Some advice on writing?

I really suck at proper grammar usage. I um... admit that spoken english is NOT my first language. However, I learned how to speak maybe when I was 5 or 7? But sign language was my first language and some of the sentences I write just don't really come out right... they come out all jumbled. xD Just a heads up on that one. But I always had very good reading comprension. I can understand new words and their meaning when its in a paragraph.

Anyway... I'm not sure how do you go about writing a fantasy story. Not like... LotR/Matrix crap... something like well... Advent Children almost. xD Nearly realistic in world views, but magical when it comes to some people. And the themes are usually sometime uplifting and depressing at times. I really have a lot of ideas for stories... but I'm not sure... how to go about it. Should I go all out and have someone throw me some crit or just do a short one to show an idea?

And finally, should I read books to improve my grammar usage? This is what I'm actually afraid of, I do not want books to give me an impression of a particular style that they use in writing. I'm pretty darn sure that nearly most writers have their own style in writing besides the story concept. I'm sure its important... is it?

Let me know and I appreciate any advice or crit.

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Writing is the best way to improve your skill, but reading has its benefits as well. You'll be able to expand your vocabulary, learn how different styles of writing can evoke different emotions, and also learn how to shape different 'voices' for your characters. Worrying about creating your own style of writing is a legitimate concern, but there is nothing new under the sun, and anything you eventually write will be similar to something else out there. That isn't to say that you can just mimic someone's style and call it good, but you shouldn't place it as your first concern when learning the basics.

In my first writing class at college, we spent the first half of the semester just practicing writing scenes. He would give us premises to write about, like two people meeting at a restaurant or someone getting back home from work, and wanted us to make it as accurate to life as possible without going overboard on detail. Eventually we moved on to plot concepts, making a skeleton of a story, then going on to complete a whole shory story. You could follow the same sort of regimen to get some practice.

Are there any colleges close to where you live? If they have any creative writing classes, see if you can buy any used copies of their instruction books and learn from them, or take the classes if you can. Getting daily practice in writing, especially with a professor to help along the way, will definitely help.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I would agree, reading is a big help if you want to write well especially since English isn't your first language. The more you read (English of course :P) the more you will recognize how things should sound (grammar-wise) and how to write sentences/phrases smoothly. Also always re-read what you wrote and if something doesn't sound right, try using a different word and/or putting words in different places.

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Thank you guys, I'll look into it.

In high school, I took a creative writing class. I realized from Sol's post that my teacher royally blew. Yeah she pretty much suck at teaching that sort of thing. :\ I remember loving how to write with such freedom. I always have something to write about!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'd suggest reading a lot, and if you want a book on grammar, go with "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk and E. B. White. Just make sure you get the latest edition, not the old 1918 version.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Okies, thank you guys! Keep them coming!

How ya doing, buddy?

everyone's right. Read. read different authors, different genres. read two books at the same time. Find what works for you and what isn't working, learn to identify the voice/tone, watch how characters develop through the action. Then, you're ready to try writing.

as for that, if you're having trouble getting started, don't think about it. Just sit down, grab hold of an image (you're got some in there, i know) and write about it. Write as much as you can. No story is ever done in one draft anyways - so don't worry about grammer and plot and all that shit in the first one. Just get it out there. The real work in writing comes after, and you get to revise that 1st draft garbage into something more coherent, then you revise the 2nd draft into something cleaner, then you revise and revise again.

FELIPE NO

Long post ahead, hope it's worthwhile! =D

Originally Posted by Philia

I really suck at proper grammar usage. I um... admit that spoken english is NOT my first language. However, I learned how to speak maybe when I was 5 or 7? But sign language was my first language

Sign language? Well, you could start by writing a little autobiography cause that's really interesting! Are you deaf? (I may have missed a post where you explained all this, if so I'm sorry for bringing it up where it's off-topic.)

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Anyway... I'm not sure how do you go about writing a fantasy story.

It's not easy to write a fantasy story, or any other kind of story. Fantasy has some unique features that makes it (in my opinion) the hardest genre to write in a convincing fashion. No other genre asks so much of the reader, so you have to be a great storyteller to keep people going. On the upside, you don't have to research (except for inside your own mind).

Once you've thought of a story, the best technique to put it on paper is:
1) Know what your story is about;
1a) Write a short outline of the story. You should be able to say in one or two sentences what your story is about.
1b) Determine the setting, theme and motifs of your story. Write these things down, and put them somewhere where you can look at them anytime.

2) Write descriptions of the main characters and places that are important. I would say that in your head, you should be able to explain everything that happens in your story in a consistent fashion.

3) Write ROUGH drafts of the first chapter, and the last chapter. This is a technique I learned from writing research papers, but it really works for everything. Why write those first? Because they're the hardest. Once you wrote those, the rest is a lot easier, and you need to do the hardest stuff first because you will lose drive about halfway through, no matter how long or short the story is. (When writing the first chapter, don't worry about the first sentence, it'll change anyway.)

4) Make sure you have an editor. I don't care how good you think you are, no author should ever write without an editor. I'd write about this more but it's probably subject for another topic--but it's IMPORTANT, so I'm mentioning it.

It's not necessarily the method that you will be using once you're more used to writing, but it's definitely a good method.

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Should I go all out and have someone throw me some crit or just do a short one to show an idea?

I'd certainly recommend starting with short stories, despite being a very hard format to do properly. The reason I would start with short stories is it'll give you an idea of whether you have a knack for storytelling, and whether you enjoy doing it. If you start with a long story and find out you just don't like writing, you will have wasted your time with nothing to show for it.

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And finally, should I read books to improve my grammar usage? This is what I'm actually afraid of, I do not want books to give me an impression of a particular style that they use in writing.

Every writer has their own style, and conversely every writer is influenced by other writers. But you cannot muffle away your own style by definition. It can be molded and shaped by other authors, but you will always retain your own style. That's the beauty of art.

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I'm pretty darn sure that nearly most writers have their own style in writing besides the story concept. I'm sure its important... is it?

Yes, absolutely. Every writer has their own style (whether they like it or not) and that's why you can tell Hobb isn't Tolkien, and Douglas Adams isn't Terry Pratchett, regardless of content.

Usually, there is only one writer that really grabs you. For me, it's George R. R. Martin. As far as pure lingual skill goes, he is the best I've ever seen, and he puts the effort in to make his stories that much more exciting to read. But what other people have said is right--read different authors and find out what you like and what you don't like from a writing-technical point of view. Just reading is good, but you can also try to find things that you dislike in writing and analyze them.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Wait - you rank Advent Children above Lord of the Rings? Anyway, if you don't want to colour your imagination by reading the works of others, look for examples of good grammar in non-fiction such as periodicals; avoid tabloid crap though. I don't know about over there, but in the UK broadsheet newspapers are generally well-written and don't suffer from much dumbing-down of the English language. I'd imagine it's the same in the US, although I wouldn't know which to recommend.

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Read a lot of books and take notice of how stories are written. You can then choose to write in a similar structure or make up your own style. I found that grammar worked best for me when I actually took a grammar class and I did workbook exercises.

Before you write the story, build up your characters, settings, plot, etc. Ask yourself, "What's this story about?" and "Who are the characters, what are their purposes, what are they trying to attain, etc."

If you already have a lot of ideas, start with the ones you think are best. Don't hesitate to write a rough draft a couple of times just to play with ideas. Then have people read your stories to tell you what they think.

Don't think about publishing books right now, if that's what you're thinking. Just keep writing, regardless of whether or not they're good. Keep building your skills first.

Part of the reason why I don't consider publishing my stories is because they don't fit the conventional styles of a novella or novel. They're a combination of script-like dialogue with descriptive details and narrative of settings and what's occurring. They're meant to read like you're watching films and that's intentional.

Anyway, be creative and use your imagination. Don't be afraid to experiment too.

How ya doing, buddy?

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They're a combination of script-like dialogue with descriptive details and narrative of settings and what's occurring. They're meant to read like you're watching films and that's intentional.

Wow, somebody else who writes in the same manner as I! Nice!

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

So while on this topic, how far into planning do you guys go? Do you plan out every single detail, know your rough plot from beginning to end, or just start writing and see what happens?

I'm curious because I find that the biggest problem for me is getting stuck at one point where I'm just not sure where I should move onto next. While I'm okay with knowing the beginnings and ends, it's moving the middle from one to the other that I have trouble doing.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Strangely enough, I do a lot of thinking while sleeping or whenever I'm doing other things when it comes to writing my stories. The ideas just come to me naturally and by the time I know it, I'm finished writing the story and it has the beginning, middle and end. The only planning I really do (where I sit down and write it out) is with the characters and which part of the story they are introduced in. Everything else just seems to connect.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Wow. I must be a really undisciplined writer. Anyway, with me, when I get an idea, the first thing I do is play the story through in my head for a while. If I lose interest, it's discarded, but if I think it's going somewhere good, I write down the general gist of it. I'm not a big fan of pre-writing, stuff like outlines, and I've only done outlines for two of my stories. Usually my planning happens all in my head. As far as length goes, I never set out with a pre-determined length in mind. Write as much as it takes to tell your story; every story will be different. Ummmm... I feel like I have more to say, but I can't think of anything. Anyway, I shut up with a quote by my favorite fantasy author, Steven Brust: "Writing is telling the story that you want to hear told." Or something close. Don't let anything get in the way or your creative vision!

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by franposis

So while on this topic, how far into planning do you guys go? Do you plan out every single detail, know your rough plot from beginning to end, or just start writing and see what happens?

So, two famous Japanese authors an their comments on this:

Haruki Murakami: He said he had the idea for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle just from the image of someone cooking a pot of spaghetti al dente and the phone going off. He knew no more of the story than the reader does at that point. He says he found it really exciting, not knowing where everything is going. But then if you read the book, you'll see what he means. Also, another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of great literature we read was originally written in serialized form, a part of the story each day in the newspaper so they couldn't plan out everything, e.g. Anna Karenina, a lot of Balzac's works, Fontane as well. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is also an example of something that wasn't planned out from the beginning, but that's a different story.

On the other hand

Kazuo Ishiguro: I attended a reading of his once, and someone asked how he wrote. I believe he's the type to plan most of it out on paper and fill in the details as he writes. But then again, a lot what his novels are about come from surprise endings or realizations set up as a result of structuring through out the entire course of the novel. I think in the end though, it's ultimately what works well for you.

But as a general response to the thread:

A pretty well-known writer I wrote to once once said that the trick to getting better at writing is to do a little bit of writing each day, it doesn't matter what, an event, a discription, it could be anything, just make sure to keep using language in interesting ways. I don't think it's a bad idea to read writers with a mind to imitate them, at least so said a teacher in a creative writing class I took once. Some writer he mentioned (I forget who) used to type out entire Hemingway books just to get a feel for how he writes. I used sound like a grossly inferior version of one writer I liked, but then I started copying another, and another, and another... Now I'm not sure I do what you'd call 'great writing', but at least I think I don't come off very obviously as any one author.

So yeah @Meia, I'd say apart from writing a lot, be sure to read tons of books. The English language is a bit like... London, actually. Sure, there are the guidebooks and maps for tourists with all the major roads and the obvious things to see and whatnots. But then there are also a million little sidestreets and alleyways hiding the things that you won't find advertised, like the redlight districts, the slums and generally unsafe areas, bits that are still under construction and aren't for public use yet, etc. So just like London, the official guides to the English language will miss out on a lot of the exciting stuff. So perhaps if you're relatively new to the language you should probably focus in on writers who use English in a clean and 'proper' way. But once you're done with those, definitely dive in to the stuff that breaks the rules, like Ullyses, Huckleberry Finn, A Clockwork Orange, Hawksmoor, any Faulkner, the moderns, also the older classical stuff like Chaucer, Coleridge, Shakespeare, Keats, etc. For all of these are equally a part of what it is to express yourself in English.

Phew. Done.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Ulysses

Wait - you rank Advent Children above Lord of the Rings?

I re-read her first post and I think I understand what she meant.

She was referring to a world where Magical Systems are fairly banal or in everyday use, ubiquitous and common. The world is largely based on our own, except that some people can use magic. Advent Children was probably an easy way to refer to that. Since Lord of The Rings is very high fantasy and the Maxtrix is very science fiction, she wanted to write something closer to Modern Fantasy.

There was a book I read a few years back, called War For The Oaks, by Emma Bull. Here's the summary:

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Eddi McCandry has just left her boyfriend and their band when she finds herself running through the Minneapolis night, pursued by a sinister man and a huge, terrifying dog. The two creatures are one and the same: a phouka, a faerie being who has chosen Eddi to be a mortal pawn in the age-old war between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Eddi isn't interested--but she doesn't have a choice. Now she struggles to build a new life and new band when she might not even survive till the first rehearsal.

It was placed in the category of Urban Fantasy, and rightly so, since it was definitly modern day, but at the same time, with Fantasy elements.

I think what Meia was looking towards was something closer to... well, given that Arthur C. Clarke just celebrated his 90th Birthday, I think it would be appropriate to quote from his "Third Law": Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.. That is to say, sometimes Magic is not always as it appears.

For more information, check THIS page (Which is where I also got the quote ).

Of course, I could be completely off target, so grain of salt and all that.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

The Stand by Stephen King has that big element you're looking for, by the way. It's realistic with some characters essentially wielding magic

Jam it back in, in the dark.