: has amnesia T's story is E1 -> E5 I's story is E5 -> E8 Book order is: (chapter \[POV\] event ) ch1 \[T\] E1, ch2 \[I\] E5, ch3 \[T\] E2, ch4 \[I\] E6, ch5\[T\] E3, ch6 \[I\] E7, ch7 \[T\] E4, ch8 \[I\] E8, ch9 \[T\] E5 where stories merges. (optional ch10 \[I\] E9) Where does the amnesia have a role in masking information? | 1 | 1,075 | 1.5 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imqx3tp | imqw06m | 1,662,086,503 | 1,662,085,998 | 6 | 1 | Do you have any writing from a year or two ago that you can reread right now and compare with something more recent you've done? I guarantee you you'll be able to see how you've improved, even if it doesn't feel like it. I've been serious about writing since I was a kid, and I entered college thinking I was just a kid with a little more natural ability than the average person. This depressed me because I figured I'd never actually become a "good writer," I'd just hit my ceiling and never be able to raise it. Well, I was wrong -- by the time I was a senior, my sophomore year writing seemed so amateurish and not-so-great. Meaning I improved tremendously but still felt like my ability was set in place. Point being, in my experience, and as cliché as it sounds, I'm 10000% sure you are improving and on your way to becoming the writer you're meant to be, you're just too close to the process to see it. | Like with drawing, painting and other art, one of the best things you can do is just write, practice and look at the works of others. I grew up reading books more than anything else and drew inspiration for random paragraphs that had the potential to be stories if I ever really worked at them. My advice would be to find a couple authors you like or trawl places, like reddit or wattpad, for some good content, find a genre you enjoy a lot and see how they do it. Nothing you see will ever be perfect, though it'll sure as hell seem it a lot of the time. Being a bit of a sci-fi nut I'll reccomend taking a poke at the HFY subreddit and seeing if any of those tickle your fancy, and remember, with practice comes improvement, more so if you find constructive criticism given. | 1 | 505 | 6 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imqw06m | imr35ok | 1,662,085,998 | 1,662,089,378 | 1 | 6 | Like with drawing, painting and other art, one of the best things you can do is just write, practice and look at the works of others. I grew up reading books more than anything else and drew inspiration for random paragraphs that had the potential to be stories if I ever really worked at them. My advice would be to find a couple authors you like or trawl places, like reddit or wattpad, for some good content, find a genre you enjoy a lot and see how they do it. Nothing you see will ever be perfect, though it'll sure as hell seem it a lot of the time. Being a bit of a sci-fi nut I'll reccomend taking a poke at the HFY subreddit and seeing if any of those tickle your fancy, and remember, with practice comes improvement, more so if you find constructive criticism given. | I've been writing for about 18 years (since I was 10 years old), and I only just now think I've written something I can be really, actually happy with. I've stepped away from it and reread it and I'm still proud of it. But I can still see my mistakes, which means I'm still growing - the moment I can't see my mistakes is when I should get scared. Anyway, I've definitely felt...impatient, I guess, about my skill level? The fact is that writing takes ages. Just writing a novel can take months, and it uses a LOT of skills. There's seemingly infinite space for mistakes. Part of overcoming this feeling is coming to terms with the fact that it may just be a decade or so until you're really able to be happy with what you produce. I wrote probably 8-10 novels and I was happy with maybe 1 or 2 or them. In some sense they were failures but in another sense they helped me grow. I had to see them as growth and that's basically the main skill I've focused on all my life. And it took me ages to think man, I'm finally ready to start *learning* how to tell great stories. But that's the fun part. And because writing is hard, if you can write something that's even competently put together, it's honestly an amazing and rare skill. So even being okay at it is something to be proud of. Don't give up, find people you trust and have them read your work, and keep going. Folks in the comments have said it: *practice*. Hope this was helpful in some way. Best of luck with your writing! | 0 | 3,380 | 6 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr5tmj | imqw06m | 1,662,090,750 | 1,662,085,998 | 5 | 1 | No one becomes a good writer overnight. Look at Stephen King: he failed miserably DOZENS of times before he struck gold! His memoir *On Writing* was the kick in the pants I needed to try my hand again at writing. | Like with drawing, painting and other art, one of the best things you can do is just write, practice and look at the works of others. I grew up reading books more than anything else and drew inspiration for random paragraphs that had the potential to be stories if I ever really worked at them. My advice would be to find a couple authors you like or trawl places, like reddit or wattpad, for some good content, find a genre you enjoy a lot and see how they do it. Nothing you see will ever be perfect, though it'll sure as hell seem it a lot of the time. Being a bit of a sci-fi nut I'll reccomend taking a poke at the HFY subreddit and seeing if any of those tickle your fancy, and remember, with practice comes improvement, more so if you find constructive criticism given. | 1 | 4,752 | 5 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsn00u | imr6bf2 | 1,662,125,888 | 1,662,091,007 | 3 | 2 | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | I'm masterful in my field, that field not being writing, and after double digit years I rarely see anything new, and don't often encounter anything over my head. The "good" you're referring to is reaching a point where what you do is meditative. You don't do it because it baffles you, or defeats you, but because you enjoy it so much that the process of steps that have become so well known to you have become the object of your joy. The act of art motivates artists, and learning the actions takes as much time as you can dedicate to it. For me, I thought about, and still do think about, the enigma that is my profession. I constantly tried to make sense of what made no sense to me, the stuff people couldn't or wouldn't teach me, and from that and practice I got better all the time. Now I write because I want a new challenge, and so I learn and overthink and practice, and maybe one day I'll be as good a writer as I am in my work. All I know for now is that I enjoy it tremendously, and hope to continue as long as I can. | 1 | 34,881 | 1.5 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | ims3blf | imsn00u | 1,662,115,461 | 1,662,125,888 | 2 | 3 | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | 0 | 10,427 | 1.5 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsf7sf | imsn00u | 1,662,122,277 | 1,662,125,888 | 2 | 3 | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | 0 | 3,611 | 1.5 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imqw06m | imsn00u | 1,662,085,998 | 1,662,125,888 | 1 | 3 | Like with drawing, painting and other art, one of the best things you can do is just write, practice and look at the works of others. I grew up reading books more than anything else and drew inspiration for random paragraphs that had the potential to be stories if I ever really worked at them. My advice would be to find a couple authors you like or trawl places, like reddit or wattpad, for some good content, find a genre you enjoy a lot and see how they do it. Nothing you see will ever be perfect, though it'll sure as hell seem it a lot of the time. Being a bit of a sci-fi nut I'll reccomend taking a poke at the HFY subreddit and seeing if any of those tickle your fancy, and remember, with practice comes improvement, more so if you find constructive criticism given. | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | 0 | 39,890 | 3 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsn00u | imrf66w | 1,662,125,888 | 1,662,096,365 | 3 | 1 | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | I knew a guy that used to work in the porn industry (back of the house, so to speak), and he said something that always stuck with me: “Everyone is someone’s kink. Everyone.” Just because you think you are a terrible writer is a subjective issue, even if there are object ways for you to improve. But chances are, there are people out there that would really like your ideas and prose even as it is now. You should always strive to improve and grow, but we are always our own harshest critics. Your future fans will staunchly disagree with you. :) | 1 | 29,523 | 3 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr63xi | imsn00u | 1,662,090,901 | 1,662,125,888 | 1 | 3 | Take a creative writing class and/or pick up some books on the craft itself (ie The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White). It will demystify a lot of what you are looking at when you're reading something and thinking "why is this better than what I write?" | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | 0 | 34,987 | 3 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsn00u | imr7b5y | 1,662,125,888 | 1,662,091,544 | 3 | 0 | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | 1 | 34,344 | 3,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsn00u | imrbomp | 1,662,125,888 | 1,662,094,119 | 3 | 0 | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | Identifying the problem is half of the solution. What in particular don't you like about your writing/something that you want to improve? You have to go into detail and look at concrete examples for specific situations. Am I not clear enough? Is the prose a bit off? How can I best convey what I'm trying to express in this sentence or paragraph? A lot of it is really just hard work + time + effort. But I can also agree that some people just have that *something* extra—something that even if I spend my whole life practicing, I'm not sure I can even achieve. You can learn to write well. But that doesn't always mean you can write a great story. | 1 | 31,769 | 3,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsn00u | imrdes8 | 1,662,125,888 | 1,662,095,207 | 3 | 1 | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | All crafts are honed by experience and effort, not to mention how it’s easy to read a very good book and put the author on some pedestal you feel like you can’t achieve | 1 | 30,681 | 3 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsn00u | imroqe6 | 1,662,125,888 | 1,662,103,560 | 3 | 1 | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | Writing is like art it’s all subjective so what’s bad to you might be Amazing to someone else, there’s an audience for everything! Just try to see what you don’t like about your writing and what you do and from there build up your strengths/ work on your weaknesses. It’s not gonna be easy everything starts out bad before you learn what works for you so stick with it. | 1 | 22,328 | 3 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsn00u | imrpkz5 | 1,662,125,888 | 1,662,104,300 | 3 | 1 | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | To "git gud", you need to work on quite a few skills. Description, dialogue, plotting, characterization, research, grammar, vocabulary, and so on. Each of these can be studied in different books etc. However, it's probably most productive to read good books by many different authors, and get a sense of how they do things. | 1 | 21,588 | 3 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | ims0az6 | imsn00u | 1,662,113,242 | 1,662,125,888 | 1 | 3 | I've mentioned this before, but I hope it might be helpful. This Ira Glass quote about the gap between our taste level and our skill level. Add that to the whole 'how to boil a frog alive' thing and you get a gap between your taste and skill levels, that is slowly eroded as your skill level improves, but the improvement is so slow, and you're so close to it, that it's hard to see. | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | 0 | 12,646 | 3 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsn00u | ims24wl | 1,662,125,888 | 1,662,114,615 | 3 | 1 | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | The truth is at the beginning of our writing journey, we were not good at writing at all. But through constant practice (writing and reading from your favorite artist), we naturally get better. I always as a teenager wanted to write. Too bad I discovered 'webnovel'. Almost all their stories were crap, the dialogue lacked subtext, the story lacked good descriptions, the character's motive for been too good or too evil weren't clear, to name just a few. And that was what I started to learn with at first. And my stories as you guessed were . . . crap. But then been an avid reader I soon found stories written by professionals and imitated their writing. I wrote almost everyday. Though, I never allowing my books to lie around my home because I was too embarrassed of my writing, I didn't want my family reading it. It was after two years I finally discovered I had gotten better at writing. Wanting to get rid of my old piles of book I stumbled upon my old work and read some of it. The tremendous improvement I had made in only two years! Nowadays, I still look back to like a few months ago and remark to myself how much better I became. I am not bragging that I am a good writer. I am only saying that with constant practice you will be better at writing. Consistency is key. So whether you feel it is something you can't learn, or it is something not for you. Just continue to write everyday, or look at your old works. You would be grateful. I promise you. | 1 | 11,273 | 3 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsn00u | imsajue | 1,662,125,888 | 1,662,119,870 | 3 | 1 | Writing is a weird kind of art because it involves at least five discreet areas of skill: 1. Prose. You need to be able to string together a beautiful sentence (or at least not an ugly one). That's not easy and requires an ear, as well as a ton of practice. There are a lot of "good" writers who have this down pat, but lack in other areas. 2. Plot. One of the things you'll notice about some of the "beautiful language" folks. They don't write page turners. You don't get gripped on the first sentence and then dragged through a non-stop thrill ride. Andy Weir is great at writing page turners. His prose is ok. Not spectacular though. 3. Characters. Back to my buddy Andy Weir, notice anything funny between The Martian, and Project Hail Mary? Same character. Different name, but same dude. Lee Child has one character as well (though he is open about it). George R. R. Martin is the king of characters because he just has a ton and seems to be able to reliably make spectacular characters. 4. Emotional Impact. Some writers can punch you right in the feelz. Some don't. Tom Clancy had a perfectly good career without making anyone cry, ever. 5. Concept. Some books sell themselves. Jurassic Park sells itself. The second someone pitched the idea for Prey that movie got approved. There are a ton of writers who never thought of a good concept, and there are some writers who just churn them out. So the perfect writer would be great at all these things, but I can't think of anyone who is. Generally speaking you need to be ok at all of these things except for one or two which you're good-great at. But if you're actually paying attention to your craft and trying to improve there are famous writers (Margaret Atwood for example) who ought to be reading Project Hail Mary and saying "why the fucking fuck can't I write a plot like this!" | Being a good storyteller is hard because telling and consuming stories is inherent to the human experience. What do you do when you're hanging with friends at a bar? Tell stories. What do you do at the barbershop? Tell stories. What did you do around a camp fire as a kid? Tell or hear stories. It's hard because we have developed a sense of a good story and a not so good story from literal life times of consuming stories, yet when we're getting started, we have little to no experience telling long form stories straight from our imaginations and putting them on paper. | 1 | 6,018 | 3 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr6bf2 | imqw06m | 1,662,091,007 | 1,662,085,998 | 2 | 1 | I'm masterful in my field, that field not being writing, and after double digit years I rarely see anything new, and don't often encounter anything over my head. The "good" you're referring to is reaching a point where what you do is meditative. You don't do it because it baffles you, or defeats you, but because you enjoy it so much that the process of steps that have become so well known to you have become the object of your joy. The act of art motivates artists, and learning the actions takes as much time as you can dedicate to it. For me, I thought about, and still do think about, the enigma that is my profession. I constantly tried to make sense of what made no sense to me, the stuff people couldn't or wouldn't teach me, and from that and practice I got better all the time. Now I write because I want a new challenge, and so I learn and overthink and practice, and maybe one day I'll be as good a writer as I am in my work. All I know for now is that I enjoy it tremendously, and hope to continue as long as I can. | Like with drawing, painting and other art, one of the best things you can do is just write, practice and look at the works of others. I grew up reading books more than anything else and drew inspiration for random paragraphs that had the potential to be stories if I ever really worked at them. My advice would be to find a couple authors you like or trawl places, like reddit or wattpad, for some good content, find a genre you enjoy a lot and see how they do it. Nothing you see will ever be perfect, though it'll sure as hell seem it a lot of the time. Being a bit of a sci-fi nut I'll reccomend taking a poke at the HFY subreddit and seeing if any of those tickle your fancy, and remember, with practice comes improvement, more so if you find constructive criticism given. | 1 | 5,009 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr6bf2 | imr63xi | 1,662,091,007 | 1,662,090,901 | 2 | 1 | I'm masterful in my field, that field not being writing, and after double digit years I rarely see anything new, and don't often encounter anything over my head. The "good" you're referring to is reaching a point where what you do is meditative. You don't do it because it baffles you, or defeats you, but because you enjoy it so much that the process of steps that have become so well known to you have become the object of your joy. The act of art motivates artists, and learning the actions takes as much time as you can dedicate to it. For me, I thought about, and still do think about, the enigma that is my profession. I constantly tried to make sense of what made no sense to me, the stuff people couldn't or wouldn't teach me, and from that and practice I got better all the time. Now I write because I want a new challenge, and so I learn and overthink and practice, and maybe one day I'll be as good a writer as I am in my work. All I know for now is that I enjoy it tremendously, and hope to continue as long as I can. | Take a creative writing class and/or pick up some books on the craft itself (ie The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White). It will demystify a lot of what you are looking at when you're reading something and thinking "why is this better than what I write?" | 1 | 106 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | ims3blf | imqw06m | 1,662,115,461 | 1,662,085,998 | 2 | 1 | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | Like with drawing, painting and other art, one of the best things you can do is just write, practice and look at the works of others. I grew up reading books more than anything else and drew inspiration for random paragraphs that had the potential to be stories if I ever really worked at them. My advice would be to find a couple authors you like or trawl places, like reddit or wattpad, for some good content, find a genre you enjoy a lot and see how they do it. Nothing you see will ever be perfect, though it'll sure as hell seem it a lot of the time. Being a bit of a sci-fi nut I'll reccomend taking a poke at the HFY subreddit and seeing if any of those tickle your fancy, and remember, with practice comes improvement, more so if you find constructive criticism given. | 1 | 29,463 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | ims3blf | imrf66w | 1,662,115,461 | 1,662,096,365 | 2 | 1 | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | I knew a guy that used to work in the porn industry (back of the house, so to speak), and he said something that always stuck with me: “Everyone is someone’s kink. Everyone.” Just because you think you are a terrible writer is a subjective issue, even if there are object ways for you to improve. But chances are, there are people out there that would really like your ideas and prose even as it is now. You should always strive to improve and grow, but we are always our own harshest critics. Your future fans will staunchly disagree with you. :) | 1 | 19,096 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr63xi | ims3blf | 1,662,090,901 | 1,662,115,461 | 1 | 2 | Take a creative writing class and/or pick up some books on the craft itself (ie The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White). It will demystify a lot of what you are looking at when you're reading something and thinking "why is this better than what I write?" | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | 0 | 24,560 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr7b5y | ims3blf | 1,662,091,544 | 1,662,115,461 | 0 | 2 | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | 0 | 23,917 | 2,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imrbomp | ims3blf | 1,662,094,119 | 1,662,115,461 | 0 | 2 | Identifying the problem is half of the solution. What in particular don't you like about your writing/something that you want to improve? You have to go into detail and look at concrete examples for specific situations. Am I not clear enough? Is the prose a bit off? How can I best convey what I'm trying to express in this sentence or paragraph? A lot of it is really just hard work + time + effort. But I can also agree that some people just have that *something* extra—something that even if I spend my whole life practicing, I'm not sure I can even achieve. You can learn to write well. But that doesn't always mean you can write a great story. | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | 0 | 21,342 | 2,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imrdes8 | ims3blf | 1,662,095,207 | 1,662,115,461 | 1 | 2 | All crafts are honed by experience and effort, not to mention how it’s easy to read a very good book and put the author on some pedestal you feel like you can’t achieve | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | 0 | 20,254 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | ims3blf | imroqe6 | 1,662,115,461 | 1,662,103,560 | 2 | 1 | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | Writing is like art it’s all subjective so what’s bad to you might be Amazing to someone else, there’s an audience for everything! Just try to see what you don’t like about your writing and what you do and from there build up your strengths/ work on your weaknesses. It’s not gonna be easy everything starts out bad before you learn what works for you so stick with it. | 1 | 11,901 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | ims3blf | imrpkz5 | 1,662,115,461 | 1,662,104,300 | 2 | 1 | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | To "git gud", you need to work on quite a few skills. Description, dialogue, plotting, characterization, research, grammar, vocabulary, and so on. Each of these can be studied in different books etc. However, it's probably most productive to read good books by many different authors, and get a sense of how they do things. | 1 | 11,161 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | ims0az6 | ims3blf | 1,662,113,242 | 1,662,115,461 | 1 | 2 | I've mentioned this before, but I hope it might be helpful. This Ira Glass quote about the gap between our taste level and our skill level. Add that to the whole 'how to boil a frog alive' thing and you get a gap between your taste and skill levels, that is slowly eroded as your skill level improves, but the improvement is so slow, and you're so close to it, that it's hard to see. | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | 0 | 2,219 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | ims24wl | ims3blf | 1,662,114,615 | 1,662,115,461 | 1 | 2 | The truth is at the beginning of our writing journey, we were not good at writing at all. But through constant practice (writing and reading from your favorite artist), we naturally get better. I always as a teenager wanted to write. Too bad I discovered 'webnovel'. Almost all their stories were crap, the dialogue lacked subtext, the story lacked good descriptions, the character's motive for been too good or too evil weren't clear, to name just a few. And that was what I started to learn with at first. And my stories as you guessed were . . . crap. But then been an avid reader I soon found stories written by professionals and imitated their writing. I wrote almost everyday. Though, I never allowing my books to lie around my home because I was too embarrassed of my writing, I didn't want my family reading it. It was after two years I finally discovered I had gotten better at writing. Wanting to get rid of my old piles of book I stumbled upon my old work and read some of it. The tremendous improvement I had made in only two years! Nowadays, I still look back to like a few months ago and remark to myself how much better I became. I am not bragging that I am a good writer. I am only saying that with constant practice you will be better at writing. Consistency is key. So whether you feel it is something you can't learn, or it is something not for you. Just continue to write everyday, or look at your old works. You would be grateful. I promise you. | Because you're trying to be perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. | 0 | 846 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsf7sf | imqw06m | 1,662,122,277 | 1,662,085,998 | 2 | 1 | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | Like with drawing, painting and other art, one of the best things you can do is just write, practice and look at the works of others. I grew up reading books more than anything else and drew inspiration for random paragraphs that had the potential to be stories if I ever really worked at them. My advice would be to find a couple authors you like or trawl places, like reddit or wattpad, for some good content, find a genre you enjoy a lot and see how they do it. Nothing you see will ever be perfect, though it'll sure as hell seem it a lot of the time. Being a bit of a sci-fi nut I'll reccomend taking a poke at the HFY subreddit and seeing if any of those tickle your fancy, and remember, with practice comes improvement, more so if you find constructive criticism given. | 1 | 36,279 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imrf66w | imsf7sf | 1,662,096,365 | 1,662,122,277 | 1 | 2 | I knew a guy that used to work in the porn industry (back of the house, so to speak), and he said something that always stuck with me: “Everyone is someone’s kink. Everyone.” Just because you think you are a terrible writer is a subjective issue, even if there are object ways for you to improve. But chances are, there are people out there that would really like your ideas and prose even as it is now. You should always strive to improve and grow, but we are always our own harshest critics. Your future fans will staunchly disagree with you. :) | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | 0 | 25,912 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsf7sf | imr63xi | 1,662,122,277 | 1,662,090,901 | 2 | 1 | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | Take a creative writing class and/or pick up some books on the craft itself (ie The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White). It will demystify a lot of what you are looking at when you're reading something and thinking "why is this better than what I write?" | 1 | 31,376 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr7b5y | imsf7sf | 1,662,091,544 | 1,662,122,277 | 0 | 2 | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | 0 | 30,733 | 2,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsf7sf | imrbomp | 1,662,122,277 | 1,662,094,119 | 2 | 0 | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | Identifying the problem is half of the solution. What in particular don't you like about your writing/something that you want to improve? You have to go into detail and look at concrete examples for specific situations. Am I not clear enough? Is the prose a bit off? How can I best convey what I'm trying to express in this sentence or paragraph? A lot of it is really just hard work + time + effort. But I can also agree that some people just have that *something* extra—something that even if I spend my whole life practicing, I'm not sure I can even achieve. You can learn to write well. But that doesn't always mean you can write a great story. | 1 | 28,158 | 2,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsf7sf | imrdes8 | 1,662,122,277 | 1,662,095,207 | 2 | 1 | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | All crafts are honed by experience and effort, not to mention how it’s easy to read a very good book and put the author on some pedestal you feel like you can’t achieve | 1 | 27,070 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsf7sf | imroqe6 | 1,662,122,277 | 1,662,103,560 | 2 | 1 | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | Writing is like art it’s all subjective so what’s bad to you might be Amazing to someone else, there’s an audience for everything! Just try to see what you don’t like about your writing and what you do and from there build up your strengths/ work on your weaknesses. It’s not gonna be easy everything starts out bad before you learn what works for you so stick with it. | 1 | 18,717 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imrpkz5 | imsf7sf | 1,662,104,300 | 1,662,122,277 | 1 | 2 | To "git gud", you need to work on quite a few skills. Description, dialogue, plotting, characterization, research, grammar, vocabulary, and so on. Each of these can be studied in different books etc. However, it's probably most productive to read good books by many different authors, and get a sense of how they do things. | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | 0 | 17,977 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsf7sf | ims0az6 | 1,662,122,277 | 1,662,113,242 | 2 | 1 | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | I've mentioned this before, but I hope it might be helpful. This Ira Glass quote about the gap between our taste level and our skill level. Add that to the whole 'how to boil a frog alive' thing and you get a gap between your taste and skill levels, that is slowly eroded as your skill level improves, but the improvement is so slow, and you're so close to it, that it's hard to see. | 1 | 9,035 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsf7sf | ims24wl | 1,662,122,277 | 1,662,114,615 | 2 | 1 | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | The truth is at the beginning of our writing journey, we were not good at writing at all. But through constant practice (writing and reading from your favorite artist), we naturally get better. I always as a teenager wanted to write. Too bad I discovered 'webnovel'. Almost all their stories were crap, the dialogue lacked subtext, the story lacked good descriptions, the character's motive for been too good or too evil weren't clear, to name just a few. And that was what I started to learn with at first. And my stories as you guessed were . . . crap. But then been an avid reader I soon found stories written by professionals and imitated their writing. I wrote almost everyday. Though, I never allowing my books to lie around my home because I was too embarrassed of my writing, I didn't want my family reading it. It was after two years I finally discovered I had gotten better at writing. Wanting to get rid of my old piles of book I stumbled upon my old work and read some of it. The tremendous improvement I had made in only two years! Nowadays, I still look back to like a few months ago and remark to myself how much better I became. I am not bragging that I am a good writer. I am only saying that with constant practice you will be better at writing. Consistency is key. So whether you feel it is something you can't learn, or it is something not for you. Just continue to write everyday, or look at your old works. You would be grateful. I promise you. | 1 | 7,662 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imsajue | imsf7sf | 1,662,119,870 | 1,662,122,277 | 1 | 2 | Being a good storyteller is hard because telling and consuming stories is inherent to the human experience. What do you do when you're hanging with friends at a bar? Tell stories. What do you do at the barbershop? Tell stories. What did you do around a camp fire as a kid? Tell or hear stories. It's hard because we have developed a sense of a good story and a not so good story from literal life times of consuming stories, yet when we're getting started, we have little to no experience telling long form stories straight from our imaginations and putting them on paper. | What do you call a good writer? Who's a good writer, in your opinion? That's the kind of writer you should read. Immersing yourself in good writing (whatever your definition of "good" is) is the way to go. | 0 | 2,407 | 2 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imrf66w | imr7b5y | 1,662,096,365 | 1,662,091,544 | 1 | 0 | I knew a guy that used to work in the porn industry (back of the house, so to speak), and he said something that always stuck with me: “Everyone is someone’s kink. Everyone.” Just because you think you are a terrible writer is a subjective issue, even if there are object ways for you to improve. But chances are, there are people out there that would really like your ideas and prose even as it is now. You should always strive to improve and grow, but we are always our own harshest critics. Your future fans will staunchly disagree with you. :) | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | 1 | 4,821 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imrbomp | imrf66w | 1,662,094,119 | 1,662,096,365 | 0 | 1 | Identifying the problem is half of the solution. What in particular don't you like about your writing/something that you want to improve? You have to go into detail and look at concrete examples for specific situations. Am I not clear enough? Is the prose a bit off? How can I best convey what I'm trying to express in this sentence or paragraph? A lot of it is really just hard work + time + effort. But I can also agree that some people just have that *something* extra—something that even if I spend my whole life practicing, I'm not sure I can even achieve. You can learn to write well. But that doesn't always mean you can write a great story. | I knew a guy that used to work in the porn industry (back of the house, so to speak), and he said something that always stuck with me: “Everyone is someone’s kink. Everyone.” Just because you think you are a terrible writer is a subjective issue, even if there are object ways for you to improve. But chances are, there are people out there that would really like your ideas and prose even as it is now. You should always strive to improve and grow, but we are always our own harshest critics. Your future fans will staunchly disagree with you. :) | 0 | 2,246 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr7b5y | imrdes8 | 1,662,091,544 | 1,662,095,207 | 0 | 1 | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | All crafts are honed by experience and effort, not to mention how it’s easy to read a very good book and put the author on some pedestal you feel like you can’t achieve | 0 | 3,663 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imroqe6 | imr7b5y | 1,662,103,560 | 1,662,091,544 | 1 | 0 | Writing is like art it’s all subjective so what’s bad to you might be Amazing to someone else, there’s an audience for everything! Just try to see what you don’t like about your writing and what you do and from there build up your strengths/ work on your weaknesses. It’s not gonna be easy everything starts out bad before you learn what works for you so stick with it. | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | 1 | 12,016 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr7b5y | imrpkz5 | 1,662,091,544 | 1,662,104,300 | 0 | 1 | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | To "git gud", you need to work on quite a few skills. Description, dialogue, plotting, characterization, research, grammar, vocabulary, and so on. Each of these can be studied in different books etc. However, it's probably most productive to read good books by many different authors, and get a sense of how they do things. | 0 | 12,756 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr7b5y | ims0az6 | 1,662,091,544 | 1,662,113,242 | 0 | 1 | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | I've mentioned this before, but I hope it might be helpful. This Ira Glass quote about the gap between our taste level and our skill level. Add that to the whole 'how to boil a frog alive' thing and you get a gap between your taste and skill levels, that is slowly eroded as your skill level improves, but the improvement is so slow, and you're so close to it, that it's hard to see. | 0 | 21,698 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr7b5y | ims24wl | 1,662,091,544 | 1,662,114,615 | 0 | 1 | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | The truth is at the beginning of our writing journey, we were not good at writing at all. But through constant practice (writing and reading from your favorite artist), we naturally get better. I always as a teenager wanted to write. Too bad I discovered 'webnovel'. Almost all their stories were crap, the dialogue lacked subtext, the story lacked good descriptions, the character's motive for been too good or too evil weren't clear, to name just a few. And that was what I started to learn with at first. And my stories as you guessed were . . . crap. But then been an avid reader I soon found stories written by professionals and imitated their writing. I wrote almost everyday. Though, I never allowing my books to lie around my home because I was too embarrassed of my writing, I didn't want my family reading it. It was after two years I finally discovered I had gotten better at writing. Wanting to get rid of my old piles of book I stumbled upon my old work and read some of it. The tremendous improvement I had made in only two years! Nowadays, I still look back to like a few months ago and remark to myself how much better I became. I am not bragging that I am a good writer. I am only saying that with constant practice you will be better at writing. Consistency is key. So whether you feel it is something you can't learn, or it is something not for you. Just continue to write everyday, or look at your old works. You would be grateful. I promise you. | 0 | 23,071 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr7b5y | imsajue | 1,662,091,544 | 1,662,119,870 | 0 | 1 | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | Being a good storyteller is hard because telling and consuming stories is inherent to the human experience. What do you do when you're hanging with friends at a bar? Tell stories. What do you do at the barbershop? Tell stories. What did you do around a camp fire as a kid? Tell or hear stories. It's hard because we have developed a sense of a good story and a not so good story from literal life times of consuming stories, yet when we're getting started, we have little to no experience telling long form stories straight from our imaginations and putting them on paper. | 0 | 28,326 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imtks89 | imr7b5y | 1,662,139,273 | 1,662,091,544 | 1 | 0 | Because something like art has visible improvement when practicing from another arttist’s style. It’s harder to tell when you’ve improved in writing. Nowadays, after practicing for like 5 years, I can look back at my original works and see the improvement, but hoo boy it takes a WHILE to convince yourself that you’re visibly improving. Trust yourself! You’re improving, even if you can’t tell right now! | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | 1 | 47,729 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imtwstm | imr7b5y | 1,662,144,020 | 1,662,091,544 | 1 | 0 | I’m also a drawer and writer, so I understand your perspective. But ultimately, without getting too abstract, the difference between good drawing and good writing is really the same question as “what is good art”? People can watch the same tv shows and movies, and there is rarely a consistent agreement on which are good and bad. People can go to a gallery, and each person will prefer different works, and some may not like anything there. Writing is the same. In the end, writing and stories are personal. If no one else read a book, but one person found it inspiring and it helped them, does it matter? If the general public love a book, it sells a million copies, but the critics hate it, does it matter? If a book is loved by the critics and has awards heaped on it, but you think it’s pretentious and poorly written, does it matter? In the end, it is just our personal opinions. So if you forget about all that, and ignore sales and awards and fans, what are you left with? Ultimately, just a writer telling a story. The same thing we’ve done for millennia. The way my grandparents told stories to my parents, the way my parents told stories to me, and the way I now tell stories to my own kids. That’s all it is. A moment in time when we can share in a story together, as storyteller and audience. And if everyone involved is happy, if the audience feels connected, and most importantly if you enjoy telling a story, then what could possibly matter more? | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | 1 | 52,476 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imr7b5y | imu40dr | 1,662,091,544 | 1,662,146,930 | 0 | 1 | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | Because we are our harshest critics | 0 | 55,386 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imv1a5f | imr7b5y | 1,662,161,173 | 1,662,091,544 | 1 | 0 | It always surprises me that kind of stuff that becomes a best-selling novel. well, not always, but often. I think what people want is an easy-to-follow plot that is also engaging. What may that be? That's a good question to which I don't have the answer. I will repeat what others have said before, keep on writing. That's the only way to get better and finally creating something that people will enjoy | Like any skill, the way you learn is to seek instruction. Basketball players find coaches. Piano players find instructors. Chess players find mentors. Take a creative writing course. You can only learn so much from reading. Reading will (might) show you the proper way to write, but you don't get the "why." You need a teacher. That teacher can be a book on writing, YouTube videos, or a course in school. You can't learn to play the piano by listening to Beethoven. You can't learn to play basketball by watching Micheal Jordan. Writing is hard. Hell, writing poorly is hard. Doing it well is damn near impossible. You need someone to show you how. And I will tell you a secret. All of those really expensive paintings hanging in museums, their artists also had instructors at one time. Leonardo da Vinci's was an art student at some point. Hemingway was an excellent English student, worked at the school newspaper, went on to be a journalist, and basically memorized the newspaper's style guide. Sure it wasn't formal instruction, but it's not like he just sat down one day and wrote _The Sun Also Rises._ He had a lots of informal instruction for years before that. People who read his writing and told him how to make it better. You can't read your way into being a good writer no matter what this sub tries to tell you. I'm sure people will point out that Hemingway read sports journalists and tried to emulate their style. But yeah, exactly. He was reading them critically, and trying to emulate them. That is different than reading for fun. If you wanted to sit down and read Hemingway and then try to emulate his style you could probably learn a ton from it. _But that isn't reading._ Find instruction. That's how you learn. | 1 | 69,629 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imrdes8 | imrbomp | 1,662,095,207 | 1,662,094,119 | 1 | 0 | All crafts are honed by experience and effort, not to mention how it’s easy to read a very good book and put the author on some pedestal you feel like you can’t achieve | Identifying the problem is half of the solution. What in particular don't you like about your writing/something that you want to improve? You have to go into detail and look at concrete examples for specific situations. Am I not clear enough? Is the prose a bit off? How can I best convey what I'm trying to express in this sentence or paragraph? A lot of it is really just hard work + time + effort. But I can also agree that some people just have that *something* extra—something that even if I spend my whole life practicing, I'm not sure I can even achieve. You can learn to write well. But that doesn't always mean you can write a great story. | 1 | 1,088 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imroqe6 | imrbomp | 1,662,103,560 | 1,662,094,119 | 1 | 0 | Writing is like art it’s all subjective so what’s bad to you might be Amazing to someone else, there’s an audience for everything! Just try to see what you don’t like about your writing and what you do and from there build up your strengths/ work on your weaknesses. It’s not gonna be easy everything starts out bad before you learn what works for you so stick with it. | Identifying the problem is half of the solution. What in particular don't you like about your writing/something that you want to improve? You have to go into detail and look at concrete examples for specific situations. Am I not clear enough? Is the prose a bit off? How can I best convey what I'm trying to express in this sentence or paragraph? A lot of it is really just hard work + time + effort. But I can also agree that some people just have that *something* extra—something that even if I spend my whole life practicing, I'm not sure I can even achieve. You can learn to write well. But that doesn't always mean you can write a great story. | 1 | 9,441 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | imrpkz5 | imrbomp | 1,662,104,300 | 1,662,094,119 | 1 | 0 | To "git gud", you need to work on quite a few skills. Description, dialogue, plotting, characterization, research, grammar, vocabulary, and so on. Each of these can be studied in different books etc. However, it's probably most productive to read good books by many different authors, and get a sense of how they do things. | Identifying the problem is half of the solution. What in particular don't you like about your writing/something that you want to improve? You have to go into detail and look at concrete examples for specific situations. Am I not clear enough? Is the prose a bit off? How can I best convey what I'm trying to express in this sentence or paragraph? A lot of it is really just hard work + time + effort. But I can also agree that some people just have that *something* extra—something that even if I spend my whole life practicing, I'm not sure I can even achieve. You can learn to write well. But that doesn't always mean you can write a great story. | 1 | 10,181 | 1,000 | ||
x3pn01 | writing_train | 0.71 | Why does being a good writer seem impossible? When I was young, I unfortunately discovered Wattpad. I read a ton of horrible writing, but was still super inspired to create my own stories. I wrote some and generally had fun writing, but I knew it wasn’t ever good. When I draw, it’s easy to learn from other artists and learn to reference, and the more I do it, the better I get. For writing though, it just doesn’t seem the same? I haven’t attempted to write in a long time, but I feel like it’s something I just *cant* learn. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you overcome it? | ims0az6 | imrbomp | 1,662,113,242 | 1,662,094,119 | 1 | 0 | I've mentioned this before, but I hope it might be helpful. This Ira Glass quote about the gap between our taste level and our skill level. Add that to the whole 'how to boil a frog alive' thing and you get a gap between your taste and skill levels, that is slowly eroded as your skill level improves, but the improvement is so slow, and you're so close to it, that it's hard to see. | Identifying the problem is half of the solution. What in particular don't you like about your writing/something that you want to improve? You have to go into detail and look at concrete examples for specific situations. Am I not clear enough? Is the prose a bit off? How can I best convey what I'm trying to express in this sentence or paragraph? A lot of it is really just hard work + time + effort. But I can also agree that some people just have that *something* extra—something that even if I spend my whole life practicing, I'm not sure I can even achieve. You can learn to write well. But that doesn't always mean you can write a great story. | 1 | 19,123 | 1,000 |
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