Guest Post: The Best Advice To Being A Good Writer

Harry influenced a lot of us to write!

If I could give any advice for writing, it would be this:

Read, and then write.

That’s not advice, you think.  That’s barely a sentence.  But honestly, these are the two biggest things you can do to improve your wording and your stories in general.

First, read, and read voraciously.  Start by reading the kinds of books that you want to write, but don’t stop there.  If you love science fiction, making up your own worlds, and defying the laws of this planet, then yes, read Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton, and Orson Scott Card.  But even if you don’t love science fiction, read those authors anyway.  And read Dostoevsky and Dickens, Shakespeare and Eliot, and Joyce and Austen and C.S. Lewis.  Read YA novels, and Romantic poetry, and non-fiction books about string theory or the Romanovs.   Read as much as possible.  I rediscovered my library a few years ago, and it’s a beautiful thing, for “Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future” (Ray Bradbury).

When you read as a writer, not only do you enjoy the stories, but you ask yourself why you enjoy them.  Which parts of dialogue do you like? How did the author use different literary elements in his plot? And what made you get so attached to the anti-hero and his internal struggle?

Most of all, don’t waste time on poorly-written books (unless you want an example of what not to do). Read the classics.  But classics are long and boring! You say.  They’re hard to get through!  And that can be true.  But sometimes, the most rewarding things in life are hard to reach, and you might have to do a little digging to get there.  I can promise you it’s worth the effort.  There’s a reason we still read classics today.  They touch on some sort of eternal truth in a way that spoke to their own society and still speaks to us.

So read for your own pleasure and to inform your writing.  But as you’re reading (and expanding your vocabulary!), remember this:  do not be discouraged.  Learn from what you read, but try not to compare your work to it.  No, you aren’t as good as these wonderful, famous authors.  Will you ever reach their level? Maybe not.  And that’s okay!  You’re learning! I get so discouraged sometimes when I see how beautiful some literature is, but I keep going.  And that brings me to our last point:

Write.  Write something every day.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a journal, a short story, a poem, or a few hundred words of a novel.  Writing is both inspiration and craft.  Craft is the way you put words together, the technical side of things.  Inspiration is the content, that extra breath inside of your work that brings it to life and says something important and true.  Although reading will help with that, inspiration is not something that you can really learn.  But you can learn craft.  In that aspect, writing is like playing piano or a sport – it requires practice.  So, practice! 

Save everything you write, no matter how bad you think it is.  Finally, find someone you trust to read your work – someone who will be both kind and honest.  Just as musicians need teachers and athletes need coaches, writers need mentors.  This is often forgotten because the actual act of writing is solitary.  The process, however, is not.

So, read well, write often, and don’t give up!  Good luck and God bless.

~Kristen

You can find Kristen online at The Paradigm Shifts, her blog.

Character Profiles: The ex-bff

Guest post by Kathryn.

Bio: I enjoy to read, write, and volunteer with special needs kids. I've been published in Stone Soup, and am super excited to be published on TWFT!

In a lot of books I’ve read, I notice that a lot of the time, there’s a best friend that:

• Isn’t let on to the MC’s magical powers, gets mad, and refuses to be the best friend anymore.

• Get’s jealous of the MC (or the MC gets jealous of them) and the two characters fight, and aren’t best friends anymore.

• Starts to hang out with popular people, the MC gets mad, and the two fight, and they aren’t best friends.

I haven’t mentioned all of the possible situations, but they all end in basically one way: The two characters aren’t best friends anymore.

Now, this does happen in real life. And it is a great added dimension to a story, because most readers usually want the characters to make up, which keeps them reading to find out if they do.

But it isn’t the fact that characters in books are constantly fighting and finding new friends, it’s what happens after the fight that bothers me.

First of all, let me say I have nothing against the ex-BFF character. They add a whole new problem to the story, because the ex-BFF probably has lots of good rumors and trouble they can cause for the MC.

But, sometimes the way the ex-BFF goes about doing this is just a bit....unrealistic. For instance, in one story I read, the ex-BFF put an article in the school newspaper (which an adult proofread), that revealed all of these embarrassing things about the MC.

When I’d first read the chapter, I was all, “Oh, I feel so bad for her” (by her I mean the MC) but then, I started to think about the actual details.

One thing I realized, was that the actual event of putting a humiliating article in a school newspaper would be impossible. As I’d mentioned before, a teacher read the final draft of the newspaper before it was released to the kids. So, unless the teacher had something against the MC (which she didn’t) it would be entirely impossible to let the article be read by kids without the teacher reading it. But, later in the book, the teacher says she’d never read the article.

And, for another thing, there are kind kids out there who would probably go ambush the ex-BFF, and that would be the end of her hurtful reign.

Another thing in the whole making a realistic ex-BFF, is the popular people thing.

I will admit, I have encountered some snobs that were popular. But, not all popular people are mean. The dictionary definition of the word popular is: Widely liked or appreciated. This basically means that a synonym for popular is: nice.

So, why does every book have to bash popular kids? I think, personally, that it’s a fun subject to write about. And, yes, it is! The hard part is doing it realistically.

OK. Let’s use a plotline I wrote.

Lola and Jewel were best friends. Then, suddenly Jewel starts hanging out with the popular kids, and Lola’s left in the dust. As Jewel starts to pull away from Lola, and do things with her new friends, Lola can’t help remembering how mean Jewel’s new friends were to them in the past.

What will Lola do? Will Jewel become popular, or will she and Lola be BFFs again?

The plot line itself isn’t that bad. It’s just the way it’s written. About how the “popular kids” are mean (which, I know a lot are) and how it sort of poses a question at the end, when the answer is kind of predictable: they make up.

It isn’t that a good ex-BFF is bad, it’s that they can be very tacky. The harsh truth is that friends make new friends, though the new friends may not be popular, and sometimes friends don’t make up. And I hope someday, I’ll find a book with that perfect contrast

Hard Characters

Guest post by Kathryn.

Bio: I enjoy to read, write, and volunteer with special needs kids. I've been published in Stone Soup, and am super excited to be published on TWFT!

 ~

I was reading the entry about “Cliches in YA writing,” and absolutely loved it. And, it got me thinking about some types of characters that I REALLY wish were easy to write up, because they’re, well, funny.

1.)  The Zany, crazy, spaz-girl.
You know, the one of TV shows, (For example, Addison from Suite Life on Deck) that is always radiating with energy, as if they’re on major sugar-high. The girl that talks super fast, with no pauses, and hands are forever flapping with excitement. If you’re like me, you love those people. And, if you’re also like me, you want to have them in your writing, but find them too complex to create.
2.) The health-nut gym teacher, that confiscates junk food, and makes kids do insane tabata workouts at detention.
I have a wellness teacher like this, and I keep track of all of the things she says. For instance, she made two boys do a whole workout in the hallway, because they slammed into my sister, racing to class. But, as much as I’ve tried, I can’t seem to create a character like her, without having the issue of severe-tackiness.

3.) The popular girl, who has no visible nice thing about her.
You know how in Disney Channel movies, the popular girl always has a tiny moment where the MC overhears her talking to herself, or crying, or showing some other weakness (cough cough Radio Rebel cough cough)? And you’re always wanting to scream“NO! It isn’t like that in real life! The popular girl doesn’t give us a big revealing moment, she just stays a nasty brat!”
 But, unfortunately, books are cheesy, if Little-Miss-Future-Prom-Queen shows no weakness. So in the end, the story has to have some Disney Channel in it. UGH!  
 4.) The teacher who acts like a total hippie.
I personally would LOVE to have a hippie-teacher in one of my stories. You know, the one who (if a girl) wears long skirts in bright floral patterns, and brings a guitar into homeroom so that the class can experience the joy of singing folk songs. But somehow, my dream-character is staying in my dreams.
 If anyone has any suggestions (or more awesome character profiles) please tell me so!

-Katy

What should we write about?

Guest post by Paulina Czarnecki. 
Bio: Hi! My name is Paulina Czarnecki. I’m fourteen and—obviously—I love to write. I’m very excited to be guest-posting on TWFT. I also have my own blog at www.paulinaczarnecki.wordpress.com.

When I got the email saying I could write a post, my first question was, “What should I write about?” If you’re going to write, you’re going to ask that question. Because, let’s face it—most story plots don’t just come to you. Most plots, you have to catch.

A lot of my early manuscripts were left unfinished because I lost interest or had a new idea. I jumped from story to story. Now, I realize that’s because I never had a solid story idea. All I had was the premise. A premise is that ‘Hey! What if…’ moment writers have when they first have an idea for a book. Usually, that premise isn’t enough to carry a writer through the whole story. Premise does not equal plot.

Everyone has different styles of writing, though. So if you like to sit down and write whatever comes out of your fingers, and it works for you, perfect. Even so, you have to think about what you’re writing.

Take advantage of a quiet moment to develop your ideas. There will be holes in the plot. So you should ask yourself: Why does the heroine do this? How does the hero save her? What happens afterwards?

Don’t just wait for the answers to come to you. Actively ask questions and search for the answers. The internet is useful for this—you can Google just about anything, click on the hundredth result, and be inspired. You can also ask others what they would do in the situation your hero is facing. You can play out several different versions of a scene in your head and choose the one that works best.

So, my advice to you is: Chase after those stories! Be active rather than passive. Find answers to your questions.

I hope this helps you find your next plot.

~Paulina

YA Author Anna Banks discusses the publishing world of tomorrow

Recently, TWFT asked Anna Banks, author of the recently-released OF POSEIDON, to write about how she envisions the publishing world of tomorrow. Here’s what she said.

~

To get a good idea of where the future of publishing is going, let’s examine some facts:

Fact #1 Ebooks are here to stay. (Until the zombie apocalypse, that is. Then we’ll all have to read print books, because our e-readers will eventually run out of juice).

Fact#2 Ebooks have hurt the sales of print books. (Though to what extent we can’t be sure because perhaps you’ve noticed we’re also in the belly button of a crappy economy).

Fact#3 It is relatively easy to self publish an Ebook. Hence, there are a lot—a lot—of self published Ebooks out there. (Insert your opinion about that here).

Now, you might think you know where I’m going with this, but you’re probably wrong. If you think I’m against Ebooks or self publishing or the zombie apocalypse, you’re so very adorably mistaken.
Repeat after me: Ebooks are not the devil. Not even self published ones.
Before I got an agent and a book contract, I was a snob about self publishing. I told myself that I would never do it, that if my work wasn’t good enough to get picked up by a traditional house, then it simply was not good enough.

The truth is, I would self publish. Please note that my debut novel, OF POSEIDON, has been picked up by one of the “big six” publishing houses, Macmillan. They’re even sending me on book tour this summer. I have a rock star agent. A publicist, even. All the doors appear to be open to me, right?  So why would I, an author who has already “made it”, consider self publishing?

After going through the publishing process, I’ve changed my mind. Here’s why:

Let’s say I have an idea for a book that I lurve (right now, this is hypothetical, but it could very well happen at some point), or that I’ve already written this book that I lurve. Let’s say my editor doesn’t like it. OR let’s say a bunch of editors like it, but they want changes I’m not willing to make. (This happens all the time, BTW. Usually the author and editor will compromise, but sometimes their vision for the book is too far apart to come to an agreement.) Do I drop the book, this idea that I love and work on something we can all agree on?

Not necessarily. That is, not unless I absolutely want to earn an advance and have the marketing handled for me and the cover designed for me and a book trailer made for me and a tea party with lemon crumpets in my honor (ßI made this last part up). And just for the record, I *do* want all these things. These things are ideal. These things are nice. These things are fancerous.

But what if I still feel very strongly about my own vision for the book? Will I format it and slap it on Amazon first chance I get, then tweet the snot out of it until I’ve irritated all my followers?

Some might. Some do. Okay, a lot do. That’s where the Ebook gets its horns and pitchfork, I’m afraid. But not me. Nope, I’m hiring a freelance editor who will clean it up, critique it, and send it back to me all purdy. Then I get to worry about marketing and covers and book trailers and tea parties with lemon crumpets. Is it worth the trouble and money to do all this? That of course, depends on how you feel about your book. If I loved it enough though, I would do it.

Does that mean I’ve declared the traditional publishing industry an enemy? Am I a traitor? Does it mean I’ll stop writing books for my agent to submit to editors? Does it mean I’m no longer a legitimate writer?
Heck to the no. It means I love a story enough to breathe life into it at my own expense. And what’s wrong with that? I’m investing in myself. Period. Plenty of traditionally published authors are open to self pubbing. Plenty are opposed. All have fans.

Here is my question to you: As a reader, would you refuse to read a self published work by your favorite author? Why or why not? Would you take a chance on an unknown self published author?
Because your answers, my friends, are precisely what determine where the future of the publishing industry is heading.

 ~

Thanks, Anna! If you want to read more of her writing, you can visit her blog. You can also buy her book here.

-
Linda