I guess I just have a lot to say about a bunch of different stuff. Half of that is character and setting profiles, religions and world history, etc. and the other half of it is my apparently very detailed outline.
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WritersEra |OT| Publish before you die, writing writer writes
- Thread starter weemadarthur
- Start date
- OT
My God, more power to you, man. I don't have it in me to even approach that level of preparation.
man... I barely managed 100k last November. Not sure how you managed to get 81k in 13 days lol
Been a long time since I posted in here. Been in a super big rut for years now, mainly due to things not working out in life in general and a traumatic experience or two. Made it hard to get the creative juices flowing for a while and it's still mostly like that. But I did finally make something new earlier this year.
Went back and forth on posting this here since I'm not sure it's the right place for it, but someone on another forum that liked it convinced me to do so. I made a sort of placeholder visual novel just to see if I could do it. The idea was to take a few chapter of my third novel and see how well it would adapt to a visual format as I would like to do a full adaptation some day, but it kind of transformed into something else by the end.
If this isn't the right place for it, I'll remove the post, but here it is.
Went back and forth on posting this here since I'm not sure it's the right place for it, but someone on another forum that liked it convinced me to do so. I made a sort of placeholder visual novel just to see if I could do it. The idea was to take a few chapter of my third novel and see how well it would adapt to a visual format as I would like to do a full adaptation some day, but it kind of transformed into something else by the end.
If this isn't the right place for it, I'll remove the post, but here it is.
I love the character designs. The first screenshot is awesome.
It's like anything in writing. It's a fantastic idea if you pull it off, and a terrible idea if you didn't. A lot of modern genre fiction is putting the emphasis on starting things "in media res," or in the middle of things, because there's been some push back against the "slow burn" type start that gradually builds up to things before letting all hell break loose. But every writer has to do their thing in their way.
My novel started with a teenage mage running away from a rival gang-member in a surplus, 20th century tank and trashing a corporate estate in her efforts to survive. Other novels by other people might start with someone having breakfast and wondering whether to be daring and go for tea, or stick with coffee. Anyway can work if you make it work.
Just remember that when you start right in the middle of a high octane situation, you're creating a ton of questions, and you're shooting yourself in the foot if you take the time to stop to answer all of them in detail. The whole point of an actiony beginning is to keep things moving, but it also presents the risk of creating a lot of confusion since readers don't know WTF is going on, or WhoTF it's happening to. Your job is give them the sense of those answers WITHOUT breaking your fast-pace at the same time.
Oh wow, I never thought of that and reading over what I just wrote, I actually did do that, oops.
Just remember, if you think it's annoying if someone starts an action sequence in a movie, then pauses the movie every few minutes to explain what's happening, so you don't get lost... You're doing that for your action opening if make sure to ground and explain everything.
I don't think it it would be possible for me to really care about such a thing(starting in the middle of a battle) in writing.
I have to know and care about characters for the battle to be interesting at all in writing. While in a more visual medium you can get away with cool moves and what not to keep my interest, in writing there is no way to write it that I will care about what the characters are doing in the middle of a battle if I don't know who they are. (especially since "cool moves" in writing tend to be very boring to read)
But that could just be me, I mean I have issues caring about a lot of things in stories unless I spend a decent amount of time getting to know characters first.
I think the only thing that matters when starting a story is whether you can hold the reader's interest - you can do it with the thick of a battle or a twelve-page description of a house as long as you get the execution right.
It's a pretty time-honored tradition in suspense, horror and mystery writing, but it does vary from genre to genre. Of course in horror and mystery stories it's not really all that unusual to start off with a murder/bloodletting, in order to whet the appetites of the readers and let them know what kind of ride they're getting into. But it's all a matter of preferences for stories and genres. I think most murder mystery fans would complain if a book took several pages to build up and describe a person, only to kill them off and then immediately move on to the detective/investigator finally showing up and starting the real story. Same with horror. You want to introduce the monster, so it's pretty normal to just have your First Victim get killed off in some gruesome way. Nobody reading horror really wants to go on for a hundred pages without something gruesome happening, because character building is occurring first.
Fantasy and science fiction though... yeah. Not a bad idea to set things up with people and places first, though obviously many writers play with those conventions, depending on their strengths.
That's fair, and those are both genre I don't typically care about because they bore the crap out of me since I don't care about any of the characters. (that being said I do enjoy Detective Conan and some mystery tv shows, but that is a lot to do with me knowing the investigation team fairly well) Fantasy and science fiction are far more my jam.
To be fair I was merely saying before that I wouldn't be able to care about a battle in the middle, not that some people couldn't enjoy it. I've started a number of books that like to try to start in the middle of a battle or action scene... I didn't even make it through the 5-10 page battle before giving up on the books >.>
I am horrible with names in general, trying to keep track of a battle when I don't know the names at all is just UGH!!!!!!!
Maybe if I was better with names or keeping track of characters in general it wouldn't be so bad, but even in TV shows and anime I rarely can remember the whole main cast after 5 episodes lol.
luckily in my own writing I have done fairly well with keeping track of the characters. I can somehow remember most of the names from that but ask me about the shows I like I can maybe list off 5 characters on any given show I have watched 100 eps of lol.
Been going back to type up the rest of my book before I try and approach the final chapter again and I discovered that I lost a page or two from my book. It's so hard for me when shit like this happens because while I in general know what happens I'm obsessed about not knowing word from word and taking up a lot of time trying to rewrite it and the last page I left off I'm confused because I thought my character did something else but I can't remember if I just decided to do it later, but I'm sure I made my character do this thing.
Sorry to hear that. Sucks when you lose work. What happened, are you writing by hand then retyping to a word processor, or using some other software like Scrivener before bringing into MS Word?
Dood that suuuuuuuucks. Jelly that you're writing it by hand though. Its a huge pain but I have always enjoyed doing handwritten stuff a lot more than just typing up notes, but jesus its a hassle and of course the risk of losing pages.
Emerson’s self publishing info
So I've wanted to write this up for a little while now, but general life has gotten in the way until now. Some of you may remember I posted about my self-published contemporary fantasy novel Black Creek (https://www.amazon.com/Black-Creek-Dan-Kemp-ebook/dp/B07D5KZ8ZQ), which came out a little over a month ago.
Considering there are a lot of active and aspiring authors here, self published or otherwise, I thought people might appreciate seeing some information on the process and some real numbers from a first timer.
All the stats I'm giving here refer to the first 30 days of release.
I started writing the novel in November 2016 and finished it in late May of 2017, at around 130k words. I then put it away for a month or so before reading it myself and doing a first revision.
I have two professional copy editors in my family, so I didn't pay for any editing services. For more developmental feedback, I have a few friends and writing partners who I trust to give me solid feedback. In all I did four drafts of the novel before release.
I found the cover artist on Reedsy, which was quite a smooth process, and I'm thrilled with the product I got. It cost me $400. A lot of the quotes I got for original artwork (not just stock photo manipulation) were significantly more. I also looked on places like fiverr, etc. which mainly just offer people willing to turn a stock photo into a cover with some text elements. This might work for some people, but personally I'd always consider spending more on a nicer cover. Also of note, there are some excellent artists on reddit, in subreddits such as HungryArtists, who will show you a portfolio and give you a quick quote for your concept. I've used them for several short stories I've put out, with great results.
Prior to release, I listed the book on LibraryThing as an ebook giveaway and ended up with 41 people requesting it. I sent those out a little more than a week before release. To date I've gotten only 4 reviews out of those on the LibraryThing website. Only one of those people put a review on Amazon, and none on Goodreads.
In the days leading up to the release, I submitted to 10 fantasy book review blogs. To date I have only heard back from one, who declined to read it.
Starting with the release date, I began ad campaigns on Amazon, Facebook, Bookbub, and Reddit. All of them have very similar tools for audience narrowing and roughly similar costs per click. I'll get into them more individually.
Facebook: Spent ~$70. Facebook campaigns ran very quickly, racking up charges much faster than any other service. I got many thousands of views, but seemingly little sales conversions. I did get a bunch of Likes on my page, but I don't particularly care about that. It's not really possible (with all the concurrent campaigns) to say which campaigns translated to real sales, but I don't feel like Facebook got me much. Considering the way a lot of people use the service, absentmindedly scrolling through, liking and occasionally clicking through but rarely taking any action, I wouldn't be too surprised.
Amazon: Spent ~$30. Unfortunately they are probably the most annoying service to use. All metrics are delayed by like 3 days minimum, and sales conversions are even more delayed. Eventually I did get about 37,000 views, but this only translated to a handful of sales.
Reddit: Spent $10 as an experiment. Very specifically targeted on this site towards individual reddits. I don't have these numbers available at the moment but there were not many views, but a relatively high click-through rate. Again, you can't determine if any became sales.
Bookbub: The easiest service to use, with impressions starting immediately and stats arriving in almost real time. I spent about ~$30 for about 30k views, with about 100 clickthroughs.
Getting reviews, despite being massively important to sales, seems to be frustratingly difficult. On Amazon, I've only got 4 reviews, with an average of 4 stars. On Goodreads I have 8 reviews with a score of 4.75.
So what did this all translate to? To date, I've sold:
7 paperback
26 eBook
2,615 pages read of Kindle Unlimited
The Kindle Unlimited payments are delayed so I'm not certain, but I expect this to come to about $70 total. Obviously, between marketing and the book cover I'm still significantly in the hole.
Fortunately, I have a well-paying full time job and have no intention on writing for a living, and I have the luxury of spending more than I earn on a creative project. Still, I know this is not true for a lot of people so it helps to be aware of what realistic expectations might be.
Overall, I always kept my expectations in check and things have played out about what I expected (though less than I hoped of course). I was surprised at the amount of Kindle Unlimited readership I had so far, and disappointed at the lack of reviews. At the end of the day I'm happy that those who do read it seem to enjoy it.
I hope this was of some interest to somebody here, and I'd be happy to discuss any aspect of the process.
Considering there are a lot of active and aspiring authors here, self published or otherwise, I thought people might appreciate seeing some information on the process and some real numbers from a first timer.
All the stats I'm giving here refer to the first 30 days of release.
I started writing the novel in November 2016 and finished it in late May of 2017, at around 130k words. I then put it away for a month or so before reading it myself and doing a first revision.
I have two professional copy editors in my family, so I didn't pay for any editing services. For more developmental feedback, I have a few friends and writing partners who I trust to give me solid feedback. In all I did four drafts of the novel before release.
I found the cover artist on Reedsy, which was quite a smooth process, and I'm thrilled with the product I got. It cost me $400. A lot of the quotes I got for original artwork (not just stock photo manipulation) were significantly more. I also looked on places like fiverr, etc. which mainly just offer people willing to turn a stock photo into a cover with some text elements. This might work for some people, but personally I'd always consider spending more on a nicer cover. Also of note, there are some excellent artists on reddit, in subreddits such as HungryArtists, who will show you a portfolio and give you a quick quote for your concept. I've used them for several short stories I've put out, with great results.
Prior to release, I listed the book on LibraryThing as an ebook giveaway and ended up with 41 people requesting it. I sent those out a little more than a week before release. To date I've gotten only 4 reviews out of those on the LibraryThing website. Only one of those people put a review on Amazon, and none on Goodreads.
In the days leading up to the release, I submitted to 10 fantasy book review blogs. To date I have only heard back from one, who declined to read it.
Starting with the release date, I began ad campaigns on Amazon, Facebook, Bookbub, and Reddit. All of them have very similar tools for audience narrowing and roughly similar costs per click. I'll get into them more individually.
Facebook: Spent ~$70. Facebook campaigns ran very quickly, racking up charges much faster than any other service. I got many thousands of views, but seemingly little sales conversions. I did get a bunch of Likes on my page, but I don't particularly care about that. It's not really possible (with all the concurrent campaigns) to say which campaigns translated to real sales, but I don't feel like Facebook got me much. Considering the way a lot of people use the service, absentmindedly scrolling through, liking and occasionally clicking through but rarely taking any action, I wouldn't be too surprised.
Amazon: Spent ~$30. Unfortunately they are probably the most annoying service to use. All metrics are delayed by like 3 days minimum, and sales conversions are even more delayed. Eventually I did get about 37,000 views, but this only translated to a handful of sales.
Reddit: Spent $10 as an experiment. Very specifically targeted on this site towards individual reddits. I don't have these numbers available at the moment but there were not many views, but a relatively high click-through rate. Again, you can't determine if any became sales.
Bookbub: The easiest service to use, with impressions starting immediately and stats arriving in almost real time. I spent about ~$30 for about 30k views, with about 100 clickthroughs.
Getting reviews, despite being massively important to sales, seems to be frustratingly difficult. On Amazon, I've only got 4 reviews, with an average of 4 stars. On Goodreads I have 8 reviews with a score of 4.75.
So what did this all translate to? To date, I've sold:
7 paperback
26 eBook
2,615 pages read of Kindle Unlimited
The Kindle Unlimited payments are delayed so I'm not certain, but I expect this to come to about $70 total. Obviously, between marketing and the book cover I'm still significantly in the hole.
Fortunately, I have a well-paying full time job and have no intention on writing for a living, and I have the luxury of spending more than I earn on a creative project. Still, I know this is not true for a lot of people so it helps to be aware of what realistic expectations might be.
Overall, I always kept my expectations in check and things have played out about what I expected (though less than I hoped of course). I was surprised at the amount of Kindle Unlimited readership I had so far, and disappointed at the lack of reviews. At the end of the day I'm happy that those who do read it seem to enjoy it.
I hope this was of some interest to somebody here, and I'd be happy to discuss any aspect of the process.
Thanks for the stat breakdown!
I was thinking of using Facebook in the future for advertisements since I've used it before for work, but your breakdown has given me a much better idea of what to expect/better alternatives to go on.
I was thinking of using Facebook in the future for advertisements since I've used it before for work, but your breakdown has given me a much better idea of what to expect/better alternatives to go on.
Stat breakdown sounds pretty similar to what I got from my video game. Couldn't get fucking anyone to review it, sent out tons of codes--most redeemed--with no follow through.
It's fucking frustrating.
It's fucking frustrating.
Thanks for the feedback, that's very helpful. But yeah... from what I've been hearing, at least for the moment, it's all about reviews. The authors I speak to and the marketing people with publishers are always going on and on about the "magic number 50" on Amazon. More than Goodreads, more than blogs, more than positive comments on Twitter, the ONE number that seems to be the fission point for sales is getting 50 or more reviews on Amazon. Once you get 50, the algorithm starts pushing your book harder on recommends, and that's when you start seeing some traction. I don't know how the self-publishers do it, but I know in the case of trade published authors, the marketing department with their publishers push pretty hard and aggressive to get reviews that wind up on Amazon, or encourage Goodreads reviewers to cut n' paste their reviews into Amazon. It doesn't matter if it's a one star review with "This sucks," or even a 5 star review with "Good." As long as it's a review, and it's on Amazon, it counts towards that magic number 50.
Similar stats from me regarding my projects, although I am happy to report that I have Kindle Unlimited pages being read every day for the last 2 months (save for one day in June). I continue to run sales and freebies on the first in the series. I made $24 last month which was like my high point in terms of revenue.
My goal when I eventually try to sell books and stuff is to make enough money to buy a bottle of nice brandy so I can drink away the tears.
The difficulty to get people to buy or even review your book, whether traditionally or self published, is one of the most depressing things about being a writer. Hell, give someone a free copy in a Twitter giveaway and it's a 50/50 chance they'll mention getting it on Twitter.
Yup. Extends to video games and I'm sure other media too. Maybe less so for music since you can consume a song in a few minutes.
Sites like woovit and keymailer exist to give people who requested keys keys. They signed up to review your product for free, so you give it to them for free.
Send out like 40 keys, get four reviews, maybe less.
It's amazing how hard it is to get hobbyists and professionals who love talking about a specific thing to talk about YOUR specific thing, even if they asked for a copy.
Basically, I'm looking at my first novel and I know I want to give it another editing pass before I self publish it. But i might just throw it online for free. I can't imagine anyone will buy the fucker no matter how hard I try, so I might as well just let people at it if they stumble on it with no commitment involved save time. It's what I plan on doing with the music I'm working on. I'm slowly resigning myself to the fact that I'll never make it as an artist, that my day job is okay, and that I should just suck it up and have fun while I can.
Which is a really shitty realization to come to, which is why booze is a thing.
4 reviews out of 40 keys sounds about right, TBF. It's the classic Pareto principle in action. If you can get around a 5% engagement rate, you're doing okay, 10% is even better, 20% is amazing.
I've been serialising my work online for years. My golden period was around 2010, when webcomic advertising was at its height. Social Media fucked that right up, and the stuff I've released since 2015 hasn't come anywhere close to matching previous figures. I haven't even had a single review XD
When I've a new batch of chapters to release later in the year, I might try a marketing push of some kind, though I suck at such things. In this day and age, I'd probably do well to focus on promoting myself (since I tick a bunch of "diversity" boxes) as much as my work (which also ticks a lot of those boxes), but that makes me hideously uncomfortable :S
I've been serialising my work online for years. My golden period was around 2010, when webcomic advertising was at its height. Social Media fucked that right up, and the stuff I've released since 2015 hasn't come anywhere close to matching previous figures. I haven't even had a single review XD
When I've a new batch of chapters to release later in the year, I might try a marketing push of some kind, though I suck at such things. In this day and age, I'd probably do well to focus on promoting myself (since I tick a bunch of "diversity" boxes) as much as my work (which also ticks a lot of those boxes), but that makes me hideously uncomfortable :S
I miss being able to hand write.... but my hand writing is bad anyways and sometimes led to me not being able to read it lol.
anymore I can't write for more than 5-10 minutes without serious pain in my wrist :/
typing I don't have pain most of the time, so typing it is lol.
NetGalley are far from cheap - their pricing seems more aimed at major publishers than indy/small press authors.
And Emerson's figures match my own experiences pretty well. I sent out 50 giveaway copies of my first book and got 3 Goodreads and 2 Amazon reviews. 20 giveaway copies of my second novel and a dozen copies to people who've specifically requested it for review have yet to produce any response at all.
Oh. Ouch. I have to admit, I didn't know it actually cost money to get a book on that service. I just knew the other authors I know, like my agent's other clients always have their books sent there for ARC reviews, but then the reviewers themselves have to disclose in their reviews that their received an ARC in exchange for a review.
I'd happily use them myself if they didn't cost hundreds of dollars - I've seen how effective they are at getting reviews, but on my budget I have to rely on free giveaway services like Librarything and Instafreebie.
There's one golden rule in writing,
You need to read and write a lot and if you aren't reading then you simply don't have the tool to write effectively.
It's time to start reading, my friend. Even a little bit everyday goes a long way.
Fellow writers! I have emerged from the depths of my writing cave with some news: I've recently sold two short stories (one reprint, one original) which will be appearing soon.
I sold "The Dinosaur Graveyard" to A. Merc Rustad for their online/physical anthology, ROBOT DINOSAURS! It's a long flash story (short short story?) about a robotics engineer spending a long night repairing her daughter's favourite toy. "The Dinosaur Graveyard" will be available for free on August 24. More details here.
I also sold a reprint of "The Penelope Qingdom" to Cast of Wonders—an Escape Artist podcast with a YA slant. "The Penelope Qingdom" is a love letter to growing up, '80s Saturday morning cartoons, Dungeons & Dragons, and falling in love for the first time. It's the absolute perfect venue for the story, and I'm pleased that "The Penelope Qingdom" will be finding a new audience. It was originally published during the same week as the US election, so got lost in the hurricane (and subsequent nuclear fallout since)—so this is a great opportunity to give it fresh life. More details here.
If podcasts aren't your thing, you can read "The Penelope Qingdom" right now for free on Curious Fictions.
Other than that, I'm knee deep, and about 16k words, into a novella called "The Rose and Honey Soul." I conceptualized it and began work on it over two years ago, but hit a road block and only recently returned. That time away allowed me to work through plotting and worldbuilding issues, and it's been smooth sailing since. I expect it'll be about 25k words by the time it's done. It's a baroque fantasy set in an eternally dark post-apocalyptic world—initially inspired by Dark Souls, but it's since taken on a life of its own. Its got wandering knights, dragons, city-powering fungal generators, paper witches, lost love, and a bunch more fun stuff.
I sold "The Dinosaur Graveyard" to A. Merc Rustad for their online/physical anthology, ROBOT DINOSAURS! It's a long flash story (short short story?) about a robotics engineer spending a long night repairing her daughter's favourite toy. "The Dinosaur Graveyard" will be available for free on August 24. More details here.
I also sold a reprint of "The Penelope Qingdom" to Cast of Wonders—an Escape Artist podcast with a YA slant. "The Penelope Qingdom" is a love letter to growing up, '80s Saturday morning cartoons, Dungeons & Dragons, and falling in love for the first time. It's the absolute perfect venue for the story, and I'm pleased that "The Penelope Qingdom" will be finding a new audience. It was originally published during the same week as the US election, so got lost in the hurricane (and subsequent nuclear fallout since)—so this is a great opportunity to give it fresh life. More details here.
If podcasts aren't your thing, you can read "The Penelope Qingdom" right now for free on Curious Fictions.
Other than that, I'm knee deep, and about 16k words, into a novella called "The Rose and Honey Soul." I conceptualized it and began work on it over two years ago, but hit a road block and only recently returned. That time away allowed me to work through plotting and worldbuilding issues, and it's been smooth sailing since. I expect it'll be about 25k words by the time it's done. It's a baroque fantasy set in an eternally dark post-apocalyptic world—initially inspired by Dark Souls, but it's since taken on a life of its own. Its got wandering knights, dragons, city-powering fungal generators, paper witches, lost love, and a bunch more fun stuff.
I don't get how you people write novels. They just need so many words and plot points and I could have ended this dumb thing 13,000 words ago if I had her eat everybody already. I was originally going to try and finish this by Nano but that's not happening, so instead I might just take a break from Victorian Era silly romance and into harsher, literary introspection for my Nano project. I feel like something darker would be easier to consistently work on since I can just channel my constant depression into filler instead of trying to think of "jokes" like with my current book project.
Not to harp too much as well, but yeah try and get into the habit of reading more. I used to (and still do) have a bad habit of not reading. When I first started to get a bit more serious about writing I actively tried to read more than the little to nothing I was reading (outside of my English classes) and when I did, I noticed a steep increase in the quality of my words and ideas. If you're looking for a quick way to get into reading, I always recommend reading short story collections/anthologies in genres that interest you (as well as trying genres you're not sure if you'd like or not. Always good to try new things).
As to the trading works, sorry I don't have anything to trade at the moment, but I do wish all of us were a bit more tradey though for a lot of understandable reasons it doesn't really happen around here. My personal case, no one want to trade short stories usually and also I just don't have anything ready to be read. I've been trying to get a short story up to snuff recently, but I've been lazy about editing. Plus I am worried it may be a bit more problematic than I first thought it would be. Thinking I might abandon plans for that and start editing this melodramatic af ghost story I have in the back burner.
Congrats and all that. I'm always mildly curious what you're up.
Not to harp too much as well, but yeah try and get into the habit of reading more. I used to (and still do) have a bad habit of not reading. When I first started to get a bit more serious about writing I actively tried to read more than the little to nothing I was reading (outside of my English classes) and when I did, I noticed a steep increase in the quality of my words and ideas. If you're looking for a quick way to get into reading, I always recommend reading short story collections/anthologies in genres that interest you (as well as trying genres you're not sure if you'd like or not. Always good to try new things).
As to the trading works, sorry I don't have anything to trade at the moment, but I do wish all of us were a bit more tradey though for a lot of understandable reasons it doesn't really happen around here. My personal case, no one want to trade short stories usually and also I just don't have anything ready to be read. I've been trying to get a short story up to snuff recently, but I've been lazy about editing. Plus I am worried it may be a bit more problematic than I first thought it would be. Thinking I might abandon plans for that and start editing this melodramatic af ghost story I have in the back burner.
Congrats and all that. I'm always mildly curious what you're up.
even if my story was in a tradable state, it's hard to get someone interested in a 600k+ story :P (that is roughly only 25% done >.> granted there are 6 major story arcs it's broken into at this point)
I too need to read more. But at the very least I am pretty quick to pick up differences between my own writing and stories. I try to read a little bit every day and focus on what is different and how I can approve... but when I say a little bit I really mean I average like 2 pages a day >.>
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Congrats again, aidan, you talented hard working beautiful bastard! :)
On this subject of not reading, unfortunately here in Brazil most people simply don't read at all. I grew in a family where books were almost something alien. Except for the books demanded by the school, basically all I read was magazines (at least I had that, thank God!). But the weird thing about me is that when I had to read a book, I used to enjoy them, but it never crossed my mind that I should read more. People usually say that reading is boring, and I used to just accept that as truth. I also was a lousy student that hated to write (by hand), I was always daydreaming. But at the same time, every time the teacher asked the class to come up with a story, while people would come with half a page or a full page at most, I used to come with 7, 8 or more pages. Back then, It never crossed my mind that I like to write. The writing bug bit me when I was an adult, around 24 or 25. It started when I was invited to be part of a team in a competition about cartoons/animes and comics/mangas on a Brazilian forum. I initially refused the invitation because even though I enjoyed cartoons and animes when I was younger, I'm not the kind of person that knows the specific name of the object X that appears on the 26th episode of the third season of X cartoon, and back then I had never read a manga, and comic books for me were Monica's Gang at most. But my friend insisted saying that I could google stuff, and I was like "eh, whatever, let's do this". Despite my efforts, I was useless most of the time, but then the organizers asked each team to come up with a story of an original hero, and I said to myself that I could do that. Then me and another guy (he managed to have a novelette published soon after that, by the way, so he was good!) from my team started writing each one a story. I got hooked! I was writing much more than I was supposed to, and had to force myself to stop. We read each other's story and he said that mine was better, and the rest of the team agreed, so we sent mine, and we won. I felt great (one of the few times I felt good on that first year of depression) and I had this idea that maybe one day I should finish that story, that it was cool and it would be a good book. But of course it was just a silly idea that would fade on the next morning, except that it didn't. And not only that... Other new stories started surfacing from the depths of my mind out of the blue, and I even started having dreams of new stories. It was like I had opened this weird door inside my mind, and Jesus Christ, I had to write. I needed to take at least something out of my chest. Weird...
Anyways, it came as common sense to me that writing without reading was a silly idea. If I wanted to start writing, I also had to start reading, and thank God I did that! The initial idea was to buy one or two books to see how it's done and then write my story. But reading for the first time without any external obligations made me realize that another thing had awaken inside me: the realizations that reading is f*ckin' good and a lot of fun! Then I started buying books almost compulsively, and all that reading made me postpone my writings. And it was good because it made me understand that Swedish medieval Batman wasn't an original idea, and that other GREAT ideas I had weren't so good, and most importantly: despite thinking that I was good with that writing thing, I actually wasn't.
So Doukou and other people coming here aspiring to write: read. 15 minutes a day, one book for month, it doesn't matter. Only reading how the professionals like aidan and H.Protagonist do that you'll understand how they do it and how much you need to improve, or how good your ideas really are. I'd love to trade stuff with you, but I write in Portuguese, so this won't work (plus, I've been really busy with this Wattys thing and life is beating me hard at the moment). :P
On this subject of not reading, unfortunately here in Brazil most people simply don't read at all. I grew in a family where books were almost something alien. Except for the books demanded by the school, basically all I read was magazines (at least I had that, thank God!). But the weird thing about me is that when I had to read a book, I used to enjoy them, but it never crossed my mind that I should read more. People usually say that reading is boring, and I used to just accept that as truth. I also was a lousy student that hated to write (by hand), I was always daydreaming. But at the same time, every time the teacher asked the class to come up with a story, while people would come with half a page or a full page at most, I used to come with 7, 8 or more pages. Back then, It never crossed my mind that I like to write. The writing bug bit me when I was an adult, around 24 or 25. It started when I was invited to be part of a team in a competition about cartoons/animes and comics/mangas on a Brazilian forum. I initially refused the invitation because even though I enjoyed cartoons and animes when I was younger, I'm not the kind of person that knows the specific name of the object X that appears on the 26th episode of the third season of X cartoon, and back then I had never read a manga, and comic books for me were Monica's Gang at most. But my friend insisted saying that I could google stuff, and I was like "eh, whatever, let's do this". Despite my efforts, I was useless most of the time, but then the organizers asked each team to come up with a story of an original hero, and I said to myself that I could do that. Then me and another guy (he managed to have a novelette published soon after that, by the way, so he was good!) from my team started writing each one a story. I got hooked! I was writing much more than I was supposed to, and had to force myself to stop. We read each other's story and he said that mine was better, and the rest of the team agreed, so we sent mine, and we won. I felt great (one of the few times I felt good on that first year of depression) and I had this idea that maybe one day I should finish that story, that it was cool and it would be a good book. But of course it was just a silly idea that would fade on the next morning, except that it didn't. And not only that... Other new stories started surfacing from the depths of my mind out of the blue, and I even started having dreams of new stories. It was like I had opened this weird door inside my mind, and Jesus Christ, I had to write. I needed to take at least something out of my chest. Weird...
Anyways, it came as common sense to me that writing without reading was a silly idea. If I wanted to start writing, I also had to start reading, and thank God I did that! The initial idea was to buy one or two books to see how it's done and then write my story. But reading for the first time without any external obligations made me realize that another thing had awaken inside me: the realizations that reading is f*ckin' good and a lot of fun! Then I started buying books almost compulsively, and all that reading made me postpone my writings. And it was good because it made me understand that Swedish medieval Batman wasn't an original idea, and that other GREAT ideas I had weren't so good, and most importantly: despite thinking that I was good with that writing thing, I actually wasn't.
So Doukou and other people coming here aspiring to write: read. 15 minutes a day, one book for month, it doesn't matter. Only reading how the professionals like aidan and H.Protagonist do that you'll understand how they do it and how much you need to improve, or how good your ideas really are. I'd love to trade stuff with you, but I write in Portuguese, so this won't work (plus, I've been really busy with this Wattys thing and life is beating me hard at the moment). :P
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Congratulations - two at once is no small thing, and the novella sounds pretty interesting as well.
Sheer bloody persistance mostly. The things are an absolute headache to fit together in any coherent fashion - I've often had to resort to detailed plot outlines.
A thousand words a day :V
I'd say the idea is to get an idea big enough for a novel, but my second book was supposed to be a novella and then it wasn't, so I dunno. Shit just happens and boom, you have a thousand stupid words you don't know what to do with.
On the topic of reading:
i've ran into a few writers, or rather, a few people who want to be writers, who don't read. I can absolutely tell. It's frustrating to hear "Well I'm a storyteller, not a reader" for every reason imaginable ._.
I just want my story out of my head. I can worry about it being well written later lol. I'm not too worried about my ideas since i still consume a ton of stories but i know my actual writing is lacking.
That being said I'm slowly making strides. It's not like i am ignoring trying to improve my writing. I allst read some trying to pick up what i am doing wrong and at least read random advice stuff... But i am already putting around 30-40 hours a week writing and that isn't including the time i spend plotting which is most of the rest of the week because i never stop plotting anymore.
I know i should read more... But when i actually have time to relax i want to play games or watch TV.
We will see though... I will likely attempt to finish rewriting the first chapter soon so i can be told how horrible it is loo