Writing tips.
Apparently there's a number of these going around, and I thought I'd toss in my two cents (less because I think any of you are looking for my advice and more because I like to keep track of this stuff, when given an excuse). In the last year or so, I've hit the point where I have started to consider myself a good writer. I'm not talking about my ability relative to other people's, but by my own standards. I'm happy with the things I'm writing these days, and with the progress I'm making from story to story. Since I've only been writing for about four years, the whole preceding learning curve is still pretty fresh in my mind. Here are the things that have helped me:
1. Read widely, eclectically, and voraciously.
2. Get good betas.
3. Learn to love the rewriting process.
4. Join or start a collaborative project.
5. Break the rules.
1. Read widely, eclectically, and voraciously. Everything I read -- fanfiction, novels, nonfiction -- has the potential to impact my writing, and much of it does, and for the better. Reading other people's fanfiction showed me how much can be accomplished in different wordcounts, and how many different ways the same basic story can be told. It's taught me what turns me off or reels me in, how twist the knife or throw a sucker punch. Novels taught me to take joy in a long arc, the slow fleshing out of a world, and have kept me connected to prose and narrative styles that I don't encounter in the fannish narrative. They make me push myself: a summer marathon of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett broke me of the habit of writing adjectives in threes and helped me realize the sense of space carried in spare prose. Nonfiction books tend to open new doors for me by providing new settings, new symbolic landscapes, or new perspectives. Suzette Haden Elgin's Try to Feel It My Way showed me how the metaphors a character thinks in could convey their whole way of interacting with the world. Anytime I get stuck in my writing, I can often jumpstart myself by changing up what I'm reading, or seeking out something related to my current project, but with a different slant.
2. Get good betas. I really lucked out on this one early on. The friend who got me into fandom was a great editor and my first beta. When I needed a new one, I emailed the best writer I'd encountered on LJ and asked her for advice in finding a beta; to my shock and delight, she offered to beta for me. For me, a good beta is someone who'll catch both the tiny nitpicky bumps and the major story issues, who'll push me to answer the hard questions and tell me all the things she loves about each draft as it is. Having multiple betas can also provide that same depth of feedback. I push myself to take all of the feedback my betas give me seriously and do my best to incorporate it; if I get a suggest I don't agree with, I've learned that making myself articulate why I don't want to go with it often illuminates key elements of a story for me. Returning the favor and betaing for others has also really developed my ability to assess my own writing.
3. Learn to love the rewriting process. Deleting even a sentence can feel like pulling teeth, especially because I reread a story so many times in the course of finishing one draft that it gets hard for me to imagine it going any other way. I learned, though, that when there's a section of a story I'm just not happy with, the best thing I can do is cut that entire chunk out, tack it in another document for safekeeping, and then look at the blank space and ask myself, Okay, what is it I'm trying to say? It's still a struggle for me to excise sentences, images, or jokes I love because they don't fit in the story, but I've discovered that if it takes me four rounds of deep rewrites to get a story I'm happy with, it feels worth it when I'm done.
4. Join or start a collaborative project. This, more than anything, has increased my writing speed and kept me going through periods where I didn't want to write. Collaborative projects, especially large-scale ones, can also be a nightmare, and I've known a lot of people who've gotten burned by projects that stalled out or got hijacked. Still, I find writing with someone else, especially someone I admire and trust, teaches me an amazing amount. I've found that the deeper I sink my teeth into a collaborative project, the more all of my solo stories benefit, both in terms of quality and consistent pace.
5. Break the rules. One of the biggest struggles I've had has been kicking the rules I learned in middle school writing classes. (I.e.: "Showing" is always better than "telling," even when it makes your prose hopelessly dense. When it comes to adjectives, more is more. Cycling through synonyms -- said/asserted/insisted/gasped/..., he/the other man/her dark-haired companion/blah blah blah... -- is always better than reusing a straightforward, everyday word.) Now that I've written enough to start spotting the themes, characters, and stylistic choices I come back to, I'm starting to dive off in the opposite directions, just for the stretch of it. It's fun, and I feel like each attempt clears some of the "noise" out of my writing; when I do go back to those elements I love, I'm able to handle them better.
I recommend that you go read astolat's advice; she's a successful writer of both fan and bill-paying fiction, and her tips were good ones.
1. Read widely, eclectically, and voraciously.
2. Get good betas.
3. Learn to love the rewriting process.
4. Join or start a collaborative project.
5. Break the rules.
1. Read widely, eclectically, and voraciously. Everything I read -- fanfiction, novels, nonfiction -- has the potential to impact my writing, and much of it does, and for the better. Reading other people's fanfiction showed me how much can be accomplished in different wordcounts, and how many different ways the same basic story can be told. It's taught me what turns me off or reels me in, how twist the knife or throw a sucker punch. Novels taught me to take joy in a long arc, the slow fleshing out of a world, and have kept me connected to prose and narrative styles that I don't encounter in the fannish narrative. They make me push myself: a summer marathon of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett broke me of the habit of writing adjectives in threes and helped me realize the sense of space carried in spare prose. Nonfiction books tend to open new doors for me by providing new settings, new symbolic landscapes, or new perspectives. Suzette Haden Elgin's Try to Feel It My Way showed me how the metaphors a character thinks in could convey their whole way of interacting with the world. Anytime I get stuck in my writing, I can often jumpstart myself by changing up what I'm reading, or seeking out something related to my current project, but with a different slant.
2. Get good betas. I really lucked out on this one early on. The friend who got me into fandom was a great editor and my first beta. When I needed a new one, I emailed the best writer I'd encountered on LJ and asked her for advice in finding a beta; to my shock and delight, she offered to beta for me. For me, a good beta is someone who'll catch both the tiny nitpicky bumps and the major story issues, who'll push me to answer the hard questions and tell me all the things she loves about each draft as it is. Having multiple betas can also provide that same depth of feedback. I push myself to take all of the feedback my betas give me seriously and do my best to incorporate it; if I get a suggest I don't agree with, I've learned that making myself articulate why I don't want to go with it often illuminates key elements of a story for me. Returning the favor and betaing for others has also really developed my ability to assess my own writing.
3. Learn to love the rewriting process. Deleting even a sentence can feel like pulling teeth, especially because I reread a story so many times in the course of finishing one draft that it gets hard for me to imagine it going any other way. I learned, though, that when there's a section of a story I'm just not happy with, the best thing I can do is cut that entire chunk out, tack it in another document for safekeeping, and then look at the blank space and ask myself, Okay, what is it I'm trying to say? It's still a struggle for me to excise sentences, images, or jokes I love because they don't fit in the story, but I've discovered that if it takes me four rounds of deep rewrites to get a story I'm happy with, it feels worth it when I'm done.
4. Join or start a collaborative project. This, more than anything, has increased my writing speed and kept me going through periods where I didn't want to write. Collaborative projects, especially large-scale ones, can also be a nightmare, and I've known a lot of people who've gotten burned by projects that stalled out or got hijacked. Still, I find writing with someone else, especially someone I admire and trust, teaches me an amazing amount. I've found that the deeper I sink my teeth into a collaborative project, the more all of my solo stories benefit, both in terms of quality and consistent pace.
5. Break the rules. One of the biggest struggles I've had has been kicking the rules I learned in middle school writing classes. (I.e.: "Showing" is always better than "telling," even when it makes your prose hopelessly dense. When it comes to adjectives, more is more. Cycling through synonyms -- said/asserted/insisted/gasped/..., he/the other man/her dark-haired companion/blah blah blah... -- is always better than reusing a straightforward, everyday word.) Now that I've written enough to start spotting the themes, characters, and stylistic choices I come back to, I'm starting to dive off in the opposite directions, just for the stretch of it. It's fun, and I feel like each attempt clears some of the "noise" out of my writing; when I do go back to those elements I love, I'm able to handle them better.
I recommend that you go read astolat's advice; she's a successful writer of both fan and bill-paying fiction, and her tips were good ones.