Writing Please help me, how to become a good writer

Vornaga

New member
Joined
Jul 9, 2019
Messages
2
Points
3
Hello guys
My name vornaga a newbie writer without any knowledge other than reading novel. I have no talent or specialty so I don't know how to begin it. I am still not good with English and have a boring mind. I need a teacher that can help me with it. My limited knowledge and language I am still writing it



A very basic story without anything you may found interesting so please give me your opinion about it
 

TLCsDestiny

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 2, 2019
Messages
249
Points
83
Upfront, blunt and honest...at least u could make a character with those traits :)
There's a start...
 

jinxs2011

Spud Cannon
Joined
Dec 23, 2018
Messages
150
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83
Alright, first of all you'll need to work on your grammar and general English skills. Bad grammar can turn quite a lot of people off the novel. Just from things I've noticed, you'll want to pay attention to capitalisation at the start of sentences, spacing after a full stop, using proper tenses (example: "the army of undead is leading by three people" should be "The army of undead is lead by three people") and general sentence structure and word placement.

For instance, something like "by three people that so weird three people look is far from undead being or someone who controls the army." makes absolutely no sense. I would think it would be something along the lines of "by three people that appeared weird as they did not seem to be undead beings or people who might lead an army.", but it is difficult to tell as the wording makes it difficult to tell what you actually meant.

Then there is the talking. It is difficult or nigh impossible to tell who is saying what. There are various ways to avoid this problem. Some novels use the character names in brackets before speech to indicate who is talking, but most use simple cues like "he said 'blah'", "she said 'blah'" or "George said 'blah'". This helps people keep track of who said what and be significantly less confused.

I would consider looking at some well-written English novels (if you're not sure which ones on here are well-written, go to a book store in real life. Most books get looked over by an editor before publishing, so the majority of them should be good) and carefully looking at how they write the grammar and sentence structure and so on, so you have a easy point of comparison.

After you've done that, you need to turn your perspective around. 'Talent', 'specialty', sure, they can be important, but in writing the more important things are these:
Plan your novel. What characters will appear, why, what they can do and what will they do; where will they go; outline the story for the novel, major events, and so on and so forth. Once you have an outline of the story, each chapter will become easier to write.

Keep writing. It's a basic fact on these sorts of sites that the more chapters you post, the more people see them, and the more people that see them, the more readers you are likely to have. Outside of readers, writing, funnily enough, increases your skill at writing.

Research. In writing a fiction, you're going to be writing about a lot of things you don't know about. There's no escaping it, because let's be honest, not many of us are experts on the behavioural tendencies of wild animals, metallurgy or mythological beings. So, rather than just making something up or having it work however you think is convenient and annoying the heck out of any reader who knows how it actually is, you look it up. Read up a bit on the topic before you keep writing.

Don't stress if you can't find the right word for something. A thesaurus can help in a lot of these cases, but if not, don't stress. Make a note of it somewhere so you can remember to try again another time. If you still can't figure it out, just let it be.

Don't stress about the early chapters. If you're serious about the novel, you'll probably end up editing or re-writing them again later. Trust me, I've done it about two or three times for each of my novels.

And finally, write about what you know. Now, I'm not saying that if, for example, you're a master fisherman that you should be writing a story about a fisherman, but it is good to incorporate your knowledge into the story. It can make it more interesting, and let's the reader actually learn something through your novel.
 

Wintertime

King of Nothing
Joined
Jan 14, 2019
Messages
165
Points
83
Start by getting a better grasp of the language. You must learn to at least understand English first before writing about it. Especially, if you want a concise story.

Spelling, grammar, and sentence structure could be improved. You can worry about pacing and plot later.

I did you a favor.


Hopefully, this will help you to improve your writing skills. But like, shit. Your writing is kind of hard to even comprehend. Not to mince words or anything, but I suggest you start from the very beginning and work your way from there. It will be quite a while until you can write a novel.
 
Last edited:

Vornaga

New member
Joined
Jul 9, 2019
Messages
2
Points
3
Upfront, blunt and honest...at least u could make a character with those traits :)
There's a start...
Thanks for advice
Alright, first of all you'll need to work on your grammar and general English skills. Bad grammar can turn quite a lot of people off the novel. Just from things I've noticed, you'll want to pay attention to capitalisation at the start of sentences, spacing after a full stop, using proper tenses (example: "the army of undead is leading by three people" should be "The army of undead is lead by three people") and general sentence structure and word placement.

For instance, something like "by three people that so weird three people look is far from undead being or someone who controls the army." makes absolutely no sense. I would think it would be something along the lines of "by three people that appeared weird as they did not seem to be undead beings or people who might lead an army.", but it is difficult to tell as the wording makes it difficult to tell what you actually meant.

Then there is the talking. It is difficult or nigh impossible to tell who is saying what. There are various ways to avoid this problem. Some novels use the character names in brackets before speech to indicate who is talking, but most use simple cues like "he said 'blah'", "she said 'blah'" or "George said 'blah'". This helps people keep track of who said what and be significantly less confused.

I would consider looking at some well-written English novels (if you're not sure which ones on here are well-written, go to a book store in real life. Most books get looked over by an editor before publishing, so the majority of them should be good) and carefully looking at how they write the grammar and sentence structure and so on, so you have a easy point of comparison.

After you've done that, you need to turn your perspective around. 'Talent', 'specialty', sure, they can be important, but in writing the more important things are these:
Plan your novel. What characters will appear, why, what they can do and what will they do; where will they go; outline the story for the novel, major events, and so on and so forth. Once you have an outline of the story, each chapter will become easier to write.

Keep writing. It's a basic fact on these sorts of sites that the more chapters you post, the more people see them, and the more people that see them, the more readers you are likely to have. Outside of readers, writing, funnily enough, increases your skill at writing.

Research. In writing a fiction, you're going to be writing about a lot of things you don't know about. There's no escaping it, because let's be honest, not many of us are experts on the behavioural tendencies of wild animals, metallurgy or mythological beings. So, rather than just making something up or having it work however you think is convenient and annoying the heck out of any reader who knows how it actually is, you look it up. Read up a bit on the topic before you keep writing.

Don't stress if you can't find the right word for something. A thesaurus can help in a lot of these cases, but if not, don't stress. Make a note of it somewhere so you can remember to try again another time. If you still can't figure it out, just let it be.

Don't stress about the early chapters. If you're serious about the novel, you'll probably end up editing or re-writing them again later. Trust me, I've done it about two or three times for each of my novels.

And finally, write about what you know. Now, I'm not saying that if, for example, you're a master fisherman that you should be writing a story about a fisherman, but it is good to incorporate your knowledge into the story. It can make it more interesting and lets the reader actually learn something through your novel.
Start by getting a better grasp of the language. You must learn to at least understand English first before writing about it. Especially, if you want a concise story.

Spelling, grammar, and sentence structure could be improved. You can worry about pacing and plot later.

I did you a favor.


Hopefully, this will help you to improve your writing skills. But like, shit. Your writing is kind of hard to even comprehend. Not to mince words or anything, but I suggest you start from the very beginning and work your way from there. It will be quite a while until you can write a novel.
I can't say anything other than
" thanks"
I know my shitty writing skill and maybe I can't change anything about it. but for now, I must keep writing with this shitty skill. This may become an uninteresting journey that I must take. Like my boring daily life without any meaning or purpose. I didn't know why I begin writing. for now, I am just want to see how my future-self, can he fix it or not?
 

Khiricastares

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 28, 2019
Messages
50
Points
58
Step 1: Read. Read everything you can. The more writing that passes through your brain the better. Ideally you would also not just read the story if wanting to be a writer, but read into the story and how it's written. But, just increasing how much literature goes through your brain and into you memory/subconscious is enough for a start.

Step 2: Learn the rules of grammar and writing structure. Knowing exactly where to put a comma is not the goal, but being able to write a story with at least a possibly-publishable baseline is desirable. This will take time, just try to incorporate things as you learn them into your writing so you can build good habits.

Step 3: Accept that you will probably never think you are a good writer. As you get better, your mindset changes and you forget what it was like in the past. Until you go back and read something from years ago, inducing a fit of cringe and uneasiness. As long as you are writing and as long as you are following step 1 and 2 in some degree, you will be getting better at writing.

Writing is like a job, most people will never get to that point of novelization where it's full time. But as long as you are enjoying it and want to keep writing, then you're doing a good job in my opinion.
 
Joined
Jan 2, 2019
Messages
15
Points
3
Start writing your story in your mother tongue, establish your skills with your mother tongue first and then if you think your skills are stable enough you can consider writing in another language. Write in a language that you feel comfortable with :)
 

Kalesterine

Active member
Joined
Jun 22, 2019
Messages
17
Points
43
I started writing when I was ten, so I gradually improved from not knowing how structure sentences to being an okay-ish writer.

From my experience, I suggest you start writing. My first piece was on fanfiction, oh boy, let me tell you, people there are grammar nazis. They would criticise you to the point of tears. But that sort of criticism was my determination drive. You will improve over time. I can assure you that. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Regarding your vocabulary, I got only one advice, and that is, 'Make the dictionary and the thesaurus your bestfriend'.

If you're writing on pc then I will highly reccomend grammarly to check your grammar. And if you're on pc then download the merriam Webster dictionary and a thesaurus. If you feel like you abused a word too much, then quickly refer to the thesaurus.

And as a multilingual, the best advice I can give you is to start thinking in English or at least imagine your stories in English. One of the problems I've encountered when I was beginning to write was that some words aren't available in english. Like the word 'aiyo' idk how I should make sense of that in English when we use it to express many things. That's why thinking in English is the best! You write faster and avoid the cons of being able to speak more than one language.

Take breaks when you're writing! It's fine to rest once. We aren't writing machines, so don't feel guilty.

And the best advice I've ever gotten is to never write fillers. They just dont need to exist. If doesn't advance the plot then dont write it. I worship this advice because it made my life so much easier.

That's all the advice I can give you tbh at this point.
 

awake1122

Active member
Joined
Jan 21, 2019
Messages
19
Points
43
Don't give up and keep moving forward. Getting better is a slow process, but so long as you stick to it and try your best you will improve before you know it.
 
Joined
Jan 15, 2019
Messages
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Try to find something you enjoy writing and makes you keep coming back to it.

Ideally it's something that only by writing stories, you can get it.

Maybe ask yourself, why do I want to write and become good at it?

It may take a while, but I think it's a good thing to have a clear goal on how you wanna take your writing. The kind of stories you wanna write, the genres you wanna delve on, etc...

There's a lot of ways to approach writing and I hope you can find the ones that suits you the most.
 

Macronomicon

Active member
Joined
Mar 5, 2019
Messages
13
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43
make sure you write in the main character's thoughts and beliefs as often as you can, not simply what they do. Subjective facts are incredibly useful for making a character likable.

for example, a kid almost drowned in a rain-barrel once, and he forever thinks of them as dangerous Murder-Buckets. They are not dangerous, this is simply how he feels about them. subjective fact.
 

HedonistPotato

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Joined
Apr 7, 2019
Messages
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As a newbie who's scratching her head right now on how to continue my 2nd chapter, I feel you. I actually found myself reading tons of Psychology and medical materials for my writing. I am a newbie who lacks experience, but I take my work seriously. I just don't incorporate things that don't make sense. One tip I can give (how dare I, right?) is to make sure the elements, events, characters and actions in your story are logical. The readers should be able to find logic through the behavior of the characters or the events that take place. If you want no explanations for the sake of suspense, see to it that the explanation you give will be satisfying and will compensate for leaving the readers hanging or wondering why, how, when and what.

Me when readers drop a comment and I am too nervous to read them :

1044
 
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