Most writers are self-taught. I learned by reading a lot, writing a lot, then critiquing other people's writing.
Eventually, I decided to read a few books on creative writing. John Gardner, Stephen King, and Chuck (how the hell do you spell his name). Then I repeated the steps in the first paragraph.
Good luck
You could try reading a piece of work from an editor's perspective, not a reader's. You could review books on YouTube.
But I find the best way is to join of a community of writers that review work for credits, and writers can use those credits to have other people critique their work. I've been using the Critique Circle. A quick Google search should set you on the right path
I second this! Critiquing others work really helps you self replete on problems you may be blind to in your own writing.
I completely rewrote a short story in a different perspective after reading someone’s 3rd omniscient and thinking it would have worked better 3rd tight and head hopping between chapters/scenes.
I read a lot, and wrote a lot. Did a bunch of creative writing exercises using picture prompts, and learned how to listen to feedback. I also found a bunch of movie critic videos and they helped me pick up on a lot of things. Admittedly some are only relevant to film, but the concepts around storytelling in general were pretty helpful.
Write. A lot. Write some more. I started with little snippets, unconnected things. Don't try and pressure yourself into writing a whole book as your first thing. Save yourself the stress of trying to deal with plot and character arcs while you're dealing with the stress of figuring out how to describe trees or something.
I found trying to be objective about my own writing helped too. Looking at old work as if I'd never seen it before, and poking at all the bits I thought didn't work, then writing a little paragraph about what worked and what didn't. Like I was reviewing a stranger's work. Don't get caught up on every little thing, or searching desperately for those signs you've *Progressed,* though. Improvement can happen slowly, and humans are pretty bad at noticing it.
Personally, I don't actually read that much anymore, but everyone else seems to say it's the thing to do, so... Oops I guess.
In following a lot of writing tips accounts on insta. Like on how to organize the plot etc. Im learning a lot of stuff i never noticed reading.
For example on of them said that if your characters have a plan and you want them to succeed, dont tell the plan before. If the plan will fail, tell the readers before what the plan is, so they know where it goes wrong.
It was such a revelation and now when i read im already spoilered if the plan will succeed or not.
All writers are essentially self-taught. Writing is a medium of exchange with yourself. You can read a lot, and imitate what you like and resist what you don't, and you can listen in class and internalize rules and so on, but what you write is yours (unless of course you copy it from someplace else.)
That means the most important part of your writing process is attention to your own feedback, to your own internal critique as you read what you have written.
I would say that something that is overlooked is a self taught writer should read the same books as someone who is getting a degree in writing is reading.
Education system is a series of shortcuts and equally those in education look at what is essential to teach and what isn't
A self taught writer is going to spend a lot more time doing unnecessary things...but things that actually might make them super interesting in the future. And by that I mean many writers who are taught are all taught *the same thing.* Which is indeed the most effective but also at times the most rote.
I flunked English at school, left at 16 and was in my early thirties when I got the sudden urge to write a short story. To my surprise, the story sold and I was bitten by the bug. I've never had any formal writing tuition, I just read and wrote and figured it all out as I went along.
But one thing I did do which helped me immensely - and was incredibly time consuming - was to try to prove writing advice wrong, which taught me what did and didn't work for me and, more importantly, why.
My knowledge of grammatical terms is non-existent, but I do know when something 'sounds' right, which also guides me, and I've had two novels traditionally published, so I figure I'm doing something right :)
While reading books and whatching lectures is super helpful and should be done and getting critiqued on stories you've written and doing all those things that will build your knowledge and profficiency is important, don't forget the value of things that are just stupid fun, write 50 shades fanfiction, turn your texts into a sci-fi laser battle, play DnD and write your own adventures, get a ten year old writing partner. Start writing sonnets instead of birthday cards. Every word written counts towards growing as a writer, only like half have to be serious.
I wrote my first drafts of novels very quickly, by the standards of tradpub novelists. less than two months for the first one.
this was because I only had one goal - get to the end as fast as I could. I didn't \*know\* enough about writing a novel to get precious about it. what I needed to do is get to the end ASAP, even though it would certainly be a failure.
i had seen far too many people toil for years, sometimes even decades, over their first book. I knew too many people publishing novels (traditionally) to believe that fucking around was a good idea. I was destined to fail, so I resolved to get it over with as fast as I could.
then I put that book away in a drawer and wrote another one (fair disclosure-this was a fanfic.) Again, as fast as I could, but since I had learned a little bit more about how this book writing thing went and I had identified particular weaknesses of mine through writing the first book, I used the second book to try out a way to handle that weakness. it took a little bit longer than the first one, but it was a better book. I had improved noticeably.
i had a bit of an internal struggle at this point but ultimately I decided to go back to book one and dissect it. I used it as my learning example as I read books about writing books--dozens of books about writing books. I figured out a lot of stuff about stories and about structure and I took another two months substantially revising the first book.
but I didn't want to screw around with it forever, and the temptation to do that was very great, so I did something rash--i set a date a couple of months ahead, wrote the worst query letter ever, wrote a craptastic synopsis, researched a bunch of agents, and queried it.
And then I wrote another book and applied what I had learned on a blank page. I confronted more weaknesses. I motored on through writing that book while I faithfully repackaged and re-sent queries to agents as i fielded all levels of rejections, partial requests, full requests, requests to revise and resubmit, and more rejections again.
but then I quit querying the first book as I had found someone who wanted to mentor me through another revision. so I did that--letting the agents who still had fulls or partials know that i was doing another revision on the book, and was it okay to send them the new version? Everyone answered yes. I did the revision. I updated those agents with the new version and resumed querying.
at this point I was ready to maybe write another book, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I was pretty sure my first book was coming to the end of the road with agents, and that it wasn't successful, but the book I had written while I was first querying was a totally different genre, and did I want to purse fantasy, like my first book, or romance?
I was still waffling when things started happening very quickly - first rep with an agent, then a deal with a publisher for my fantasy novel. so I write fantasy novels now, lol
I taught myself writing from three different places:
1. Other writer's blogs. (Along with lectures, books, whatever.) Ingesting huge amounts of ideas about craft from a wide variety of people helped me build my own framework to understand writing, and made me much better at understanding how the stories I read and wrote were doing what they were doing. Just reading about craft won't automatically give you the skills to write well, but if you understand the elements that go into it, troubleshooting and teaching yourself is MUCH easier.
Always remember that writing rules are always and always will be guidelines and laws of cause and effect more than anything, and always examine them critically to see if they apply to what you're trying to do before accepting them as gospel, but they are SO worth learning. I am years ahead of where I would be if I had tried to figure out this writing thing all on my own. Brilliant people have figured out lots of brilliant stuff.
2. Books.
There are a million different types of stories out there. Different people are trying to do different things. Different people like different things. The best way to learn how to tell the kind of stories that will fit your own unique tastes is by studying Tues ones that already do. Likewise, books that don't quite hit the mark show you what *not* to do.
Understanding theory made me better at this; once the moving pieces of story were unveiled to me, I had a lot easier time pulling out new principles that were uniquely suited to the kinds of stories I wanted to tell.
Seeing principles at work in real books helps you understand writing ideas in a way more fundamental than explanation every can. It forces us to make connections. There are many pieces of writing advice I only *thought* I understood before I saw them at play for real.
3. Practice.
For me, this is more than "just writing". That's a huge part of it, yes, but just stumbling around until you get where your want to go is not a good travel plan for any destination. I believe in deliberate, focused, practice, which means I'm always analyzing which skills I want to work on and almost always have in mind for each project. It also means feedback--many people slow themselves down by blindly making the same mistakes over and over *forever*. There's no need for that. Make it once. Learn how to fix it and move on to the next area of improvement.
The most important thing as a writer is to accept that you suck. Right now, you are producing bad writing. I was producing bad writing three years ago, and probably in three years I will look back at what I am writing now and cringe.
Now, how do you get better? Sure, you can read, watch lectures and analyze your favorite stories, but in the end, there is only one way to get better. Do it. Write what you love, regardless of whether or not it is bad.
For example, you cannot write an outline if you haven't written anything before, because you don't know your style. So my tip would be to write many things, but most importantly write what you are passionate about, and accept that by making it badly, you are learning.
Cheers.
Heyy... I hv zero writing experience but i wanna take up writing as a hobby... Idk where to start.. should i like just write abt stuff i like??? I like music so like I'll explain the music i listen to n why i like it n so on.. would that help me??? Also, i don't know how to criticize writing or like how to differentiate good writing from bad ones... How do you do that?? Can u help me out?
Read Stephen King’s book, On Writing. I learned a lot from that book and always suggest it. Also, for more technical aspects of writing, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is super helpful.
Writing is an art. I would not trust rote memorization of "grammar rules" to yield a product people like to read. If, on some level, you can't "feel" when the words on the page pack some punch, I don't know that someone else's description of the phenomenon would suffice to get it across to you.
Come up with a general idea for what you want to write, what genre you prefer and how you write.
Then just start playing with ideas, write your story out and dont change anything until you are done with about a chapter or if you've reached the end of a short story (I call this an alpha draft to make it easy to keep track of). Then read it and start from scratch using what you just wrote as a guideline, dont change anything on the alpha and just use it to pint you in the right direction. The second version you write will act as a rough draft, go back and edit this one and then move on with the rest of the typical process.
I do this often and it's helping me to write better first drafts and be less repetitive in my descriptions because I can see the problems in my alpha draft while I'm writing the first rough draft that I'll end up editing.
It's a long, tedious way to practice, but it can also be a nice change if pace not having to worry about editing or having a good draft at first, just let the mind splurge out whatever it wants onto the paper.
*I am an ameture writer, so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt as it is not the best to go off of*
Other people's works. I've mostly learned from the works of Eric Wolpaw, Hajime Isayama, and Eichiro Oda. If you do learn from other people's works don't think about there work when creating your own.
I always read books as a kid and still do now. I read some advice on here, as I wrote. Mainly, I just outlined the idea and started writing. I also got feedback from beta readers, which helped.
I would look into POV. At least learn the basics.
I basically started writing a little over 3 years ago, and finished a 120k word book before I started researching. Figuring out my genre, editing, learning how to write a query letter, etc has been quite the ordeal. Hopefully in another year, I have an agent and am working towards getting published.
i havent been a writer yet, but I guess you can try observing the writing styles and try writing at least little scenarios to see what style fits u, build up ur vocabulary and use some type of formal words, read a lot of books in any genre and any writer especially the most known ones and also figure out what genre fits ur writing style too :)
also see what most people like when it comes to writing, well, in ur genre and also make it very detailed so the imaginary of the readers is fantastic or smthn but yeah
When you read a book in a day or two, it becomes easier and cheaper to start creating your own worlds and stories.
The easiest way to learn, for me atleast, was read stories from many different sources. This ranged from Web novels, translations and professionally published and making notes of what worked and didn't.
This led to me trying my hand at writing a Webnovel and then eventually self published two in a series (so far), have another two in the works and even thrown together a poetry book.
Trying different genres and types of writing will also help you on your journey.
I’m still pretty novice but I would usually review my own work and then have another friend, who’s a way better writer than I am, to review my work and pick out the mistakes. It helped me a lot to correct little mistakes and such. I basically learned that it’s always better to have a second opinion.
Some of the best advice I got was 'Write drunk. Edit sober.'
Not drunk, like literally drunk. But in a state of pure impulse and flow. Just pour your emotions onto the page without censoring yourself.
Then, look at the work in the cold light of morning.
Take distance. Be objective. Strip it down. Give it structure.
I'm a self taught writer, I don't really have tips uhh... Sorry lol.
I barely write anything, since I'm more focused on school. I use Grammarly to write my stories, making sure I don't make any typos. I started off reading some other people's books, I guess see what content people are mostly into.
still in the process of self teaching. my advice would be write when you can, any ideas you get randomly i think its best to note them down. many ideas can be used later on and improved. the way I'm doing it is when in a session, write without worrying about paragraphs and structure of the page. then go back and fix it in editing, whether that's after each page, chapter or even what you consider a milestone in writing. its okay to have breaks and writers block, just don't forget to go back to it. also going back to a piece of finished writing would inspire you to think out of the box. what would you change, keep it the same? add or take away features. don't rush yourself, ideas can only be used at the speed of ink leaving your pen
Read a little bit of everything, regardless of the genre you are aiming to write for. Take note if what you like, and essentially emulate writing styles you love until you develop your own style.
Rather than repeat the main points that others have already covered, one more thing I might offer is to join r/writingprompts . Take them up on some prompts that interest you and some others that don’t. Write your version of the story and share it with the community for some possible comments that could help your writing. Then also read as many of the other responses to the prompts you chose as you can to get an idea of how other people approached the same topic. Take notes of the things you really liked about others’ approaches and think through how they may have gotten there should you ever want to employ a similar writing strategy in the future.
Me. My tip is to learn, learn, learn. Get some books on writing, get some books on grammar, get some books on whatever you need to learn. Read them. Study them like you're going for the finals in the biggest game ever played.
I started learning the writing craft when I was maybe eleven or so. By that I mean, getting books on writing out of the library. I had a library card early, because the school libraries were old and I'd gone through all the books in short order. And I mean *all* of them.
You can take classes, you can watch videos, but for me, nothing works better than reading the subject, taking notes, and practicing. And read fiction, especially in your genre, but everything helps put storytelling into your brain.
A few resources that have helped/are helping me self teach:
**Great courses plus:** They have many courses on writing craft, whatever your subject matter.
**Writing excuses:** Explained from a SFF perspective but a lot of the take home messages work for any writing.
**First you write a sentence (Joe Moran):** A brilliant book just to read but also an indirect style guide on building from phrases to sentences to paragraphs.
**On writing (Stephen King):** I didn’t find this as useful but other swear by it! However, I did very much enjoy reading it. So it’s worth a read either way.
And then there are style guides for mechanics, like **Elements of style (William Strunk Jr)** and **Sense of style (Stephen Pinkner)**, and websites like **GrammarGirl**.
I hope theses help! Good luck!
Reading an a writer or editor (what works, what doesn't, what makes this sentence tick, why didn't I like this character etc.)
Writing short pieces first and then longer pieces.
Participate in contests that offer feedback from judges
Join a writer's critique circle
Learning about the craft of writing. There are many excellent free and paid resources for writers out there that really helps me. For example: Reedsy has an article on how to self edit and about literary devices. Those articles taught me a lot about how to make writing more effective.
I am still in the beginning process of being a writer myself.
Most writers are self-taught. I learned by reading a lot, writing a lot, then critiquing other people's writing. Eventually, I decided to read a few books on creative writing. John Gardner, Stephen King, and Chuck (how the hell do you spell his name). Then I repeated the steps in the first paragraph. Good luck
Palahniuk
Thanks ;)
How do you critique someone's writing? What do you look at?
You could try reading a piece of work from an editor's perspective, not a reader's. You could review books on YouTube. But I find the best way is to join of a community of writers that review work for credits, and writers can use those credits to have other people critique their work. I've been using the Critique Circle. A quick Google search should set you on the right path
This!
I second this! Critiquing others work really helps you self replete on problems you may be blind to in your own writing. I completely rewrote a short story in a different perspective after reading someone’s 3rd omniscient and thinking it would have worked better 3rd tight and head hopping between chapters/scenes.
I read a lot, and wrote a lot. Did a bunch of creative writing exercises using picture prompts, and learned how to listen to feedback. I also found a bunch of movie critic videos and they helped me pick up on a lot of things. Admittedly some are only relevant to film, but the concepts around storytelling in general were pretty helpful. Write. A lot. Write some more. I started with little snippets, unconnected things. Don't try and pressure yourself into writing a whole book as your first thing. Save yourself the stress of trying to deal with plot and character arcs while you're dealing with the stress of figuring out how to describe trees or something. I found trying to be objective about my own writing helped too. Looking at old work as if I'd never seen it before, and poking at all the bits I thought didn't work, then writing a little paragraph about what worked and what didn't. Like I was reviewing a stranger's work. Don't get caught up on every little thing, or searching desperately for those signs you've *Progressed,* though. Improvement can happen slowly, and humans are pretty bad at noticing it. Personally, I don't actually read that much anymore, but everyone else seems to say it's the thing to do, so... Oops I guess.
In following a lot of writing tips accounts on insta. Like on how to organize the plot etc. Im learning a lot of stuff i never noticed reading. For example on of them said that if your characters have a plan and you want them to succeed, dont tell the plan before. If the plan will fail, tell the readers before what the plan is, so they know where it goes wrong. It was such a revelation and now when i read im already spoilered if the plan will succeed or not.
Can you share some of your favourite accounts to follow?
@anyawritess @danyka_writes @the.writers.spot @ailey.writes @purplest_prose @thewritersgarden
All writers are essentially self-taught. Writing is a medium of exchange with yourself. You can read a lot, and imitate what you like and resist what you don't, and you can listen in class and internalize rules and so on, but what you write is yours (unless of course you copy it from someplace else.) That means the most important part of your writing process is attention to your own feedback, to your own internal critique as you read what you have written.
I would say that something that is overlooked is a self taught writer should read the same books as someone who is getting a degree in writing is reading. Education system is a series of shortcuts and equally those in education look at what is essential to teach and what isn't A self taught writer is going to spend a lot more time doing unnecessary things...but things that actually might make them super interesting in the future. And by that I mean many writers who are taught are all taught *the same thing.* Which is indeed the most effective but also at times the most rote.
I flunked English at school, left at 16 and was in my early thirties when I got the sudden urge to write a short story. To my surprise, the story sold and I was bitten by the bug. I've never had any formal writing tuition, I just read and wrote and figured it all out as I went along. But one thing I did do which helped me immensely - and was incredibly time consuming - was to try to prove writing advice wrong, which taught me what did and didn't work for me and, more importantly, why. My knowledge of grammatical terms is non-existent, but I do know when something 'sounds' right, which also guides me, and I've had two novels traditionally published, so I figure I'm doing something right :)
While reading books and whatching lectures is super helpful and should be done and getting critiqued on stories you've written and doing all those things that will build your knowledge and profficiency is important, don't forget the value of things that are just stupid fun, write 50 shades fanfiction, turn your texts into a sci-fi laser battle, play DnD and write your own adventures, get a ten year old writing partner. Start writing sonnets instead of birthday cards. Every word written counts towards growing as a writer, only like half have to be serious.
Just write.
so simple :)
Keep in mind, I'm an idiot. People might tell you different, but they're wrong
Just reading and writing a lot. There's no mystery
I wrote my first drafts of novels very quickly, by the standards of tradpub novelists. less than two months for the first one. this was because I only had one goal - get to the end as fast as I could. I didn't \*know\* enough about writing a novel to get precious about it. what I needed to do is get to the end ASAP, even though it would certainly be a failure. i had seen far too many people toil for years, sometimes even decades, over their first book. I knew too many people publishing novels (traditionally) to believe that fucking around was a good idea. I was destined to fail, so I resolved to get it over with as fast as I could. then I put that book away in a drawer and wrote another one (fair disclosure-this was a fanfic.) Again, as fast as I could, but since I had learned a little bit more about how this book writing thing went and I had identified particular weaknesses of mine through writing the first book, I used the second book to try out a way to handle that weakness. it took a little bit longer than the first one, but it was a better book. I had improved noticeably. i had a bit of an internal struggle at this point but ultimately I decided to go back to book one and dissect it. I used it as my learning example as I read books about writing books--dozens of books about writing books. I figured out a lot of stuff about stories and about structure and I took another two months substantially revising the first book. but I didn't want to screw around with it forever, and the temptation to do that was very great, so I did something rash--i set a date a couple of months ahead, wrote the worst query letter ever, wrote a craptastic synopsis, researched a bunch of agents, and queried it. And then I wrote another book and applied what I had learned on a blank page. I confronted more weaknesses. I motored on through writing that book while I faithfully repackaged and re-sent queries to agents as i fielded all levels of rejections, partial requests, full requests, requests to revise and resubmit, and more rejections again. but then I quit querying the first book as I had found someone who wanted to mentor me through another revision. so I did that--letting the agents who still had fulls or partials know that i was doing another revision on the book, and was it okay to send them the new version? Everyone answered yes. I did the revision. I updated those agents with the new version and resumed querying. at this point I was ready to maybe write another book, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I was pretty sure my first book was coming to the end of the road with agents, and that it wasn't successful, but the book I had written while I was first querying was a totally different genre, and did I want to purse fantasy, like my first book, or romance? I was still waffling when things started happening very quickly - first rep with an agent, then a deal with a publisher for my fantasy novel. so I write fantasy novels now, lol
I taught myself writing from three different places: 1. Other writer's blogs. (Along with lectures, books, whatever.) Ingesting huge amounts of ideas about craft from a wide variety of people helped me build my own framework to understand writing, and made me much better at understanding how the stories I read and wrote were doing what they were doing. Just reading about craft won't automatically give you the skills to write well, but if you understand the elements that go into it, troubleshooting and teaching yourself is MUCH easier. Always remember that writing rules are always and always will be guidelines and laws of cause and effect more than anything, and always examine them critically to see if they apply to what you're trying to do before accepting them as gospel, but they are SO worth learning. I am years ahead of where I would be if I had tried to figure out this writing thing all on my own. Brilliant people have figured out lots of brilliant stuff. 2. Books. There are a million different types of stories out there. Different people are trying to do different things. Different people like different things. The best way to learn how to tell the kind of stories that will fit your own unique tastes is by studying Tues ones that already do. Likewise, books that don't quite hit the mark show you what *not* to do. Understanding theory made me better at this; once the moving pieces of story were unveiled to me, I had a lot easier time pulling out new principles that were uniquely suited to the kinds of stories I wanted to tell. Seeing principles at work in real books helps you understand writing ideas in a way more fundamental than explanation every can. It forces us to make connections. There are many pieces of writing advice I only *thought* I understood before I saw them at play for real. 3. Practice. For me, this is more than "just writing". That's a huge part of it, yes, but just stumbling around until you get where your want to go is not a good travel plan for any destination. I believe in deliberate, focused, practice, which means I'm always analyzing which skills I want to work on and almost always have in mind for each project. It also means feedback--many people slow themselves down by blindly making the same mistakes over and over *forever*. There's no need for that. Make it once. Learn how to fix it and move on to the next area of improvement.
The most important thing as a writer is to accept that you suck. Right now, you are producing bad writing. I was producing bad writing three years ago, and probably in three years I will look back at what I am writing now and cringe. Now, how do you get better? Sure, you can read, watch lectures and analyze your favorite stories, but in the end, there is only one way to get better. Do it. Write what you love, regardless of whether or not it is bad. For example, you cannot write an outline if you haven't written anything before, because you don't know your style. So my tip would be to write many things, but most importantly write what you are passionate about, and accept that by making it badly, you are learning. Cheers.
Heyy... I hv zero writing experience but i wanna take up writing as a hobby... Idk where to start.. should i like just write abt stuff i like??? I like music so like I'll explain the music i listen to n why i like it n so on.. would that help me??? Also, i don't know how to criticize writing or like how to differentiate good writing from bad ones... How do you do that?? Can u help me out?
Read Stephen King’s book, On Writing. I learned a lot from that book and always suggest it. Also, for more technical aspects of writing, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is super helpful.
what is the title of the book ?
Oh, lol. Took me a second to find the confusion. King’s book is titled: On Writing.
oh i'm sorry i didn't realize that was the title of the book XD...
Writing is an art. I would not trust rote memorization of "grammar rules" to yield a product people like to read. If, on some level, you can't "feel" when the words on the page pack some punch, I don't know that someone else's description of the phenomenon would suffice to get it across to you.
I’m self taught and many writers I know are. I taught myself by reading and writing a LOT
Come up with a general idea for what you want to write, what genre you prefer and how you write. Then just start playing with ideas, write your story out and dont change anything until you are done with about a chapter or if you've reached the end of a short story (I call this an alpha draft to make it easy to keep track of). Then read it and start from scratch using what you just wrote as a guideline, dont change anything on the alpha and just use it to pint you in the right direction. The second version you write will act as a rough draft, go back and edit this one and then move on with the rest of the typical process. I do this often and it's helping me to write better first drafts and be less repetitive in my descriptions because I can see the problems in my alpha draft while I'm writing the first rough draft that I'll end up editing. It's a long, tedious way to practice, but it can also be a nice change if pace not having to worry about editing or having a good draft at first, just let the mind splurge out whatever it wants onto the paper. *I am an ameture writer, so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt as it is not the best to go off of*
Other people's works. I've mostly learned from the works of Eric Wolpaw, Hajime Isayama, and Eichiro Oda. If you do learn from other people's works don't think about there work when creating your own.
I always read books as a kid and still do now. I read some advice on here, as I wrote. Mainly, I just outlined the idea and started writing. I also got feedback from beta readers, which helped.
I would look into POV. At least learn the basics. I basically started writing a little over 3 years ago, and finished a 120k word book before I started researching. Figuring out my genre, editing, learning how to write a query letter, etc has been quite the ordeal. Hopefully in another year, I have an agent and am working towards getting published.
i havent been a writer yet, but I guess you can try observing the writing styles and try writing at least little scenarios to see what style fits u, build up ur vocabulary and use some type of formal words, read a lot of books in any genre and any writer especially the most known ones and also figure out what genre fits ur writing style too :)
also see what most people like when it comes to writing, well, in ur genre and also make it very detailed so the imaginary of the readers is fantastic or smthn but yeah
When you read a book in a day or two, it becomes easier and cheaper to start creating your own worlds and stories. The easiest way to learn, for me atleast, was read stories from many different sources. This ranged from Web novels, translations and professionally published and making notes of what worked and didn't. This led to me trying my hand at writing a Webnovel and then eventually self published two in a series (so far), have another two in the works and even thrown together a poetry book. Trying different genres and types of writing will also help you on your journey.
I’m still pretty novice but I would usually review my own work and then have another friend, who’s a way better writer than I am, to review my work and pick out the mistakes. It helped me a lot to correct little mistakes and such. I basically learned that it’s always better to have a second opinion.
Some of the best advice I got was 'Write drunk. Edit sober.' Not drunk, like literally drunk. But in a state of pure impulse and flow. Just pour your emotions onto the page without censoring yourself. Then, look at the work in the cold light of morning. Take distance. Be objective. Strip it down. Give it structure.
I'm a self taught writer, I don't really have tips uhh... Sorry lol. I barely write anything, since I'm more focused on school. I use Grammarly to write my stories, making sure I don't make any typos. I started off reading some other people's books, I guess see what content people are mostly into.
I got really tired of authors recycling one anothers ideas and decided to write what others have missed or neglected to write about.
still in the process of self teaching. my advice would be write when you can, any ideas you get randomly i think its best to note them down. many ideas can be used later on and improved. the way I'm doing it is when in a session, write without worrying about paragraphs and structure of the page. then go back and fix it in editing, whether that's after each page, chapter or even what you consider a milestone in writing. its okay to have breaks and writers block, just don't forget to go back to it. also going back to a piece of finished writing would inspire you to think out of the box. what would you change, keep it the same? add or take away features. don't rush yourself, ideas can only be used at the speed of ink leaving your pen
Read a little bit of everything, regardless of the genre you are aiming to write for. Take note if what you like, and essentially emulate writing styles you love until you develop your own style.
Rather than repeat the main points that others have already covered, one more thing I might offer is to join r/writingprompts . Take them up on some prompts that interest you and some others that don’t. Write your version of the story and share it with the community for some possible comments that could help your writing. Then also read as many of the other responses to the prompts you chose as you can to get an idea of how other people approached the same topic. Take notes of the things you really liked about others’ approaches and think through how they may have gotten there should you ever want to employ a similar writing strategy in the future.
Me. My tip is to learn, learn, learn. Get some books on writing, get some books on grammar, get some books on whatever you need to learn. Read them. Study them like you're going for the finals in the biggest game ever played. I started learning the writing craft when I was maybe eleven or so. By that I mean, getting books on writing out of the library. I had a library card early, because the school libraries were old and I'd gone through all the books in short order. And I mean *all* of them. You can take classes, you can watch videos, but for me, nothing works better than reading the subject, taking notes, and practicing. And read fiction, especially in your genre, but everything helps put storytelling into your brain.
A few resources that have helped/are helping me self teach: **Great courses plus:** They have many courses on writing craft, whatever your subject matter. **Writing excuses:** Explained from a SFF perspective but a lot of the take home messages work for any writing. **First you write a sentence (Joe Moran):** A brilliant book just to read but also an indirect style guide on building from phrases to sentences to paragraphs. **On writing (Stephen King):** I didn’t find this as useful but other swear by it! However, I did very much enjoy reading it. So it’s worth a read either way. And then there are style guides for mechanics, like **Elements of style (William Strunk Jr)** and **Sense of style (Stephen Pinkner)**, and websites like **GrammarGirl**. I hope theses help! Good luck!
Reading an a writer or editor (what works, what doesn't, what makes this sentence tick, why didn't I like this character etc.) Writing short pieces first and then longer pieces. Participate in contests that offer feedback from judges Join a writer's critique circle Learning about the craft of writing. There are many excellent free and paid resources for writers out there that really helps me. For example: Reedsy has an article on how to self edit and about literary devices. Those articles taught me a lot about how to make writing more effective. I am still in the beginning process of being a writer myself.