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Things I Wish I Had Known:
Tips for Beginning Writers
Tips for Beginning Writers
Everyone starts somewhere. None of the authors you know and love were born perfect. It takes time, education and, most importantly, practice to become a great writer. And sometimes, it all would have been easier if we had just known one little thing a bit earlier.
This lesson is for any beginning writers out there, or anyone wanting to improve, covering some of the basic things you need to know and do in order to grow as a writer – coming from the hands of some of our longest running writers.
Story
First things first: no matter what type of story you are writing, you need to think about the story's progress. You need a beginning that will get people’s attention and want to keep on reading until they reach your conclusion that ties everything up, and along the way you need events, big, small, even medium sized, to provide challenges for your character/s as well as keeping people reading. Think about what will happen in the next chapter, the next five chapters and at the end before rushing to get your ideas to paper.
This doesn’t mean you have to start off with big explosions and lots of drama (something I definitely wish I had known). Small, slice of life type stories are good and really are a good place to start out with, but they need events to move the story along as well. However, don’t just throw in a big dramatic cliffhanger every chapter: that burns the reader out and makes it hard to progress the story. Writing is all about moderation, so take things slow and steady and build up.
Secondly, every story needs to have a point to it. Anything can be entertaining if it’s interesting, exciting, and funny enough, but you need a point to a story rather than just throwing everything in and seeing what works. Why are these events happening? How does each event advance the story and the characters? How does it start and where will it end?
One of my early stories was simply a series of battles between Red and Leaf. It wasn’t the greatest story, and the worst part of it is that there really wasn’t much to it except trying to make each battle more exciting and dramatic than the last.
Your story should also be more than just a ‘twist’. We do encourage originality and innovation, but simply making your story ‘Red and Blue but with elves, how shocking’ isn’t enough. If there is a twist or what if or big change that makes your story different from canon, it should be different from the canon! Why are there elves, how does that make it different to the games: does it look the same, do people act the same, why does having elves make the story any more different from the last journey fic that came along?
Finally, don’t rush. Writing 300 words and posting them as soon as you are done isn’t a great way to go about writing. The following will help you fill in the blanks and add more to your story so you can get readers hooked early on without having to lay everything on the line straight away.
Characters
Characters go hand and hand with crafting the story. You need a character to handle the events of a story, but you also need a story that is tailored to that character.
The important thing about characters is to make them interesting. It sounds simple, but it’s something a lot of people take for granted. Witty comebacks or a tragic backstory on their own don’t make someone worth reading. They need personality, they need goals, they need flaws, they need interests and dislikes, they need to think about things that are dull and unexciting because it shows they are human. One tip is to think of people you know and get some inspiration from them, whether it be a family member, an old neighbour or the guy at the coffee shop.
You don’t need to craft some impeccably detailed character, but you should have more of an idea of who they are other than their age, hair colour and what clothes they wear every day. It’s not uncommon for main characters to be a bit dull (i.e. Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker), but they tend to be surrounded by an array of characters who compensate by being much more richly layered. An exciting/interesting supporting character can do a lot to help a not so exciting main character.
It’s fine to take archetypes and use them to lay the groundwork: the hero, the goofy sidekick, the smart one, the villain, the henchmen, the wise helper. Most stories have these characters in one way or another, but the important thing is to make them more than just those tropes. Don’t just take the Harry Potter formula and move it to the Pokémon world: think of different twists, different ways that characters can go, different backstories and relationships and how they all come together. Get to know your characters before you try to write them.
Clichés
An important thing to know as a writer is that there is ultimately nothing wrong with clichés. Phrases such as ‘Mary Sue’ haunt fan fiction and make people think that doing anything that may have been done before will see your story cast off to the depths of internet hell, but those two words are used more by people with nothing constructive to offer a story.
You must know that there is nothing wrong with doing journey fics in Kanto or shipping Ash and Latias together; if you want to write it, write it. Don’t worry about the people who will slam it for simply existing, just do what you want.
The thing with clichés, as Aether notes, is to play around with them. If you are doing a journey fic in Kanto, what can you do differently than the game: different starter, different first town, different villains? Writing a direct transcript of the game is not terribly interesting, but twisting the plot, even in small ways, can be enough to make your story stand out and keep people coming back for more. Reading stories, particularly fan fiction in this case, gives you a good idea of what cliches you should avoid and the ones you can play with.
Trying too hard to avoid cliches could turn your story into one with just how 'different' it is, so don't go overboard and try not to worry about them. However, if you don't want your character to be a 'Mary Sue', the main thing there is to give them flaws and a personality that matches their role in the story rather than fretting over which Pokemon or magical abilities to give someone.
World Building
When it comes to fan fiction, especially Pokémon with so many games and episodes of the anime, it can be easy to just write about that world without putting much thought into it. It works in a visual medium, but in literature, you need to paint a picture.
While you shouldn’t overthink or include more than the story needs, you need to know what this world looks like in your head and make sure it comes across in text. Remember, this isn’t the anime where you can just copy and paste drawings of trees from previous episodes for the characters to just wander by. Paint us a picture with words, even if it's only in small details: things such as the weather, the buildings, the rocks, how bright or dark it is, smells and sounds, they are all small things that make a big difference.
When it comes to the bigger aspects of world building – government, history, sociological differences, all that jazz – the key is to go slowly. Laying it all on the line in the first paragraph gets it out of the way, but it’s not interesting to read. Introduce your characters first and then build the world through them, slowly and carefully. Look at Harry Potter for example: it doesn’t begin with “There was a war and a bald guy killed a boy’s parents and gave him a scar”, it introduces us to these through character interactions and dialogue, and is a good way to frame your first chapter.
Spelling and Grammar
One cliché that exists on the internet is the idea of ‘grammar Nazis’, the implication that anyone who picks up on spelling or grammatical errors is being uptight and can just be ignored. But if you want to be a good writer, and if you want to get reviews more than just listing errors, you need good England.
If someone reviews and points out errors, it is best that you take them on board earlier rather than later. Otherwise, you will turn out like me with 100 + chapter stories where half of them have the same spelling simple issues. The earlier you learn and take those matters on board, the quicker you can improve and start getting the attention you really want.
Basics include get 'than' and 'then', 'your' and 'you're', 'its' and it's' right; putting commas at the end of quotes when the sentence doesn't end there (i.e. "I'm sad," said the duck.), and choosing a capitalisation style for Pokemon.
Preparation
Do you think J.K. Rowling sat down at the start of each year and just started each new Harry Potter from scratch; no notes, no preparation, just winging it for 500 pages? No, no she didn’t. Every good story needs some degree of thought put into it before you start writing each chapter, and it is important for any writer to know where they want the story and characters to go before rushing to get words onto paper.
However, don’t feel as though you need to sit down and plan all 20 chapters down to the finest details. A rough guide of where the plot and characters will go is important, but don’t box yourself into a corner. Allow yourself some leeway to come up with new ideas and make changes if things aren’t working. It’s also important that when you get reviews you can take that advice on board and alter your story, rather than ignoring all the points and hoping that people like it eventually because you've planned it down to the wire. Speaking of…
Fandom
An important part of fan fiction, and fandom in general, is being a good participant in the wider community. Generally, that comes down to how you review and respond to criticism.
Firstly, reviews may seem scary, but they really aren’t. It might be disheartening to get a critical review when you think your story is amazing, but people aren’t reviewing your story to be mean or cruel. Ninety-nine percent of the time it is to help you improve, and their criticism is rooted in a place of wanting you to get better.
(Note: it is difficult to review very short chapters. There isn’t really a lot that a reader can comment on, asides from the absolutely basic and generic. A good review might make you feel good for a little while, but if you want people to keep coming back, you need to offer them a little bit more.)
Secondly, if you want more reviews, it is important that you review as well. Sitting in your own thread and never venturing out to talk to other members and strike up a relationship isn’t going to make anyone rush to your thread. If you start reviewing other stories – there are some useful tips here and here – people will be more inclined to reciprocate. Even if you only write a sentence or two, that is more than many people do, and could make that writers day.
Other points:
- Shock for the sake of shock is best avoided. You are probably more likely to turn away readers and earn a reputation instead of building the type of fanbase you’d actually want.
- Writing more than one story at a time can be tricky. There’s nothing wrong with it, but know that quality takes time.
- A suggestion from moderator @LightningTopaz: Write what you want to write! This is important - don't write to appeal to a few vocal readers, and don't change your whole story or idea because one person criticises it. Take feedback, good and bad, on board, but write a story you won't get bored with and actually want to write.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help/advice! No one will think any less of you – in fact, they’d probably think less of you if you ignore everyone’s advice and march stubbornly onwards. Everyone thinks they know best about their story, but take it from me and all the other writers who contributed – if a lot of people point out one problem, then the issue isn’t with them.
- Most importantly: read, read and read some more. The more you read, the more you pick up on about spelling, grammar, story, character, everything we've written about here today. You learn new words, you get inspiration for plot twists and how to structure things differently, there is so much you can take away. As I've referenced a lot here, Harry Potter is a great example of a lot of the basics of structuring a long form story, building a world from the ground up, character development - it even taught me a number of things about grammar. There is also some excellent fan fiction here to help inspire you.
What advice would you pass down to beginning writers? What do you wish someone had told you when you first started writing? Is there anything you still struggle with? Discuss below!
(Thank you to all the users who contributed to this)
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