Advice to Yourself

[KuruKinaar]

When we all first started writing, we weren't the best at it... Is there any advice you'd give yourself in the past that would have helped you back then?

(Mine would be: use chapters... I didn't use chapters because I thought they weren't important. So, when I finished writing, I had 300 pages to go through and organize with chapters. It was a pain...)

 

[Sleds]

Don't start a story that may need 1 000 chapters to end.

 

[Wyn]

The best advice I could give to my past self would be to "Just write what you want to write and don't overthink it". This mindset greatly helps me as an author and makes writing much more fun than ever. Hope new authors also don't overthink when writing and just do what you guys want to do. Everybody loves different things, there will be always someone who will find your work a masterpiece among the billions of people out there, all you have to do is let them see your work.

 

[SailusGebel]

Don't bite off more than you can chew.

 

[BlackKnightX]

Don't go in without a plan. I'm a very spontaneous person and work best in the moment, but writing long stories without a plan is difficult, especially when wrapping things up at the end. Oh, and stop trying to be perfect. Remember what you're trying to do.

 

[Generic.Archdemon]

advice you'd give yourself in the past that would have helped you back then?

Don't be come a fiction writer, of all thing things you know how to do, of all the skills you have, writing fiction and story telling is the one you have least talent in.

Spend some time doing local history research of small regions, you really fucking good at it for no apparent reason, or just really good at doing interviews and finding hidden unrecorded histories.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

I'd shout, "1800076jy2p!" Point at myself, "Marvin!" Point at my younger self, "Kilroy! Confirm!"

My younger self would confirm.

Then, since I set up passwords to tell myself ever since I was 7, should I ever travel through time, I would tell myself everything I could think of how to abuse future knowledge and become rich as quickly as possible, just in case the temporal event was short lived.

As for advice about writing, think ahead and nothing beats a good brick joke.

 

[QuercusMalus]

My hardest was getting over the 'high word count =better' that got beaten into me through school. Say what needs to be said, as clearly as you can. You are not Charles Dickens, you are not paid by the word.

 

[Bluebery]

My advice is "Just write."

 

[Sola-sama]

SIT. DOWN. AND. DO. THE. FUCKING. TYPING.

 

[georgelee5786]

"You suck at this, do it again"

 

[Jemini]

I'd say "Kid characters kill stories." Seriously, the reason I had to completely scrap and re-boot my first story was because a freaking kid character who I put in because I thought she was cute became the bane of my existence as she kept sucking all the air out of the room in every scene she was in and I just couldn't find a good way to write her out of the story!

That's how bad a problem it became. I actually had to abandon the entire freaking story and re-write it without that character, because that was the only thing that actually worked.

Granted, that also gave me the ability to fix several other problems the story had, but that was the cardinal problem that was killing the entire thing.

 

[ArcadiaBlade]

Don't be a perfectionist.

I have a weird sense that whenever I find mistakes such as plotholes, grammar or character interactions, I tend to get stuck up because I can't come up with a better one that I would try to stop and think before getting lazy and think to do it again tomorrow. It became a severe habit that it basically turned my brain that if I don't perfect my writing, don't write at all.

Because of my mistakes in life and no aknowledgement in my work, I ended up feeling inferior to the point that as long as I can make a good aknowledgement without any mistakes, I can move on with continuing. If not, abandon it.

Maybe its depression or maybe it was affected because of my life, I ended up stopping once I saw that my work became imperfect and abandon it.

 

[Verdante]

Finish the book you started. Create an outline; it doesn't have to be too detailed. Start with the themes you want in your story. Set aside time to write or plan out your story everyday even if it's just for 10 minutes.

But mostly, it will be about finishing the book and setting aside time to write everyday. It took a long time for me to realize this, but readers don't get attached to a perfect first five chapters, they connect with a finished book that took them on a journey.

 

[Rhaps]

Don't overthink and plan everything out, just fuck it we ball

 

[Corty]

My only advice would be:

Start doing it earlier. Don’t wait around you lazy fuck.

 

[CupcakeNinja]

When we all first started writing, we weren't the best at it... Is there any advice you'd give yourself in the past that would have helped you back then?

(Mine would be: use chapters... I didn't use chapters because I thought they weren't important. So, when I finished writing, I had 300 pages to go through and organize with chapters. It was a pain...)

"STOP STARTING SO MANY FUCKING NOVELS BECAUSE YOU READ STORIES WITH AN INTERESTING PREMISE AND SHIT EXECUTION AND KNEW YOU COULD DO BETTER AND WERE BORED ANYWAY."

My god this would have save me so much damn trouble.

 

[Vitou]

Not counting how terribly formatted my early chapters used to be, one advice would probably be "just because you posted a chapter, doesn't mean it's too late to fix its mistakes. " Seriously, I remember posting a chapter and then linking it in the server to get opinions, and when a guy told me how to make it better, I was just like "oh well, already posted it, too late to change it now." idk why, but I from some reason just thought that everyone instantly sees it as soon as I post it. But yeah, now I know, and I even went back and completely rewrote my first 3 chapters cause they just looked awful lol.

 

[Bobple]

Start posting stories now. There was about 2~3 years gap between when I started writing and when I posted my first story. The amount of skill, knowledge and experience I'd gained in my first 3 months of posting far eclipsed what I did in the years prior. You could say those 2~3 years were my foundation but they were really weren't, when I compare my work at the start of that period to the end, there is barely even an improvement.

Advice 2, I know your bad at editing don't worry. Write a bit and practice that first, then learn to edit. Don't edit chapters immediately after writing, try to wait a week before that.

 

[Corty]

@Vitou Please fix your sig to comply with the forum rules. Thank you.

• No Videos and GIF's in your signature unless under a spoiler. Picture in signature should not be bigger than 200 px in height. Total height of your signature should not exceed 10 lines of 15px text.