The Wanderers
Writing Tips and Tricks
This Bonus Chapter is less about the story I have written and more about the lessons I've learnt over the years writing. I want to share them with you guys as a way of giving back to the community, plus if it helps you guys improve your own writing then that'll make me even happier.
Now, just as a warning, I'm not that professional a writer. I am published in a small capacity and take pride in my writing, but I'm no Dickens or Hemingway. I have dedicated myself to being a writer and have every intention of being a novelist.
The first rule of writing is that there really aren't any set rules. There are lots of guidelines and styles that you can adhere to, but some of the most creative and compelling stories ever written didn't follow traditional themes. If you want to write all in second-person about a little girl playing with her dolls, then by all means do it. Just because something isn't inherently popular, doesn't mean it isn't good or compelling.
You should write because you want to, not because you have to.
Now, you certainly can write well if you are pressed into it, such as for assignments for study or for obligations. But that type will pale in comparison to something that you are truly invested in. Always try to find ways to become passionate about your writing and put your passion into your writing. If you have a particular interest that you enjoy writing about, put it into the story. I can tell you that, with the exception of this fanfiction for obvious reasons, every main protagonist in my other stories has some connection to blacksmithing, regardless of time, place or character.
If you are writing about something you are passionate about, you'll find that it is easier to write and much more fun. There are times when writing can be difficult, boring, or even head-smashingly frustrating. But if you are writing about something you care about, then that is much easier to overcome and push through.
This can be either through a particular situation, such as a zombie apocalypse or murder mystery, or through specific well-known characters, like you see in fanfictions. If love Hinata or Sakura, write about them and situations surrounding them. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't expand out from your comfort zones. But rather if you are finding yourself drifting from the original purpose of your writing and not quite feeling it, go back to your core reasons for writing and you'll find that it's far more enjoyable.
Make your characters interesting.
Nobody remembers the red shirts from Star Trek. They remember that they existed as a concept of a sacrificial crew member, but the individual members might as well be personality-void robots. Don't ignore your background characters just because they exist in the background, give them some personality. This doesn't have to be in-depth, don't waste space unnecessarily. But give them a quality or an action that makes the reader think about them for a moment before they disappear back into the crowd or are killed horribly because it was their time. This can be as simple as giving them a quirky personality or characteristic, such as an eye-patch or a verbal-tick, or going deeper as to give a connection to the main characters and have them react to that character's existence.
But it isn't just the background characters that should be interesting by nature. When you are developing a story, every primary and secondary character should have a background and development across the story. No character should be exactly the same as when they started the story, unless they actually go through a personal arc and they make the choices to return to the way they had been after their journey.
Here are a few sample questions that you should ask yourself about your characters and the journey they go through in the story:
What is the character's motivation for the things they do?
Why do they act a certain way to a particular situation?
What would make that character fall in love? What would make them hate?
What would this character die for?
There are many more that you should figure out when creating characters, which can be a complex yet fulfilling process. There is nothing quite like creating a character from your own imagination and seeing the process they undergo throughout the story and the end result of your work. You'd be surprised when, even though you've planned every part of the story, your characters gain their own form of life and can develop in ways that you won't quite expect. There is a flow to writing characters that isn't always in your control, but you need to let that process happen. Readers can tell when this kind of process is occurring, as the characters become more in-depth and likable as they go, even if they are the villains.
When creating characters, don't just give them a trait or personality quirk and call it a day. These are what are called 'one-dimensional' characters, and you see them all the time. It's an easy trap to fall into, but also something that can be easily avoided. When creating characters write a small background and personality type in a separate area. Not only will this process help you develop your characters better, but it will give your story more depth and greatly increase the immersion in your constructed world. Become interested in your characters and you will find that your story becomes much more interesting to both read and write.
This is more of a personal tip, but write your characters on things that interest you. For example in my other works, my main characters will always have a connection to blacksmithing, either as a passing hobby or as a main profession. This is because I am fascinated by the craft and always enjoy writing about it, which conveys directly into my story-telling. If you have a particular personal interest in something, then write about it for one of your characters. In all fictional works, there are going to be elements of you the writer that seep into your characters, and this is perfectly okay. Sometimes characters will act in a certain way towards a situation in the same way that you will, and that's absolutely fine. You can even write yourself into your stories, but just be wary of what might happen to those characters and the integrity of your story if you do so. Don't just put yourself as the hero and have them solve everything and nothing ever goes wrong with them, that's a boring story if I've ever heard one.
Edit your work.
This is something I must stress. Editing your own work is a process that doesn't necessarily have to be pleasant or even enjoyable, but it improves the quality of your writing drastically. Edit as you go, or edit in one big lot, but don't forget to edit. I've lost count of the number of stories that I've read both here on fanfiction and in anthologies where I think it's a great concept for a story or the characters are well thought-out, but the spelling and grammar problems just draw me out of my immersion. If you aren't confident on your spelling and grammar, then you should get a separate party to look it over and edit it. This can be a difficult step to overcome, as it is certainly nerve-wracking to have someone else look over your work before it is done, but this is something that every writer has to go through.
By editing your work, it will steadily improve in both composition and structure. This is something I can guarantee as someone who has worked in the editing field and seen the progression in my own work.
There are two main forms of editing, with their own subcategories. The first is Comprehensive Editing. This area concerns itself with the Content and Form of your writing. The second is Copyediting, which concerns itself with the Style and Mechanics of your writing.
When editing for Content you need to focus on what you are actually writing and who you are writing it for. If you are writing a science fiction novel, then you should try and get some of the science technically correct, or put in some references to actual phenomena. You have to determine the purpose of your writing, why are you writing this story? Who is the target audience? You shouldn't necessarily pander to an audience, as this can lead to a boring story that they have read a dozen times. Innovate and do new things, but always take account of what your readers might want. If you want to write something complex with fancy science, by all means do so, but if you do it in a fantasy setting with no scientists around, then you'll just confuse your readers and cause problems for the readability of your writing.
When editing for Form you need to focus on the general structure of your writing and how it will be read. Plot summaries and synopsises are your friend here, they can help to keep things in perspective. When writing fiction and non-fiction, you aren't writing it like an essay. There doesn't have to be an introduction, body and conclusion. However, take into account the readability of your writing. You want to keep paragraphs short and to the point. Each chapter of your story should contain its own self-contained part of the story. It's perfectly okay to spread a part of the story over a few chapters, but if you spread it out too much then you run the risk of losing your readers among the chaos of your writing. You want your story's structure to be organised and flow from one section to the next. Each chapter should lead into the next one and characters should develop throughout the story.
When editing for Style you need to focus on the actual writing itself and what manner of writing you do. Consistency is key in this area; if you are writing in a certain perspective then you should remain that way. If you are writing as a more detail-background focused type, then you should maintain that throughout the single piece. Style editing also focuses on the type of writing that you want your readers to experience, such as writing a more exploratory-type of science fiction for that kind of story, or a more character-focused narrative for a biography. A reader should be able to follow one sentence into the next and one paragraph into the next easily. If your reader can read your entire story in one go and not get lost purely because of the writing, you've done a relatively good job in this part of editing.
When editing for Mechanics you need to focus on the nuts and bolts of editing: the punctuation, grammar, spelling and other aspects of proper editing. This is an area that you get better at through experience, even if you aren't a particularly good speller or editor at the start. The most important rule here is to be strict with yourself and thorough. Use a dictionary and follow the general rules of grammar with whatever language you are writing in. If this is an area you are not confident in then get someone you trust to read through your work and edit it for you. Nothing ruins a story more than getting immersed into the world the writer had built, and then being drawn out because there are a few missing words that don't continue the flow, or a misspelt word in a sentence. Go through every paragraph line-by-line, deconstructing them and figuring out whether your word placement conveys what you really mean. No reader can take a writer seriously if they don't edit their work for these mechanics. It's okay if there is the occasional mistake, but if they are consistent then it tells the reader that the writer is not really committed to the story and they will lose interest.
I can't emphasise enough how important editing is. It's an intimidating prospect, I know, but one that if you are able to conquer and bring under your control, will improve your writing immensely. Above everything else, you have to be patient. Good writing is mostly going back on your own work with a red marker and redoing everything. Find your own pace and then work to improve.
Take in all feedback, whether positive or negative.
As a writer, you are never going to be able to please everyone. At times, you might not be able to please anyone. This is the fate of any writer that puts their work out into the public sphere. Taking in the responses to your work is one of the key ways that you are going to need to improve. But as a writer, you can't just cherry-pick positive feedback of your work and ignore everything else; otherwise you'll not really improve at all. You should always encourage feedback in every form, positive and negative; because that is where you can draw the spectrum of what is working in your writing and what is not.
Positive feedback is useful for several reasons. The first is obvious: it makes us feel good. Getting a good review is like getting a piece of chocolate when you weren't expecting it, or getting a higher mark than you thought you deserved. A person you don't know telling you that you did something that enjoyed is one of the best feelings in the world. If the feedback goes into details about what they enjoyed and why, then it is all the better. For example: if a review tells you that they enjoyed a particular interaction between two characters, you can use that feedback to examine what you wrote at that section and replicate it further on in your story. I'm not suggesting for you to only take the good things and duplicate them across the board, as this is sure to bore the readers after a while. But if there are certain elements that positive feedback shows that you do particularly well, build on that and do your best to improve on it.
This is the best way to find your technique and the areas that you are a natural at writing. Positive feedback is also useful for those downtimes when you don't feel like writing, or you aren't feeling confident that you can do a particular scene in the way that you want to. Sometimes you need that little perk to keep you going, even if it's just a small endorsement of a few words. Take what you can get, because there will be times when you're getting nothing but blanks and need some extra motivation. For example, a positive review of this story by Naruto1300 made me smile for the whole day after reading it: "Great story keep up the awesome work mate". This is why we write, so we can explore ideas and have other people enjoy them.
Negative feedback is extremely useful in a number of ways, but also dangerous. Before talking about the positive aspects of negative feedback, I have to inform you about constructive criticism and non-constructive criticism. All forms of feedback are useful, but not all of them should be taken 100 per cent to heart. If you get a review that is full of hate and bile about a particular thing you did, like killing off a character you like, there is something in that review that you can take away while ignoring the really bad stuff. Take the fact that the death of that character upset that person and take it into account for the story. Take a small bit of pride in the fact that you were able to bring out such a reaction in someone who you've likely never met, as bringing out emotions in people is an achievement, regardless of results. I'm certainly not suggesting you should write with the intention of upsetting people; that's a quick way to lose your readers in rapid succession and have no more feedback at all.
But also don't avoid doing certain parts of a story that you want to do just because you want to avoid negative feedback. You are a writer and that will mean that you need to take risks. Don't corrupt the integrity of your story just to please readers. Not only because you will probably lose respect for yourself, but readers are generally quite adept at noticing when they are being pandered to and begin to lose interest. There are a huge number of popular stories that choose these types of endings in the hopes of pleasing the most people, rather than taking the risky play that they really wanted to do. This is your story and you are the final person that has to vet what happens. Don't let your readers dictate everything that you do; otherwise you won't be able to maintain your motivation.
Negative feedback can certainly be useful; don't automatically dismiss it because it is negative. This is when the distinction of constructive and non-constructive feedback comes into it. You can certainly find the hate-filled comments everywhere, but you can also get lots of negative feedback that is far more useful than positive feedback.
For example, here is a review of this story by mr. cloud: "Totally confused on the no chakra thing and with rin I kinda glad the flashback thing is over though". While this is negative feedback, there are three key areas that I was able to identify and understand as areas that I did not do well and would need improvement. The confusion sections of the review told me that my explanations were either too vague or too convoluted for the reader to quite understand what I was meaning. The last bit of the review also gave me key insight into how flashbacks shouldn't go as long as I had written it. There were several reviews similar to this for this part of the story, telling me the same information. I took this into account and didn't run nearly as many flashbacks as I had intended, and eventually found ways to not do them at all for large sections of the story. This is where negative feedback can really help the development of a story, as getting information about what is working is vital, getting information about what clearly is not working and moving to correct and improve it is where you regain the respect of your readers and learn from your mistakes. As writers, we are inevitably going to mess up, but it is how we build ourselves back up and improve from that point that really defines the path that we are on and how good we really are. Work to constantly improve and learn from your experiences.
Feedback is a key aspect of writing, but it can be a chore to go through and take in properly. You will always get a mixture of good and bad writing as long as you give your work out for other people to read and critique, and with the internet now it is almost guaranteed that people are going to tell you their opinions. To be a writer is to have to sift through this chaotic miasma and draw out the information that you really need. If there is any piece of advice I can give in this regard, it is to develop a thick skin and learn to adapt.
Every line of your story should either advance the plot or develop a character.
Anything else from this is just a waste of the reader's time. The perfect example of where this can be both good and bad is in the problem of flashbacks. A new flashback that the reader hasn't read before can provide valuable backstory to a character or situation. But it can also be a waste of space, reminding the reader of something they have already read. Writing is not anime/manga; you can't get away with repeating yourself constantly in writing. You don't want to bore your reader with useless lines that can be put into other lines or removed entirely.
Examples:
Lara glanced down at the broken glass, noticing the strange reflection of the light from the nearby window. – This is a line advancing the plot; she is performing the action of glancing down, while making an observation.
It had been a good fight, a worthy fight. – This is a line developing the character thinking that they had fought a good fight.
His beard was red. – While this line does develop a character, it is boring to read depending on the surrounding context. A better way of writing something like this would be: His beard was as red as the apple juice dripping into it. – By adding this little element, you create the image in the reader's mind and both advance the plot and develop the character.
There are times when you can have short, punchy sentences for emphasis, but they have to follow the two settings above. Dramatic effect is all well and good, but you don't want to overdo it.
Describe the setting, but leave some things to the reader's imagination.
You are creating a world and giving your readers a peek into both your mind and your dreams. There are some things they need to be told, and others they can discover on their own. It may seem obvious, but if it's important to you as a writer that your main character is tall and has sandy blonde hair, then mention it. But there are ways to go about that without simply saying: "He was tall and was blonde." Work within the story to bring out those elements. Have a small child come up to the character and stare in awe at how tall he is, or when he falls to the ground describe how the dirt clung to his hair. You aren't telling the readers what is happening, it has already happened. You are the filter they require to make sense of the story. There is a fine balance between describing something and straight up telling the reader. Unfortunately finding this balance is something that only comes through practice and receiving feedback, plus discovering how it fits within your own style of writing. Some authors find they can describe some of the most remarkable settings and places with a few sentences, while others require several pages. Both are equally valid; just find the best mix for you.
With that in mind, don't tell the reader absolutely every single detail about the environments and characters that are participating in the story. The reader doesn't need to know how many knuckles are on the left hand of Nameless Guardsman A, but they'll want to know if he has a shifty look in his eyes that might betray a separate allegiance. Put in the important details, but let the readers fill in the gaps with their own imaginations. That way, they will feel much more like they are experiencing the story and this will help your story's immersion.
On the same note, there are several things that are best left unsaid, to achieve the greatest impact. Unless you are writing a gritty, realistic story, the readers don't need every detail about when a character chokes to death, how their lungs seized up on them, their muscles froze and their fingers clawed at their throat in agony for seconds before they finally died.
Okay, maybe those details are okay, but that's as far as it should go. Write how you would want to read it, don't overcrowd the pages with details that the reader can readily understand.
Some of the best things are left to the imagination. If two characters go into a room to have sex, and the scene is unimportant in comparison to the fact that they have sex, don't write the scene. Write that they entered the room and closed the door, then move on to the next morning and the aftermath. You can allude to the scene and sprinkle small details from both character's perspectives as to what happened, which will leave the readers wondering what happened and how it will affect their relationship.
However, be cautious when it comes to cliffhangers. They are related to this, in the sense of leaving out certain pieces of information for the sake of the plot. A couple of cliffhangers at specific places in a story can really give it that 'I need to keep reading to find out what happens next' vibe, but it can also ruin a story if overused. If you know that every chapter is going to end on a cliffhanger, then the tension of the story is removed and that feeling will be less likely to occur as the readers get fatigued. This is especially true for endings, where the author will leave big questions unanswered in the hopes that they will write a sequel that will explain it. Speaking from experience, this generally doesn't do much except frustrate readers, making them feel like reading the story was a waste of time up to that point. When you are writing a story, do your best to make it a single complete story, even if it is within a much larger story. Give the readers some closure; they deserve at least some for reading your story.
There are a thousand different things that you can learn about writing, and I am nowhere near qualified enough to tell you all of them properly. If you are serious about being a writer, then my biggest recommendation is to read a few books about writing and learn from some of the best in the trade. Even if you only want to write as a hobby or for yourself, there is no harm in wanting to better yourself and your writing, so that both you and your readers can enjoy it. Even if nobody reads it except for you, you will always want to give it your best and be able to look back on it with pride, would you not?
There are hundreds of good books about how to write, but these are my own recommendations that helped me get going.
The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker.
This book is about exactly what the title suggests: description and theory about the main seven plots that every story revolves around. These are: 'Overcoming the Monster', 'Rags to Riches', 'The Quest', 'Voyage and Return', 'Comedy', 'Tragedy' and 'Rebirth'. The book itself is huge and in such detail that you could almost not need anything else. If you are struggling to find a place for some of the story ideas you have, or looking for somewhere to start from scratch, then this book can help you immensely. It draws on a lot of different areas of writing beyond just plots, including some of the traps and dangers that will present themselves during the writing of a story, and has some brilliant advice for how to overcome them. It references works from ancient Greece to modern times, as a grand compilation of knowledge about writing and the art of crafting a story.
On Writing by Stephen King.
Admittedly, I'm biased in that I like King for both his material and his writing style, but this book is a great learning tool even if you don't like his works. The first half is about how and why he became a writer, and the second half is all about why people write and how to get better at it. This is more from a perspective of someone who is still currently in the writing business and making money off of his writing, though he comes out from the very beginning in stating that most writers don't see any money for their work. This is the work that really inspired me to try my hand at writing.
Don't worry if you don't have the driving passion for writing, it's not something everyone has. If you speak to writers that have been at it for years, they will tell you it's closer to a disease than a choice. I can tell you from personal experience, the moment I discovered an interest in writing I haven't been able to not do it. I write every day, not just because I want to, but because I need to. It's an obsession, a compulsion and as necessary to me as breathing. Even if nothing ever truly comes from it, I take pleasure in all the little details and bringing the stories that I've imagined to light. I'm always happy to share them with other people and see what they think about them, regardless of whether I receive good or bad feedback.
Remember, this is the Internet after all. It is dark and full of terrors.
This is a list of recommended books to help give you an understanding of good writing. Now some of these are because of the way they create worlds, while others are because of the depths of the characters. There are some here because the sheer enjoyment given to the reader from these books is something to be admired and examined.
Now this is very much just a list of my own personal recommendations, take them as you will.
In no particular order:
The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov. Read the first three: Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation.
Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein.
The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist. Read the first three: Magician, Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon. The next bunch of books are also good, but those three are the best by far.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson. Read the first three: Lord Foul's Bane, The Illearth War and The Power that Preserves.
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. As a side note, there is a reason the opening line to this novel is so well known.
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
And these are just some of the books that I would recommend for the reasons above. In order to write better, you must read. There is a reason there are classics; books that most people have read. If you have a particular genre that you are interested in, then read the 'best' ones from that, but don't be afraid to step out of that comfort zone to expand your writing potential. You might enjoy fantasy a whole lot, but read a certain character in a romance novel that helps you develop your own characters better. There is only ways to improve from reading, not the other way around.
The final piece of advice I have to give on writing, is to go out and do it. Worrying about whether your work will be good or not, or whether it will be well-received or not should not be a deciding factor on you writing the stories you want to. Writer's block and its associated problems are excuses. Even if you can't think of anything, write something down. Once you get into the habit of writing on a consistent basis, you'll find this happens less and less. Even if what you are writing is so awful that you'd never want anyone to read it ever in your lifetime, write it anyway. This is where the editing process can help immensely and you can pump out quite a lot of writing in a short period of time. This is how I was able to write 10,000 words each week, though if you were to include the writing that I delete and get rid of it's probably closer to 15,000 words. A lot of this comes down to persistence and sticking to a set schedule. If you are releasing a story chapter by chapter, you'll want to keep up a certain pace so that you don't lose readers due to inconsistency.
At the end of the day, I hope this chapter has helped in some ways to develop your interest in writing and helped you along your path to writing the stories that need to be told. I'm very lucky to have had the opportunity to write the story I've published here and share the story that has been existing in my head and on paper. As a writer I'm always amazed that people are interesting in reading my work and I will continue to write for as long as people are interesting in reading, and beyond.