Some advice on writing?

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.