I need to rant about this:
Also known as the best writing program ever! It’s a full-screen writing program!
So you open it up, and it looks like this:
You’re thinking, “Ok, so what? It’s a screen with a picture. Whoopdie do.” But it get’s better! It’s customizable!
See that “appearance”? Click it.
You can also use custom fonts that you have installed!
See that “music”? Click it.
If you drag your own music into the folder, like so:
You get this!:
But wait! It gets better!
See “typing sounds”? You can change those too!
Perhaps the best is – YOU CAN USE ANY PICTURE FOR THE BACKGROUND. It will automatically fade it for you!
Seriously, guys, this tool is wonderful. You can use it for:
- Research papers
- Novel writing
- Play writing
- Short stories
- Homework assignments
- Ranting about your friends when they piss you off
- Writing your shopping list
It auto-saves. It exports to .rtf. Hotkeys from Word for italicize, underlining, and bold work. You can print RIGHT FROM THERE.
And the seriously best thing ever?
It fits on a flash drive. The entire thing with added music is maybe 131MBs.
The bestest thing ever.
It’s free.
HOW TO BRING BACK PPL WHO STOPPED WRITING IN 2009
I used to use ZenWriter! It’s fucking amazing.
Tag: writing
To All Writers of Everything Ever
I need to rant about this:
Also known as the best writing program ever! It’s a full-screen writing program!
So you open it up, and it looks like this:
You’re thinking, “Ok, so what? It’s a screen with a picture. Whoopdie do.” But it get’s better! It’s customizable!
See that “appearance”? Click it.
You can also use custom fonts that you have installed!
See that “music”? Click it.
If you drag your own music into the folder, like so:
You get this!:
But wait! It gets better!
See “typing sounds”? You can change those too!
Perhaps the best is – YOU CAN USE ANY PICTURE FOR THE BACKGROUND. It will automatically fade it for you!
Seriously, guys, this tool is wonderful. You can use it for:
- Research papers
- Novel writing
- Play writing
- Short stories
- Homework assignments
- Ranting about your friends when they piss you off
- Writing your shopping list
It auto-saves. It exports to .rtf. Hotkeys from Word for italicize, underlining, and bold work. You can print RIGHT FROM THERE.
And the seriously best thing ever?
It fits on a flash drive. The entire thing with added music is maybe 131MBs.
The bestest thing ever.
It’s free.
HOW TO BRING BACK PPL WHO STOPPED WRITING IN 2009
The most important writing lesson I ever learned was not in a screenwriting class, but a fiction class.
This was senior year of college. Most of us had already been accepted into grad school of some sort. We felt powerful, we felt talented, and most of all, we felt artistic.
It was the advanced fiction workshop, and we did an entire round of workshops with everyone’s best stories, their most advanced work, their most polished pieces. It was very technical and, most of all, very artistic.
IE: They were boring pieces of pretentious crap.
Now the teacher was either a genius OR was tired of our shit, and decided to give us a challenge. Flash fiction, he said. Write something as quickly as possible. Make it stupid. Make it not mean a thing, just be a quick little blast of words.
And, of course, we all got stupid. Little one and two pages of prose without the barriers that it must be good. Little flashes of characters, little bits of scenarios.
And they were electric. All of them. So interesting, so vivid, not held back by the need to write important things or artistic things.
One sticks in my mind even today. The guys original piece was a thinky, thoughtful piece relating the breaking up of threesomes to volcanoes and uncontrolled eruptions that was just annoying to read. But his flash fiction was this three page bit about a homeless man who stole a truck full of coca cola and had to bribe people to drink the soda so he could return the cans to recycling so he could afford one night with the prostitute he loved.
It was funny, it was heartfelt, and it was so, so, so well written.
And just that one little bit of advice, the write something short and stupid, changed a ton of people’s writing styles for the better.
It was amazing. So go. Go write something small. Go write something that’s not artistic. Go write something stupid. Go have fun.
Describing Skin Colors
Having trouble finding synonyms for ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘tan’, etc? Have any clear idea what tone you’re going for? Here’s some web pages for skin tone description and references:
Words Used To Describe Skin Color
Handy Words for Skin Tone (Includes palettes and comparisons)
Describing Characters of Color
More Tone Synonyms w/ Pictures
7 Offensive Mistakes Writers Make (includes more than just skin color)
Most writers were the kids who easily, almost automatically, got A’s in English class. (There are exceptions, but they often also seem to be exceptions to the general writerly habit of putting off writing as long as possible.) At an early age, when grammar school teachers were struggling to inculcate the lesson that effort was the main key to success in school, these future scribblers gave the obvious lie to this assertion. Where others read haltingly, they were plowing two grades ahead in the reading workbooks. These are the kids who turned in a completed YA novel for their fifth-grade project. It isn’t that they never failed, but at a very early age, they didn’t have to fail much; their natural talents kept them at the head of the class.
This teaches a very bad, very false lesson: that success in work mostly depends on natural talent. Unfortunately, when you are a professional writer, you are competing with all the other kids who were at the top of their English classes. Your stuff may not—indeed, probably won’t—be the best anymore.
If you’ve spent most of your life cruising ahead on natural ability, doing what came easily and quickly, every word you write becomes a test of just how much ability you have, every article a referendum on how good a writer you are. As long as you have not written that article, that speech, that novel, it could still be good. Before you take to the keys, you are Proust and Oscar Wilde and George Orwell all rolled up into one delicious package. By the time you’re finished, you’re more like one of those 1940’s pulp hacks who strung hundred-page paragraphs together with semicolons because it was too much effort to figure out where the sentence should end.
Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators – Megan McArdle – The Atlantic
The Why Writing Is So Hard field of psychology is very interesting to me.
(via abbrasions)
Oh my god. I understand so much. I was not the top of my class cos I had executive function issues. But yes. I used to just spit out the “you can’t do this all in one night” project in one night and I would get a good grade. And yes I stall on writing because I don’t want it to suck.
(via deducecanoe)
Salt in the wound: when I actually listened to the instructions to do a little bit at a time over several weeks, I’d get Cs. When I’d leave the work to the last minute and do the whole project in one night I’d get As.
(via lemonsharks)
Oh god yes.
Here in my spheres of the Internet, it’s funny how everyone shares this idea that WRITING = fantasy and science fiction, that WRITERS are people who get loads of money to publish their space elf stories. I think we all found each other here and now because we share these roots of being The Bookish Children, who aspired to be Tolkien or Adams when we grew up, and I think that’s great, and I’m so glad we share all this.
It’s weird, though, how our Writing About Writing then tends to be about fiction. And fiction is such a strange market, a really weird beast. I think that a lot of this post applies to fiction writers in a particularly toxic and demoralizing way but it’s also very true in nonfiction writing.
As a kid you have all of these… IDEAS about nonfiction writing. That your textbooks and news stories and magazines and adventures and dictionaries and everything are prepared lovingly and truthfully by experts. Edited and approved by some great authority. It isn’t Authors or Writers who create this stuff; you don’t want to grow up to be them; they are oracles, not celebrities. There is still this perception that nonfiction is handed down benevolently, like stone tablets from God.
And the truth of it is that nonfiction is handed down by whoever met the deadline first. These were generally not The Bookish Children whose Daydreams Finally Took Fruitful Wing. These were the ones who believed Terry Pratchett when he said “If you trust in yourself…and believe in your dreams…and follow your star…you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”
The truth is, natural talent attracts a certain magician’s-flair attention, but that the Content Machine is starving, and it gobbles up sparkly cupcakes just as fast as it gobbles up plain bread. The news cycle turns over. Nobody’s reading it carefully, thinking of the children, setting words to flake and texture against each other just so. They’re thinking of Wednesday. They’re afraid they’re about to be found out as Mediocre, and if they miss another deadline they will get the Raised Eyebrow.
Talent is a pony you can ride for 3000 words, but when your job is 10,000 words a week then you need a fuckin trained warhorse that puts its head down and carries you stolidly through a battlefield of distractions and doesn’t listen when you try to steer it otherwise.
So you get this dichotomy in Writing about Writing, where in Fiction Writing you’re encouraged to build an elaborate fairy grotto and arrange the correct pencils in pretty Mason jars to attract the attentions of a Muse, and then do a bit of performance art where you try to market yourself while also being very humble and modest – it’s not very evidence-based, is it? And in Nonfiction it’s just THROW WORDS AT THE PAGE UNTIL THEY STICK! THROW WORDS AT THE WALL – THROW WORDS AT YOUR MOTHER. THROW YOUR MOTHER AT THE WALL. FUCK FUCK BALLS THEY’RE SLIDING OFF!! FUCK HAND ME THAT CONCLUSION WE’LL NAIL IT INTO PLACE AND PAINT OVER IT AND IT’LL KIND OF… CRUST OVER. THIS IS CRAP, IT’S THE WORST THING I’VE EVER MADE, SEND THE FUCKER OUT THERE YES GOOD DONE.
And the Nonfiction gets written, every damn day, thousands of words, filling up the Internet, bringing the news, coming through the radio, teaching the children, adorning the museums, educating the people, telling the truth, selling the product – it gets out there.
But don’t think it isn’t creative, powerful, coming from some essential source – its pedigree is just as potent as fiction’s. This post may be terrible, but it has warhorses and cupcakes and all sorts of strange and alarming imagery.
And most of nonfiction writing isn’t good. Most of it is workhorse, mediocre, bringing the truth to your mouth – some of it’s terrible. This certainly is.
And you didn’t notice. You noticed it was there.
Maybe try writing fiction like you’re writing nonfiction. Maybe it will help.
(via elodieunderglass)
but-the-library-of-alexandria:
the thing about writing fantasy stories is that language is so based on history that it can be hard to decide how far suspension of disbelief can carry you word-choice wise – what do you call a french braid in a world with no france? can a queen ann neckline be described if there was no queen ann? where do you draw the line? can you use the word platonic if plato never existed? can you name a character chris in a land without christianity? can you even say ‘bungalow’ in a world where there was no indian language for the word to originate from? is there a single word in any language that doesn’t have a story behind it? to be accurate a fantasy story would be written in a fantasy language but who has the time for that
Tolkien had the time apparently
LIsten. Linguistics Georg, who invented over 10,000 conlangs each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
Ways to un-stick a stuck story
- Do an
outline, whatever way works best.
Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.
- Conflicts
and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps
the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is
hard to write.
- Change
the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at
it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor
character, whatever.
- Know the
characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you.
Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.
- Fill in
holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes,
and add content and context.
- Have
flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These
stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency
and uncertainty to the narrative.
- Introduce
a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more
compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.
- Take
something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force
him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.
- Twists
and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist
is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up
and get it rolling again.
- Secrets. If
someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good
way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the
secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.
- Kill
someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects
all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.
- Ill-advised
character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does
something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then
engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.
- Create cliff-hangers.
Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and
make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really
bring out your creativity.
- Raise the
stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder.
Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an
important choice.
- Make the
hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the
characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not
necessarily to be successful, but active
and complicit in the narrative.
- Different
threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be
killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and
a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me,
how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).
- Figure
out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get
the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you
actually end up writing.
- What if?
What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When
you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the
story will present itself.
- Start
fresh or skip ahead. Delete the last five thousand words and try again. It’s
terrifying at first, but frees you up for a fresh start to find a proper path. Or
you can skip the part that’s putting you on edge – forget about that fidgety
crap, you can do it later – and write the next scene. Whatever was in-between
will come with time.
writers:
- break up your paragraphs. big paragraphs are scary, your readers will get scared
- fuuuuck epithets. “the other man got up” “the taller woman sat down” “the blonde walked away” nahhh. call them by their names or rework the sentence. you can do so much better than this (exception: if the reader doesn’t know the character(s) you’re referring to yet, it’s a-okay to refer to them by an identifying trait)
- blunette is not a thing
- new speaker, new paragraph. please.
- “said” is such a great word. use it. make sweet love to it. but don’t kill it
- use “said” more than you use synonyms for it. that way the use of synonyms gets more exciting. getting a sudden description of how a character is saying something (screaming, mumbling, sighing) is more interesting that way.
- if your summary says “I suck at summaries” or “story better than summary” you’re turning off the reader, my dude. your summary is supposed to be your hook. you gotta own it, just like you’re gonna own the story they’re about to read
- follow long sentences w short ones and short ones w long ones. same goes for paragraphs
- your writing is always better than you think it is. you just think it’s bad because the story’s always gonna be predicable to the one who’s writing it
- i love u guys keep on trucking
- say your dialogue out loud and see if it flows like an actual conversation two real people would have
- keep your vocab relatively simple. trust me on this. if your reader has to keep toggling between your story and dictionary.com, you’re alienating them, not showing off your “writing prowess.” It’s okay to throw in a few fancy words in once in a while to spruce things up, but don’t use things like “he extrapolated” too often
- synonyms are great, but don’t go overboard. instead of “he pronounced, retrieving the container” just say “he said, picking up the box.” again, keep it simple
- doesn’t matter how in love they are. they still need lube
- if the only thing carrying your plot is an easy-to-fix minor miscommunication/misunderstanding, you might wanna throw something else in there to keep your reader on their toes
- describe accents, but try not to put them into dialogue. “Iz cold up een Russia”??? just tell your reader the dude has a russian accent and have him talk
- ur all beautiful and i still love u
Great great great advice. Here’s a little more I’ve learned from writing:
- Writing in the past tense? Your verbs should be in the past tense (had, was, did, sat, ran, kissed). If you’re writing in the present tense, they should in the present (is, has, does, sits, runs, kisses). Don’t switch back and forth between them – especially not within the same sentence.
- The only exception is if you’re writing a “flashback” from a present tense story, in which case your flashback needs its own paragraph/prargraphs.
- Ravenette is also not a word (at least according to the dictionary).
- It’s better to describe the effects of environmental conditions than describe them directly – “Rose shivered as she stepped out into the snow” is better than “It was cold and there was snow on the ground.”
- Direct descriptions are fine too, as long as they’re interesting, not overwrought, and don’t run into multiple sentences.
- Most couples don’t go from kissing to boning in one smooth movement (unless it’s a one-night-stand) – in a real relationship the slow build is usually it’s own reward.
- Condoms are a thing. They’re not a mood killer.
- Write, write, and write some more!
- Read other people’s great stuff and tell them how great it is
- Have fun and don’t give up ❤
if you’re struggling for AU ideas take a look-see at this list i wrote for my friend who dubbed it “better than the 10 commandments"
1) Coffee shop AU
i)
Barista and person who has a ridiculous coffee
orderii)
I’m worried about your coffee dependencyiii)
you accidentally poured boiling hot coffee over
me so you’re responsible for taking me to A&Eiv)
you give me a different fake name every time you
come into starbucks and I just want to know your real name bc ur cute but here
I am scrawling “batman” onto your stupid cappuccino2)
Flower shop AUi)
You buy a weird amount of flowers and I’m
concerned as to whyii)
I’m allergic to flowers but I work in a flower
shop – you’re a customer who’s very confused as to why I’d do thatiii)
(this is also a good way to incorporate flower
meanings eg, buying certain colours/types for person to represent feelings etc.)3)
Library AUi)
You’re overdue on this book and I want it so I’m
tracking u the fuck downii)
I work in the library and I’m a little concerned
for your health bc you never stop studyingiii)
The library’s pretty empty save for you and me
and OH that couple making out loudly in the shelves somewhere4)
Awful first time meetingi)
I accidentally punched you in the face when I
was too overexcited about somethingii)
I thought you were my friend who’s just done
something awful to me (read: cut my hair while I slept, dyed all of my clothes
pink, etc. etc.) because you look similar from behind so I stormed up to you
and shoved you from behind while calling you an assholeiii)
You get the gist to this oneiv)
Oooh when you told me your name I thought you
were joking because it’s fucking awful and I made a joke about it and things
got awkward real fucking fast (perfect for a Hannibal au just saying)5)
Weird places to meet/awkward meetings in generali)
We live in the same block of flats but haven’t
ever talked and Sunday morning we were both doing the walk of shame and had to
stand in the lift togetherii)
“okay I know that being in the woods at 2am is a
weird thing to be doing but my friend called me and- wait, why are you in the woods at 2am, fuck I’m going
to die aren’t I?”iii)
A personal favourite of mine – first day at a
new job and oh fuck my boss is the person I drunkenly hooked up with last
weekend/nightiv)
We keep accidentally running into each other I’m
not a stalker I swearv)
You live across from me in our apartments and we
smile when we see each other but we don’t really know each other and oh you’re
the stripper at my friend’s stag do/hen night fuck this is really uncomfortablevi)
“My shower’s broken but I’ve got a date tonight
could I possibly use your shower please?” “Oh sure (neighbour that I’ve been crushing on for the past six months) of course you can use my shower to get ready for your date (fuck fuck fuck)”6)
Friends to romance – pining and all that
wonderful shiti)
You’ve got a date tonight and you asked for
advice on what to wear but I’m so in love with you and damn you look good in the outfit I picked out for youii)
I really like you but you’re my best friend’s exiii)
You’ve liked me for ages and were really obvious
about it and I didn’t like all the attention but now you’re over me I really
miss it and fuck I think I like you too?iv)
Somewhere along the way of getting into bar
fights together, staying up all night with movie marathons, other friendship
things, I’ve fallen in love with you but oh my god this could ruin EVERYTHINGv)
Friends with benefits oh wait I like you7)
FAKE DATING HOLY SHIT I LIVE FOR THISi)
It’s my highschool reunion and I need a hot date
so I can rub it in the faces of the people who hated meii)
My homophobic parents are coming to visit will
you pretend to date me as an extra “fuck you”?iii)
There’s a person who won’t stop bugging me will
you pretend to be my partner so that they’ll fuck off?iv)
I told my sister I have a boyfriend so she’d
stop trying to set me up with people but now she’s coming to visit and I’m in
too deep I need a fake boyf ASAP8)
Soulmate ausi)
The first words your true love(s) will say to
you are tattooed on you and why the fuck are their first words something really
ridiculous like ‘I’ll pay you a tenner to punch me in the face’ or ‘quick
what’s your favourite animal’ or ‘fucking shit hell holy fuck wow oh my god
jesus h Christ fuck me’ etc. or even worse a really ridiculous song lyric like the opening lines of uptown funk or a high
school musical song or smthing did you have to serenade me the first time you
saw me asshole?ii)
You get an ‘impression’ of your soulmate when
you turn 18 or something but all I got was a strong smell of bananas or an
overwhelming feeling that Thatcher was a good prime minister or an image in my
mind of a fucking unicorniii)
The more ridiculous the better actuallyiv)
Something like whenever your soulmate sings a
duet you can’t help but join in and my fucking soulmate is in a goddamn band
but I can’t sing for shitv)
Or maybe something like soulmates always sneeze
at the same time and I cant be sure but me and this kid in my French class just
sneezed at the same time are we soulmates or was it a coincidence (proceed w
character trying to make themselves sneeze around said person to see what’s
what)9)
Alternate universes for reali)
Mermaidsii)
Siren and asexual pirate who doesn’t understand
why all his crew are losing their shit that person has a nice voice sure but
what the fuck is happeningiii)
Hogwartsiv)
We live in a world where the greek gods are real
and you went and got yourself cursed and now I have to go on a fucking quest to
sort this shit out why do I love you again?v)
Pacific rim au (either they’re drift compatible
or one of them is a ranger and the other stresses constantly bc what if they
die yes I have read a fic like this no I didn’t come up with this one but it’s
fucking good) (also if you haven’t seen that film go watch it now)vi)
Literally any movie or book universe you like
tbh just go for it10)
Other aus that I likei)
I wanted to go on the ferris wheel but there has
to be two people to a cart come on random person let’s go oh wait are we stuck
at the top? Fuckii)
We work in the same office and you have a
goddamn squeaky chair and you wONT FUCKING STOP SQUEAKING IT BECAUSE YOU KNOW
IT ANNOYS MEiii)
Our mutual friend set us up on a blind date and
I thought I’d hate it but you’re actually… kind of funny? But because I expected to hate it in no way am I going to let you change my mind just because you’re gorgeous and funny and intelligent oh no my friend is not winning thisiv)
It started to snow and I’m the only one of our
friends who would go outside with you – I soon found out why none of the others
would go out in the snow with you (this works best if they’re new friends who
don’t know each other all that well) when you shoved a handful of snow down my
back and declared snow warv)
It’s nowhere near Christmas it’s literally still
November would you calm down about Christmas wait no why are you getting the
tree out no stop please stop (if you do this pre-relationship you can have the
grouchy one secretly finding the other’s excitement endearing and falling in
love with them actually that works for established relationship too)vi)
Current partner got a new job in America (or
other country far away) and we’re getting by on skype calls and emails but it’s
not easy and then I met someone new (can be poly or can be finding the OTP person)vii)
You want us both to get in shape and I hate
working out/running but your ass looks really good in shorts oh the things I do
for my friends and their nice assesviii) Carrying
on from 10.vii. you’ve caught me checking you out in what I thought was a
subtle way too many times and now you’re calling me out on it what do I do???ix)
You’re an actor/other famous person that I
really admire and I just saw you in the street and as I was debating whether or
not to say hi you came up to me and
started flirting what do I do??x)
You were waving at your friend behind me but I
got confused and waved back at you and now I’m dying of embarrassment but you
think it’s cutexi)
I sat down in the wrong class and I’m panicking
but don’t want to get up and leave because the class has started and you think
it’s hilarious and shut up you dumb fuck you don’t know me aahhhxii)
I’m a waiter at this wedding and you’re a drunk
guest who will not stop hitting on me please I’m trying to work no I can’t
dance with you omg let me find you some waterxiii) Our
best friends are that awful ‘cute’ couple that make-out in public and call each
other “sweetie” and “sugar” and “babe” and god they’re awful let’s talk about
how awful they are – develops into “shit we’re the awful couple now”xiv) You
pissed me off in class so I threw a book at your head and now I’m in detention
and jesus fuck I hate you so much and the teacher made me apologise and wait
you’re cuter up close and the way you talk is kind of nice actually oh fuck noOkay I could go on forever but this is over 1,500 words of
auing already I have too many ideas christsend me some to @theskyis-forever
10 Things that Red-Flag a Newbie Novelist
Beginning novelists are like Tolstoy’s happy families. They tend to be remarkably alike. Certain mistakes are common to almost all beginners. These things aren’t necessarily wrong, but they are difficult to do well—and get in the way of smooth storytelling
They also make it easy for professionals—and a lot of readers—to spot the unseasoned newbie.
When I worked as an editor, I ran into the same problems in nearly every new novelist’s work—the very things I did when I was starting out.
I think some of the patterns come from imitating the classics. In the days of Dickens and Tolstoy, novels were written to be savored on long winter nights or languid summer days when there was a lot of time to be filled. Detailed descriptions took readers out of their mundane lives and off to exotic lands or into the homes of the very rich and very poor where they wouldn’t be invited otherwise.
Books were expensive, so people wanted them to last as long as possible. They didn’t mind flipping back and forth to find out if Razumihin, Dmitri Prokofitch, and Vrazumihin were in fact, all the same person. They were okay with immersing themselves in long descriptions and philosophical digressions before they found out what happened to Little Nell. The alternative was probably staring at the fire or listening to Aunt Lavinia snore.
But in the electronic age…not so much. Your readers have the world’s libraries at their fingertips, and if you bore them or confuse them for even a minute, they’re already clicking away to buy the next shiny 99c book.
Whether you’re querying agents and editors or you’re planning to self-publish, you need to write for the contemporary reader. And that means “leaving out the parts that readers skip” as Elmore Leonard said.
Agents and readers aren’t going to want to wade through a practice novel. They want polished work. All beginners make mistakes. Falling down and making a mess is part of any learning process. But you don’t have to display the mess to the world. Unfortunately easy electronic self-publishing tempts us to do just that.
But don’t. As I said two weeks ago, it takes the same amount of time to learn to write as it did before the electronic age.
Here are some tell-tale signs that a writer is still in the learning phase of a career.
I’m not saying these things are “wrong”. They’re just overdone or tough for a beginner to do well.
queerhomestuck 