WitchWRITER M.C. 
Post by Esmeralda on Jun 24, 2008 3:06:34 GMT -4
(I posted this at both the Charmed Cafe and Es' Library of Charmed, so if it sounds familiar, that's why.)
My best friend in school, who also happened to be my eighth-grade English teacher, once told me that good writing takes planning. After reading one of my first stories where I rambled on and and on and on, she told me that rather than just sitting down and beginning to write a story, I should honor that story and my audience by taking the time first to figure out my beginning, my middle and my end. Sounds simple, but isn't.
She told me that this means figuring out what my problem is going to be, how that problem affects my characters, how they try to solve it, and finally how they do actually solve it. She said that for everything I write in the middle, I should ask myself, "How does this bring my characters closer to eventually solving the problem?" But she reminded me that part of the middle should also serve as obstacles too. That is how you build suspense. She said some things should work toward the goal while other things should get in the way of the goal, but eventually I should tie all of the loose ends together. Of course, back then in school, we never wrote trilogies!
She also told me that a lot of writers actually figure out their ending first and then work their way backward until they come to a beginning! I've discovered that that's what works best for me, so that's why I usually don't post stories until I'm done writing them.
But others will start with a problem and work out how to solve it.
Still others start at the middle, the climax, and figure out how to go back to the beginning and then forward to the ending.
Since then, I've learned that in either case, writing an outline helps. This isn't using the Roman numerals and letters, like we learned in school, but just writing out each plot-point in very general terms, like a road-map, showing how you get from the beginning to the middle to the end, with all the detours in between.
Of course, my friend the teacher was talking about stories that you actually want to share with others. If you're just writing a fanfic for yourself, you don't have to follow any of this or any other advice for that matter; just have fun writing!! But if you want to share it with others, then this advice and the ones Scifi gave you and that I hope others will share, are definitely things to consider.
Hope that helps! Hopefully others who have taken creative writing courses can do a better job explaining the beginning, the middle and the end (I took a course in college once and flunked! Now you know why most of my stories are novelizations, where others do the hard part!), but I hope what I wrote will help pique their memory, so they can give all of us better advice!!
One last piece of advice that someone else gave me, probably the most important one of all--HAVE FUN!! ENJOY YOURSELF!!! If writing the story is work, then set it aside and try writing a different one--you may come up with the right idea for your first one later! This is especially true if you're not writing for pay but just for fun, like the fanfics written here.
Best of luck, everyone!!
My best friend in school, who also happened to be my eighth-grade English teacher, once told me that good writing takes planning. After reading one of my first stories where I rambled on and and on and on, she told me that rather than just sitting down and beginning to write a story, I should honor that story and my audience by taking the time first to figure out my beginning, my middle and my end. Sounds simple, but isn't.
She told me that this means figuring out what my problem is going to be, how that problem affects my characters, how they try to solve it, and finally how they do actually solve it. She said that for everything I write in the middle, I should ask myself, "How does this bring my characters closer to eventually solving the problem?" But she reminded me that part of the middle should also serve as obstacles too. That is how you build suspense. She said some things should work toward the goal while other things should get in the way of the goal, but eventually I should tie all of the loose ends together. Of course, back then in school, we never wrote trilogies!
She also told me that a lot of writers actually figure out their ending first and then work their way backward until they come to a beginning! I've discovered that that's what works best for me, so that's why I usually don't post stories until I'm done writing them.
But others will start with a problem and work out how to solve it.
Still others start at the middle, the climax, and figure out how to go back to the beginning and then forward to the ending.
Since then, I've learned that in either case, writing an outline helps. This isn't using the Roman numerals and letters, like we learned in school, but just writing out each plot-point in very general terms, like a road-map, showing how you get from the beginning to the middle to the end, with all the detours in between.
Of course, my friend the teacher was talking about stories that you actually want to share with others. If you're just writing a fanfic for yourself, you don't have to follow any of this or any other advice for that matter; just have fun writing!! But if you want to share it with others, then this advice and the ones Scifi gave you and that I hope others will share, are definitely things to consider.
Hope that helps! Hopefully others who have taken creative writing courses can do a better job explaining the beginning, the middle and the end (I took a course in college once and flunked! Now you know why most of my stories are novelizations, where others do the hard part!), but I hope what I wrote will help pique their memory, so they can give all of us better advice!!
One last piece of advice that someone else gave me, probably the most important one of all--HAVE FUN!! ENJOY YOURSELF!!! If writing the story is work, then set it aside and try writing a different one--you may come up with the right idea for your first one later! This is especially true if you're not writing for pay but just for fun, like the fanfics written here.
Best of luck, everyone!!
