Paid Members CuckedByMenry Posted January 5, 2011 Author Paid Members Share Posted January 5, 2011 Awesome advice, guys, thanks a lot! Â Firebrand - The Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FireBrand Posted January 6, 2011 Share Posted January 6, 2011 Excelletn stuff Stug, if you need any options as to places to send any of your short ficiton I have a number of links to small press publications. Â They are manly horror publications but a few have a broader theme. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steveo2007 Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 Don't post it on the UKFF. Even if what you've written turns out to be a piece of pure genius, there will always be someone who will criticise it because they need to make themselves feel superior. Â Also, the Charlie Brooker comment "get a deadline" I think is a good comment to make. The pressure, in some ways is good for making you sit down and concentrate on whatever you want to write. Â Also, know your subject. If it's fiction, know your world. The inns and outs of your characters, know them as if they're your best friend, and know the world you've created as if you were born and raised in it. This is advice I need to take myself whenever I write something, but I think it's useful for anyone aspiring to do it professionally. Â Persevere. Don't expect success right away, or even in the next 10 or 20 years, but if you persevere and keep putting out new work, something's bound to stick. Keep writing and keep sending it out. Ask for feedback wherever you can as it would help refine your skills. Circulate your work, to get as big an audience as possible as, if you're looking to become published, then you want to ensure the biggest chance of your work being seen by the right people as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Astro Hollywood Posted January 7, 2011 Moderators Share Posted January 7, 2011 Some random suggestions. Â - Let the idea percolate a little first. Just think about what it is you want to say, the world you want to create, the characters you want to populate it with, the tone, the voice, all that. Listen to music. Think about it on the bus. Think about it while you're having a poo. Let it idly rattle around in your head when you're daydreaming. At some point, you'll be so ready to write it that you'll sit down at the keyboard and it'll all come pouring out. This is preferable to "Right. Gonna write a book..." *Stares at blank monitor* *Cracks knuckles* *Stares some more* approach. You'll just get frustrated if you've barely any idea what you want to say. Â - Take a shitload of notes before you begin. Random ideas, character traits, pieces of dialogue, stuff you want to happen. Work out a plot and fill it with this stuff, like leaving landmarks on a roadmap. That's your skeletal structure around which to build the story. Of course, you might find that you wildly deviate during the writing process, and that's fine. Just have some bones in place on which to put the meat, or you'll just meander around in a circle and go nowhere. Â - Write. Just write. It sounds simple, but a lot of people who swan around saying "Yeah, I'm a writer, me!" forget to do this part. 99% of the process is just you, sat in front of a screen, typing. I recently got done with a novel that probably had well over 1,000+ hours of that exact thing, typing, and completely lost in that world. There's no way around it. Just get down to it and do it. Even if you really, really don't feel like it that day, 500 or 1,000 words is still pretty easy to come by, and if you add up all the 1,000 words you managed to do on the days when you really had to force it, you'll find it comes to rather a lot. Two weeks worth of "Eh, I squeezed out 500 today" gives you an extra 7,000 on the wordcount. Even if you think it sucks, you can always rewrite it. Doing something that can be shaped or edited into worthwhile work is always better than doing nothing. Â - You could just ignore everything everyone has to say in this thread. Everyone who writes has to find their own system. It took me a long time to nail mine. It's pretty chaotic, and very non-linear, and anyone who caught one of my chapters unfinished would think it was the ramblings of a schizophrenic, but it works for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M-Dudz Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 Good luck with this! Some decent advice here too. Â FireBrand, i was surprised to hear your friend having to pay so much as Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted January 7, 2011 Paid Members Share Posted January 7, 2011 Good luck with this! Some decent advice here too. Â FireBrand, i was surprised to hear your friend having to pay so much as Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M-Dudz Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 You know your stuff ;-) very insightful, cheers. Â Good luck with this! Some decent advice here too. Â FireBrand, i was surprised to hear your friend having to pay so much as Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FireBrand Posted January 8, 2011 Share Posted January 8, 2011 Some random suggestions.  - Write. Just write. It sounds simple, but a lot of people who swan around saying "Yeah, I'm a writer, me!" forget to do this part. 99% of the process is just you, sat in front of a screen, typing. I recently got done with a novel that probably had well over 1,000+ hours of that exact thing, typing, and completely lost in that world. There's no way around it. Just get down to it and do it. Even if you really, really don't feel like it that day, 500 or 1,000 words is still pretty easy to come by, and if you add up all the 1,000 words you managed to do on the days when you really had to force it, you'll find it comes to rather a lot. Two weeks worth of "Eh, I squeezed out 500 today" gives you an extra 7,000 on the wordcount. Even if you think it sucks, you can always rewrite it. Doing something that can be shaped or edited into worthwhile work is always better than doing nothing.  That piece of advance is golden, it may sound obvious but it is suprising how often those who say they are going to write something or want to write something don't. I personaly advise starting off with 500 words a day, I bet Stug you will find yourself often doing more than that but at worst 500 words more than 0 will always help you.  A refreshing self help book you could read is Writing For Comics by Peter David, yes it's about comic book writing but the information about character development and other elements really do lend themselves well for traditional writing. He is also an established novelist and you will find information on his thoughts there.  Here's the link:  http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Comics-Peter...s/dp/1581807309. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members CuckedByMenry Posted January 16, 2011 Author Paid Members Share Posted January 16, 2011 Thanks again guys. For the most part I've been writing down any ideas for characters, settings, lines of speech, events and so on. The deadline I've set myself is the end of this year which, taking into account short stories and the rather awesome "Just write" advice, should be a feasible amount of time. If I don't do it, then by all means, petition to change my username to Captain Pooface. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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