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Gemmetra, I believe she meant for this to be a place where we discuss how to improve our writing, as well as general discussion of writing.


As per the conversation, I have some fun things I don't mind sharing and seeing what others think or wish to share themselves.
I enjoy reading short stories and poetry online (not that I don't read them in their published form). I find there are many places one can go online to find them, but I think these two are the best of each.
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/indexframe.html
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

I'm a huge fan of collecting fun quotes, so here are a few about writing:
"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." ~Ray Bradbury
"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." ~Toni Morrison
"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say." ~Sharon O'Brien
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." ~Anton Chekhov


I myself don't write fanfiction, unless you count the stuff I write just for fun about my rp character, but I don't so you shouldn't. I do write my own fiction, mainly short stories and poetry, though. It has been a love of mine since I was a child, something my sister and me share.

One of my favorite authors is Charles deLint, he gave us Urban Fantasy and I'll forever love the words and worlds he brings us. His use of magic, mystery, and characters is simply some of the best in modern fiction. I haven't come across anything he's written and not just loved it with all my heart. And I'm a very picky reader.

Nice! I like this topic.

I absolutely love reading. I love knowing how words that are put down on paper or on the printed page are there for a reason, and it is up to the reader to take the initiative, read, and feel the emotions the writer put into his/her work.

I also love writing. I love the ability to choose my words in order to make the biggest impact, and to make the reader feel that what I have written, I have written, because it needs to be written and needs to be felt by more than just me.


As for sharing how I improve my writing, I have an interesting exercise that I got from a nifty little book called 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing. I try to do this exercise whenever I hit a writer's block or the storyline just doesn't seem to want to come together. It also improves my word choice and sentence flow.

What you do is sit down with a published book of an author you admire and type up or write down (which ever is easier for you) word for word what they published. And, as you are copying, also try to figure out why it works and why the author chose those words in that order to get his/her point across. I've done it a lot with JK Rowling's Harry Potter books and some other less known works.

If you're having difficulties with style, or want to figure out what the style is of the authors you admire, I'd recommend this. Even if you just want a way to get you through a writer's block and keep the words flowing, this can help. I especially use this if I want to mimic the style of certain authors, and then use what I learn to help out my own writing style.

Even if it is something as simple as deciding whether you like the style of dialogue as:
"Witty dialogue," said Character.
Or:
"Witty dialogue," Character said.
Or:
Character said, "Witty dialogue."
Or any other styles. It becomes more complex when you add in the way the character actually talked.
It is definitely something you should experiment with and get a feel for how it changes your writing and which styles you want to use in which scenes that you write.

I think so? This really shouldn't be all that confusing, maybe I'm just not awake enough right now XP


I've never actually thought of looking to established writer's for style inspiration before, but I guess that's because I don't do much reading (shame on me). It sounds like an interesting idea though. I know I did something like that in sixth grade, but I didn't enjoy it because it just seemed like busy work to me and I didn't feel like I was learning anything. But maybe I was and just didn't realize it?

Oh, I have something from my creative writing class. Characters need to be driven by something. There has to be something behind their actions that makes them do what they do. What does the character want and why?
I was thrilled to learn this because there's a fic I've had writer's block on for over a year now, and I realized that my main character is not driven personally. She's driven by the circumstances of the fandom's plot, but there's nothing out there that she as an individual is working for and thus the writer's block.

It is a rather short section. But one of my favorite exercises for overcoming writer's block.


Well, I'm glad that opened a new line of thought for you.


However, upon re-reading my post I feel I should probably make clear my statement about style, because your style is what it is. You can't force it into a certain pattern all the time. If you are trying to figure out what works best, copy from several different authors that you enjoy reading. For example, if you typically write in third person and want to do first person for a particular piece and just want to find out the basic style differences, pick up three authors or so that you like reading their style of first person and copy them for a few paragraphs.

If you are trying to do a specific type of scene, like a flashback or a battle scene, pick a couple authors that have done that same type of scene in a way that you liked, and copy down the words to find out how they constructed that type of scene. But if your purpose is to set out to write fanfiction or other type of piece in the particular author's style, copying that author for a couple of paragraphs or a chapter can help you see the differences in the style you normally use and the style of the author.

This is why I'll usually try to do the exercise with several different published authors that I have read and am familiar with the scenes. (However, it shouldn't be too familiar--it works slightly better for me when I don't have the scenes memorized.) Because if I'm familiar with the scene and where it's going, I'll not only copy it, I'll try to write it in my own words and then go back word for word and discover the ways my words differ in style and word choice from the published account. And then I decide if my word choice can be improved, if putting certain words back in the published order makes a better impact, and why. No one's perfect, and it may turn out that you prefer your own choices rather than the author's and editor's choices. That's fine. But that act of analyzing is where it can help you improve your style and word choice.

There exists the statement that sometimes you can't see the forest because of the trees. In reading and trying to analyze how a novel or other piece is constructed, it is sometimes easier to see the forest than the trees. Copying word for word allows you to focus on the branches of the individual trees. And therefore get a feel for the whole forest.


Hehe. Definitely one of my favorite exercises. I talk about it a lot.

Most of my books on writing are about structure and recognizing how to write for your specific project (prose/poems/essays/ect.)

One thing I enjoy doing is reading my favorite author's thoughts about writing, whether on something specific they did or just in general.
I mean who better to give you insight than the very people you respect in the art, right?

I pulled two examples for you, the first from my bookshelf:

(taken from the Author's Introduction of Terry Goodkind's Debt of Bones)
"I value writing stories set in places I would like to be and about people I admire. I like to write about characters we recognize from our own lives- people we can readily identify and relate to-and also about the people we would like to know. Above all the characters must come alive for me as I write. They must ring true. In this world, as in ours, an individual, no matter how helpless they believe they are, can sometimes make a choice that will change their world, and not always for the better."

The second, I'll leave you to read at the website below, the author is one of my favorites, Vivian Vande Velde. She writes wonderful and fun stories and has a very blunt perspective about her that I find refreshing and I relate to her in that way myself. She is someone I greatly respect when it comes to my goals as a writer.
http://www.vivianvandevelde.com/writingAdvice.cfm

For me, I'm always writing something and then putting it to the side, and I think about things that I could change about it, add to it, or what (on a reread) just is not working more than I think I really should sometimes. But at this point in my life I'm not looking to be published so much as just work and explore myself as a writer. It is fun though, to go back to things after years and see what you were thinking and get back into that mindset and then bring something new to it. It's one of the things I enjoy most about writing actually.

But then, there are those moments when I just can't get words to flow together onto the page and I'm stuck, not knowing what I'm sitting there doing staring at an empty page.
Sometimes I just go and do something else, but others, I try to make myself write, that's how I actually got into fanfiction. I wasn't moving anywhere with any of my stories at the time and it was depressing me. So my friend asked me if I've ever just written a story for fun, which confused me at first and then she went on to explain to me what she meant. So I began to write fanfiction at her request. Sailor Moon at first and then I switched to Star Wars and then Harry Potter, after book 4 came out and at that time I wrote it as a cross over with Card Captor Sakura because me and my friend were way too fanatical about CLAMP - hence my first name here on Gaia... my nickname comes from the manga series Rayearth incase anyone didn't know that.
I had lost my interest in writing fanfiction later on in high school, but then when I started college I got back into it. At first it was to read it, I came across a link on livejournal and found ff.net, and slowly, my mind started creating the need to write my own stories with the characters I enjoy again. It has helped me in many ways, and has become a complimenting pass time to my love of writing and reading. I don't think I'll ever give it up again.
Not all breaks or blocks from writing are bad, I think they are a very useful aspect to the writing process. If nothing else they help reenergize us once the flow of inspiration reaches us again.

I enjoy things that come from free-flow writing or spur of the moment contemplations when you literally 'dawn' the character (or a character) and imagine you are in the scene as them, and just begin talking as them, sometimes if there are more than one character around you might try jumping back and forth as them, see what kind of snappy dialogue pops up. I find it a great way to get inspired and get more attached to a mindset of a particular character making it easier to imagine their responses to various situations.