EPTTo be blunt, the advice you might get from those writing groups and other amateur writers is at best obvious, but more often useless. It wouldn't be art if someone could tell you how to do it. Homogeneity is kind of completely the opposite of art.
Taking up writing as a hobby? Tips? - Page 2
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Chef
10810 Posts
To be blunt, the advice you might get from those writing groups and other amateur writers is at best obvious, but more often useless. It wouldn't be art if someone could tell you how to do it. Homogeneity is kind of completely the opposite of art. | ||
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Shauni
4077 Posts
On December 02 2010 07:12 Snuggles wrote: Googled some of the good parts of the posts to see if it's authentic, and they are! It seems like we are in the presence of a real intellectual! Pret-ty awesome!~ Not to sound cruel or anything, but I don't think you'd make a good writer. | ||
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Roe
Canada6002 Posts
On December 02 2010 07:40 Shauni wrote: Not to sound cruel or anything, but I don't think you'd make a good writer. Por que? | ||
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Snuggles
United States1865 Posts
Yeah why's that? Just be blunt, I'm not the type of guy who cries over getting criticized. If it's a good reason, then you could be saving me time by telling me to just quit right now. Don't take all my posts too seriously, I mean it looks like you're judging my ability to write based off that little post. | ||
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d3_crescentia
United States4054 Posts
Write frequently and vomitously. What I mean by that is you'll likely get better content by producing a LOT instead of trying to get things perfectly once. Even if you don't get content you're satisfied with, you'll still have stuff you can improve upon instead of some nebulous ideas. When I did Nanowrimo last year I found that I actually got a lot more done when I cared less about the words I was putting on the page and more that I was putting them on the page. I ended up being pretty happy that I finished on time but I know it needs a lot more work for me to be absolutely satisfied. p.s. Alcohol does help especially if you're on a tight deadline, but I wouldn't recommend being an alcoholic to enable your writing! | ||
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Zim23
United States1681 Posts
Another important tip: Plan ahead. If you're writing as an exercise then it's fine to vomit out a couple thousand words to keep your mind sharp, but when you start writing seriously you definitely need to plan, outline, and research to make sure your story is interesting, coherent, and cohesive. When you don't do this you tend to ramble in your writing, and it's no where near as potent and focused as it could be. Don't be afraid to write, then re-write, and then re-re-re-write. I've written some good stories that started off as absolute SHIT in my first draft. Read like mad, plan/outline, and keep editing or refining your work. Almost every piece of writing can be polished into a gem with the right approach and editing. | ||
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vinn
Australia112 Posts
On December 02 2010 06:04 Snuggles wrote: So far what I came up with are just short descriptions of stuff and scenes taking place. It from an orange that when consumed, would cause you to hallucinate and imagine that your skin was melting off and then you'd fall into the sky. Once you got into the sky you would all of the sudden come face to face with a creepy female figure, that didn't seem quite human. She wore a spotless clean pretty white dress, however, her skin was a weird deteriorated color, much like chocolate ice cream after falling on the ground in some city park, and then being scooped back up again into the ice cream cone after sloshing around in the dirt for a good minute.... It went on to the guy sitting in an office, then robots, and then mystery murder case that involved zerglings... I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. ^-^ Especially the part with the icecream. A safer option to drugs is just using your natural altered states of consciousness.. as in falling asleep. I think I heard once that Dali would try to fall asleep holding a spoon above a metal bowl or some such, so when he fell asleep and dropped the spoon, the noise would wake him up, and he would draw what his imagination had created in it's altered state. Because you know dreams are so bizarre! At least for myself, my brain always seems to subconsciously make ridiculous stories just before I fall asleep. | ||
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Hakker
United States1360 Posts
He rivals baller in terms of epicness but posts like a god. | ||
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ZERG_RUSSIAN
10417 Posts
When you want to get professional, start thinking about omission, and be ruthless with your own work. Make sure to save copies, though  .Here's one of my favorite pieces on writing by Kurt Vonnegut: In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story: 1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. 2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. 3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. 4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action. 5. Start as close to the end as possible. 6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of. 7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. 8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. Vonnegut qualifies the list by adding that Flannery O'Connor broke all these rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that. Also, Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college. | ||
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kodancer
United States89 Posts
On December 02 2010 13:33 Hakker wrote: JackMcoy hooked me with the rat post in some thread about a temp job, and with this one, I've become a full blown fan :D He rivals baller in terms of epicness but posts like a god. If only there were a purpose and a sense of contribution in his posts. Those together with his humor would be amazing. Speaking of which, always have a purpose in your writing. You don't want to write a piece and think back why the hell you even wrote it. | ||
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