I've confessed to my family that I want to be an author but I've got no idea how to write.
Please help.
Confess to your family that you're an idiot who's more concerned with your idea of what an "author" is than what it actually means.
You read.
>>7656856
i don't get it.
why do you want to be an author if you've never written before? you know that's like, the job right? how do you even know that you'll like it?
I write 4 hours a day. minimum. and i'm still nowhere.
Oh boy anon, this thread isn't going so well for you. Seems as though you even failed to write one good post sentence. Maybe you should admit it was a mistake
>>7656856
Put pen or pencil to some crisp white paper and write and revise and, after realizing you suck, erase.
confess to your family that you want to be an astronaut instead
OP here time to see if this situation is salvageable
>>7656860
DESU I don't know what an author really is but I do feel like an idiot right now.
>>7656877
I think I understand what you mean, but please clarify.
>>7656880
I just don't know how to string a story together, mostly because I'm pretty shit at sticking to writing. Probably just need to keep writing (big shocker)
>>7656886
No it's not going well, but I might get some decent advice what to do later.
>>7656889
This is pretty much my english final and yet they let me pass lol
>>7656896
Yeah I'm actually just trying to figure out what I want to do in life now so they'd probably be all for it.
>>7656880
We get these threads all the time and I always wonder the same thing. It seems to be unique to writing.
Nobody goes on /mu/ and says "hey, can't sing or play any instruments, any advice on releasing an album?"; nobody goes on /3/ and says "hey, so I have zero artistic skills and don't work well with computers, how to a release my game?"
However, when it comes to /lit/, everyone seems to have this idea that you are 'entitled' to write a book even if you have no talent in writing or storytelling.
>>7656856
>I've confessed to my family that I want to be an author
I did that as well when I was 8. I've lived my life following that dream until the point I understood that I will never be a great writer. I fell lost now. the only thing I can do is to keep writing and just hope to write something for the normie crowd and move on.
>tfw can't write
>tfw all i can think of are ideas like a man turning into a cockroach or a careless man that kills an arab and gets sentenced to death
>>7656940
It's because if you're literate you're in principle capable of writing a book. Makes it seem like the easiest way to get famous by creating something.
Mind you, I suppose the same's true of the visual arts. Though people tend to be more aware of how unskilled they are on that front, plus living artists generally aren't so famous.
>>7656856
As soon as you tell people you want to be an author, you've already failed at being one. Congrats. You played yourself.
>>7656856
you're an idiot. writing isn't supposed to be a job, it's just a hobby. get a real job and write in your free time.
>>7657339
This. Do you also confess to your family that you want to collect baseball cards? Or do you get the fuck out there and find some baseball cards?
>>7656856
OP is a pathetic NEET.
so am I OP, so am I.
but i recently discovered that one of my wikipedia articles was mentioned favorably in a national newspaper. so at least I wrote some hard hitting journalism and made a difference faggot. we have nothing in common.
writing is like programming, sounds like the easiest thing to do but requires the grit and the grind
you need idea, planning, dedication and patience but the most important thing is that it is not a fantasy back-burner type of a deal. you have to begin and keep at it
the hardest part is the dedication
how do you oultine/plan?
>>7657362
you've nailed it. I keep getting lost after I write a few pages down. So I start fast and go nowhere and I loathe my habits
any tips?
>>7657391
start by writing a short story.
dont try to write a whole novel as your first attempt.
Post something you've written so far
>>7657397
>dont try to write a whole novel as your first attempt.
okay but as for the short, keep it simple so I don't have trouble getting lost? I write in bursts typically so it's when I'm not on a spree that I suffer the most- I feel out to sea during those moments
>>7656856
"I want to be a sailor though I've never seen a boat or the ocean or been wet before"
>>7657391
Obvious things: make sure grammar, sentence structure and so on is good. And, of course, read lots.
But other advice:
Write a whole novel - 90k words. Edit it. Edit it lots. Make it perfect. This will take many, many months. Work relentlessly.
Because it's your first completed work, you will think it's good. But it isn't. So write another one.
Keep doing this until you have written a good novel.
ACTUALLY FINISHING is the main thing here. Odd chapters, disconnected scenes, this is not enough. You will learn so, so much by finishing.
As for getting lost? What are you talking about? Forgetting where the story is? You know you can read what you've written, right? And then change it? That's sort of a big thing with writing.
And ignore these cunts saying you can't do it. They're right, you can't, but you can LEARN how. We were all literally BABIES once. Of course there's real talent, but hard work will get you to a high enough standard for publication (unless you're retarded, which I'm assuming you're not).
(I am a published author).
>>7657468
Thanks mate,
by getting lost I meant that I get inspired write for a burst, churn out some pages, and when I go back to it I realize I don't know where I was going , and when I try to force myself to keep writing it, it doesn't go anywhere.
thanks for the advice, I'll finish.
>>7657411
look its basically art. you decide on some message that you want to tell people.
so sum up your story, what you want to ultimately convey to your audience. art is born out of loneliness. you literally have nobody to tell your story to so you just piss it onto your canvas and cast it out there hoping someone will read it.
for comparison, take a look at science fiction short stories from the 60s. like Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. now go and watch A.I.
http://www.wired.com/1997/01/ffsupertoys/
ok so now you have your message summed up in a paragraph, you decide on a setting. time, location, characters(dont worry if its just some shitty hollow 1D dialectic the greeks did this as well and people loved it)
now you trick your audience into listenning to your message by giving them a constant string of feels. describe the time, is the sun setting? are there birds? what is your protagonist standing on? holding? wearing? how does this make them feel? are they tired? happy? a massive faggot with a raging boner and a buttplug causing their prostate to constantly leak? are they a child? an adult? are they loved? are they independant? weak? just keep describing them and their feels.
now where are they going? are they just sitting there? now you slip in your message once the reader is full of feels. steadily you scaffold the stream of feels in there to direct your audience to accept the message.
keep it up with the feels.
now you close up with some kind of revelation, having explored the feels and discourse that has directed your audience by making the sun set or the character fall asleep or some bullshit people will be ok with.
Then be writing. There's no manual on how to write. There's no easy way.
>>7656935
>I think I understand what you mean, but please clarify.
Read on languaje, on writing (write little reports about the important stuff), then read the classics.
>>7656935
I just meant you read as many novels as you can, good and bad ones alike, or preferably not bad ones but I like to ask friends for recommendations and boy, do they have shit tastes. It's an exercise in itself to try and look at the structure and understand why you think it's a bad novel be it through narrative structures or prose and and style alike, of course it's all subjective but I think it would help find your own voice. Reading good lit is good because it digs deep into an idea of perfection and long lasting identity, trying to copy those authors could help you find a voice of your own. A grammar might help, and poetry could too, maybe even those 'guides to writing fiction', I've not yet looked at one myself but I'm personally not too invested in becoming successful.
Really, I'd think it's just practice, but I think the best literature is also steeped in a tradition that spans from the Greeks up to today, even. So reading is an imperative to me
>>7658654
>now you close up with some kind of revelation, having explored the feels and discourse that has directed your audience by making the sun set or the character fall asleep or some bullshit people will be ok with.
hahaha thanks anon! Cheers
>>7657155
Agree fully. I wish warosu wasn't down because I think I've had almost this exact same conversation before in a previous thread.
There is a sort of murky quality to writing (I'm not sure I could quantify it on the fly) that makes it much harder for a layperson to judge quality, unless it is literally jumbled nonsense. With drawing, someone can put a pencil down on paper to portray an object and easily be able to tell when it looks poorly made.
>>7656856
Read with a critical eye. Try to figure out what your favorite writers do and how. Read with a pen in your hand. Put the work in.
