Tips and tricks for authors

D

Deleted member 57675

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As the title says give a tip for new authors
Post in correct forum section please please.

Edited it. Sorry mind was tired earlier.

Improving

1. Accept constructive criticism if it helps to improve, but ignore the comments/reviews that are straight up toxic.

2. Rules, guidelines, whatever. So many try to follow it but end up deterring from it or writing even worse. Nothing is a straight cut line in writing. Twist or bend, some stuff is meant to be broken. Don't take it too seriously to a T. Its general abstract guidelines you can follow if it's applicable.

3. Research where needed to help strengthen your story or specific touchy subjects. But don't limit yourself too strictly. Fiction allows more freedom on creating and telling a story.

4. It is okay to fail first time and many times. No one is 100% perfect. It takes practice, preseverence and improvement to write better.

5. Determine if you write for yourself, or to gain popularity. One might make you happy, but not happy with lack of readers. The other is happy with popularity, but maybe not what you want to write.

6. Pantsy or planner? Figure whether you want to improvise every time you hit an obstacle or chart a new path. If you are more likely to end on a dead end with plotholes, maybe try plan some stuff out first before writing.

Posting Online

7. If you want to traditionally publish your story later on, be careful posting most of it online. Heard some publishers will be hesitant to publish your story if its already on the web, but different publishers and cases so it may vary.

8. Post on different sites if you want to attract more readers. But be careful of site's policies and contracts. Read what's allowed before posting, and read before agreeing to anything.

9. You might find your story copied and pasted onto various sites. Just a thought if you post a story you're very fond of online.

10. Different sites cater to different trends and genres and cater to a different audience. Some genres are more popular than others on certain sites.

Scribblehub & Its Forum

11. @WelcomeToSH has a post dedicated for newbie writers and users on SH. Has general FAQs.

12. Search in forum if you have a particular question about using SH, how to get popular on SH, what time to post on SH. Many have been asked repeatedly and answered already.

13. Post in the right forum section! Lately, many newbies don't even read where they should post their threads, and it only take few seconds to do so. Don't make someone have to report your thread to be moved! If you cannot read where to post correctly, don't expect your readers to be all understanding and awe of your work either. Mutual reading level.

14. Get Off the Forum. It Only Distracts You. It is loud because its joined by many voices of writers who often procrastinate, distracted, and hard time write more save for a few.
 
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Ilikewaterkusa

You have to take out their families...
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:blob_cookie:

You will receive many advices and criticism. Listen to all, but follow only the ones you think are right. For example, if you are writing a fast paced shounen then ignore the comments saying this looks unrealistic etc. If you are writing a slow paced drama then ignore the ones saying that it's chapter 15 and nothing has happened yet.
Maybe not many, but make sure to ask
As the title says give a tip for new authors
Once you get a good series off the ground don’t ever end it
 
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Ai-chan

Queen of Yuri Devourer of Traps
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As the title says give a tip for new authors

Authors should write and continue to improve their writing. Not checking where you're going and asking for author tips in artists forum is the wrong start, though. It shows you can't care less and don't bother doing your own research, which is a bad thing if you want to be a good author.
 

ElliePorter

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Continue to consume more media to gain knowledge and ideas for your work.
 

Monaka

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As the title says give a tip for new authors
Don't be discouraged if your story have few readers at the beginning. Most readers only pick stories to read when said stories have reached a certain length and numbers of chapters. Keep writing!
 

NitroxDarks

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Take a breather to organize your own head to better elaborate your thoughts and have a better structure in your paragraphing. It happened to me something incredible weird for my first 2-3 chapters. A lot of words were missing and there were even some weird '/#$' and the like; at first, I didn't took much notice of a comment that elaborated on my chapters being confusing. I took around a month to discover the problem with those chapters and to be honest, I did have some trouble getting used to writing in PC like this, but there were some technical problems which I cannot fathom.
It's fine to write whatever you want but, remember that the world you are creating is always moving and should not be stopped and removed by some of your regrets from past actions and for creating forced scenarios which you didn't thought it was too much at the time... yea, like that.
 

RayneStorm

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1. Don't pants a story. Yeah, I know pantsing sounds cool and everyone says it's valid and whatever but if you want to make life more difficult for yourself and add on an extra 3 rounds of rewriting and editing, then pants away. I've written over three dozen novels and I can confidently say that even the vaguest of plans is better than none at all. I think people think that plans are too rigid but they can be changed if you really want to and if you think planning out your story will make writing it boring then chances are your story is just boring and the planning showed it up. Anytime I pants a story, be guaranteed it has to be rewritten from scratch using draft one as an outline. While planning doesn't mean I'll never have to do a rewrite it is far more unlikely that such a drastic overhaul would be necessary


2. Have your characters make choices and suffer for them. Active characters who drive the plot are far more interesting to read than ones who get dragged by the plot. Relatability isn't necessary if they're interesting. No one relates to Darth Vader or the Joker but they're active characters and fun to watch. As for the consequences? Make it hurt. If the protagonist is always right then the story is predictable and boring. If they can be wrong then the stakes are higher because while we're pretty certain they won't die, that doesn't mean that everyone else is going to make it out alive or that they will get away without a scratch. That's why Kaiji has more tension than Kakegurui. In Kaiji, even if he wins he might lose an eardrum, while Kakegurui is pretty to look at but we know nothing bad will happen to them so it's more about the spectacle than the tension of the gamble

3. Finish the story. I would say don't even look at feedback until it's done (or hold off on posting altogether). You can't properly edit an unfinished story. I'm currently writing a trilogy and I'm glad I didn't post book one because the events of book 3 need to be foreshadowed. Not to mention that readers can jump to conclusions on an unfinished book and make their criticisms invalid (yeah, I said it). I've had critiques on my mysteries as I was posting to another site that there was a plothole or that the character was acting out of character or that the clues didn't make sense but those criticisms were mostly invalid because the plothole wasn't a plothole but part of the clue to the reveal, the character acting out of character was supposed to clue the reader in that something was wrong and the clues made perfect sense in the end. While I did smooth out the delivery the story didn't need to be rewritten but if I didn't already have the ending, I may have taken out interesting parts of the story before I had it on paper. Not to mention the value of finishing in and of itself. If you finish one book then you can finish another and each book will be better than the last. So just finish and worry about fixing it later (though there would be less to fix if you started with a rough outline of what you want to happen at the very least)
 

Toripuru-S

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Plenty of good advice 👀. So I'll try to avoid repeating anybody else 😋.

I'd like to add:
1. Avoid getting jealous of the success of other writers. This doesn't mean no one is allowed to have an opinion, but it's a bad look to always whine about what other people are doing, rather than focusing on your damn self.
2. Similarly, avoid constant self-loathing. If a writer is incessantly going, "aW gEeZ 🥺 mY wRiTiNG iS sO bAD 🥺", "mAyBe i sHOuLd qUiT 🥺", and/or anything similar then they should skip the loathing and quit. Go away. Because the endless wave of other writers with the confidence to tell a story will spit on you, walk around you, and proceed to tell their own stories.

Do the best you can ♥️, embrace failure/criticism ♥️, and strive to improve ♥️.
 

placeintime

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The only thing I can say is for writers who are just starting off, is to understand that you won't achieve your goal in just one day.

What I mean by this is that you can have a big goal of wanting 1 million views, 100,000 favorites and etc. Understand that this isn't going to happen in just one day. This happens for a good amount of time.

Make smaller goals to build up to that larger goal instead. That way, it increases motivation and gives you an idea of how long it will take to get to your goal.
 

TheEldritchGod

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The human eye is a rather unreliable thing.

When writing, you'd be surprised how easy it is for you to misread something, especially when you are the one to write it. At the end of every chapter, copy paste it into a program that can do Text to Speech. Listen to it being read back to you EXACTLY AS YOU WROTE IT. The computer has no mercy. You will hate it. You will hate it so much you are likely to never do it a second time because nothing will force you to see just how crappy you are as a writer than listening to it read out loud to you.

I recommend Text Edit.

I don't even do it that often anymore. When I hear my own writing I will spend HOURS carefully editing every. SINGLE. SENTENCE. UNTIL. IT. SOUNDS. RIGHT.

However, if you truly wish to get your story "right", nothing will FORCE you to write better than Text to speech your writing back at you.
 

Coffeeporse67

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As a new writer, I had a lot of passion. But then it quickly burns out. It's hard to keep going when you get bored, but more so because you don't know where you're going. So here's a short list of some things I want to say that you might want to follow, or bend, or ignore:

1. I am working on this, but have a general plan. Actually, this can be fun to plan how you want your story to begin, the small conflicts along the way, the foreshadowing, the climax, and then the end.
2. Make believable characters. For all characters, make flaws and strengths, ask questions on how they will react in certain situations, their motives for doing what they do, for your MC, the side characters, the antagonists, and even the minor characters. Everything is a gray scale, not black and white.
3. Balance the power. Don't make your MC OP without a cost to the power, whether the power itself is dangerous, or the experiences the MC goes through to get the power, or the mental struggle they have over it. This can be applied to all characters, not just the MC.
4. I think it's other peoples' writing that inspires you, and that's great. When I wrote, I also subconsciously or consciously took a lot of their ideas from their writing, and I think that's fine. Of course, following word for word, character for character is not really writing, but more of plagiarism (I mean copy and pasting literally). For that...don't do that. On the other hand, some people might want to smack me over the head for this but - I think it's fine to steal ideas and write them. Because slowly, those ideas will be tinkered with and change, becoming your own ideas.
5. Most importantly, and I stress this: Don't be afraid to fail. Back then, I didn't have this fear, but as I posted more and more chapters on my story to the public, as I matured and wrote more, I realized my writing was terrible. Taking criticism is hard, because it feels personal (and sometimes the other is just rude and gives insults without explaining, so ignore them). But just take it as a learning experience, because you'll get better.
It's the same with all kinds of things.
 
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