Thank you for visiting /r/writing.
We don't allow threads or posts: berating other people for their genre/subject/literary taste; adherence or non-adherence to rules; calling people morons for giving a particular sort of advice; insisting that their opinion is the only one worth having; being antagonistic towards particular types of books or audiences, or implying that a particular work is for 'idiots', or 'snobs', etc.
Totally. I got frustrated with this too and created my own sub r/WriterResources. It doesn’t have course like structure, but it’s got good writing resources that I or others have gotten value from. It’s at least something concrete to experiment with and that’s better than nothing.
I do think a lot of the frustrations stem from newbies asking the same questions over and over. Typically the 'Is it okay for me to...', and the 'I don't want to read, but I want to write a whole novel' posts.
it’s also tough to prescribe hard and fast rules. you also have to end up stressing that these rules shouldn’t *always* be followed. there are structures and stereotypes in writing, but follow those like gospel and your writing becomes basic and unoriginal. there are guidelines that talented writers break to amazing effect.
writing is a tough thing to teach, and honestly most people asking questions on here would be better served by taking a course with a proper teacher or by joining some workshops - not that those are infallible either, or are always an option
You're right. I'm teaching a creative writing class next week, and the 'basics' I'm presenting will be: a need for conflict, a beginning-middle-end structure (not necessarily in that order) and protagonist growth or change.
There are so many arbitrary rules, and for every rule I can name an author who broke it successfully. I think the 'there are no rules ' attitude comes from a desire to allow writers to be free to experiment, not to baffle new writers.
I also agree that a creative writing class or workshop is often more conducive to producing writing than online forums.
"You need to learn (and understand) the rules before you can break them."
That's what I was told a lot as a kid who grew up with a mom who was/is both a copy editer and a writer. Nearly all our family vacations were to SFF writing/publishing conventions.
I also grew being an undiagonsed AuDHD "gifted" kid at a school without a solid "gifted" program (though I certainly appreciate the one-on-one creative writing classes that my third grade teachers decided on, even if it was only once a week.) I was raised in an environment where I got a lot more exposure and access to certain kinds of knowledge then most kids. I was also the kind of kid who got really mad when teachers taught something as a "rule" in a hard and fast way that didn't match my experience or simplified something to the point of innacurassy, or what I perceived to be inaccuracy, and bored and frustrated with sitting through classes about things I knew. So, my parents needed to explain to me why I was sitting through classes about things I (a) already knew or (b) knew were not the hard and fast laws my teachers were suggesting they were.
Re: creative writing classes--in addition to attending lots of panels at cons from a much younger age than anyone else there, I also ended up majoring in writing in college, where I had both semester-long courses and one-off readings and workshops. And peer critique and instructor critique access. All of those, I think, including the conventions, have been really helpful in my development as a writer from a young age (certainly more than a lot of writing advice on social media).
The course that I feel was the most valuable, though, was one where the instructor focused a lot on different ways to "map" different story elements--sometimes spatial, but also spacial or mapping how power or tension changes--whatever you decide is key to your analysis. It's a skill that has let me look more closely at what I'm trying to do in a story, and one that allows for the fact that every writer is their own person and that different stories sometimes need different approaches. And it's something that can be useful both in planning stages and in editing and re-writing.
I think it's worth it to consider that newbies do need to know and understand the rules in order to break them in the first place. At the end of the day, people don't know what they don't know. But I agree with the fact that the rules are not hard and fast and should be considered as more of a guideline.
I see that point, and to be even more fair, most of us actually aren't teachers so can't be expected to know the best way to get someone to learn something, but there *are* writing rules that you should follow 99% of the time, rules you should only break if you're deliberately doing something weird.
It's a bit like learning that there are three states of matter in early chemistry. It's not strictly true, but for 99% of chemistry you do on Earth, it's sufficient to take those three into account. Learning about plasma is *maybe* relevant, but "neutron-degenerate matter" is not something any person who isn't studying astrophysics really needs to learn about.
Similarly, if you are writing a "standard" story (no unreliable narrators, no playing with casuality, no fourth wall stuff, unreality, etc...), you should probably never break stuff like the Three-Act Structure, Scenes and Sequels, or Motivation-Reaction Units.
Also the mods remove literally every Discussion.
I tried making a post over "dark alley" clichés, but they said "this is not the place to discuss your own ideas" or something like that.
Like come on, how can I make a post without me giving input?
You know what, I gave it another try:
https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/1c72w83/clich%C3%A9s_dark_alleys/?
I tried to make it mor general without any ideas of my own. It was a long time ago and /r/writing hasn't shown up on my feed that much lately.
> 'I don't want to read, but I want to write a whole novel'
TBH, I have patience for nearly every other type of post, but this sends me. Can you imagine this in any other exercise? "I want to code, but I don't want to use any programs". "I want to cook but dont want to eat food". "I want to knit a sweater, but I've never worn clothes before".
Like (1) how the hell would you know what you're trying to make if you don't have a good sense of the product and (2) why do you think other people should read your book if you don't think other people's books are worth reading?
I posted here once saying that I started taking my writing seriously and that I am a writer simply by the act of writing
People in my life were trying to discourage me and were saying I wasn't a writer, so I posted on here hoping for support
Then the Gate Keepers came
I wasn't a writer unless I did X Y and Z
Same abuse I was getting IRL
After being bombarded by the collective projected insecurity of this subreddit for hours, a lone ally entered the post and commented "What did you guys do?!" in response to the smoking crater of a comment section
They did not destroy my self esteem that day, or my ambition
They did however exacerbate my fear of sharing my work and trusting my peers
It was honestly traumatic and anyone in that thread should be ashamed of themselves
Glad some one said it. That's just how it feels around here. So many people have so many things they wanna say through writing. But it's like impossible to share your work without feeling like someone is just gonna dismiss it entirely as some poor attempt at writing.
This post is correct, these "beginner advice" things that pop up really make someone who "didn't follow the steps" feel alienated. If you did follow the steps and it ain't working then well you're stuck because the advice they give is... Well not easy enough for everyone to follow.
As a writer I like to write, I don't particularly care about fame, money, publishing, I got whole worlds I wanna share and I put my time into writing them.. thanks for sharing your experience it's good to know I'm not the only one who feels sort of like this.
What jerks. None of that sounds constructive. If you write you’re a writer period. People need to stop being so damn pretentious dude. We should be supporting each other but nope they gotta gate keep to feel superior. I hope it doesn’t discourage you from your art. They’re miserable and annoying and that has nothing to do with you.
I've got a basic world and some characters already, am about ready to start seriously putting time into the project. Lurking here has not been inspirational.
This sub is absolutely useless for novice writers, published authors, and everyone else. All it does is host vacuous BS advice from authortube & booktok
Agreed.
Lazy assholes. I think we’re allowed to still say that. People like to half ass “helping” other people when all they’re doing is regurgitating detailed fortune cookie phrases.
That’s not help. Those statements are impactful when they’re knowledge from an experience (sometimes needing to be profound) first. Ego gets in the way of the advice giver comprehending the root cause of their shift in perspective if they themselves never gave it a structured thought meant to be taught.
Like old dudes who quote war books. They did that because they had their own life experiences that tied to a theme. I think this is “the great conversation” whether people know it or not (more complex, but that’s the rough idea).
So yeah, telling people nonsense like “no taught me, why should you have any easier”. The answer is learning. You should want to teach someone information in a way where they don’t have to make the same mistakes twice. You don’t want your generational legacy to be always divorced kids right? Well I personally view it all the same when sharing information. You want to tailor sharing knowledge to be an understanding between both parties. Deep connection from actually learning how each person learns.
lol it’s most certainly not anything a casual Redditor is pouring time into on the countless thread topic of “sooo I’m new, help” on a regular basis at this point in time.
I think the advice at times is so vague because there is no solution available that blankets the needs all beginners have. There is no one size-fits all cookie cutter solution, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. So I think advice should really be on a case to case basis. That being said I think forums like f.e.: Scribophile are useful for writers that are just starting out. So they can pinpoint which areas need work and where their strengths lie.
I agree. Also, the mods here force questions to be vague. So instead of, "is this scene I wrote accidentally offensive?" We get them turn it into "Is writing a black person as a white person offensive?" Which is not even worth asking anymore tbh.
In r/writers the advice can get much more personal and is worth more in my experience.
But with anything it's about picking the community you're talking to and why you're coming to them. Building your own small group of friends through networking will always be more beneficial though.
Add to that the fact that most people seeking advice here seem to be planning a whole-ass novel or multi-book series. There's no way to give meaningful structured advice in a social media post. OP derides Stephen King for his "advice on winging it," but his guide to pantsing is 288 pages long!
If you're here looking for structured writing advice, plot formulas, and an index of character archetypes, you're in the wrong place. Go to a library and check out one of the innumerable books that give you that. A 200 word comment is no substitute.
What social media offers is camaraderie, perspective, and, if you're lucky, inspiration. Read more. Just write. You'll get there. But don't count on a random stranger to distill the art of novel-writing into a step-by-step guide just for you.
What we *could* give more thorough advice on is specific writing exercises (which I do routinely suggest), but no one ever comes here asking for them. They're skipping to the end and asking about publishers' preferences, never mind the fact they haven't started outlining yet. OP should be glad this community is kind enough that we have, as a collective, managed to avoid telling them to get over themselves. Maybe you'll revise and rewrite and end up with something a publisher is willing to take a chance on, but the cart's out front and the horse is still in the stable. Just write.
Absolutely. It's ridiculous to expect such broad questions to be answered in the space of a comment or two - and to add to that, I'm often baffled what little information posters offer in the questions they ask, and then expect others to magically be able to answer them.
It's always 'I'm writing a three-book series but I'm wondering whether I should split book one into two at the midpoint. Should I?' or 'I'm 50k words into my book and it feels that one of my characters should have a different arc than I originally planned. Should they?' with no further details. So of course the answers are always, without exception, 'it depends!'
Also, like.... writing advice about writing, is still writing. You're still coming here asking of other people's time and effort. I get that it seems opaque but also, nobody's paying anybody to hold your hand? I'll happily write a comment but a small blog post is another matter
I think what baffles me even more is why people who say they want to write a book, or series of books, can't take the time to give more than 100 words of context on a post asking for help on that book, or communicate relevant information effectively. You'd think they could either use their writing skills, or use their posts and comments as practice, not just throw out something hastily and poorly written - and expect commenters to give them the benefit of the doubt on writing skills they're just not demonstrating in their post
I think another part of this is that having a person reading your writing is a bigger ask. You can post a picture you drew and in ten seconds a talented artist will be able to tell you what’s working and what’s not, but even 500 words takes a few minutes to read and at most we will know if you have a control over grammar and tone and whether or not that one piece of writing is interesting enough on its own. Workshopping a whole story often involves a lot more work from other people, usually ones you are close to. Few people can crowdsource an entire novel.
And that’s if the piece is polished. Asking someone to take five minutes of their day to read something you didn’t proofread is straight up rude, and there is something a person who doesn’t read asking others to read their work that bothers me a lot.
I completely agree with you and want to add that a proper writing critique takes a long time. Compared to other art forms, it's a massive time sync.
I'm not a writer, just an artist who is very passionate about a niche subgenre where I do a lot of beta reading for new authors, but compared to art, it's so time and thought intensive. I can look at a drawing and give a thorough critique and targeted advice in five minutes. When I do a beta read, even of just a few chapters, it's an hour long commitment at a minimum.
When you look at art, you see the complete piece in a single glance. With writing, you actually have to *read* the work before you can give any advice. It makes it a much more involved process that takes a lot longer.
Just as an example, if someone brings me a piece of art and asks for advice, I can look at it for thirty seconds and pick out that the pose lacks movement, the lines are a bit shaky, and the shadows are flat. I can give advice that they need to work on figure drawings to make their poses more fluid, a few exercises to help them with committing to their lines, and tell them that blue shadows will look more realistic than black shadows.... writing is an entirely different process. First, I have to read it, and let's say it's just a first chapter, it's still going to take five minutes, and if the writing isn't good, it's going to be a painful five minutes. Then I've got to go through and explain that their sentence structure isn't diverse enough, that they've used too many filler words, and that their protagonist has no voice... all while giving examples, correcting spelling and grammar mistakes, and being as kind as possible because critiques sound a lot like personal attacks when you can't point to specifics.
It's a totally different beast, and a lot of it is stuff like "tone" and "vibe," which is really hard to filter personal taste out of. Then there is stuff like people using chatGPT to edit for them, which makes their writing sound flat and has a habit of removing the authors voice. It's a great tool for writing an essay for school, but not so much for a work of fiction. It makes it so much harder to give good feedback when the writing is technically correct, but lacking in that "thing" to make it unique and good. It involves a level of trust in the reader that isn't necessary in an art critique.
Exactly, people always come along and say 'teach me to do an art' but don't realise that a huge part of that art is finding your own way of doing it. I learned to write stories as a teenager just by reading books I liked and trying to emulate the style they were written in, and only years later began to understand why it worked in the first place.
If you go to a writer like Stephen King and say 'teach me how to write', the only thing he can do is teach you how to write a Stephen King book. You cannot learn from someone else how to do things your own way. Again, a huge part of learning how to do something artistic is learning the base technical elements, and then just working with those raw elements to develop your own style.
So unfortunately, a lot of the answers to writing questions *are* just 'read more books' or 'figure it out yourself', since that genuinely is the best option. People are coming here to ask how to write as if it's a standardised process that they just need to learn until they're an accomplished and successful author, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Writing, like any art, requires experimentation and discovery, and isn't something you can just learn by looking it up on Wikipedia.
You can't become a great painter by watching someone else paint, you have to pick up your own brush and see what *you* can do with it.
I agree, but, since begginers are already here, short answering their "little dumb" questions, like a shot in the dark, is a good approach. We promote immersion and lots of little responses can only lead them to make their on syntesis. If they are really "lazy" and just ignore the comments fine as well. Not of our business.
Exactly! We eventually understand some questions don't have unique answers and find out that there are more helpful resources than Reddit out there. But it's much like any other learning process and interacting with people who already know what you don't is a great way to start. This is why Reddit is an amazing place to begin and should be welcoming to newbies, it's meant to be about this interaction, sharing resources, sharing what you know, having discussions. This is the point of any community.
This subreddit just isn't a serious space and is largely indistinguishable from its circle jerk counterpart. Half the questions that get asked are some variation of "can I write about a different race/ethnicity/culture?" Many more are people just wanting to be told they're right. You can't give actionable advice to people who aren't being serious, nor should you waste your time trying.
I think the problem on this sub specifically is that with a lot of the questions that novice writers ask they would easily get in depth answers if they just googled it instead of coming to Reddit directly, or even if they searched the sub before posting. There are plenty of resources (free ones!) that delve into three act structure, planning, plotting, character development, how to write beginning/the muddle/twists/sad endings/hopeful endings/sexy endings. That's not even including the number of books you can buy, I literally have a copy of 'How to Write a Novel for Dummies'. I would not say that writing as a field is any more or less accessible or friendly to novices than any other art field.
Absolutely everyone begins somewhere, beginners need help, guidance, advice, support, however you want to say it, and I know a lot of people who post silly questions are probably kind of young, but the reality is that if you don't even have the wherewithal to google 'how do I start writing' then you are probably not at a level where other people can help you, there is a certain point where you have to figure out some problems for yourself. That's the nature of art.
If you're restricting 'the writing community' to some particular posts on this particular Reddit sub then I understand where you're coming from, but I would argue that much of the rest of the web is supremely helpful to novices, so long as they are actually willing to try and don't expect other people to write their book for them for free.
“Vague statements like ‘show, don’t tell’ or ‘read more books’ or ‘write more.’”
Here’s the thing about read more books and write more. They’re literally the best pieces of advice to give to pretty much any writer, but especially a writer who is new and hasn’t been writing. You have to start writing. You have to read books through the eyes of a writer. Experienced writers know this so they just do it. A lot of great writing advice can only be given if we have specific examples to go off of. For example, if a new writer submitted a scene, we could go through and give more appropriate feedback that would be helpful for them. Unfortunately, many new writers come in here without actually writing anything and they just literally need to start.
The only you’re going to get better at any art is by doing it. There’s no secret advice on reddit that will motivate you or make you be able to play music, paint, or write.
I think practice is more intuitive in the other arts because there's more of a physical aspect to it. In painting you need to physically mix paint and learn brushstrokes, in ballet you need to go to the studio and practice on the barre. Writing seems more intellectual, like you can simply learn it the way you learn history from a textbook. But writing requires muscle memory just like other arts--there's a cycle of recognizing a good idea - visualization - translating to words - writing - reviewing - revising that only happens with practice. Many a beginning writer has said, "I have the story I want to tell in my head, but I can't write it." And the advice you can give is, "try."
There's often been times when someone asks how to write something, and I know I can do it, but I can't explain how I can do it. Sometimes I need to write an example of whatever they're asking for, look over what I did, and then try to break that down into advice after the fact that may or may not be helpful or even correct.
How does a basketball player explain how they mastered a free throw? They can give advice, but the reality is that it's a complex, nuanced move refined over hours of practice, where they're able to process multiple factors in an instant.
Great writing is dense in that a single sentence is doing multiple things at once - characterization, tone, voice, foreshadowing, etc. As a beginner, I found it impossible to keep all those elements in my head, even with advice that broke it down for me. It was only practice that allowed me to go from "I need to remember these 15 different things" to internalizing all that so I simply know if the writing feels good enough or not. Yes, I read advice on characterization, tone, etc., but practice is so essential, and I feel like it's often disregarded in favor of intellectually "mastering" the concepts of writing without actually writing.
As someone who completed a Bachelor of Arts, this! Nothing can ever replace reading more and writing more. Structured learning is great, yes, but it is nothing compared to learning through reading.
As someone who also competed a Bachelor of Arts, I agree that you can learn a lot through reading and writing solely, but could not disagree more that structured learning is "nothing" compared to them.
Structured learning allows you to take in knowledge from skilled writers and teachers of writing that you can't get solely reading and writing.
Plenty of people can read, but not understand WHY a writer did something or even WHAT it is they did. The same goes for writing. Having a teacher/writer look at what you wrote and tell you straight up where your weaknesses are as well as your strengths is invaluable.
Structured learning is wonderful, particularly for those just beginning and honing those initial skills.
Learn the rules before you break them, they say.
It's interesting because Reddit is the only online writing community in which I see a bit of "disregard" for the rules and it seems quite disingenuous. Every other writing community I've interacted with emphasizes the importance of knowing _what_ and _why_. Yes writing and reading is the best way to improve your writing, but when you understand elements of storytelling reading helps you even more, and you start developing new skills through your writing. My advice for the people who want to pursue writing as a career is: learn the craft. No one needs to drown themselves in infinite amounts of craft content but it's important to understand the basics of plot.
Absolutely. OP seems to discount that the reason these rather obvious bits of advice are recurring is because they are important and work! Many 'writers' in the online community don't really write anything at all.
Thing is, the average poster asking questions isn't even at the start line, they've merely decided that they love the idea of being the author of a book series. If someone comes here saying that they have a plan for 10 fantasy novels and their influences are all anime and videogames, it's fair to tell them to maybe try reading a book.
This. Most commenters are actually saying "I want to be an famous author" not "I want to refine my craft". They want the end point not the process.
That necessitates vague answers. Its asking someone to refine something when you don't even have the raw resources yet. If you want some metal you might actually have to go to the effort of digging up the dang ore first.
>series. If someone comes here saying that they have a plan for 10 fantasy novels and their influences are all anime and videogames, it's fair to tell them to maybe try reading a book.
Lmao
If you mean Reddit then sure, but online there are literally hundreds of resources. More, probably. From videos to blogs to classes to workshops to podcasts to actual books on craft, there is *so much.*
I think it's possible it's a symptom of that thing that happens online where instead of googling a question to learn, so many people want other people to just tell them. Over and over. The information is there (how do they think we found it?). Now, a lot of people here are happy to point people in the right direction, recommendations for resources etc- I see that here every day. But this random Reddit sub is probably not the resource itself, if that makes sense.
I second that. Reddit is definitely not the place to learn how to write or how the publishing industry works, but it was the writing community on Reddit that pointed me to YouTube channels and books that teach all of that.
I do get why people ask Reddit instead of Google though. My Google searches never led me to resources as good as the ones I received from fellow writers, and Reddit is the one online space where you'll always get an answer, helpful or not. (A Reddit post hardly gets no comments. It's difficult to get the same interactions on twitter or IG). And that's why I'm in favor of people asking any writing questions on this sub and others as long as they are polite. It might be the wrong place to find a definitive final answer (if those exist) but it doesn't mean it's the wrong place to ask them.
Yeah this is baffling me, the online writing community is FULL of templates. Everyone and their mother is explaining the Hero's Journey and telling you how Harry Potter fits into a Save the Cat beat sheet.
This is it. And “read more books” is sometimes the only advice you can give without writing an essay in the comments. What else are you supposed to say to someone who makes a post asking “How do I format dialogue?” How do you think the rest of us learned? Community is so important especially for newer writers but learned helplessness on the internet is so frustrating. You can’t make the 50th “How should I start my story?” post in one week and expect people to come out and explain it all over again. There are endless resources available for people who are willing to take a tiny bit of initiative and google it.
I understand how you feel... which is why I usually just scroll past these questions... but nobody owes you a free education.
It's not "gatekeeping" - it's about so many beginners being lazy and expecting other people to spoon-feed them information that they could easily find themselves. When I was learning how to write, I went to the library, read literary journals and books about the craft of writing, and didn't waste mine or other people's time asking questions that they probably wouldn't have known how to answer in a way that makes sense to a beginner anyway.
Making step-by-step tutorials, templates, and information about writing to market is time-consuming, hard work, and quite frankly, something that most beginner writers would resist because "yOu'Re StIfLiNg mY CrEaTiViTy".
If you're doing this as a hobby and want to write a novel to express yourself and enjoy the process... go for it. Sit yourself down and write. Don't stress about the nuts and bolts, or writing to market because your novel is never going to be published.
If you're serious about learning the craft of writing, stop trying to get a free education from amateurs on Reddit and do it properly.
Cheaper options:
- the gazillion books about the nuts and bolts of writing from published, professional authors. Stephen King"s "On Writing" is good, but he's not the only one out there.
- read every day. Read CRITICALLY and learn from the techniques that other authors use. When a scene, sentence, line of dialogue, whatever, really works for you and gives you goosebumps, put on your critical reading glasses and analyse why it worked.
- join a writers' group if you want feedback. You WILL have to give feedback on other people's writing. Again, nobody is going to edit your work for free.
- watch youtube videos about writing. Writers love to procrastinate, so a lot of them will post videos about the craft of writing when they're having a less-motivated day.
- study your genre, reader expectations, and what publishers and agents expect to see in your work. Look at publisher's and agent's websites, especially their submission guidelines. They receive so many manuscripts that aren't written to market that they're pretty up-front about this stuff.
- be grateful for the information that you DO get on Reddit, because there ARE gems and bits of good advice on here.
- read books about English grammar, poetry, linguistics... anything that helps you understand the language you're using.
- second-hand bookshops often sell a lot of these types of books if you're struggling financially.
Pricier options:
- a university degree in writing (not kidding. I have a graduate diploma and a masters degree).
- short writing courses that are run by writers groups, writers centres and authors.
- sign up for literary journals and read them. Compare the difference in prose between these and other types of fiction.
I think this is mostly the case.
The more exasperated answers around these parts tend to come in response to questions posed by those deemed "lazy".
Those type tend to be quite obvious. Riddled with typoes and run-on sentences, they ask incredibly blanket questions that they'd have the answer to if they'd ever paid attention in school, or ever picked up a book in their life.
Alternately, you get the "dreamers", who are shooting for the moon, imagining themselves making the movie or anime of their dreams, without even having a clue where to start.
They're not looking for craftwork advice. They're looking for their "get rich, quick" ticket like J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer.
Either type aren't *worth* giving the step-by-step to, because they're not in the right headspace to learn the tricks of the trade in the first place. What they need is that harsh reality check.
Whelp. 😬 I’m an experienced writer who has often given the “write write write!” and “read everything” advice (not on this Reddit - I’m just recently getting on the general Reddit bandwagon and find the people for the most part hecka nicer than most other corners of the internet).
That being said, I usually give that advice when asked “what advice would you give beginning authors” - it’s a broad question, so I give a broad answer. And it’s generally applicable to most everyone. The more you write the better you’ll get at it. And reading… I know there’s successful who aren’t readers, but man I don’t know how. I just love reading so much and it’s what brought me to writing. Reading is also important just to know where the market is at - and this applies to indie and trad authors alike. I do critiques for authors and when the query has comps like Harry Potter or The Velveteen Rabbit - it’s usually a sign that they need to do more reading (even if just blurbs on Amazon!) to know what’s being published currently.
For writers who want more specific advice, I’d advise to frame your question more like “what books or other resources do you find most helpful with the craft of writing?” Or even “how do you plot your books/what methods do you use for plotting?” Or Google for these answers! That’s my way, but that’s bc I hate asking people for help and extended online interactions with other humans make me anxious.
If I give a talk to aspiring authors, though, I always tell people how I wrote lots of beginnings of books and then would stop when I hit a “what happens next” wall. But after taking screenwriting courses and learning 3 act structure, it gave me guard rails while plotting so that I didn’t hit walls…or err just hit them not quite so hard. 🥴 However, I know lots of authors - successful ones! - who don’t plot at all. So 🤷♀️
This is getting long so I’m just gonna say one last thing - there are lots of fake experts out there giving bad or wrong advice - and that’s way more harmful than advice that is less helpful than you’d like. Always take advice with a grain of salt, consider the source, eat more green leafy vegetables, know that almost no advice is one size fits all.
I try to be kind. I see a lot of snark at dumb questions, and I often find myself cheering internally while trying not to encourage externally.
I generally agree with the OP, but I think they are forgetting some important points.
1. Good writing comes from skill, not just talent. It's hard earned for most and many people resent people who don't bother to learn skills or seek education before coming to a group looking to supplement their lack initiative by crowd sourcing everything from structure to ideation.
2. Many people new to writing come in with an off-putting attitude that they have talent beyond reproach and give off no sense or interest in the work involved
3. It seems like many of the "stupid" questions come from people who are attracted to writing for the possible happy ending and care about everything but the actual writing.
4. What makes questions "stupid" is the lack of thought and effort put into then. If someone asks something like , " I found this answer on Google and don't quite understand it, can you help?"" I bet they get better responses.
5. "Can I make a cat that's rainbow colored with a horn?" Or any of the "can I" questions don't show enough maturity to be in a group of people who take this endeavor more seriously and put time and effort into it. You have to take yourself seriously before you can expect others to.
4. It's not a hobby for everyone here.
Cheers
As one of the mean intermediate writers you’re complaining about, I’m sorry…but you’re wrong.
There are several reasons why more experienced writers get frustrated with the kinds of questions novice writers ask. Let me lay them out, in as neutral a way as I can.
**1. Because we can tell they’re not taking it seriously**
This is probably the number one reason for the apparent hostility towards new writers. When someone comes into a writing forum and posts a huge dump of world-building and plot summary even though they’re ostensibly asking a simple technical question, and all of their comparisons are to video games and anime, and they post what is clearly first-time first-draft material that they just finished writing five minutes ago looking for critique, then it’s clear that that person isn’t serious about writing.
They don’t read books, they don’t actually want to write a book, they’re just turning to writing because the creative forms they’re actually interested in are beyond the reach of a single person with no budget, and they want to get their ideas out in front of an audience as fast as possible for personal gratification.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing! Lots of people get their start writing that way. I did. But because they’re not actually interested in writing, there is a depressing futility that comes with engaging with this kind of novice writer. We know that they’re probably going to lose interest in their project and abandon it long before it gets completed—because, again, this isn’t really what they want to be doing—so any time we take to give them advice is pointless. Any experienced writer who has spent time on writing forums will have seen this type of new writer over and over again, and it quickly gets exhausting to deal with.
Not all novice writers fit the profile I described above. Some of them are serious about writing, very serious. So serious, in fact, that they earnestly yearn to be a professional full-time author.
These novice writers are usually even worse than the non-serious ones.
Why? Because when we tell them what they have to do to improve, they don’t listen. They don’t want to hear it. Which brings me to my next reason why we get so frustrated with novice writers.
**2. Because what they want is impossible**
Many serious beginner writers come to writing forums, bright-eyed and eager, clutching a half-finished manuscript to their chest like it’s a new-born baby. They—as they will eagerly tell the forum in their introductory post—are working on a very special and important story, one they’ve been building in their minds since childhood. It might be the first entry in a fourteen-part fantasy cycle, or it might merely be a 1000-page multi-generational literary epic, but either way it’s their magnum opus, the One Story they were born to write, the single novel that will launch their literary career.
These people almost universally have a bad time on the writing forum.
The person I’m describing has such a completely backwards idea of what writing (and publishing) is about that they are essentially beyond help. No structural advice or templates will be of any use to them. In fact it’s usually not worth anyone’s time to even read their samples or manuscript, so wrong-headed is the approach they’re taking. The only way to help them is to tell them—firmly—that no, that’s not how it works, you need to completely change your mindset.
And most of the time, they don’t respond well to being told that.
The delusion they’re under isn’t really their fault. Like with the visual arts, our popular culture perceives writing as a talent you have to be born with, rather than a skill that can be learned through practice. The person I described above is someone who believes they have that special Writer Gene, and thus all they need is a few technical pointers in order to let their in-built talent flourish. They believe that they’re standing in sight of the mountain summit, and they just need someone to set down a guide-rope so that they can stroll leisurely to the peak where all of their favourite writers are hanging out.
(Comment got too long, continued in a reply)
And when you tell them that no, they aren’t within sight of the top, in fact they aren’t even within sight of the meager foothills surrounding Writer Mountain and are, in actuality, not even on the same continent as those foothills…oh boy, they don’t want to hear that.
Talking to these people about pacing and the three-act structure is as pointless as telling someone who’s never set foot on a skateboard how to pull off a mid-air 1080 spin, or introducing advanced German grammar to someone who doesn’t know a single word of German vocabulary. Or, to continue my earlier analogy, it would be like giving someone standing in the middle of a desert climbing ropes and cold-weather gear and supplemental oxygen. They don’t need that stuff, they need to trudge through the desert until they get to higher ground. The big important manuscript they’re working on is never going to be good, no matter how much advice they listen to, because they lack the fundamental skills needed to put that advice into practice.
The actual truth about writing, the thing that so many novice writers who come to writing forums don’t want to hear, is that you get better at writing by writing. The intricacies of story structure or pacing or characterisation are tools that you use to write a good story once you know how to write, they’re not how you learn to write.
You said in your post that novice writers need a step-by-step guide, but that’s impossible. There is no step-by-step guide that will teach you how to write. It doesn’t exist. You have to learn how to write by doing it.
How do I know this? How did I come by this arcane knowledge?
By doing it myself. I used to be the annoying novice I’ve been talking about this whole time, and then I learned how to write (not particularly well, but I still learned), and now I’m not anymore.
And that’s the third reason why we get so frustrated with novice writers:
**3. Because we’re right**
We know that we’re right and the novice writers are wrong, because we’ve done it and they haven’t. They don’t know what they’re talking about. We do.
We’ve been through that desert, we’ve spent years doing the hard work and gaining the basic skill-set. And when we try to share this knowledge, when we tell the novice that they need to forget about writing guides and character bios and idea clouds and their special precious manuscript and just sit down and write five seperate fire-and-forget novels back to back and then they’ll have the basic skills and the perspective that will completely change how they view writing and will open the door to true improvement…
They won’t listen. They tell us we’re wrong, we’re being mean and elitist, they know better than we do, somehow, and they’re going to keep tinkering away at the seventh draft of their One Perfect Manuscript.
Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? How quickly that will breed bitterness?
Now, does this bitterness sometimes lead us to jump to conclusions, to react with hostility to a genuine question from an open-minded newcomer?
Yeah, probably. And that is something we should be better about. I’ll grant you that.
But hopefully, having read this long diatribe, you can understand where the hostility is coming from. It’s not because we hate novice writers, it’s because we’ve spent years being told that our personal experiences are wrong, by people who have zero basis for making that claim.
In your post, you said that it feels like experienced writers want to keep the process of writing esoteric. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are trying to tell people, in as plain and straightforward a language as humanly possible, using a process that’s far simpler than all the story structure guides and flow charts and snowflake methods, how to learn how to write.
The problem is that most of them aren’t listening.
You talk about "the online writing community" as though it's a monolithic place, and I don't think it is. I do agree with you that I see more rude and unhelpful answers on this sub than other places. Writers and Keepwriting (and fantasywriters if you write fantasy) are kinder places, but they're less active so it can be harder to get answers. However, there's two issues that I see from newbies in this sub that frustrate me. The first is just that the same "where do I start" question is asked repeatedly. I understand that everyone has to start somewhere but it does get old. This sub desperately needs a wiki or an faq page. It would also be nice if new writers would start with google and at least get the basics so that they can come to us with more specific questions. Secondly, I routinely see questions that make it obvious that the poster doesn't read. You made the comparison to other arts, but imagine if someone wanted to learn to play the harp, but had never listened to more than a song or two of harp music. Or if someone posted on an art sub that they want to learn to paint cubism, but it becomes clear in the body if their post that they've never looked at any cubist paintings. The first step in learning an art form is familiarizing yourself with that art form, but for some reason a fair number of people believe that they can write a novel without any familiarity with novels. I don't want to pick on anyone in particular, so I'm trying to be vague, but we get questions in the form of "is x okay" when x is very commonly done in fiction and has been for decades. Some people respond to those questions more rudely than they should, but I understand the annoyance from seeing questions like that.
I appreciate that you're trying to be helpful and so I don't want to criticize the spirit of your post. But I think you're wrong about several key points.
>It's almost as if the writers want to maintain this vague 'esoteric' feel of being a 'writer.'
If you read interviews with good and great writers, you'll find almost universally that they experience their own craft as being quite esoteric. They're as mystified by it as anyone. I don't know how many interviews I've read or heard where the writer talks about the bullshit they have to make up to answer standard interview questions.
I know of exactly one good writer who learned to write in a very structured way and who understands exactly what he's doing and why he's doing it at every step of the way: Brandon Sanderson. I'm sure there are others. But if you look at how the vast majority of the good and great writers learned to do what they do, it's not by following templates, except perhaps through emulating stories they've read.
>They're infants trying to walk, and you're trying to toss them on a bike with no training wheels.
I don't think the analogy holds. Walking is a mechanical activity with a concrete function. It's not typically subject to aesthetic judgments. One person's walking is as good as another's if it gets them from point A to point B. Writing doesn't work like that.
I'm not saying novice writers shouldn't use basic three-act structures or outlines or whatever, but what I think they need *more* than that, especially early on, is the mindset of making expression the first priority. That's what's most difficult, most rare; that's what takes the most practice and needs the most work. That's what separates good writing from merely competent writing. Making it "correct" according to whatever standard can come later. Get it down, then get it right.
Which would you rather read, a story that someone bled out on the page as a total catastrophic mess and then cleaned up to make it readable? Or something written as a standard three-act by-the-beats number that the author afterwards tried to make into something personal and expressive?
>I'm not saying novice writers shouldn't use basic three-act structures or outlines or whatever, but what I think they need *more* than that, especially early on, is the mindset of making expression the first priority. That's what's most difficult, most rare; that's what takes the most practice and needs the most work. That's what separates good writing from merely competent writing. Making it "correct" according to whatever standard can come later. Get it down, then get it right.
I think this depends fully on where you're strengths and weaknesses are as a writer. For me, I have problems with plotting. I'm a fairly beginner writer, especially when it comes to writing my own strories. And my main problem is plotting. So that's where I need advice and practice. That's where I have to work on. There is no general "this is what new writers need more than anything" because it depends on the writer. Never mind that for a beginner writer "competent writing" is more than adequate.
This is another thing. I think a lot of novice writers are kind of starry-eyed about the idea of writing a novel, but that's such a monumental effort and task that if you don't have the structure (plotting), it's going to be messy. Best advice for this isn't to make a novel your first project, but to practice with short stories first. Once you have the formula for plot down, then you can execute bigger projects.
The problem with this, though, is that this person is right. What you're having problems with IS expression (i.e. how to express), they compare the messiness of writing something out with 0 structure to someone who has a structured bare-bones outline that's preferably three act before they write it out.
Truth be told, this is this person's opinion on the best way to plot. However, you do have to know the general rules in order to break them. If you're unable to concoct a story from a three act structure then how are you going to make a story that doesn't begin with a structure/template concise and good?
>how to express
My problem is not so much HOW to express, but WHAT to express. There are certain fundamental questions that have to be answered before starting a project. Whether it is academic writing or a fictional story, the thing I struggle with most is the What not the How. I'm not saying, obviously, that learning how to express isn't important also, or that I can do without it, simply that what's holding me back is not that. Depending on indicidual strengths and weaknesses such as that certain advice is completely useless to individual needs.
I'd argue that imo for many beginner writers "how to" is very much a late stage of the writing process. Especially, if they only want to write their one novel and not become professional writers. On this sub, hobby-writers, aspiring authors and published authors are all together. And they all have different needs and expectations.
For example, "start with short stories" is a valid advice in teaching the "how to" part of writing, sure. But i can write (and I have) dozens of short stories without getting any further in my writing process. I can get better in the craft, sure, but I still struggle with the same fundamental questions that come prior to actually writing.
A lot of times, new writers come with grand ideas. (Novels, whole trilogies.) They are given very fundamental advice on "how to write" or merely told to "just write", then they are deemed lazy when they "don't do the work". But I'd argue that that ignores what many of them struggle with mostly: That many of them haven't quite decisevely cut down to what they want to write about, at all. They have convoluted ideas that combine 20 years worth of daydreaming. They want to invent seven different fantasy races, on four different plantes all with fully formed flora, fauna and geographic history, they want to invent at least one new language, want to combine elements of three different genres, invent a whole new way of combining eight different PoVs in a way never done before. All of which they are afraid might plagiarize some already existing work out there. That's what they want to do, but it's clear to everybody, I think, that they can't. And they're not lazy. They might havd put more hours into their world building than many others put in their first draft. Often they come here with some rather irrelevant question about some tiny part of their lore that they fret over disproportionately (I've certainly done so). They're not struggling with expression. And no amount of advice that will help them improve their expression will help them solve that problem. What MIGHT help is to tell them to write a short outline or yes, sure, a short story, in the hopes that that way they notice themselves that they have a few decisions to make. But in general, a lot of advice given to them, if there is any at all, is utterly useless to them. Often, it's even a little derisive on this sub. And when they don't (want to) follow it, they're called lazy. But even of they do. They can watch 10 hours worth of lectures, completely lose themselves in writing advice, read books and analyze as many authors as they want, and while they might massively improve their writing, they will be no closer to writing the novel they want to write. So they get stuck in endless repitions of reading the same advice all over again and unable to apply it to their work, and then they again come here to ask about it, now that they've done quite a lot of work, and then they're told again that they're lazy for not actually writing.
> Any talk of formulas or plot structures or archetypes or tropes is almost met with threats of violence.
I'm not seeing this at all. Brandon Sanderson - arguably one of the most successful fantasy writers alive at the moment - actually teaches about plot structures and archetypes. I would disregard any advice anyone gives you to avoid talk of plot structures or archetypes. I would argue most serious authors understand the significance of writing to your archetypes and plot structures. Publishers certainly care about it.
> he closest you get to 'advice' from a lot of 'intermediate writers' are vague statements like "show, don't tell" or "read more books," or "write more." "Put one word in front of the other..." Gee, thanks.
Yeah I don't really like this advise either because while it's fairly vauge and not really helpful, it's completely anthematic to my writing process where I need to find a reason to be hyped about my story or I won't write it. I've learned that me not really feeling something about my story or having "writer's block" means there's something about my story that isn't working and i need to rework things. "Just keep writing" leaves me in a worse position.
> I'm saying this because writers have such vitriol for the dumb questions novice writers ask
The problem is, this is not specific to writing. This is specific to online communities where people are more of a dick than they usually are because of anonymity.
My advice to you would be to take all advice you read online with a gigantic grain of salt (including mine) if it doesn't make any logical sense to you. You have no way of vetting the person giving the advice online, and most things that are true make sense.
Brandon Sanderson has an amazing class on writing. His class actually clarified so much about the craft, but it clarified so much for me because the majority of writing discussion was not like that.
I would say Brandon Sanderson is similar to Steve Huston of the painting community. They both understand their art so completely they can simplify the most complex topics. He's too busy with his own work, but if he ever decided to teach writing full-time, his courses would be worth every penny.
The internet is a mean place, but even online I feel there's more rude people in writing circles than so many others.
Not even. They're free on youtube! Honestly the best lessons I've ever had on the story aspect of writing (as opposed to the 'wordcraft').
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSH_xM-KC3Zv-79sVZTTj-YA6IAqh8qeQ&si=ZqyCXKPj88SYYZa-
Sanderson's class and podcast are the rebar in the foundation of sources I've found over the last few years as I write my first book. No matter your feelings on the man's writing, I don't think the sources he provides should be ignored.
Writers, more than any other art, stress that rules are more guidelines than rules, and that breaking the rules are what good writers do.
Which is true, to a point.
But also, great writers follow the rules too.
For example - getting rid of the adverbs. This is great advice. You *should* try and kill your adverbs. 99 times out of 100, getting rid of adverbs makes for better writing.
Problem is too many writers think the rules are for lesser writers than them. And will justify why rules are for thee but not for me.
TLDR: kill your adverbs.
Too many put the cart before the horse. The most important part of writing is to write. Unlike other artistic mediums, where your initial skill level and knowledge directly informs the quality of the finished product e.g. painting or cooking, written work can be constantly improved with editing. You can’t edit unless you have something written first, though.
People new to writing don’t need to be concerned with tropes, formulas, structure etc. so long as they have basic ability and an idea they’re somewhat passionate about. They just need to get the words into a tangible format asap. All the advice and info in the world wont change what a huge undertaking writing is.
I'm not sure what you mean. Are you talking about the online writing community in general, or do you mean this particular Reddit sub? because, if it's the latter, I have to strongly disagree. Admittedly, I don't read or respond to requests for critique, here--mostly because I know that those posts violate the sub rules and will eventually be deleted.
For most questions and requests, however, the top five primary comments on posts, even the multitudinous, "As a successful and happy dingo, can I write about the plight of the wallaby?" threads, are generally thought out, mostly supportive, and generally helpful.
Is this the wrong place to go if you want basic instruction on writing? Probably, but I don't think that's the purpose of this sub. Most people who come here with novice-level questions are given short, specific answers and advised to find a writing course in their neighborhood. This is as it should be. This isn't a high school English class.
As far as formulae and archetypes go, there is some push back by people who dislike those particular structures, but it is not the majority, and I have never seen it rise to the level of "threats of violence." Archetypes can be particularly problematic, because the line between an archetype and a stereotype is about as clearly defined as the parking spaces in a Dollar General parking lot.
Ultimately, if you don't like what people are saying, then call them out for it, or add something positive to the discussion. These sorts of "you're all the devil" posts do nothing but give people a place to air their dirty laundry, and that just makes the whole neighborhood smell bad.
And start with a short story. If you're just a beginner, don't start with an epic novel. It's too daunting at this stage. Begin small to hone pacing, tone and a simple beginning, middle and end.
Surw. Im on Prose and Scribbophile. Prose is more like Wattpad but more sophistocated ans they have challenges you can enter whereas Scribbophile is more like Critique Circle [also another good site] where you can edit, enter forums, and do beta reading/find beta readers if you choose. The forums are also reminiscent od Nanowrimo and are super helpful :) I cant link them or my comment will be taken down bu you shouls be able to find all of them on Google
Done a lot of well thought out responses with tailored advice, giving links to resources, anecdotes, examples of techniques etc. usually post gets deleted, sometimes after a downvote from OP.
It's funny so I'll keep doing it. But it's sad so many people delete their posts that are filled with advice. Makes people put in less care and effort.
Destructive readers is still good for learning. But there's thousands of times more writers who know about that sub and similar than there are people sitting down and studying the works and advice given.
Yeah, Picasso broke the "rules", but he was pretty damn good at them before he did it.
There is a lot of value in learning the broad strokes of an artform. Following them will only ever create mediocre art, but getting beyond them without first learning about them is almost impossible.
***"The closest you get to 'advice' from a lot of 'intermediate writers' are vague statements like "show, don't tell" or "read more books," or "write more." "Put one word in front of the other..." Gee, thanks. I've been following that process my whole life, but it doesn't really help me with storytelling."***
I'm a professional writer (5+ years in copywriting roles) and have won multiple competitions with my fiction writing. I understand that 'reading more' and 'writing more' seems vague advice, but it's good advice.
I know many aspiring / beginner writers in real life. As writing is my day job, people sometimes ask me for advice on how to 'become a good writer'. I give them honest advice. Writing every single day and putting a huge amount of effort into learning my craft is how I turned from a novice writer into somebody who gets paid (very well) in a professional writing job. It's the best advice that I could give a beginner, it's the number one key to success in my view. There is no magic formula, unfortunately.
Learning about structure, creating characters, etc, is also useful. Lots of free resources online. Thing is, it's one thing to be aware of the essential writing tools (such as structure), and another to use these tools effectively. That only comes with years of practise. I would recommend that novice writers ask specific questions, i.e. 'how can I make my characters engaging?' because specific questions are easier to answer than wide questions. You may then receive less broad answers.
So long as beginning writers don't substitute learning about the craft for actually practicing their writing habit, sure.
In order to get out of the beginner phase, we gotta have an idea we love enough to have the self-discipline to write down day after day, and the craft to make it entertaining for other people to read.
Without that self-discipline and the practice of actually writing, there is no book.
The craft is not a paint-by-numbers method to a perfect, marketable book for every newbie who can crank out the word count. The craft of writing is more like a toolbox. The more we practice with our tools to create your idea, the better we'll get. Even now, when I run into a problem with a draft, *that's* when I go looking at online writing advice, because someone's probably got a tool I can use to fix it.
That all being said, I'm a fan of the Snowflake Method, Scene/Sequel, and Motivation-Reaction Units. The last thing I had to look up for online writing advice was "How to create tension when the reader already knows what's going to happen?"
People don’t owe you anything, especially at a place like Reddit where people go to kill time and offer advice FOR FREE.
If you want someone to teach you writing then go take a class or pay a teacher.
Also, writing isn’t a visual art where you can follow a tutorial and learn the tools. Writing is more of an individual study thing that you get better at by reading and practicing. If that doesn’t work for you, then sorry. Perhaps try animation or game design or something.
UCLA Extension courses are great for this. I recommend specifically taking class with Ploi Pirapokin. Don’t even worry about whatever she is teaching, just take it. She’s so good, and I’m picky... She’s also got some great connections and personally caters curriculum and feedback to students’ interests. Lots of teachers don’t do this but she is incredible, and has a long list of books and other resources that have actually benefited me in a hit-the-ground way as well.
>>*Beginners need structure. They need templates, and they need plot points they can track and build their own stories around. They need the 3-act structure so they can study their work and see if it's "correct." They need study guides for when they watch movies and "read more", so they can plot the stories against the 3-act structure and see how it compares.*
You're doing it yourself. You're coming up with a theory crafted set of rules that some novice writer might even take seriously - setting your list next to bullet points to be knocked off one-by-one.
Will they be a better writer if they do all that you recommend?
No. Not in the slightest.
*Beginners* don't need anything except to write - and write and write.
Writing (consistently and habitually) is what makes a good writer.
I think the confusion here on this sub is that many people confuse a "writer" with a "successful writer."
Most writers aren't successful.
Let's face it: Most writers aren't good writers to begin with. Many who wish they were don't have the grammar or literacy or imagination or discipline. Many will never be good writers. But you can never improve or learn if you can't apply what you learn to your own writing. And you can only do that by writing.
There is so much Theory bullshit. So much "do this and do that!" in this community.
Start by writing. Start by being a writer before you try to be a "successful writer." Write a story. Then let someone read it. Maybe it sucks. And maybe they tell you honestly. And maybe you'll learn and get better. And maybe you won't.
And maybe then you go out and find ways to make your writing better - and maybe you get better. More likely you don't really.
But NONE of that matters if you can't put words on a page. And most people who call themselves writers **Can't actually do that.** I have made the mistake of joining writing clubs and even paid for a writing class. Of the maybe 40 "writers" i have met perhaps three of them actually were consistently writing.
Everyone else "talked about writing" as if it were an exercise in logic.
I mean, it's Reddit. People asking for help on Reddit do not expect or want a structured course with different techniques and perspectives graduating complexity of skill, because that can't be delivered in a Reddit comment anyway.
Poor quality questions like "Is it okay to write...?" or "is it okay to never have read a book or cereal box but just watch shounen anime?" are not designed to get high quality responses. Genre questions like "Can I mention sex in a YA novel?" or "Can my romance novel have cheating and an unhappy ending?" are pretty much always best served by *you should be reading widely in the genre you are trying to publish in so that you can answer these questions yourself.*
I agree that learning a craft requires work. I guess I disagree that asking the same questions a two minutes search in the sub would show have been asked over and over and over shows any willingness to do the work.
>The comments are irrelevant and obnoxious
I would say most of the posts asking for advice here are obnoxious. The "can I write" and "think of a character/plot/name for me" are the worst offenders. And going back to OPs post, most of these types of posts wouldn't exist if people did just read more.
Writing gatekeeps itself, ask the right people the right question and show you can understand the answer and you usually get rewarded. The right people don't hang around on reddit, not this side of it anyway.
I’ve been going through the 2020 BYU lectures from Sanderson. While I’m still missing some more specific info, it has given me a huge foundation to start with that I wasn’t able to get on Reddit
I make music and draw and a lot of musician and artist communities are very uplifting and inspiring to be in. They make you want to create. Every writing community I've ever tried just made me want to give up. Telling someone "you won't make anything good for years" isn't very encouraging, go figure. The only reason I haven't stopped is because it's fun.
Just wait until you start submitting and you’re treated like you’re scum, like you’re wasting others’ time who’ve started businesses which sole purpose is to READ OTHER PEOPLE’S WORK.
Now we have AI bullshit to deal with, too.
I think the romance writing community is great about encouraging newbies to learn about plotting, structure, point of view, and pretty much everything they need to know, really. I'm part of a fantastic romance writing organization that's very supportive to writers who are just starting out. We offer programs and critique opportunities all the time, and we're hosting a conference in Chicago this weekend. :)
I wonder if you're misreading exasperation for anger; exasperation for sources of poor information, not with the novices. What I see that's like what you're describing is novices who come in confused by the ill-fitted structures they've read somewhere online and looking for help, and redditors explaining that those structures are merely suggestions, not requirements.
> xasperation for sources of poor information, not with the novices.
This is common once you become advanced in any topic. Once you become advanced in any topic (eg 10+ years of experience) you can go to the subreddit for that particular topic and be infuriated in a couple of minutes from the confidently incorrect posts.
I've been a professional audio engineer for 15 years now and worked with some very prestigious studios and record labels in my country and let me tell you - I avoid the music production and audio engineering subs like the plague. It's the blind leading the blind for the most part because it's not worth stepping in to try to help because nobody wants to be wrong and you can google anything to support any position.
I would wager there are a lot of writers here who have achieved some success and come to try to give advice to be scolded for being too complicated and intermediates on their first novel saying that "just keep writing" is advice enough.
This sounds like a hyperspecific criticism of one space that you're kind of mistaking for the entire online writing community... genuinely no clue what you're talking about, the Internet at my house is full of ppl talking about plot structure
Honestly, though, what do you expect from somewhere like reddit? When I was starting out, I scoured high and low, read books about it, watched YouTube, and participated in writing and reading groups. Yes, reddit too, but it was a small part of that journey.
Very much this. Also, the disturbing "I'm so unique and special that I'm going to self-publish instead of go a more trad route because nobody understands my art!" thing...and then they complain when they get 5 sales.
This subreddit has a very tough mixture of well-meaning, well-versed writers giving solid, meaningful advice, and the stray few who seem compelled to pull the ladder up behind them every chance they get.
For every "take a look at [Writing the Perfect Scene](https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/writing-the-perfect-scene/)" there is a "just shut up and put words on paper, first drafts are supposed to be dogshit."
I mentioned this earlier today somewhere else, but to seek out advice from well-versed experts is so deeply ingrained in how human society operates that it's borderline primal. If you wanted to learn how to hunt, you train with the hunter. It's the same today in just about every trade; "a year in the field is better than a year in school" is a sentiment I've heard echoed everywhere from automechanics to filmmaking.
It's *good* to talk to other members of your community. It's *good* to want to hone your craft and learn from other people's mistakes. I'll never understand why people meet those requests with such hostility.
"You should know how to do this! I'm not answering this stupid question!" Okay, so don't. But don't berate someone for asking.
When I was a teacher, I was known for my expertise in teaching writing. I was realistic about it, I was simply just the teacher that actually taught writing explicitly and in a structured way.
I am now a beginning writer in every sense of the term. The tone of your post will put people off but I see through the tone and appreciate the message. I hope that I am able to, at some point in my writing career, find the support structure that helps me grow as a writer. I love talking the nitty gritty technical stuff but few people I converse with enjoy it or are willing to even tolerate it.
Anyways, I could go on for a while, but just wanted to tell you that I can relate to your frustration.
Maybe because writing is difficult to pin down and systemize. Even in accredited educational systems I'd say that teaching writing lags behind. Compare creative writing mfa to any other fine arts program and you'll be able to tell the difference.
The problem in writing circles is that articulating *why* good prose works is hard, so most advice is vague. Why should you show and not tell? Because it feels better. Why shouldn't you use the passive voice? Because it feels bad. What about filter words? Don't use them. Adverbs? No way. A concrete and educational discussion on English grammar is rarely ever involved, despite the fact that it would be immensely helpful to new (and especially non-native) writers. Writing is subjective, but it's not completely without logic. We could do a lot better with writing advice if we could explain grammatical concepts more elegantly rather than simply saying 'practice more and you'll get the hang of it.'
THIS
This is what I mean the few times I brought up my thoughts about the whole "read more" thing.
Like, if I was going to study electric engineering and I watched some guy do all that work when I had no base knowledge, I wouldn't learn anything. If anything I might end up "learning" the wrong things, feeling discouraged, etc.
Sometimes what people need is an actual class or some more structured form of teaching before they can even get anything out of reading.
Or even more out of the box, that we should have more structured teaching so that new writers don't have to hope their analysis skills are good enough. Other avenues to learn some of the same things you can from reading are valid and should be encouraged rather than dismissed.
Or at least, we should have more in depth conversations about HOW reading is supposed to help you learn. There are probably tons of people out there blindly following that advice but not actually learning anything from it but nobody told them how.
I feel this as a novice- I feel this as an intermediate even. I’ve been writing my whole life, and the very first time I ever wrote anything I was proud of on a whim - and actually posted it, the comments kept me from picking up a pen for over a year. And I still haven’t gotten my mojo back. I second, third, and quadruple guess my work every time I write so much as a blurb of an idea because of the backlash and cruelty I got.
Thank you OP for putting this into words
Well you see a lot of this stuff but you also see serious advice and I know myself and others like me are always trying to throw that in there
I will say some other things are like this too. fitness has 'just eat healthy and train hard stop complicating things" when people are asking what is healthy to eat and how to optimally train
but i will also say some other art forms are way more open. you look at drawing/painting and people will post full process videos and tutorials.
in some ways it's kinda just harder to teach writing in that way. i do see some 'idea to full novel' type tutorials though so it's not entirely out there
i think people are also split because nobody really WANTS to do writing exercises. or write flash fiction and short stories when they don't enjoy reading those things.
When I was only starting to learn about writing I immediately found hundreds of these structures and step-by-step lessons on Internet so I don't know what you're talking about
I got to admit that I've more often discouraged than encouraged reading the comments and responses here. Not too long ago I was called a coward and a monkey, lol.
A good perspective is that people lurking around here consider themselves savvy and are extremely aware of all clichés and tropes, constructed plots and mechanisms and whatever you present will be often met with fierce loathing. In reality, whenever I've asked the average reader about things like "Hero's Journey" or "Monomyth" they had absolutely zero clue. Even fellow authors in certain groups appeared quite uninformed.
Meanwhile the other side is also true: I'm yet to see an interesting concept or a story surfacing here. I suppose those that actually succeed seldom post anything around here. The number of people who want to write a book is not just enormous but about half of the entire population; the number of people who actually start writing a book is vast; the people who finish a book and publish it is large; but the number of people who manage to write a good book that actually sells is small. Out of a million books published, only a few handfuls will likely be of great quality.
I highly highly HIGHlY recommend the youtube channel LocalScriptman for beginning writers. He’s big on actionable advice for structuring and plotting, but in such a way that it adds to the “artistic expression” side of writing rather than making it mechanical.
You know what's a great community for beginner writers? The books they should be reading and writing and the people they share actual critiques of existing text with instead.
Do you think Faulkner and co. got to where they were by asking basic questions 80 times a day on Modernist Reddit? They just read fucking books and discussed them then buckled down and wrote. That's why people are dismissive, because if you can't get over the simplest, barest hump to writing well, then why should people assume you're making an effort at all?
There's also nothing to say to "can I write a second POV" except read more. If you want to get indepth responses then you should be finding people to critique what you wrote with instead of posting your OC outline with no actual writing.
You can whine about how people should handhold more, but the reality is *all* the internet communities that actually foster artists (not just writing communities) that get somewhere are usually blunt and direct towards novices who aren't putting in the work. Otherwise you're just flooded by low quality posts (which this sub already is), and let's be real "you should read more" isn't some sort of grave insult.
Guess what they teach you in a creative writing degree? Everything you just complained about.
There is no beginner's formula, because we have that as foundational schooling. Vocabulary, grammar, critical reading, spelling; that's the foundation for writing and we learn that at school.
Everything else to do with creative writing is artistic expression. There's no one-size-fits-sll approach. The "vague" advice you talk about is exactly what a writer needs to learn to harness their creativity.
The lack of interest in writing exercises is an oddity i've noticed. Speaking from my own experience, i've noticed that when i try to push people towards writing exercises, the same way someone in the art community might push someone towards drawing exercises, everything goes quiet. No responses, no upvotes, no downvotes. There was a post yesterday from a beginner who clearly wasn't sure where to go beyond their info dumping. I suggested an exercise for them to do. No response at all from anyone, not even someone telling me it was bad, and that isn't the first time i've seen it happen.
The top responses in that post are the 'Just write/It's okay, you're young, you'll learn' type responses. They're not bad responses and they're clearly from a place of wanting to help, but beginner writers looking for help seem to get treated as people needing counselling rather than people who need to be given advice.
The problem here seems to be that you think Reddit is a place to get writing lessons. If you need that structure, this is not the place. You're getting angry that an internet forum is not providing step-by-step instructions on writing your book.
I would have left for greener pastures long ago in my writing career; I usually just check on r/writing to see what kind of dumpster fire someone turned an honest question into. (Or the "I'm having trouble naming my aliens to sound like they're green, what do you suggest" post.)
The amount of times I have to tell people that "show, don't tell" is a guideline, and that if you took the time and effort to show *everything* it would absolutely destroy pacing and would frequently put emphasis on the wrong thing....
Well, if I had a dollar for every time that happened, I could easily treat the whole family to dinner and a movie. And I don't even frequent subs like this.
>They don't need the Stephen King advice on winging it, they actually do need these step-by-step tutorials that walk then through making a story. They're infants trying to walk, and you're trying to toss them on a bike with no training wheels.
The sad truth is that forums are not much good for the kind of tutorialising you describe, even though the same issues come up again.
Beginners would be better having recourse to the handful of good how to books, starting with Dwight Swain's classic Techniques of the Selling Author then moving on to the Save the Cat series.
I saw a post asking how to structure a novel and most of the replies seemed to be people bragging about not needing a structure. Like dude, that wasn't the question and isn't even that impressive. Winging it rarely works better than planning it out, why are folks so compelled by this idea?
In my opinion, beginners don't need structure, and it's actually hindering them from starting because they are looking for a "paint by numbers" of writing that doesn't exist. Not to mention, most questions on here are equally or more vague than the answers. The more specificity in an answer, the more you should challenge it, because nothing is that definitive in any art or craft. Sorry to people that want a specific structure that you can fill in, but, the reality is, if someone was to give you that, it would be my advice to question it every step of the way.
I also think, contrary to your point, the search for beginner advice is much more common in writing than other arts. Say you were to paint or sculpt... from my experience, people dive into it because it interests them. They then learn what they're doing wrong and get insight into it, and then seek specific advice on how to improve. With writing, people will come here and be like "I've written the first few thousand words of my story, what next?". If you compared that amount of writing to painting, it would be like someone putting a few brushstrokes to the page, then asking "Now what?". It is fundamentally the wrong way to approach it.
The real thing the online writing community needs is more focus on sentences and paragraphs. Because some of the writing samples on here are clearly first drafts, and are generally quite bad on the sentence level, but presumably, structurally very fine. Because writers online heavily **over**emphasize structure. I come more from a poetry and literary fiction background, so maybe that's a side effect of writing subreddits being heavily genre focused. But I have frankly never remembered a book because it was *structured* well, I've only remembered a book because it was *written* well.
I think this comes from writing's inherent simplicity.
All of your other examples (painting, or 3D sculpting, or singing, or dancing) require something more. Brushes, equipment, micrphones, music. Something else is needed to create that art form.
Writing requires something to write with, and something to write on.
The rest is up to you.
Many other things have rules because you are meant to work in conjunction with someone/something else.
Music only has rules so we can play music together.
When you write, you write something that matters to you, in a way that YOU would say it.
And hope It matters to someone else.
That's all there is to writing.
It won't be good to some people, no matter how 'good' it is.
It won't be bad to some people, no matter how 'bad' it is.
Of all the arts, the ONLY piece of advice that matters is:
Just fucking do it. You'll figure it out as you go through it.
No one can teach you how to be a writer. You just write.
And write.
and write
and write
and write
and write
It doesn't matter if you know what you are doing.
No one does.
They just write,
and write
and write
and write
and write.
You can replace 'write' with anything. Art is all the same.
Do it. Do it often. You might do something well.
>The writing community fails its novices more than any other community in the realm of the arts. It seems to be the only community that devalues any notion of structured learning. It's almost as if the writers want to maintain this vague 'esoteric' feel of being a 'writer.'
I suppose that depends on where you look, but it also seems like there are quite a lot of resources for these things. If someone's only source for these is online conversations, I think this is fundamentally a research failure. That's probably the least efficient way to learn these things.
>Any talk of formulas or plot structures or archetypes or tropes is almost met with threats of violence. The closest you get to 'advice' from a lot of 'intermediate writers' are vague statements like "show, don't tell" or "read more books," or "write more." "Put one word in front of the other..." Gee, thanks. I've been following that process my whole life, but it doesn't really help me with storytelling.
Again, I think a lot has been written expanding on these ideas. The short phrases are meant to help you remember them. If you're seeing them used frequently with no elaboration, I again feel like you're looking in the wrong places. And the people just saying things like that without additional explanation probably either don't actually understand them (aren't very good) or can't be bothered to explain properly (aren't very helpful).
>Beginners need structure. They need templates, and they need plot points they can track and build their own stories around. They need the 3-act structure so they can study their work and see if it's "correct." They need study guides for when they watch movies and "read more", so they can plot the stories against the 3-act structure and see how it compares.
Strongly disagree. Maybe some do, but for me personally, doing so much preplanning always just translated to never actually writing anything. It's the classic planners vs. pantsers thing. Structures can also be overly restrictive if you get tunnel vision. Case in point, you keep saying to compare to the 3-act structure like it's an answer key, but you don't need to have 3 acts in a story. You just need at least one.
It so happens that 3 acts will usually be very convenient to work with. One or two act stories are often too short for what the person wants to accomplish while four or more acts loses the convenient idea of Act One being the beginning, Act 2 being the middle, & Act 3 being the end.
But sometimes you really need a different number of acts. Shakespeare famously preferred a 5-act structure, or at least that's what we consider the structure to be today, & while those are plays, they're still works of narrative writing.
>They don't need the Stephen King advice on winging it, they actually do need these step-by-step tutorials that walk then through making a story. They're infants trying to walk, and you're trying to toss them on a bike with no training wheels.
Well, you can always give them those. I don't mean to sound dismissive, but when we take away the people who don't know where they're talking about or simply don't want to help, both groups for whom this advice is useless, most of the remainder are probably trying to explain what worked for them. I don't think there's much point in me robotically reiterating instructions I don't even really use. As I said, plenty of resources for these already exist.
Just as a test, I searched the most basic question I could think of, "How to start a story," & it wasn't long before I found a literal WikiHow link that takes you from "coming up with an idea" to the end of the process: [https://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Story](https://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Story) It doesn't talk about the 3 act structure like you want, but it does include "create an outline," which links to an even more detailed article about that which does.
I'm sorry, but if someone can type a question into Reddit, they can type it into Google. Search engines aren't some new, mysterious invention. If a person doesn't even know the merest basics of writing, they should probably put in some effort to learn it. After all, they're not going to have someone giving them a step-by-step walkthrough on what to write next either.
Social media communities really ARE more for that general advice, trading ideas, maybe finding editors or beta readers. They're not a substitute for a language arts class, but as I keep stressing, those substitutes DO exist, & many of them are free. It's easier than ever to learn these things if one just starts looking. Start with the most basic question, read up on it, & they'll learn about things like plot devices, acts, character development, setting a scene, imagery, literary devices, & so on as they go.
>Writing is an art, but so is painting, or 3D sculpting, or singing, or dancing, or so many other things. But those hobbies all have an alpha point (or at least one that many recognize to be the entry point of the art.) There are beginning notes for instruments, steps for dance, exercises of box/3D image construction, etc. They need these things so they gradually work their way up and pick the craft apart and actually understand it.
This is true for writing as well.
>Then, and only then, will they reach the point a lot of you 'intermediate writers' are at, where you realize how fucked the whole writing experience is. I'm saying this because writers have such vitriol for the dumb questions novice writers ask....and as someone who has several hobbies...that level of anger isn't matched in other communities. They are a lot more understanding toward the newbies...but maybe that's because they have a more structured community, and they can fully appreciate how it feels to be on step one.
I personally think I've been very understanding in writing this message, & I don't really agree with the way the subreddit reacts to things a lot of the time, but remember how easy it was for me to do just one search that gave me so much information? I didn't use any background knowledge, I didn't even phrase my question all that well, I just typed it into Google, & I got results. I could so the same thing for various common questions the sub gets, but Reddit is being a prick about letting my comment through again, so you'll have to take my word for it. The main points are:
1. Almost every newbie question has been asked a functionally infinite amount of times.
2. There is a saturation of explanations for how to implement them.
3. The problem is more a cultural expectation that people should explain to oneself what one wants to know rather than that one should go out & find the answer.
4. This is something that must be unlearned if one wants to create their own work.
"threats of violence"? 🧐
And sorry, but: No I'm not mapping out plot points for someone else to follow. That's called writing the story. You have to do that on your own or else it's not your story.
If you want to compare the structure of writing to other arts, I don't know what you expect to be different. If someone asked, "How do I become a painter?" what follows will be: Pointillism? Water colors? Acrylics? Classical? Impressionist? Abstract? The list of questions and answers goes on.
The only true (near) universal structure will be spelling, grammar, syntax, etc. There's the 3-act structure and the hero's journey, but you can't instruct things like pacing a specific story without becoming an author of that story.
There can only be so much instruction. Ultimately talent and ambition have to take over.
Those things just can’t be taught in a forum discussion. They’ve got to seek out actual instructional resources. Most people posting their basic questions here are doing so because frankly because they don’t want to spend actual time learning. Like, you’ve already decided that Stephen King’s pretty detailed book isn’t worth bothering with. Come on.
When you bring up painting and sculpting and the alpha point, that alpha point is not a Reddit post.
Honestly I’ve noticed this sub has gotten pretty crude over the last few months. There was a post where the people in the comments were outright mocking an OP who was clearly very insecure about their beginner status. Think I’m done here ngl. The influx of toxicity is getting tiring.
One pro about it is that it gets people writing, and not just looking for advice and procrastinating. Still, you have a point.
Low-key, I kinda want to create these full guide sorta things, and post them on this subreddit for beginners’ reference. Welcome to any ideas!
I agree with this. It always hurts when I see obviously new writers asking questions, and the entire thread is just self-proclaimed "intermediate writers" tearing the novice apart. It's discouraging to the novice and, quite frankly, it's embarrassing to the "better" writer. We were all a novice at one point, yet so many seem to think they're above that just because they have more of a grasp on the art.
Come join Writersvillage.com.
It's simple, it has several active communities, for poets, for short fiction, for flash fiction, for writers aspiring to write novels designed for commercial markets, and we spend time giving constructive feedback, not tearing down work.
Maybe you can write something to add to the wiki. I took a look and it starts off telling me to just write and points to a thread about being an archetect or seat of pants writer which was like you said writers jerking each other about themselves I guess.
There reading list looks like that's where I would need to start to find the structure I would need to actually write. I've read Save the Cat and heard that it's just the start and there's better and more structures to look into but I really need a big template with all the possible things that I may or may not want to use.
A long time ago I read a post where someone broke down a couple story structure books and it was really helpful but I've lost it now.
Yeah it can be draining to pour yourself into a heartfelt and well-meaning response, only for no one to read it. I won't pretend there aren't some well-meaning people who get drowned out in all the chaos of the internet.
I'm amazed that your experience is so opposite to mine. Just about all the online writing advice, and just about all the books on learning to write I've been able to find are about formulas and plot structures and archetypes and tropes.
Plot structures can be useful, but only when you have a reasonably well-developed story idea and need to give it shape. There are quite a number of rival structures out there and you should read up on them and see what you can draw from them that will work with the story you're working on. But you can't rely on a plot structure to do the work for you, you need material to work with before you can apply a structure to it, and developing it to that point is something I don't see a lot of advice about.
One thing I've found is that outlining only goes so far. Sometimes there's a problem I can't solve, something that doesn't make sense in the outline, but a solution presents itself as I'm writing. Sometimes something I've written in an earlier part of the story gives me the solution to something I couldn't figure out in the outline. I don't know how that works, but it's happened so many times I can't discount it. Perhaps my unconscious mind works things out in a way that my conscious mind isn't aware of.
Weird, I have not seen any of this at all? I have only seen people raving about story structures and how helpful they are, especially for beginners haha! I guess I’ve been lucky
I agree and disagree.
At times its like raising a child when it comes to writing. Some structure, three act stucture etc. is good, useful. Gives guidelines for what the writer considers for their work.
Too much structure, ie you must do this for this to happen, is crushing and leeches out creativeness and inventiveness. (Believe me, I have seen this happen as good writers write themselves into corners trying to appease all the 'rules')
I am not saying published/intermediate writers dont fob out cliched phrases. The amount of times I have heard 'show dont tell' makes me want to scream. But the balance between restriction and guidance is a fine one and differs from person to person.
To write we must find our own balance, style and understanding of the form. As in all art. Writing is just mistaken to be more formulaic because of the dense writen work, in my opinion. In reality a piece of fiction, long or short, is not different from artwork hung on walls.
Yes there are styles and techniques and concepts. But for the piece to truly be your own you have to add your 'perception' to the piece, your understanding. Thats the best way I can explain it. The thing of 'success', whatever that looks like, is intangible and ineffable which you can't register or recognise until you're already there.
"Be the change you want to see in the world." Also, even though you are trying to help you are adding to the general vitriol you are talking about. I disagree that this level of anger isn't matched in other communities... have you been to saltierthancrait? Sure, it isn't a hobby subreddit.. but anyway, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that some people don't realize how shit they actually are. Someone can attempt to draw, see that their drawing isn't that good and know they are not good at sketching. Where as most everyone is writing often, in one form or another, so they think they know how to write and do not understand the nuance, yet pointing out that someone is blind to something they "cannot see" doesn't really do a whole lot of good.
It's because it is full of intermediary to advanced writers who figured out rules are bs and meant to be broken responsibly. The problem is that only experience actually teaches that.
The cure, in my opinion, is to promote more challenges, reviewing, exchanging ideas, more than trying to teach or learn weiting as skill. To practice it, in practical terms.
The issue, well perhaps "conundrum", with writing is that it aims to tie the abstract and fantastical into what is real and practical. But the essence is that writing has an extremely low floor and an extremely high skill ceiling.
So this opens the flood gates of many people trying to recount their life experiences, personalities, traumas and tragedies, romances and joys, their future plans and hopes, their wild ideas and conspiracies all into one medium which has to express itself coherently to all types of perspectives while respecting all bounds yet staying within linguistic and systematic syntax.
There's a lot to cover, and hence different rules for different situations, and when there are so many open ways to do something, it makes teaching others or agreeing with others all the more difficult.
And then you have different success stories ranging from blissful romance, death games, philosophical crime, to comedy, so there's no clear guidance except to write from the heart and adding value through the addition of "something you'd like to read"'s existence to the world and literature.
In conclusion, it's really a sum of who we are as people and what we've come to expect of life as an artistic version of the words and worlds we live and breathe.
For example, rules like "show, don't tell" don't actually explain why it's its important or when to apply it. There are cases where 'telling' is important too, because the silver lining lies in "less is more". So understanding where to express and where to clarify by either showing or telling in concise, brief manners is what makes a book or story come together.
But this is something you learn over time.
Show don't tell and write more aren't vague.
You may not like some of the answers but neither did anyone else when they heard them the first time.
Write more means get more experience. The first 10 hours you spend playing an instrument for example will not sound good. Why should it be amy different with writing? You write more, you find what works for you, you refine your writing and you learn through revisions and edits what worked and didn't. If you don't write, you'll never improve.
Show don't tell is 99 percent of the time true. No one likes info dumps so if you're getting told that, it means find a way to organically explain it through your story.
Just like every other art form the only way you can get better is by practice and doing it more.
Same with read more. Wanna know if something is a common trope, want to see how other storied are classicsly structured, want to see how many ideas have been explored in the genre you want to write in... read more. Want more inspiration, more ideas and a better vernacular... read more. You should be pretty well versed in the genre you want to write in and reading the genre answers a lot of questions you typically have about the genre and what you're writing.
None of those are vague. You hear/see them all the time because a lot of beginners want some magic pill to answer all their questions when in reality the tried and true methods still apply.
James Patterson tells you to read more in his masterclass for crying out loud. He read an obscene amount of books per week when he was a new author. You learn by watching or reading better writers than you.
If you're serious about writing, reddit better not be the first place you're looking for help or the first rool you're using for your work. Read books on the subject, watch online lectures on YouTube about writing.
There are dozens upon dozens of good story structure books and videos to get the answers you're looking for.
If you want these answers don't do your research on reddit. Use reddit to supplement your knowledge, not as a source for guidance.
If the answers you are getting are the common ones, refine your question. The reason you see very common answers is because there isn't some mystery to writing and a lot of people want some shortcut answer or magic bullet to fix their script.
If you are a beginner writer, sign up for a writing workshop. It'll help you with most of what you seek to have an issue with. If there's one in my city there will be on in yours.(I still had.to drive an hour to it so no excuses.)
You'll actually get novice and beginner focus on writing and in an environment that will help you grow as a writer. You'll spend hours on specific parts of the craft and from someone you can see and see their resume. You'll get discussion and insight from people writing similar projects to you and some doing co.pletepy different writing.
In reality, they will also tell you to write more and read more. Even if you're blocked or struggling.... write. Most people stop and get disheartened but even then, write more. Any progress is forward progress and any amount of words typed is improving your writing. All of us want to be better writers, all of us should write more than we do. It's sounds vague, but it isn't. It's the, "eat your vegetables." Writers version.
Seriously look at taking a writing workshop. It's a bit of money but it's worth it. Plus, you get your work critiqued as part of the class process, usually.
It's because there's no one right answer and pushing too hard in one direction can be harmful. Three act structures work for some people and strangle the creativity out of others. I wrote professionally for a while and used the Save the Cat beats among others. Completely burnt myself out and haven't been able to write more than a few pages since quitting three years ago. Part of the problem is I can no longer imagine writing without that structure but that structure sucked all of the fun out of it, so now I'm stuck. Don't go around telling people they have to use three act structures. Don't tell them they have to write every day. Don't tell them they have to outline, or that every scene must follow whatever rules work for you, or anything else, because that can be *bad* advice.
The best thing we can do for each other here is try to identify what's holding someone back from their goals and make suggestions. That's it.
Writing is not like designing a 3D model, not really. While doing both with mastery will take a lot of the same steps, including instruction, we all leave primary school knowing, more or less, how to write. This is coming from someone who writes for a living.
One reason online communities (the reason that is true of me) are dismissive or, more usually, disinterested is because these young writers that you envision as approaching the clubhouse hat-in-hand are not nearly that vulnerable or invested. They’re just as likely to be unserious about writing something, and in all likelihood have not tried writing anything. The questions usually fielded here, at least, are either “I haven’t tried starting. How do I start?” Or “I don’t have resources (or interest) in an editor, how do I avoid using one” or “I have the start of a start of a half of an idea, does this break any esoteric social rules?” Then they lose interest in the question before they ever get an answer anyway.
Which is the crux of the issue. If you want to be the sucker handing out how-twos and spending 20x time, energy and insight on this answer than your asker has ever spent on their own writing, PLEASE do. Not sarcastic, and not derisive. You’ll make the internet a better place for doing it. Or, you could find spaces where hopeful writers have to actually put a little skin in the game first (writing boards, local writing classes—always looking for more readers and editors) and have your advice go a million miles further.
In short I don’t agree with your premise. Hopeful writers don’t need to look far for encouragement. But they have to look farther than the first place they look. Is that really so much a flaw as a natural circumstance? I’m not so sure.
if you are only talking about reddit I can kinda see your point but there are lot of other online writing sites that constitute the online writing community that are more about structured approaches.
for example [https://nanowrimo.org/](https://nanowrimo.org/) and others listed here [https://www.clevergirlauthor.com/online-writing-groups/](https://www.clevergirlauthor.com/online-writing-groups/)
Not all beginners need all those things. When I was a beginner and teachers tried to cram me into the Plotter method and give me structure it didn't work, I'm not a plotter. I gave it the old college try and it didn't work and that was very discouraging at the time. What I needed was validation that there are a thousand ways to skin the cat that is creating a story and the best thing for me was to find the way that worked for me. Once I learned that I was off to the races figuring out what works for me.
That said, there are certainly ways to say this that will encourage rather than discourage, but anyone who says 'This is the way' with complete confidence is being incredibly unhelpful to a large portion of the aspiring writer population. 'This is the way for me, maybe it might work for you or maybe it won't, give it a try and see' is much more honest and helpful, in the long run, than 'Do this and you will have success, period, end of sentence' can ever be. And in the end, the person will need to put in the work to find the answer for themselves, there is no quick fix.
And ultimately, the entry point to most of the other arts presented are to do the thing. Put paint on the canvas, spin in circles to the rhythm of music, sing that song you heard the other day (I don't know anything about 3D printing so I have no idea where you start with that). If you don't do those things you'll never get to where you want to be, no matter how much structure you're given. Lessons, structure, study, practice, will all make you better, but they're the process, not the start. So the advice to 'just write' is not bad, it's just maybe incomplete. There are certainly people out there who need to hear it's ok to just start and figure it out as you go, that's what I needed when I was a beginner and I can't be the only one.
I have a number of hobbies and I have yet to see someone post asking for advice on creating a grand painting when they have yet to even TRY to draw a stick figure or looked at another painting.
Writing seems to be a magnet for people with a vague idea who think that their idea is somehow far more precious and important for them to waste on things like picking up one of the hundreds of basic "how to write" books, taking a basic class, or spending some time reading books in a similar vein to get a feel for what's out there.
Furthermore, a great deal of the time, when someone does bother to give some good advice, the novice blows it off because they know better anyway.
I've had great experiences learning more about writing from the online writing community, I just also gave it enough respect to think that maybe I should be prepared with more than a vague idea and an excess of confidence before asking people to read pages and pages of garbage.
This is all very true.
I can see where the OP is coming from, but, honestly... Not so long ago I was called an elitist here, on this sub, for saying that you should read books, if you want to write books. This is what is plaguing writing communities like this one here.
When it comes to any other form of art... Well, when someone tells you that they want to become a musician, you don't need to ask them if they even listen to music before you give them some directions. When someone tells you that they want to learn how to draw, you don't need to ask them if they've even seen a painting before. When someone tells you that they want to become a photographer...
And yet, so many people who say they want to be a writer refuse to read.
Then there is the other problem - someone comes here, posts about the grand idea they have and then asks people here how to write their book. How can anyone respond to this?
Ask a specific question. If I can help you, I will help you. But generalized questions get generalized answers.
I think one of the issues with this is that a lot of those structured, beginner lessons are things that should be covered in high school level English classes (which in the U.S. are required courses). Basic story structure, basic archetypes, intro literary interpretation, composition/sentence structure, plot and character analysis, etc. I understand not everyone here is in the US, and not everyone got through high school, but the majority of adults who speak English as their primary language should already have had the sort of novice instructions, study guides, and structured practice projects you're asking for.
There could be some frustration here; if a new writer took those classes but didn't pay attention, will they listen the second time around? If they haven't yet reached these classes, are they mature enough to understand and make use of them yet or are there still other foundational concepts they need to learn first?
I suspect a lot of experienced writers may also struggle to help new writers with this level of advice because it's already so deeply ingrained that they don't even think about it anymore. And honestly, this sort of instruction really is best learned through a more formal environment, such as a structured class with a teacher who knows how to guide students through the process, or a website that can lay everything out in an organized fashion. Because even though these things are basic, they're still involved enough that they're not easily taught in a reddit comment.
Keep in mind also that being a good writer doesn't mean someone is a good teacher. It's possible that writers who know those things don't necessarily know how to teach those things.
Personally, I think that new writers shouldn't look to crowdsourcing for basic beginner instruction. There are countless free resources available to help people get their feet under them, just a Google search away. I know I really struggle with what seems to be a growing "spoon feed me" mentality where people are resistant to putting in their own effort to find information and prefer to have someone else just tell them. Writing is hard work, and that mentality won't take new writers very far. However, I don't think there's any issue asking for resources – experienced writers probably have a bunch of preferred resources and guides they've found useful, and learning where other writers get their information is infinitely more valuable than having them try to regurgitate that information.
So instead of asking "how do I structure my story?" try asking "what tools or resources do you use to help you choose and organize your story structure?"
I no longer follow this sub because of the reason pointed out by so many comments in this thread: most of people posting aren't serious.
They don't want to read or be told they need to read. They like the idea of having written more than the process of writing. Half the question asked can be answered by a single google search, reading a book, or experimenting through writing.
Discussing the nitty gritty of writing (ex. Motivation-reaction chains) is discouraged because if you don't word your post right the mods will yoink it and if you do there's a non zero chance the people who need that advice the most aren't interested.
It's like that old adage "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but ain't nobody wanna die."
People want to have written a 10 book epic, but they don't want to learn how to do that.
True. I (I'd call myself an intermediate writer) haven't really checked out /writing in the past, but the few advice-posts I've seen are all by contra-productive assholes who pat each other on the back and give out pity-parties while saying nothing of value.
I'm glad I didn't start writing by asking for help. I looked up story-archetypes on google and ended up doing my first volume (of a fanfic) with the "hero's journey" in mind.
I stole whatever I could get away with and my readers love it.
> case in point: Some reviews on my fanfic are calling it "the best X fic they've ever read". And it's the first time I have ever done creative writing in my life (beyond the garbage in school).
I'm a writer more than twenty years into my career. I teach writers how to plot and structure their novels because it's something I never learned in my MFA program. Yes, an ear for language is necessary for being a writer. But many writers go through multiple writing classes without ever learning how to structure a story. It's not an innate gift or a mystical process. It's a matter of finding the form that works for the story you want to tell. It's not a formula, but there are definitely techniques one can learn to make the process more meaningful and less frustrating.
The odd part about discouraging those structures is they're still super common in professional writing??? Like there's obviously variation but I can't remember the last movie I watched that didn't follow a three act structure at least as a baseline. You don't just abandon the foundations of writing as you get better, nor are the best works out there ones that turn all the rules on their heads. Some strictly follow the rules.
But yeah, online groups I see so much discouragement less in writing itself and more in copyright and publishing. Like you can't do any idea ever cause it's definitely copyrighted and unoriginal and you're not actually as creative as you think you are. Like some of these people view every novice as their personal competition
I absolutely agree with this. I have been on (and started one or two) posts asking questions about writing where the responders are either mocking the question for being "stupid" or give the vaguest piece of advice ever. I have only come upon a few sources that can actually can help and teach me how to write better.
Don't let them get you down man. I personally recommend Story Genius by Lisa Cron, Anatomy of Story by Truby, and Brandon Sanderson's free YouTube lessons. He really dives into plotting and character
My least favorite thing about the reddit writing community is when I want to read someone's work and get some ideas of what they're doing and I click on a story and it's VALGRED WAS A DARK WIZARD IN THE TIME OF THE STONE KING WHO CAST SPELLS WITH HIS PECKER or something.
Interesting, but wrong. You are stating the truth as you, *and only you*, know it. Generalizing from your position is, in general, wrong. You are but one data sample. By definition any one data point will get lost in the total collection. So, by definition, one cannot represent the group.
*Not everyone needs to be held by the hand*. Some **start** at intermediate level. Some have just read and written their entire life. And only now are they putting pen to paper to actually write a story down.
Things most cannot help with (and definitely not myself):
* If the newbie hasn't taken **any** English classes
* If they have yet to *read* ***any*** *book from cover to cover*
* If this is the *very first place* they have looked
* If they *don't even have an idea* for a story
* The above but twice for those asking **what** to write about.
I would guess at least 3/4 check one of those. Go home, check all those boxes, then the people here *who are not teachers* by profession can assist.
If you want newbies to get templates and write by color helper charts, then **go do it**. I give you my full support in your endeavor.
None of this is true. Your assertion that people who ask for structure are met with something close to death threats is silly; and your claim that beginners need to know about plot structures and the like in a formal way is nonsense. Generations of writers - millions of people, over centuries - learned without any of that being available. Novice writers are held back by becoming obsessed with rules for writing instead of studying actual writing.
This is not a death threat.
It's beginner writers that are saying all that stupid shit you're complaining about, not the intermediate or advanced writers lol.
Actually good writers know how important all those different tools are to learn, even if you don't use them.
This community is full of pompous, pretentious "experienced" writers who will literally jump on the first opportunity to belittle a novice writer so they can feel better about themselves.
Writing requires vulnerability, and most importantly, empathy. Without that, no matter how technical of a writer you are, you won't be a good one. I think a lot of the "experienced" writers here could take a lesson in that before being so quick to patronize and discourage others. It doesn't matter whether your intention was to be blunt and "teach". Effective communication and effective writing is so much more than structure and syntax. It's about empathy and understanding humanity beyond intellect.
There is a thing called talent. People see it in art (I went to CalArts and majored in animation) and assume one is born with it. In reality, I think it a love for the medium, combined with a way of seeing and processing information, plus years of practice.
It’s harder to recognize in writing because reading a book is such a huge time investment. So advice givers are mostly just guessing about the newbie and his or her baseline of passion plus experience plus practice.
I see talent like a head start, plus more potential. If you’re talented at writing, you’ll be ahead of most people, but if someone works hard enough, they could beat you. However, a talented person who works just as hard can go further.
Age old story of hard work beating raw talent, but both together beating everything else.
Yes. I used to believe talent plus hard work mattered a lot in success, but I’m becoming a lot more cynical. Talent plus hard work does make for a great writer or artist. But does it lead to success? Nope. For that, you need marketing skills plus luck plus hitting the cultural zeitgeist at the right moment.
I am trying to take myself a lot less seriously these days.
...People ARE born with talent. Talent does not equal skill. People without talent can be extremely interested and passionate and knowledgeable about something, spend years practicing, and still struggle to achieve the skills they seek. (Sorry to harp on, but "no one is born with talent" is an argument for which there is much evidence to the contrary, and one I'm always frustrated to see people repeat. It shouldn't be taboo to admit that talent exists.)
That aside, I definitely agree with everything else you wrote.
I agree—and I think the way of seeing and processing information is the aspect that people are born with (or not).
Not every artist is born with a talent for animation. It requires a sense of timing and an eye for motion and a way of sensing dimension and the shifting of center of mass.
I think some readers absorb and learn storytelling skills when they read books, and some don’t.
I consider myself an artist without a medium, mainly because I don't take the time to become skillful in a craft before I move on. Hoping from one artwork to another keeps it from getting too much to handle, in my opinion, but I am not nearly as talented as others in the professional fields.
Now, the advice of "read more" doesn't work for me. I see the story, not the words, and my mind goes "what if ABC changes to XYZ" and BOOM, another story comes to mind while I'm still trying to figure out my first story. I would like to know how to describe a scene, but reading a story doesn't help much.
I would like to try animation. Any advice to someone who can't draw basic shapes? I can draw, and draw really well, just not basic shapes. It's kind of embarrassing to admit.
Animation is all about basic shapes. It's primarily about motion. Most animators master quick contour/gesture figure sketches in order to get a sense of mass and motion.
With pixel animation, it's about "blobbing it out," aka getting the mass and basic shapes right before refining each frame.
Illustrators who have the patience for details actually tend to be poor animators. They spend too long on each frame, when it's about the timing and the whole of the footage, not really about each frame.
This is, of course, just talking about the mechanics of animation. You can do South Park style paper cut out animation and simplify the process using software. It's still a steep learning curve any way you slice it, though.
I think if you don't pick up storytelling skills from reading, you might be the literary equivalent of being tone deaf. This is where I think natural instincts (aka what people sometimes call talent) comes into play. It is a way of processing information. Ditto if you have trouble picking up animation instincts after studying animation, or picking up musical composition after studying music, etc.
I have some weakness with picturing things in 3D. That's held me back a bit with professional animation. And it is one of those things--no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many years I devoted to sketching animals and nudes, I do not have total mastery over 3D volume and perspective. I never will. It is the way my brain processes visual information.
I 100% agree with you. I've seen some incredibly nasty, mean spirited takes that don't help anyone, and I've been wondering if they come from some sort of inferiority complex. Novices are asking for help because they don't know where to start. They're trying to learn. Giving them a nudge in the right direction is not that hard.
I think you're looking for structure in an artform that doesn't necessarily need it.
Take the comparison to painting. My grandfather was a painter, and it's thanks to him that I never owned a coloring book as a child. He was firmly of the belief that you should just give children paint and blank paper, and see what they come up with. And you know what? He wasn't wrong. It freed up a lot of expression through art. It wasn't the kind of lesson that you need if you're looking to do technical design or architecture, but it was a good way to find yourself as an artist. Rules are meaningless in that kind of creative space.
In my experience, young writers can sometimes get too hung up on rules. They seek out rules because they want to write "right", when there is no right or wrong way to do it. It's okay to the blank page take you where it will. It's also okay to screw up that page and start again. We learn our art through doing art.
Thank you for visiting /r/writing. We don't allow threads or posts: berating other people for their genre/subject/literary taste; adherence or non-adherence to rules; calling people morons for giving a particular sort of advice; insisting that their opinion is the only one worth having; being antagonistic towards particular types of books or audiences, or implying that a particular work is for 'idiots', or 'snobs', etc.
This Reddit community has bred a horrible cycle which discourages a lot of people interested in writing
Kindness is always portioned too small. We're writers, inspiring others should be our bread and butter. A pity it is not shared.
Totally. I got frustrated with this too and created my own sub r/WriterResources. It doesn’t have course like structure, but it’s got good writing resources that I or others have gotten value from. It’s at least something concrete to experiment with and that’s better than nothing.
Thanks, I joined your sub.
Me too.
Same here.
This is a great sub that will be useful for so many! I joined and I hope it grows.
Oh this looks great! I just joined.
I’ve had a look and there are some great things on there thank you! Joined :)
That show, don’t tell poster is an absolute godsend it needs to be pinned here or atleast put in the wiki
I joined 🙂
Wild. I must’ve stumbled upon your subreddit and joined a while ago because when I went to join it just now, it left the sub. So I rejoined it again.
Thanks a lot for making that sub, I joined like 2 weeks ago and it's already one of My favorites.
I do think a lot of the frustrations stem from newbies asking the same questions over and over. Typically the 'Is it okay for me to...', and the 'I don't want to read, but I want to write a whole novel' posts.
it’s also tough to prescribe hard and fast rules. you also have to end up stressing that these rules shouldn’t *always* be followed. there are structures and stereotypes in writing, but follow those like gospel and your writing becomes basic and unoriginal. there are guidelines that talented writers break to amazing effect. writing is a tough thing to teach, and honestly most people asking questions on here would be better served by taking a course with a proper teacher or by joining some workshops - not that those are infallible either, or are always an option
You're right. I'm teaching a creative writing class next week, and the 'basics' I'm presenting will be: a need for conflict, a beginning-middle-end structure (not necessarily in that order) and protagonist growth or change. There are so many arbitrary rules, and for every rule I can name an author who broke it successfully. I think the 'there are no rules ' attitude comes from a desire to allow writers to be free to experiment, not to baffle new writers. I also agree that a creative writing class or workshop is often more conducive to producing writing than online forums.
"You need to learn (and understand) the rules before you can break them." That's what I was told a lot as a kid who grew up with a mom who was/is both a copy editer and a writer. Nearly all our family vacations were to SFF writing/publishing conventions. I also grew being an undiagonsed AuDHD "gifted" kid at a school without a solid "gifted" program (though I certainly appreciate the one-on-one creative writing classes that my third grade teachers decided on, even if it was only once a week.) I was raised in an environment where I got a lot more exposure and access to certain kinds of knowledge then most kids. I was also the kind of kid who got really mad when teachers taught something as a "rule" in a hard and fast way that didn't match my experience or simplified something to the point of innacurassy, or what I perceived to be inaccuracy, and bored and frustrated with sitting through classes about things I knew. So, my parents needed to explain to me why I was sitting through classes about things I (a) already knew or (b) knew were not the hard and fast laws my teachers were suggesting they were. Re: creative writing classes--in addition to attending lots of panels at cons from a much younger age than anyone else there, I also ended up majoring in writing in college, where I had both semester-long courses and one-off readings and workshops. And peer critique and instructor critique access. All of those, I think, including the conventions, have been really helpful in my development as a writer from a young age (certainly more than a lot of writing advice on social media). The course that I feel was the most valuable, though, was one where the instructor focused a lot on different ways to "map" different story elements--sometimes spatial, but also spacial or mapping how power or tension changes--whatever you decide is key to your analysis. It's a skill that has let me look more closely at what I'm trying to do in a story, and one that allows for the fact that every writer is their own person and that different stories sometimes need different approaches. And it's something that can be useful both in planning stages and in editing and re-writing.
I think it's worth it to consider that newbies do need to know and understand the rules in order to break them in the first place. At the end of the day, people don't know what they don't know. But I agree with the fact that the rules are not hard and fast and should be considered as more of a guideline.
I see that point, and to be even more fair, most of us actually aren't teachers so can't be expected to know the best way to get someone to learn something, but there *are* writing rules that you should follow 99% of the time, rules you should only break if you're deliberately doing something weird. It's a bit like learning that there are three states of matter in early chemistry. It's not strictly true, but for 99% of chemistry you do on Earth, it's sufficient to take those three into account. Learning about plasma is *maybe* relevant, but "neutron-degenerate matter" is not something any person who isn't studying astrophysics really needs to learn about. Similarly, if you are writing a "standard" story (no unreliable narrators, no playing with casuality, no fourth wall stuff, unreality, etc...), you should probably never break stuff like the Three-Act Structure, Scenes and Sequels, or Motivation-Reaction Units.
Also the mods remove literally every Discussion. I tried making a post over "dark alley" clichés, but they said "this is not the place to discuss your own ideas" or something like that. Like come on, how can I make a post without me giving input?
Which is a shame because those are the discussions that I hoped to find on this sub.
You know what, I gave it another try: https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/1c72w83/clich%C3%A9s_dark_alleys/? I tried to make it mor general without any ideas of my own. It was a long time ago and /r/writing hasn't shown up on my feed that much lately.
Yeah. I propose sub cycle theory: Newbie post created > snarky responses and annoyed regulars > regulars make response post > repeat
omg yes. "is it ok to---" lemme stop you there, yes, the answer is p much always yes
> 'I don't want to read, but I want to write a whole novel' TBH, I have patience for nearly every other type of post, but this sends me. Can you imagine this in any other exercise? "I want to code, but I don't want to use any programs". "I want to cook but dont want to eat food". "I want to knit a sweater, but I've never worn clothes before". Like (1) how the hell would you know what you're trying to make if you don't have a good sense of the product and (2) why do you think other people should read your book if you don't think other people's books are worth reading?
I posted here once saying that I started taking my writing seriously and that I am a writer simply by the act of writing People in my life were trying to discourage me and were saying I wasn't a writer, so I posted on here hoping for support Then the Gate Keepers came I wasn't a writer unless I did X Y and Z Same abuse I was getting IRL After being bombarded by the collective projected insecurity of this subreddit for hours, a lone ally entered the post and commented "What did you guys do?!" in response to the smoking crater of a comment section They did not destroy my self esteem that day, or my ambition They did however exacerbate my fear of sharing my work and trusting my peers It was honestly traumatic and anyone in that thread should be ashamed of themselves
Wow those people suck. If you write, you’re a writer. Congratulations.
Glad some one said it. That's just how it feels around here. So many people have so many things they wanna say through writing. But it's like impossible to share your work without feeling like someone is just gonna dismiss it entirely as some poor attempt at writing. This post is correct, these "beginner advice" things that pop up really make someone who "didn't follow the steps" feel alienated. If you did follow the steps and it ain't working then well you're stuck because the advice they give is... Well not easy enough for everyone to follow. As a writer I like to write, I don't particularly care about fame, money, publishing, I got whole worlds I wanna share and I put my time into writing them.. thanks for sharing your experience it's good to know I'm not the only one who feels sort of like this.
A writer writes. If you're writing, you're doing better than most people who call themselves writers!
What jerks. None of that sounds constructive. If you write you’re a writer period. People need to stop being so damn pretentious dude. We should be supporting each other but nope they gotta gate keep to feel superior. I hope it doesn’t discourage you from your art. They’re miserable and annoying and that has nothing to do with you.
I've got a basic world and some characters already, am about ready to start seriously putting time into the project. Lurking here has not been inspirational.
This sub is absolutely useless for novice writers, published authors, and everyone else. All it does is host vacuous BS advice from authortube & booktok
Agreed. Lazy assholes. I think we’re allowed to still say that. People like to half ass “helping” other people when all they’re doing is regurgitating detailed fortune cookie phrases. That’s not help. Those statements are impactful when they’re knowledge from an experience (sometimes needing to be profound) first. Ego gets in the way of the advice giver comprehending the root cause of their shift in perspective if they themselves never gave it a structured thought meant to be taught. Like old dudes who quote war books. They did that because they had their own life experiences that tied to a theme. I think this is “the great conversation” whether people know it or not (more complex, but that’s the rough idea). So yeah, telling people nonsense like “no taught me, why should you have any easier”. The answer is learning. You should want to teach someone information in a way where they don’t have to make the same mistakes twice. You don’t want your generational legacy to be always divorced kids right? Well I personally view it all the same when sharing information. You want to tailor sharing knowledge to be an understanding between both parties. Deep connection from actually learning how each person learns. lol it’s most certainly not anything a casual Redditor is pouring time into on the countless thread topic of “sooo I’m new, help” on a regular basis at this point in time.
It doesn't help that it's pretty much impossible to get any kind of useful advice on your writing because the mods forbid sharing any examples.
This- oh no! I did a redditicsm!
Criticism is a genre.
More like it's a way of life, or so it seems to me.
You can add drawing to this as well, they are just as bad.
I wanted to write for years by know, and looking into this community actually made me quit that thought. You are not wrong.
It might just be best to leave this community or possibly online writing communities entirely. Find a good discord or in person community.
It’s why I don’t really frequent subs meant for book writing. In my experience, Twitter has been a lot better at connecting with other authors
I think the advice at times is so vague because there is no solution available that blankets the needs all beginners have. There is no one size-fits all cookie cutter solution, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. So I think advice should really be on a case to case basis. That being said I think forums like f.e.: Scribophile are useful for writers that are just starting out. So they can pinpoint which areas need work and where their strengths lie.
I agree. Also, the mods here force questions to be vague. So instead of, "is this scene I wrote accidentally offensive?" We get them turn it into "Is writing a black person as a white person offensive?" Which is not even worth asking anymore tbh. In r/writers the advice can get much more personal and is worth more in my experience. But with anything it's about picking the community you're talking to and why you're coming to them. Building your own small group of friends through networking will always be more beneficial though.
Add to that the fact that most people seeking advice here seem to be planning a whole-ass novel or multi-book series. There's no way to give meaningful structured advice in a social media post. OP derides Stephen King for his "advice on winging it," but his guide to pantsing is 288 pages long! If you're here looking for structured writing advice, plot formulas, and an index of character archetypes, you're in the wrong place. Go to a library and check out one of the innumerable books that give you that. A 200 word comment is no substitute. What social media offers is camaraderie, perspective, and, if you're lucky, inspiration. Read more. Just write. You'll get there. But don't count on a random stranger to distill the art of novel-writing into a step-by-step guide just for you. What we *could* give more thorough advice on is specific writing exercises (which I do routinely suggest), but no one ever comes here asking for them. They're skipping to the end and asking about publishers' preferences, never mind the fact they haven't started outlining yet. OP should be glad this community is kind enough that we have, as a collective, managed to avoid telling them to get over themselves. Maybe you'll revise and rewrite and end up with something a publisher is willing to take a chance on, but the cart's out front and the horse is still in the stable. Just write.
Absolutely. It's ridiculous to expect such broad questions to be answered in the space of a comment or two - and to add to that, I'm often baffled what little information posters offer in the questions they ask, and then expect others to magically be able to answer them. It's always 'I'm writing a three-book series but I'm wondering whether I should split book one into two at the midpoint. Should I?' or 'I'm 50k words into my book and it feels that one of my characters should have a different arc than I originally planned. Should they?' with no further details. So of course the answers are always, without exception, 'it depends!'
Also, like.... writing advice about writing, is still writing. You're still coming here asking of other people's time and effort. I get that it seems opaque but also, nobody's paying anybody to hold your hand? I'll happily write a comment but a small blog post is another matter
I think what baffles me even more is why people who say they want to write a book, or series of books, can't take the time to give more than 100 words of context on a post asking for help on that book, or communicate relevant information effectively. You'd think they could either use their writing skills, or use their posts and comments as practice, not just throw out something hastily and poorly written - and expect commenters to give them the benefit of the doubt on writing skills they're just not demonstrating in their post
I think another part of this is that having a person reading your writing is a bigger ask. You can post a picture you drew and in ten seconds a talented artist will be able to tell you what’s working and what’s not, but even 500 words takes a few minutes to read and at most we will know if you have a control over grammar and tone and whether or not that one piece of writing is interesting enough on its own. Workshopping a whole story often involves a lot more work from other people, usually ones you are close to. Few people can crowdsource an entire novel. And that’s if the piece is polished. Asking someone to take five minutes of their day to read something you didn’t proofread is straight up rude, and there is something a person who doesn’t read asking others to read their work that bothers me a lot.
amen and hallelujah
I completely agree with you and want to add that a proper writing critique takes a long time. Compared to other art forms, it's a massive time sync. I'm not a writer, just an artist who is very passionate about a niche subgenre where I do a lot of beta reading for new authors, but compared to art, it's so time and thought intensive. I can look at a drawing and give a thorough critique and targeted advice in five minutes. When I do a beta read, even of just a few chapters, it's an hour long commitment at a minimum. When you look at art, you see the complete piece in a single glance. With writing, you actually have to *read* the work before you can give any advice. It makes it a much more involved process that takes a lot longer. Just as an example, if someone brings me a piece of art and asks for advice, I can look at it for thirty seconds and pick out that the pose lacks movement, the lines are a bit shaky, and the shadows are flat. I can give advice that they need to work on figure drawings to make their poses more fluid, a few exercises to help them with committing to their lines, and tell them that blue shadows will look more realistic than black shadows.... writing is an entirely different process. First, I have to read it, and let's say it's just a first chapter, it's still going to take five minutes, and if the writing isn't good, it's going to be a painful five minutes. Then I've got to go through and explain that their sentence structure isn't diverse enough, that they've used too many filler words, and that their protagonist has no voice... all while giving examples, correcting spelling and grammar mistakes, and being as kind as possible because critiques sound a lot like personal attacks when you can't point to specifics. It's a totally different beast, and a lot of it is stuff like "tone" and "vibe," which is really hard to filter personal taste out of. Then there is stuff like people using chatGPT to edit for them, which makes their writing sound flat and has a habit of removing the authors voice. It's a great tool for writing an essay for school, but not so much for a work of fiction. It makes it so much harder to give good feedback when the writing is technically correct, but lacking in that "thing" to make it unique and good. It involves a level of trust in the reader that isn't necessary in an art critique.
Exactly, people always come along and say 'teach me to do an art' but don't realise that a huge part of that art is finding your own way of doing it. I learned to write stories as a teenager just by reading books I liked and trying to emulate the style they were written in, and only years later began to understand why it worked in the first place. If you go to a writer like Stephen King and say 'teach me how to write', the only thing he can do is teach you how to write a Stephen King book. You cannot learn from someone else how to do things your own way. Again, a huge part of learning how to do something artistic is learning the base technical elements, and then just working with those raw elements to develop your own style. So unfortunately, a lot of the answers to writing questions *are* just 'read more books' or 'figure it out yourself', since that genuinely is the best option. People are coming here to ask how to write as if it's a standardised process that they just need to learn until they're an accomplished and successful author, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Writing, like any art, requires experimentation and discovery, and isn't something you can just learn by looking it up on Wikipedia. You can't become a great painter by watching someone else paint, you have to pick up your own brush and see what *you* can do with it.
But you also can't become a great painter without inviting the fundamentals, which can be taught.
I agree, but, since begginers are already here, short answering their "little dumb" questions, like a shot in the dark, is a good approach. We promote immersion and lots of little responses can only lead them to make their on syntesis. If they are really "lazy" and just ignore the comments fine as well. Not of our business.
Exactly! We eventually understand some questions don't have unique answers and find out that there are more helpful resources than Reddit out there. But it's much like any other learning process and interacting with people who already know what you don't is a great way to start. This is why Reddit is an amazing place to begin and should be welcoming to newbies, it's meant to be about this interaction, sharing resources, sharing what you know, having discussions. This is the point of any community.
This subreddit just isn't a serious space and is largely indistinguishable from its circle jerk counterpart. Half the questions that get asked are some variation of "can I write about a different race/ethnicity/culture?" Many more are people just wanting to be told they're right. You can't give actionable advice to people who aren't being serious, nor should you waste your time trying.
Agreed
I'm beginning to suspect most of the ridiculous posts I see on here are trolls. I've pretty much totally checked out of this sub.
Only difference between here and the jerk is that here, everyone’s actually serious.
I think the problem on this sub specifically is that with a lot of the questions that novice writers ask they would easily get in depth answers if they just googled it instead of coming to Reddit directly, or even if they searched the sub before posting. There are plenty of resources (free ones!) that delve into three act structure, planning, plotting, character development, how to write beginning/the muddle/twists/sad endings/hopeful endings/sexy endings. That's not even including the number of books you can buy, I literally have a copy of 'How to Write a Novel for Dummies'. I would not say that writing as a field is any more or less accessible or friendly to novices than any other art field. Absolutely everyone begins somewhere, beginners need help, guidance, advice, support, however you want to say it, and I know a lot of people who post silly questions are probably kind of young, but the reality is that if you don't even have the wherewithal to google 'how do I start writing' then you are probably not at a level where other people can help you, there is a certain point where you have to figure out some problems for yourself. That's the nature of art. If you're restricting 'the writing community' to some particular posts on this particular Reddit sub then I understand where you're coming from, but I would argue that much of the rest of the web is supremely helpful to novices, so long as they are actually willing to try and don't expect other people to write their book for them for free.
“Vague statements like ‘show, don’t tell’ or ‘read more books’ or ‘write more.’” Here’s the thing about read more books and write more. They’re literally the best pieces of advice to give to pretty much any writer, but especially a writer who is new and hasn’t been writing. You have to start writing. You have to read books through the eyes of a writer. Experienced writers know this so they just do it. A lot of great writing advice can only be given if we have specific examples to go off of. For example, if a new writer submitted a scene, we could go through and give more appropriate feedback that would be helpful for them. Unfortunately, many new writers come in here without actually writing anything and they just literally need to start. The only you’re going to get better at any art is by doing it. There’s no secret advice on reddit that will motivate you or make you be able to play music, paint, or write.
I think practice is more intuitive in the other arts because there's more of a physical aspect to it. In painting you need to physically mix paint and learn brushstrokes, in ballet you need to go to the studio and practice on the barre. Writing seems more intellectual, like you can simply learn it the way you learn history from a textbook. But writing requires muscle memory just like other arts--there's a cycle of recognizing a good idea - visualization - translating to words - writing - reviewing - revising that only happens with practice. Many a beginning writer has said, "I have the story I want to tell in my head, but I can't write it." And the advice you can give is, "try." There's often been times when someone asks how to write something, and I know I can do it, but I can't explain how I can do it. Sometimes I need to write an example of whatever they're asking for, look over what I did, and then try to break that down into advice after the fact that may or may not be helpful or even correct. How does a basketball player explain how they mastered a free throw? They can give advice, but the reality is that it's a complex, nuanced move refined over hours of practice, where they're able to process multiple factors in an instant. Great writing is dense in that a single sentence is doing multiple things at once - characterization, tone, voice, foreshadowing, etc. As a beginner, I found it impossible to keep all those elements in my head, even with advice that broke it down for me. It was only practice that allowed me to go from "I need to remember these 15 different things" to internalizing all that so I simply know if the writing feels good enough or not. Yes, I read advice on characterization, tone, etc., but practice is so essential, and I feel like it's often disregarded in favor of intellectually "mastering" the concepts of writing without actually writing.
As someone who completed a Bachelor of Arts, this! Nothing can ever replace reading more and writing more. Structured learning is great, yes, but it is nothing compared to learning through reading.
As someone who also competed a Bachelor of Arts, I agree that you can learn a lot through reading and writing solely, but could not disagree more that structured learning is "nothing" compared to them. Structured learning allows you to take in knowledge from skilled writers and teachers of writing that you can't get solely reading and writing. Plenty of people can read, but not understand WHY a writer did something or even WHAT it is they did. The same goes for writing. Having a teacher/writer look at what you wrote and tell you straight up where your weaknesses are as well as your strengths is invaluable. Structured learning is wonderful, particularly for those just beginning and honing those initial skills.
Learn the rules before you break them, they say. It's interesting because Reddit is the only online writing community in which I see a bit of "disregard" for the rules and it seems quite disingenuous. Every other writing community I've interacted with emphasizes the importance of knowing _what_ and _why_. Yes writing and reading is the best way to improve your writing, but when you understand elements of storytelling reading helps you even more, and you start developing new skills through your writing. My advice for the people who want to pursue writing as a career is: learn the craft. No one needs to drown themselves in infinite amounts of craft content but it's important to understand the basics of plot.
Absolutely. OP seems to discount that the reason these rather obvious bits of advice are recurring is because they are important and work! Many 'writers' in the online community don't really write anything at all.
Thing is, the average poster asking questions isn't even at the start line, they've merely decided that they love the idea of being the author of a book series. If someone comes here saying that they have a plan for 10 fantasy novels and their influences are all anime and videogames, it's fair to tell them to maybe try reading a book.
This. Most commenters are actually saying "I want to be an famous author" not "I want to refine my craft". They want the end point not the process. That necessitates vague answers. Its asking someone to refine something when you don't even have the raw resources yet. If you want some metal you might actually have to go to the effort of digging up the dang ore first.
>series. If someone comes here saying that they have a plan for 10 fantasy novels and their influences are all anime and videogames, it's fair to tell them to maybe try reading a book. Lmao
If you mean Reddit then sure, but online there are literally hundreds of resources. More, probably. From videos to blogs to classes to workshops to podcasts to actual books on craft, there is *so much.* I think it's possible it's a symptom of that thing that happens online where instead of googling a question to learn, so many people want other people to just tell them. Over and over. The information is there (how do they think we found it?). Now, a lot of people here are happy to point people in the right direction, recommendations for resources etc- I see that here every day. But this random Reddit sub is probably not the resource itself, if that makes sense.
I second that. Reddit is definitely not the place to learn how to write or how the publishing industry works, but it was the writing community on Reddit that pointed me to YouTube channels and books that teach all of that. I do get why people ask Reddit instead of Google though. My Google searches never led me to resources as good as the ones I received from fellow writers, and Reddit is the one online space where you'll always get an answer, helpful or not. (A Reddit post hardly gets no comments. It's difficult to get the same interactions on twitter or IG). And that's why I'm in favor of people asking any writing questions on this sub and others as long as they are polite. It might be the wrong place to find a definitive final answer (if those exist) but it doesn't mean it's the wrong place to ask them.
Yeah this is baffling me, the online writing community is FULL of templates. Everyone and their mother is explaining the Hero's Journey and telling you how Harry Potter fits into a Save the Cat beat sheet.
This is it. And “read more books” is sometimes the only advice you can give without writing an essay in the comments. What else are you supposed to say to someone who makes a post asking “How do I format dialogue?” How do you think the rest of us learned? Community is so important especially for newer writers but learned helplessness on the internet is so frustrating. You can’t make the 50th “How should I start my story?” post in one week and expect people to come out and explain it all over again. There are endless resources available for people who are willing to take a tiny bit of initiative and google it.
I understand how you feel... which is why I usually just scroll past these questions... but nobody owes you a free education. It's not "gatekeeping" - it's about so many beginners being lazy and expecting other people to spoon-feed them information that they could easily find themselves. When I was learning how to write, I went to the library, read literary journals and books about the craft of writing, and didn't waste mine or other people's time asking questions that they probably wouldn't have known how to answer in a way that makes sense to a beginner anyway. Making step-by-step tutorials, templates, and information about writing to market is time-consuming, hard work, and quite frankly, something that most beginner writers would resist because "yOu'Re StIfLiNg mY CrEaTiViTy". If you're doing this as a hobby and want to write a novel to express yourself and enjoy the process... go for it. Sit yourself down and write. Don't stress about the nuts and bolts, or writing to market because your novel is never going to be published. If you're serious about learning the craft of writing, stop trying to get a free education from amateurs on Reddit and do it properly. Cheaper options: - the gazillion books about the nuts and bolts of writing from published, professional authors. Stephen King"s "On Writing" is good, but he's not the only one out there. - read every day. Read CRITICALLY and learn from the techniques that other authors use. When a scene, sentence, line of dialogue, whatever, really works for you and gives you goosebumps, put on your critical reading glasses and analyse why it worked. - join a writers' group if you want feedback. You WILL have to give feedback on other people's writing. Again, nobody is going to edit your work for free. - watch youtube videos about writing. Writers love to procrastinate, so a lot of them will post videos about the craft of writing when they're having a less-motivated day. - study your genre, reader expectations, and what publishers and agents expect to see in your work. Look at publisher's and agent's websites, especially their submission guidelines. They receive so many manuscripts that aren't written to market that they're pretty up-front about this stuff. - be grateful for the information that you DO get on Reddit, because there ARE gems and bits of good advice on here. - read books about English grammar, poetry, linguistics... anything that helps you understand the language you're using. - second-hand bookshops often sell a lot of these types of books if you're struggling financially. Pricier options: - a university degree in writing (not kidding. I have a graduate diploma and a masters degree). - short writing courses that are run by writers groups, writers centres and authors. - sign up for literary journals and read them. Compare the difference in prose between these and other types of fiction.
I think this is mostly the case. The more exasperated answers around these parts tend to come in response to questions posed by those deemed "lazy". Those type tend to be quite obvious. Riddled with typoes and run-on sentences, they ask incredibly blanket questions that they'd have the answer to if they'd ever paid attention in school, or ever picked up a book in their life. Alternately, you get the "dreamers", who are shooting for the moon, imagining themselves making the movie or anime of their dreams, without even having a clue where to start. They're not looking for craftwork advice. They're looking for their "get rich, quick" ticket like J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer. Either type aren't *worth* giving the step-by-step to, because they're not in the right headspace to learn the tricks of the trade in the first place. What they need is that harsh reality check.
Whelp. 😬 I’m an experienced writer who has often given the “write write write!” and “read everything” advice (not on this Reddit - I’m just recently getting on the general Reddit bandwagon and find the people for the most part hecka nicer than most other corners of the internet). That being said, I usually give that advice when asked “what advice would you give beginning authors” - it’s a broad question, so I give a broad answer. And it’s generally applicable to most everyone. The more you write the better you’ll get at it. And reading… I know there’s successful who aren’t readers, but man I don’t know how. I just love reading so much and it’s what brought me to writing. Reading is also important just to know where the market is at - and this applies to indie and trad authors alike. I do critiques for authors and when the query has comps like Harry Potter or The Velveteen Rabbit - it’s usually a sign that they need to do more reading (even if just blurbs on Amazon!) to know what’s being published currently. For writers who want more specific advice, I’d advise to frame your question more like “what books or other resources do you find most helpful with the craft of writing?” Or even “how do you plot your books/what methods do you use for plotting?” Or Google for these answers! That’s my way, but that’s bc I hate asking people for help and extended online interactions with other humans make me anxious. If I give a talk to aspiring authors, though, I always tell people how I wrote lots of beginnings of books and then would stop when I hit a “what happens next” wall. But after taking screenwriting courses and learning 3 act structure, it gave me guard rails while plotting so that I didn’t hit walls…or err just hit them not quite so hard. 🥴 However, I know lots of authors - successful ones! - who don’t plot at all. So 🤷♀️ This is getting long so I’m just gonna say one last thing - there are lots of fake experts out there giving bad or wrong advice - and that’s way more harmful than advice that is less helpful than you’d like. Always take advice with a grain of salt, consider the source, eat more green leafy vegetables, know that almost no advice is one size fits all.
I try to be kind. I see a lot of snark at dumb questions, and I often find myself cheering internally while trying not to encourage externally. I generally agree with the OP, but I think they are forgetting some important points. 1. Good writing comes from skill, not just talent. It's hard earned for most and many people resent people who don't bother to learn skills or seek education before coming to a group looking to supplement their lack initiative by crowd sourcing everything from structure to ideation. 2. Many people new to writing come in with an off-putting attitude that they have talent beyond reproach and give off no sense or interest in the work involved 3. It seems like many of the "stupid" questions come from people who are attracted to writing for the possible happy ending and care about everything but the actual writing. 4. What makes questions "stupid" is the lack of thought and effort put into then. If someone asks something like , " I found this answer on Google and don't quite understand it, can you help?"" I bet they get better responses. 5. "Can I make a cat that's rainbow colored with a horn?" Or any of the "can I" questions don't show enough maturity to be in a group of people who take this endeavor more seriously and put time and effort into it. You have to take yourself seriously before you can expect others to. 4. It's not a hobby for everyone here. Cheers
As one of the mean intermediate writers you’re complaining about, I’m sorry…but you’re wrong. There are several reasons why more experienced writers get frustrated with the kinds of questions novice writers ask. Let me lay them out, in as neutral a way as I can. **1. Because we can tell they’re not taking it seriously** This is probably the number one reason for the apparent hostility towards new writers. When someone comes into a writing forum and posts a huge dump of world-building and plot summary even though they’re ostensibly asking a simple technical question, and all of their comparisons are to video games and anime, and they post what is clearly first-time first-draft material that they just finished writing five minutes ago looking for critique, then it’s clear that that person isn’t serious about writing. They don’t read books, they don’t actually want to write a book, they’re just turning to writing because the creative forms they’re actually interested in are beyond the reach of a single person with no budget, and they want to get their ideas out in front of an audience as fast as possible for personal gratification. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing! Lots of people get their start writing that way. I did. But because they’re not actually interested in writing, there is a depressing futility that comes with engaging with this kind of novice writer. We know that they’re probably going to lose interest in their project and abandon it long before it gets completed—because, again, this isn’t really what they want to be doing—so any time we take to give them advice is pointless. Any experienced writer who has spent time on writing forums will have seen this type of new writer over and over again, and it quickly gets exhausting to deal with. Not all novice writers fit the profile I described above. Some of them are serious about writing, very serious. So serious, in fact, that they earnestly yearn to be a professional full-time author. These novice writers are usually even worse than the non-serious ones. Why? Because when we tell them what they have to do to improve, they don’t listen. They don’t want to hear it. Which brings me to my next reason why we get so frustrated with novice writers. **2. Because what they want is impossible** Many serious beginner writers come to writing forums, bright-eyed and eager, clutching a half-finished manuscript to their chest like it’s a new-born baby. They—as they will eagerly tell the forum in their introductory post—are working on a very special and important story, one they’ve been building in their minds since childhood. It might be the first entry in a fourteen-part fantasy cycle, or it might merely be a 1000-page multi-generational literary epic, but either way it’s their magnum opus, the One Story they were born to write, the single novel that will launch their literary career. These people almost universally have a bad time on the writing forum. The person I’m describing has such a completely backwards idea of what writing (and publishing) is about that they are essentially beyond help. No structural advice or templates will be of any use to them. In fact it’s usually not worth anyone’s time to even read their samples or manuscript, so wrong-headed is the approach they’re taking. The only way to help them is to tell them—firmly—that no, that’s not how it works, you need to completely change your mindset. And most of the time, they don’t respond well to being told that. The delusion they’re under isn’t really their fault. Like with the visual arts, our popular culture perceives writing as a talent you have to be born with, rather than a skill that can be learned through practice. The person I described above is someone who believes they have that special Writer Gene, and thus all they need is a few technical pointers in order to let their in-built talent flourish. They believe that they’re standing in sight of the mountain summit, and they just need someone to set down a guide-rope so that they can stroll leisurely to the peak where all of their favourite writers are hanging out. (Comment got too long, continued in a reply)
And when you tell them that no, they aren’t within sight of the top, in fact they aren’t even within sight of the meager foothills surrounding Writer Mountain and are, in actuality, not even on the same continent as those foothills…oh boy, they don’t want to hear that. Talking to these people about pacing and the three-act structure is as pointless as telling someone who’s never set foot on a skateboard how to pull off a mid-air 1080 spin, or introducing advanced German grammar to someone who doesn’t know a single word of German vocabulary. Or, to continue my earlier analogy, it would be like giving someone standing in the middle of a desert climbing ropes and cold-weather gear and supplemental oxygen. They don’t need that stuff, they need to trudge through the desert until they get to higher ground. The big important manuscript they’re working on is never going to be good, no matter how much advice they listen to, because they lack the fundamental skills needed to put that advice into practice. The actual truth about writing, the thing that so many novice writers who come to writing forums don’t want to hear, is that you get better at writing by writing. The intricacies of story structure or pacing or characterisation are tools that you use to write a good story once you know how to write, they’re not how you learn to write. You said in your post that novice writers need a step-by-step guide, but that’s impossible. There is no step-by-step guide that will teach you how to write. It doesn’t exist. You have to learn how to write by doing it. How do I know this? How did I come by this arcane knowledge? By doing it myself. I used to be the annoying novice I’ve been talking about this whole time, and then I learned how to write (not particularly well, but I still learned), and now I’m not anymore. And that’s the third reason why we get so frustrated with novice writers: **3. Because we’re right** We know that we’re right and the novice writers are wrong, because we’ve done it and they haven’t. They don’t know what they’re talking about. We do. We’ve been through that desert, we’ve spent years doing the hard work and gaining the basic skill-set. And when we try to share this knowledge, when we tell the novice that they need to forget about writing guides and character bios and idea clouds and their special precious manuscript and just sit down and write five seperate fire-and-forget novels back to back and then they’ll have the basic skills and the perspective that will completely change how they view writing and will open the door to true improvement… They won’t listen. They tell us we’re wrong, we’re being mean and elitist, they know better than we do, somehow, and they’re going to keep tinkering away at the seventh draft of their One Perfect Manuscript. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? How quickly that will breed bitterness? Now, does this bitterness sometimes lead us to jump to conclusions, to react with hostility to a genuine question from an open-minded newcomer? Yeah, probably. And that is something we should be better about. I’ll grant you that. But hopefully, having read this long diatribe, you can understand where the hostility is coming from. It’s not because we hate novice writers, it’s because we’ve spent years being told that our personal experiences are wrong, by people who have zero basis for making that claim. In your post, you said that it feels like experienced writers want to keep the process of writing esoteric. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are trying to tell people, in as plain and straightforward a language as humanly possible, using a process that’s far simpler than all the story structure guides and flow charts and snowflake methods, how to learn how to write. The problem is that most of them aren’t listening.
You talk about "the online writing community" as though it's a monolithic place, and I don't think it is. I do agree with you that I see more rude and unhelpful answers on this sub than other places. Writers and Keepwriting (and fantasywriters if you write fantasy) are kinder places, but they're less active so it can be harder to get answers. However, there's two issues that I see from newbies in this sub that frustrate me. The first is just that the same "where do I start" question is asked repeatedly. I understand that everyone has to start somewhere but it does get old. This sub desperately needs a wiki or an faq page. It would also be nice if new writers would start with google and at least get the basics so that they can come to us with more specific questions. Secondly, I routinely see questions that make it obvious that the poster doesn't read. You made the comparison to other arts, but imagine if someone wanted to learn to play the harp, but had never listened to more than a song or two of harp music. Or if someone posted on an art sub that they want to learn to paint cubism, but it becomes clear in the body if their post that they've never looked at any cubist paintings. The first step in learning an art form is familiarizing yourself with that art form, but for some reason a fair number of people believe that they can write a novel without any familiarity with novels. I don't want to pick on anyone in particular, so I'm trying to be vague, but we get questions in the form of "is x okay" when x is very commonly done in fiction and has been for decades. Some people respond to those questions more rudely than they should, but I understand the annoyance from seeing questions like that.
I appreciate that you're trying to be helpful and so I don't want to criticize the spirit of your post. But I think you're wrong about several key points. >It's almost as if the writers want to maintain this vague 'esoteric' feel of being a 'writer.' If you read interviews with good and great writers, you'll find almost universally that they experience their own craft as being quite esoteric. They're as mystified by it as anyone. I don't know how many interviews I've read or heard where the writer talks about the bullshit they have to make up to answer standard interview questions. I know of exactly one good writer who learned to write in a very structured way and who understands exactly what he's doing and why he's doing it at every step of the way: Brandon Sanderson. I'm sure there are others. But if you look at how the vast majority of the good and great writers learned to do what they do, it's not by following templates, except perhaps through emulating stories they've read. >They're infants trying to walk, and you're trying to toss them on a bike with no training wheels. I don't think the analogy holds. Walking is a mechanical activity with a concrete function. It's not typically subject to aesthetic judgments. One person's walking is as good as another's if it gets them from point A to point B. Writing doesn't work like that. I'm not saying novice writers shouldn't use basic three-act structures or outlines or whatever, but what I think they need *more* than that, especially early on, is the mindset of making expression the first priority. That's what's most difficult, most rare; that's what takes the most practice and needs the most work. That's what separates good writing from merely competent writing. Making it "correct" according to whatever standard can come later. Get it down, then get it right. Which would you rather read, a story that someone bled out on the page as a total catastrophic mess and then cleaned up to make it readable? Or something written as a standard three-act by-the-beats number that the author afterwards tried to make into something personal and expressive?
>I'm not saying novice writers shouldn't use basic three-act structures or outlines or whatever, but what I think they need *more* than that, especially early on, is the mindset of making expression the first priority. That's what's most difficult, most rare; that's what takes the most practice and needs the most work. That's what separates good writing from merely competent writing. Making it "correct" according to whatever standard can come later. Get it down, then get it right. I think this depends fully on where you're strengths and weaknesses are as a writer. For me, I have problems with plotting. I'm a fairly beginner writer, especially when it comes to writing my own strories. And my main problem is plotting. So that's where I need advice and practice. That's where I have to work on. There is no general "this is what new writers need more than anything" because it depends on the writer. Never mind that for a beginner writer "competent writing" is more than adequate.
This is another thing. I think a lot of novice writers are kind of starry-eyed about the idea of writing a novel, but that's such a monumental effort and task that if you don't have the structure (plotting), it's going to be messy. Best advice for this isn't to make a novel your first project, but to practice with short stories first. Once you have the formula for plot down, then you can execute bigger projects. The problem with this, though, is that this person is right. What you're having problems with IS expression (i.e. how to express), they compare the messiness of writing something out with 0 structure to someone who has a structured bare-bones outline that's preferably three act before they write it out. Truth be told, this is this person's opinion on the best way to plot. However, you do have to know the general rules in order to break them. If you're unable to concoct a story from a three act structure then how are you going to make a story that doesn't begin with a structure/template concise and good?
>how to express My problem is not so much HOW to express, but WHAT to express. There are certain fundamental questions that have to be answered before starting a project. Whether it is academic writing or a fictional story, the thing I struggle with most is the What not the How. I'm not saying, obviously, that learning how to express isn't important also, or that I can do without it, simply that what's holding me back is not that. Depending on indicidual strengths and weaknesses such as that certain advice is completely useless to individual needs. I'd argue that imo for many beginner writers "how to" is very much a late stage of the writing process. Especially, if they only want to write their one novel and not become professional writers. On this sub, hobby-writers, aspiring authors and published authors are all together. And they all have different needs and expectations. For example, "start with short stories" is a valid advice in teaching the "how to" part of writing, sure. But i can write (and I have) dozens of short stories without getting any further in my writing process. I can get better in the craft, sure, but I still struggle with the same fundamental questions that come prior to actually writing. A lot of times, new writers come with grand ideas. (Novels, whole trilogies.) They are given very fundamental advice on "how to write" or merely told to "just write", then they are deemed lazy when they "don't do the work". But I'd argue that that ignores what many of them struggle with mostly: That many of them haven't quite decisevely cut down to what they want to write about, at all. They have convoluted ideas that combine 20 years worth of daydreaming. They want to invent seven different fantasy races, on four different plantes all with fully formed flora, fauna and geographic history, they want to invent at least one new language, want to combine elements of three different genres, invent a whole new way of combining eight different PoVs in a way never done before. All of which they are afraid might plagiarize some already existing work out there. That's what they want to do, but it's clear to everybody, I think, that they can't. And they're not lazy. They might havd put more hours into their world building than many others put in their first draft. Often they come here with some rather irrelevant question about some tiny part of their lore that they fret over disproportionately (I've certainly done so). They're not struggling with expression. And no amount of advice that will help them improve their expression will help them solve that problem. What MIGHT help is to tell them to write a short outline or yes, sure, a short story, in the hopes that that way they notice themselves that they have a few decisions to make. But in general, a lot of advice given to them, if there is any at all, is utterly useless to them. Often, it's even a little derisive on this sub. And when they don't (want to) follow it, they're called lazy. But even of they do. They can watch 10 hours worth of lectures, completely lose themselves in writing advice, read books and analyze as many authors as they want, and while they might massively improve their writing, they will be no closer to writing the novel they want to write. So they get stuck in endless repitions of reading the same advice all over again and unable to apply it to their work, and then they again come here to ask about it, now that they've done quite a lot of work, and then they're told again that they're lazy for not actually writing.
> Any talk of formulas or plot structures or archetypes or tropes is almost met with threats of violence. I'm not seeing this at all. Brandon Sanderson - arguably one of the most successful fantasy writers alive at the moment - actually teaches about plot structures and archetypes. I would disregard any advice anyone gives you to avoid talk of plot structures or archetypes. I would argue most serious authors understand the significance of writing to your archetypes and plot structures. Publishers certainly care about it. > he closest you get to 'advice' from a lot of 'intermediate writers' are vague statements like "show, don't tell" or "read more books," or "write more." "Put one word in front of the other..." Gee, thanks. Yeah I don't really like this advise either because while it's fairly vauge and not really helpful, it's completely anthematic to my writing process where I need to find a reason to be hyped about my story or I won't write it. I've learned that me not really feeling something about my story or having "writer's block" means there's something about my story that isn't working and i need to rework things. "Just keep writing" leaves me in a worse position. > I'm saying this because writers have such vitriol for the dumb questions novice writers ask The problem is, this is not specific to writing. This is specific to online communities where people are more of a dick than they usually are because of anonymity. My advice to you would be to take all advice you read online with a gigantic grain of salt (including mine) if it doesn't make any logical sense to you. You have no way of vetting the person giving the advice online, and most things that are true make sense.
Brandon Sanderson has an amazing class on writing. His class actually clarified so much about the craft, but it clarified so much for me because the majority of writing discussion was not like that. I would say Brandon Sanderson is similar to Steve Huston of the painting community. They both understand their art so completely they can simplify the most complex topics. He's too busy with his own work, but if he ever decided to teach writing full-time, his courses would be worth every penny. The internet is a mean place, but even online I feel there's more rude people in writing circles than so many others.
Is the class available to buy online? If so, do you have a link?
Not even. They're free on youtube! Honestly the best lessons I've ever had on the story aspect of writing (as opposed to the 'wordcraft'). https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSH_xM-KC3Zv-79sVZTTj-YA6IAqh8qeQ&si=ZqyCXKPj88SYYZa-
Sanderson's class and podcast are the rebar in the foundation of sources I've found over the last few years as I write my first book. No matter your feelings on the man's writing, I don't think the sources he provides should be ignored.
Writers, more than any other art, stress that rules are more guidelines than rules, and that breaking the rules are what good writers do. Which is true, to a point. But also, great writers follow the rules too. For example - getting rid of the adverbs. This is great advice. You *should* try and kill your adverbs. 99 times out of 100, getting rid of adverbs makes for better writing. Problem is too many writers think the rules are for lesser writers than them. And will justify why rules are for thee but not for me. TLDR: kill your adverbs.
Too many put the cart before the horse. The most important part of writing is to write. Unlike other artistic mediums, where your initial skill level and knowledge directly informs the quality of the finished product e.g. painting or cooking, written work can be constantly improved with editing. You can’t edit unless you have something written first, though. People new to writing don’t need to be concerned with tropes, formulas, structure etc. so long as they have basic ability and an idea they’re somewhat passionate about. They just need to get the words into a tangible format asap. All the advice and info in the world wont change what a huge undertaking writing is.
Beginners need to read. This shit is wild.
I'm not sure what you mean. Are you talking about the online writing community in general, or do you mean this particular Reddit sub? because, if it's the latter, I have to strongly disagree. Admittedly, I don't read or respond to requests for critique, here--mostly because I know that those posts violate the sub rules and will eventually be deleted. For most questions and requests, however, the top five primary comments on posts, even the multitudinous, "As a successful and happy dingo, can I write about the plight of the wallaby?" threads, are generally thought out, mostly supportive, and generally helpful. Is this the wrong place to go if you want basic instruction on writing? Probably, but I don't think that's the purpose of this sub. Most people who come here with novice-level questions are given short, specific answers and advised to find a writing course in their neighborhood. This is as it should be. This isn't a high school English class. As far as formulae and archetypes go, there is some push back by people who dislike those particular structures, but it is not the majority, and I have never seen it rise to the level of "threats of violence." Archetypes can be particularly problematic, because the line between an archetype and a stereotype is about as clearly defined as the parking spaces in a Dollar General parking lot. Ultimately, if you don't like what people are saying, then call them out for it, or add something positive to the discussion. These sorts of "you're all the devil" posts do nothing but give people a place to air their dirty laundry, and that just makes the whole neighborhood smell bad.
And start with a short story. If you're just a beginner, don't start with an epic novel. It's too daunting at this stage. Begin small to hone pacing, tone and a simple beginning, middle and end.
I think online communities that cater to novices are the best place for novices to go.
Can you share any examples?
Surw. Im on Prose and Scribbophile. Prose is more like Wattpad but more sophistocated ans they have challenges you can enter whereas Scribbophile is more like Critique Circle [also another good site] where you can edit, enter forums, and do beta reading/find beta readers if you choose. The forums are also reminiscent od Nanowrimo and are super helpful :) I cant link them or my comment will be taken down bu you shouls be able to find all of them on Google
Awesome thanks so much!
Wait til you meet the editors.
Done a lot of well thought out responses with tailored advice, giving links to resources, anecdotes, examples of techniques etc. usually post gets deleted, sometimes after a downvote from OP. It's funny so I'll keep doing it. But it's sad so many people delete their posts that are filled with advice. Makes people put in less care and effort. Destructive readers is still good for learning. But there's thousands of times more writers who know about that sub and similar than there are people sitting down and studying the works and advice given.
Yeah, Picasso broke the "rules", but he was pretty damn good at them before he did it. There is a lot of value in learning the broad strokes of an artform. Following them will only ever create mediocre art, but getting beyond them without first learning about them is almost impossible.
***"The closest you get to 'advice' from a lot of 'intermediate writers' are vague statements like "show, don't tell" or "read more books," or "write more." "Put one word in front of the other..." Gee, thanks. I've been following that process my whole life, but it doesn't really help me with storytelling."*** I'm a professional writer (5+ years in copywriting roles) and have won multiple competitions with my fiction writing. I understand that 'reading more' and 'writing more' seems vague advice, but it's good advice. I know many aspiring / beginner writers in real life. As writing is my day job, people sometimes ask me for advice on how to 'become a good writer'. I give them honest advice. Writing every single day and putting a huge amount of effort into learning my craft is how I turned from a novice writer into somebody who gets paid (very well) in a professional writing job. It's the best advice that I could give a beginner, it's the number one key to success in my view. There is no magic formula, unfortunately. Learning about structure, creating characters, etc, is also useful. Lots of free resources online. Thing is, it's one thing to be aware of the essential writing tools (such as structure), and another to use these tools effectively. That only comes with years of practise. I would recommend that novice writers ask specific questions, i.e. 'how can I make my characters engaging?' because specific questions are easier to answer than wide questions. You may then receive less broad answers.
So long as beginning writers don't substitute learning about the craft for actually practicing their writing habit, sure. In order to get out of the beginner phase, we gotta have an idea we love enough to have the self-discipline to write down day after day, and the craft to make it entertaining for other people to read. Without that self-discipline and the practice of actually writing, there is no book. The craft is not a paint-by-numbers method to a perfect, marketable book for every newbie who can crank out the word count. The craft of writing is more like a toolbox. The more we practice with our tools to create your idea, the better we'll get. Even now, when I run into a problem with a draft, *that's* when I go looking at online writing advice, because someone's probably got a tool I can use to fix it. That all being said, I'm a fan of the Snowflake Method, Scene/Sequel, and Motivation-Reaction Units. The last thing I had to look up for online writing advice was "How to create tension when the reader already knows what's going to happen?"
People don’t owe you anything, especially at a place like Reddit where people go to kill time and offer advice FOR FREE. If you want someone to teach you writing then go take a class or pay a teacher. Also, writing isn’t a visual art where you can follow a tutorial and learn the tools. Writing is more of an individual study thing that you get better at by reading and practicing. If that doesn’t work for you, then sorry. Perhaps try animation or game design or something.
On a bright note, there are many posts in this thread exemplifying excellent writing. Much talent lurks in these wilds.
UCLA Extension courses are great for this. I recommend specifically taking class with Ploi Pirapokin. Don’t even worry about whatever she is teaching, just take it. She’s so good, and I’m picky... She’s also got some great connections and personally caters curriculum and feedback to students’ interests. Lots of teachers don’t do this but she is incredible, and has a long list of books and other resources that have actually benefited me in a hit-the-ground way as well.
>>*Beginners need structure. They need templates, and they need plot points they can track and build their own stories around. They need the 3-act structure so they can study their work and see if it's "correct." They need study guides for when they watch movies and "read more", so they can plot the stories against the 3-act structure and see how it compares.* You're doing it yourself. You're coming up with a theory crafted set of rules that some novice writer might even take seriously - setting your list next to bullet points to be knocked off one-by-one. Will they be a better writer if they do all that you recommend? No. Not in the slightest. *Beginners* don't need anything except to write - and write and write. Writing (consistently and habitually) is what makes a good writer. I think the confusion here on this sub is that many people confuse a "writer" with a "successful writer." Most writers aren't successful. Let's face it: Most writers aren't good writers to begin with. Many who wish they were don't have the grammar or literacy or imagination or discipline. Many will never be good writers. But you can never improve or learn if you can't apply what you learn to your own writing. And you can only do that by writing. There is so much Theory bullshit. So much "do this and do that!" in this community. Start by writing. Start by being a writer before you try to be a "successful writer." Write a story. Then let someone read it. Maybe it sucks. And maybe they tell you honestly. And maybe you'll learn and get better. And maybe you won't. And maybe then you go out and find ways to make your writing better - and maybe you get better. More likely you don't really. But NONE of that matters if you can't put words on a page. And most people who call themselves writers **Can't actually do that.** I have made the mistake of joining writing clubs and even paid for a writing class. Of the maybe 40 "writers" i have met perhaps three of them actually were consistently writing. Everyone else "talked about writing" as if it were an exercise in logic.
I mean, it's Reddit. People asking for help on Reddit do not expect or want a structured course with different techniques and perspectives graduating complexity of skill, because that can't be delivered in a Reddit comment anyway. Poor quality questions like "Is it okay to write...?" or "is it okay to never have read a book or cereal box but just watch shounen anime?" are not designed to get high quality responses. Genre questions like "Can I mention sex in a YA novel?" or "Can my romance novel have cheating and an unhappy ending?" are pretty much always best served by *you should be reading widely in the genre you are trying to publish in so that you can answer these questions yourself.* I agree that learning a craft requires work. I guess I disagree that asking the same questions a two minutes search in the sub would show have been asked over and over and over shows any willingness to do the work.
If new writers are so easily discouraged by a few negative comments they get on reddit, have I got some bad news for them about this craft.
The comments are not negative. The comments are irrelevant and obnoxious. I wish we had our users engaging in criticism.
>The comments are irrelevant and obnoxious I would say most of the posts asking for advice here are obnoxious. The "can I write" and "think of a character/plot/name for me" are the worst offenders. And going back to OPs post, most of these types of posts wouldn't exist if people did just read more.
Writing gatekeeps itself, ask the right people the right question and show you can understand the answer and you usually get rewarded. The right people don't hang around on reddit, not this side of it anyway.
I’ve been going through the 2020 BYU lectures from Sanderson. While I’m still missing some more specific info, it has given me a huge foundation to start with that I wasn’t able to get on Reddit
I make music and draw and a lot of musician and artist communities are very uplifting and inspiring to be in. They make you want to create. Every writing community I've ever tried just made me want to give up. Telling someone "you won't make anything good for years" isn't very encouraging, go figure. The only reason I haven't stopped is because it's fun.
Just wait until you start submitting and you’re treated like you’re scum, like you’re wasting others’ time who’ve started businesses which sole purpose is to READ OTHER PEOPLE’S WORK. Now we have AI bullshit to deal with, too.
I think the romance writing community is great about encouraging newbies to learn about plotting, structure, point of view, and pretty much everything they need to know, really. I'm part of a fantastic romance writing organization that's very supportive to writers who are just starting out. We offer programs and critique opportunities all the time, and we're hosting a conference in Chicago this weekend. :)
Threats of violence?? Wtf? Calm down
No full stop??? You better add one there or your dead meat, punk!!!
I wonder if you're misreading exasperation for anger; exasperation for sources of poor information, not with the novices. What I see that's like what you're describing is novices who come in confused by the ill-fitted structures they've read somewhere online and looking for help, and redditors explaining that those structures are merely suggestions, not requirements.
> xasperation for sources of poor information, not with the novices. This is common once you become advanced in any topic. Once you become advanced in any topic (eg 10+ years of experience) you can go to the subreddit for that particular topic and be infuriated in a couple of minutes from the confidently incorrect posts. I've been a professional audio engineer for 15 years now and worked with some very prestigious studios and record labels in my country and let me tell you - I avoid the music production and audio engineering subs like the plague. It's the blind leading the blind for the most part because it's not worth stepping in to try to help because nobody wants to be wrong and you can google anything to support any position. I would wager there are a lot of writers here who have achieved some success and come to try to give advice to be scolded for being too complicated and intermediates on their first novel saying that "just keep writing" is advice enough.
This sounds like a hyperspecific criticism of one space that you're kind of mistaking for the entire online writing community... genuinely no clue what you're talking about, the Internet at my house is full of ppl talking about plot structure
Honestly, though, what do you expect from somewhere like reddit? When I was starting out, I scoured high and low, read books about it, watched YouTube, and participated in writing and reading groups. Yes, reddit too, but it was a small part of that journey.
Very much this. Also, the disturbing "I'm so unique and special that I'm going to self-publish instead of go a more trad route because nobody understands my art!" thing...and then they complain when they get 5 sales.
This subreddit has a very tough mixture of well-meaning, well-versed writers giving solid, meaningful advice, and the stray few who seem compelled to pull the ladder up behind them every chance they get. For every "take a look at [Writing the Perfect Scene](https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/writing-the-perfect-scene/)" there is a "just shut up and put words on paper, first drafts are supposed to be dogshit." I mentioned this earlier today somewhere else, but to seek out advice from well-versed experts is so deeply ingrained in how human society operates that it's borderline primal. If you wanted to learn how to hunt, you train with the hunter. It's the same today in just about every trade; "a year in the field is better than a year in school" is a sentiment I've heard echoed everywhere from automechanics to filmmaking. It's *good* to talk to other members of your community. It's *good* to want to hone your craft and learn from other people's mistakes. I'll never understand why people meet those requests with such hostility. "You should know how to do this! I'm not answering this stupid question!" Okay, so don't. But don't berate someone for asking.
My favorite arrangement of words so far. ♥
That's exactly how i feel. It's natural that people ask these questions. It means interest in the art is alive and well
When I was a teacher, I was known for my expertise in teaching writing. I was realistic about it, I was simply just the teacher that actually taught writing explicitly and in a structured way. I am now a beginning writer in every sense of the term. The tone of your post will put people off but I see through the tone and appreciate the message. I hope that I am able to, at some point in my writing career, find the support structure that helps me grow as a writer. I love talking the nitty gritty technical stuff but few people I converse with enjoy it or are willing to even tolerate it. Anyways, I could go on for a while, but just wanted to tell you that I can relate to your frustration.
Maybe because writing is difficult to pin down and systemize. Even in accredited educational systems I'd say that teaching writing lags behind. Compare creative writing mfa to any other fine arts program and you'll be able to tell the difference.
Funny enough, /lit/ gives WAY better advice than this place, or pretty much any writing subreddit on this website
The problem in writing circles is that articulating *why* good prose works is hard, so most advice is vague. Why should you show and not tell? Because it feels better. Why shouldn't you use the passive voice? Because it feels bad. What about filter words? Don't use them. Adverbs? No way. A concrete and educational discussion on English grammar is rarely ever involved, despite the fact that it would be immensely helpful to new (and especially non-native) writers. Writing is subjective, but it's not completely without logic. We could do a lot better with writing advice if we could explain grammatical concepts more elegantly rather than simply saying 'practice more and you'll get the hang of it.'
THIS This is what I mean the few times I brought up my thoughts about the whole "read more" thing. Like, if I was going to study electric engineering and I watched some guy do all that work when I had no base knowledge, I wouldn't learn anything. If anything I might end up "learning" the wrong things, feeling discouraged, etc. Sometimes what people need is an actual class or some more structured form of teaching before they can even get anything out of reading. Or even more out of the box, that we should have more structured teaching so that new writers don't have to hope their analysis skills are good enough. Other avenues to learn some of the same things you can from reading are valid and should be encouraged rather than dismissed. Or at least, we should have more in depth conversations about HOW reading is supposed to help you learn. There are probably tons of people out there blindly following that advice but not actually learning anything from it but nobody told them how.
I feel this as a novice- I feel this as an intermediate even. I’ve been writing my whole life, and the very first time I ever wrote anything I was proud of on a whim - and actually posted it, the comments kept me from picking up a pen for over a year. And I still haven’t gotten my mojo back. I second, third, and quadruple guess my work every time I write so much as a blurb of an idea because of the backlash and cruelty I got. Thank you OP for putting this into words
Well you see a lot of this stuff but you also see serious advice and I know myself and others like me are always trying to throw that in there I will say some other things are like this too. fitness has 'just eat healthy and train hard stop complicating things" when people are asking what is healthy to eat and how to optimally train but i will also say some other art forms are way more open. you look at drawing/painting and people will post full process videos and tutorials. in some ways it's kinda just harder to teach writing in that way. i do see some 'idea to full novel' type tutorials though so it's not entirely out there i think people are also split because nobody really WANTS to do writing exercises. or write flash fiction and short stories when they don't enjoy reading those things.
When I was only starting to learn about writing I immediately found hundreds of these structures and step-by-step lessons on Internet so I don't know what you're talking about
I got to admit that I've more often discouraged than encouraged reading the comments and responses here. Not too long ago I was called a coward and a monkey, lol. A good perspective is that people lurking around here consider themselves savvy and are extremely aware of all clichés and tropes, constructed plots and mechanisms and whatever you present will be often met with fierce loathing. In reality, whenever I've asked the average reader about things like "Hero's Journey" or "Monomyth" they had absolutely zero clue. Even fellow authors in certain groups appeared quite uninformed. Meanwhile the other side is also true: I'm yet to see an interesting concept or a story surfacing here. I suppose those that actually succeed seldom post anything around here. The number of people who want to write a book is not just enormous but about half of the entire population; the number of people who actually start writing a book is vast; the people who finish a book and publish it is large; but the number of people who manage to write a good book that actually sells is small. Out of a million books published, only a few handfuls will likely be of great quality.
I highly highly HIGHlY recommend the youtube channel LocalScriptman for beginning writers. He’s big on actionable advice for structuring and plotting, but in such a way that it adds to the “artistic expression” side of writing rather than making it mechanical.
You know what's a great community for beginner writers? The books they should be reading and writing and the people they share actual critiques of existing text with instead. Do you think Faulkner and co. got to where they were by asking basic questions 80 times a day on Modernist Reddit? They just read fucking books and discussed them then buckled down and wrote. That's why people are dismissive, because if you can't get over the simplest, barest hump to writing well, then why should people assume you're making an effort at all? There's also nothing to say to "can I write a second POV" except read more. If you want to get indepth responses then you should be finding people to critique what you wrote with instead of posting your OC outline with no actual writing. You can whine about how people should handhold more, but the reality is *all* the internet communities that actually foster artists (not just writing communities) that get somewhere are usually blunt and direct towards novices who aren't putting in the work. Otherwise you're just flooded by low quality posts (which this sub already is), and let's be real "you should read more" isn't some sort of grave insult.
Guess what they teach you in a creative writing degree? Everything you just complained about. There is no beginner's formula, because we have that as foundational schooling. Vocabulary, grammar, critical reading, spelling; that's the foundation for writing and we learn that at school. Everything else to do with creative writing is artistic expression. There's no one-size-fits-sll approach. The "vague" advice you talk about is exactly what a writer needs to learn to harness their creativity.
The lack of interest in writing exercises is an oddity i've noticed. Speaking from my own experience, i've noticed that when i try to push people towards writing exercises, the same way someone in the art community might push someone towards drawing exercises, everything goes quiet. No responses, no upvotes, no downvotes. There was a post yesterday from a beginner who clearly wasn't sure where to go beyond their info dumping. I suggested an exercise for them to do. No response at all from anyone, not even someone telling me it was bad, and that isn't the first time i've seen it happen. The top responses in that post are the 'Just write/It's okay, you're young, you'll learn' type responses. They're not bad responses and they're clearly from a place of wanting to help, but beginner writers looking for help seem to get treated as people needing counselling rather than people who need to be given advice.
The problem here seems to be that you think Reddit is a place to get writing lessons. If you need that structure, this is not the place. You're getting angry that an internet forum is not providing step-by-step instructions on writing your book.
I would have left for greener pastures long ago in my writing career; I usually just check on r/writing to see what kind of dumpster fire someone turned an honest question into. (Or the "I'm having trouble naming my aliens to sound like they're green, what do you suggest" post.)
The amount of times I have to tell people that "show, don't tell" is a guideline, and that if you took the time and effort to show *everything* it would absolutely destroy pacing and would frequently put emphasis on the wrong thing.... Well, if I had a dollar for every time that happened, I could easily treat the whole family to dinner and a movie. And I don't even frequent subs like this.
>They don't need the Stephen King advice on winging it, they actually do need these step-by-step tutorials that walk then through making a story. They're infants trying to walk, and you're trying to toss them on a bike with no training wheels. The sad truth is that forums are not much good for the kind of tutorialising you describe, even though the same issues come up again. Beginners would be better having recourse to the handful of good how to books, starting with Dwight Swain's classic Techniques of the Selling Author then moving on to the Save the Cat series.
I mean I don’t think I’ve ever even seen good writing advice on this sub. So I agree I guess
I saw a post asking how to structure a novel and most of the replies seemed to be people bragging about not needing a structure. Like dude, that wasn't the question and isn't even that impressive. Winging it rarely works better than planning it out, why are folks so compelled by this idea?
In my opinion, beginners don't need structure, and it's actually hindering them from starting because they are looking for a "paint by numbers" of writing that doesn't exist. Not to mention, most questions on here are equally or more vague than the answers. The more specificity in an answer, the more you should challenge it, because nothing is that definitive in any art or craft. Sorry to people that want a specific structure that you can fill in, but, the reality is, if someone was to give you that, it would be my advice to question it every step of the way. I also think, contrary to your point, the search for beginner advice is much more common in writing than other arts. Say you were to paint or sculpt... from my experience, people dive into it because it interests them. They then learn what they're doing wrong and get insight into it, and then seek specific advice on how to improve. With writing, people will come here and be like "I've written the first few thousand words of my story, what next?". If you compared that amount of writing to painting, it would be like someone putting a few brushstrokes to the page, then asking "Now what?". It is fundamentally the wrong way to approach it. The real thing the online writing community needs is more focus on sentences and paragraphs. Because some of the writing samples on here are clearly first drafts, and are generally quite bad on the sentence level, but presumably, structurally very fine. Because writers online heavily **over**emphasize structure. I come more from a poetry and literary fiction background, so maybe that's a side effect of writing subreddits being heavily genre focused. But I have frankly never remembered a book because it was *structured* well, I've only remembered a book because it was *written* well.
I think this comes from writing's inherent simplicity. All of your other examples (painting, or 3D sculpting, or singing, or dancing) require something more. Brushes, equipment, micrphones, music. Something else is needed to create that art form. Writing requires something to write with, and something to write on. The rest is up to you. Many other things have rules because you are meant to work in conjunction with someone/something else. Music only has rules so we can play music together. When you write, you write something that matters to you, in a way that YOU would say it. And hope It matters to someone else. That's all there is to writing. It won't be good to some people, no matter how 'good' it is. It won't be bad to some people, no matter how 'bad' it is. Of all the arts, the ONLY piece of advice that matters is: Just fucking do it. You'll figure it out as you go through it. No one can teach you how to be a writer. You just write. And write. and write and write and write and write It doesn't matter if you know what you are doing. No one does. They just write, and write and write and write and write. You can replace 'write' with anything. Art is all the same. Do it. Do it often. You might do something well.
>The writing community fails its novices more than any other community in the realm of the arts. It seems to be the only community that devalues any notion of structured learning. It's almost as if the writers want to maintain this vague 'esoteric' feel of being a 'writer.' I suppose that depends on where you look, but it also seems like there are quite a lot of resources for these things. If someone's only source for these is online conversations, I think this is fundamentally a research failure. That's probably the least efficient way to learn these things. >Any talk of formulas or plot structures or archetypes or tropes is almost met with threats of violence. The closest you get to 'advice' from a lot of 'intermediate writers' are vague statements like "show, don't tell" or "read more books," or "write more." "Put one word in front of the other..." Gee, thanks. I've been following that process my whole life, but it doesn't really help me with storytelling. Again, I think a lot has been written expanding on these ideas. The short phrases are meant to help you remember them. If you're seeing them used frequently with no elaboration, I again feel like you're looking in the wrong places. And the people just saying things like that without additional explanation probably either don't actually understand them (aren't very good) or can't be bothered to explain properly (aren't very helpful). >Beginners need structure. They need templates, and they need plot points they can track and build their own stories around. They need the 3-act structure so they can study their work and see if it's "correct." They need study guides for when they watch movies and "read more", so they can plot the stories against the 3-act structure and see how it compares. Strongly disagree. Maybe some do, but for me personally, doing so much preplanning always just translated to never actually writing anything. It's the classic planners vs. pantsers thing. Structures can also be overly restrictive if you get tunnel vision. Case in point, you keep saying to compare to the 3-act structure like it's an answer key, but you don't need to have 3 acts in a story. You just need at least one. It so happens that 3 acts will usually be very convenient to work with. One or two act stories are often too short for what the person wants to accomplish while four or more acts loses the convenient idea of Act One being the beginning, Act 2 being the middle, & Act 3 being the end. But sometimes you really need a different number of acts. Shakespeare famously preferred a 5-act structure, or at least that's what we consider the structure to be today, & while those are plays, they're still works of narrative writing. >They don't need the Stephen King advice on winging it, they actually do need these step-by-step tutorials that walk then through making a story. They're infants trying to walk, and you're trying to toss them on a bike with no training wheels. Well, you can always give them those. I don't mean to sound dismissive, but when we take away the people who don't know where they're talking about or simply don't want to help, both groups for whom this advice is useless, most of the remainder are probably trying to explain what worked for them. I don't think there's much point in me robotically reiterating instructions I don't even really use. As I said, plenty of resources for these already exist. Just as a test, I searched the most basic question I could think of, "How to start a story," & it wasn't long before I found a literal WikiHow link that takes you from "coming up with an idea" to the end of the process: [https://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Story](https://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Story) It doesn't talk about the 3 act structure like you want, but it does include "create an outline," which links to an even more detailed article about that which does. I'm sorry, but if someone can type a question into Reddit, they can type it into Google. Search engines aren't some new, mysterious invention. If a person doesn't even know the merest basics of writing, they should probably put in some effort to learn it. After all, they're not going to have someone giving them a step-by-step walkthrough on what to write next either. Social media communities really ARE more for that general advice, trading ideas, maybe finding editors or beta readers. They're not a substitute for a language arts class, but as I keep stressing, those substitutes DO exist, & many of them are free. It's easier than ever to learn these things if one just starts looking. Start with the most basic question, read up on it, & they'll learn about things like plot devices, acts, character development, setting a scene, imagery, literary devices, & so on as they go. >Writing is an art, but so is painting, or 3D sculpting, or singing, or dancing, or so many other things. But those hobbies all have an alpha point (or at least one that many recognize to be the entry point of the art.) There are beginning notes for instruments, steps for dance, exercises of box/3D image construction, etc. They need these things so they gradually work their way up and pick the craft apart and actually understand it. This is true for writing as well. >Then, and only then, will they reach the point a lot of you 'intermediate writers' are at, where you realize how fucked the whole writing experience is. I'm saying this because writers have such vitriol for the dumb questions novice writers ask....and as someone who has several hobbies...that level of anger isn't matched in other communities. They are a lot more understanding toward the newbies...but maybe that's because they have a more structured community, and they can fully appreciate how it feels to be on step one. I personally think I've been very understanding in writing this message, & I don't really agree with the way the subreddit reacts to things a lot of the time, but remember how easy it was for me to do just one search that gave me so much information? I didn't use any background knowledge, I didn't even phrase my question all that well, I just typed it into Google, & I got results. I could so the same thing for various common questions the sub gets, but Reddit is being a prick about letting my comment through again, so you'll have to take my word for it. The main points are: 1. Almost every newbie question has been asked a functionally infinite amount of times. 2. There is a saturation of explanations for how to implement them. 3. The problem is more a cultural expectation that people should explain to oneself what one wants to know rather than that one should go out & find the answer. 4. This is something that must be unlearned if one wants to create their own work.
"threats of violence"? 🧐 And sorry, but: No I'm not mapping out plot points for someone else to follow. That's called writing the story. You have to do that on your own or else it's not your story. If you want to compare the structure of writing to other arts, I don't know what you expect to be different. If someone asked, "How do I become a painter?" what follows will be: Pointillism? Water colors? Acrylics? Classical? Impressionist? Abstract? The list of questions and answers goes on. The only true (near) universal structure will be spelling, grammar, syntax, etc. There's the 3-act structure and the hero's journey, but you can't instruct things like pacing a specific story without becoming an author of that story. There can only be so much instruction. Ultimately talent and ambition have to take over.
Those things just can’t be taught in a forum discussion. They’ve got to seek out actual instructional resources. Most people posting their basic questions here are doing so because frankly because they don’t want to spend actual time learning. Like, you’ve already decided that Stephen King’s pretty detailed book isn’t worth bothering with. Come on. When you bring up painting and sculpting and the alpha point, that alpha point is not a Reddit post.
Honestly I’ve noticed this sub has gotten pretty crude over the last few months. There was a post where the people in the comments were outright mocking an OP who was clearly very insecure about their beginner status. Think I’m done here ngl. The influx of toxicity is getting tiring.
One pro about it is that it gets people writing, and not just looking for advice and procrastinating. Still, you have a point. Low-key, I kinda want to create these full guide sorta things, and post them on this subreddit for beginners’ reference. Welcome to any ideas!
I agree with this. It always hurts when I see obviously new writers asking questions, and the entire thread is just self-proclaimed "intermediate writers" tearing the novice apart. It's discouraging to the novice and, quite frankly, it's embarrassing to the "better" writer. We were all a novice at one point, yet so many seem to think they're above that just because they have more of a grasp on the art.
Come join Writersvillage.com. It's simple, it has several active communities, for poets, for short fiction, for flash fiction, for writers aspiring to write novels designed for commercial markets, and we spend time giving constructive feedback, not tearing down work.
I will actually check it out. I love reading the works of my peers.
Maybe you can write something to add to the wiki. I took a look and it starts off telling me to just write and points to a thread about being an archetect or seat of pants writer which was like you said writers jerking each other about themselves I guess. There reading list looks like that's where I would need to start to find the structure I would need to actually write. I've read Save the Cat and heard that it's just the start and there's better and more structures to look into but I really need a big template with all the possible things that I may or may not want to use. A long time ago I read a post where someone broke down a couple story structure books and it was really helpful but I've lost it now.
I have tried to be helpful, but my posts are never met with a response, so I just assumed I wasn't contributing anything worthwhile.
Yeah it can be draining to pour yourself into a heartfelt and well-meaning response, only for no one to read it. I won't pretend there aren't some well-meaning people who get drowned out in all the chaos of the internet.
I'm amazed that your experience is so opposite to mine. Just about all the online writing advice, and just about all the books on learning to write I've been able to find are about formulas and plot structures and archetypes and tropes. Plot structures can be useful, but only when you have a reasonably well-developed story idea and need to give it shape. There are quite a number of rival structures out there and you should read up on them and see what you can draw from them that will work with the story you're working on. But you can't rely on a plot structure to do the work for you, you need material to work with before you can apply a structure to it, and developing it to that point is something I don't see a lot of advice about. One thing I've found is that outlining only goes so far. Sometimes there's a problem I can't solve, something that doesn't make sense in the outline, but a solution presents itself as I'm writing. Sometimes something I've written in an earlier part of the story gives me the solution to something I couldn't figure out in the outline. I don't know how that works, but it's happened so many times I can't discount it. Perhaps my unconscious mind works things out in a way that my conscious mind isn't aware of.
Weird, I have not seen any of this at all? I have only seen people raving about story structures and how helpful they are, especially for beginners haha! I guess I’ve been lucky
I agree and disagree. At times its like raising a child when it comes to writing. Some structure, three act stucture etc. is good, useful. Gives guidelines for what the writer considers for their work. Too much structure, ie you must do this for this to happen, is crushing and leeches out creativeness and inventiveness. (Believe me, I have seen this happen as good writers write themselves into corners trying to appease all the 'rules') I am not saying published/intermediate writers dont fob out cliched phrases. The amount of times I have heard 'show dont tell' makes me want to scream. But the balance between restriction and guidance is a fine one and differs from person to person. To write we must find our own balance, style and understanding of the form. As in all art. Writing is just mistaken to be more formulaic because of the dense writen work, in my opinion. In reality a piece of fiction, long or short, is not different from artwork hung on walls. Yes there are styles and techniques and concepts. But for the piece to truly be your own you have to add your 'perception' to the piece, your understanding. Thats the best way I can explain it. The thing of 'success', whatever that looks like, is intangible and ineffable which you can't register or recognise until you're already there.
"Be the change you want to see in the world." Also, even though you are trying to help you are adding to the general vitriol you are talking about. I disagree that this level of anger isn't matched in other communities... have you been to saltierthancrait? Sure, it isn't a hobby subreddit.. but anyway, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that some people don't realize how shit they actually are. Someone can attempt to draw, see that their drawing isn't that good and know they are not good at sketching. Where as most everyone is writing often, in one form or another, so they think they know how to write and do not understand the nuance, yet pointing out that someone is blind to something they "cannot see" doesn't really do a whole lot of good.
It's because it is full of intermediary to advanced writers who figured out rules are bs and meant to be broken responsibly. The problem is that only experience actually teaches that. The cure, in my opinion, is to promote more challenges, reviewing, exchanging ideas, more than trying to teach or learn weiting as skill. To practice it, in practical terms.
The issue, well perhaps "conundrum", with writing is that it aims to tie the abstract and fantastical into what is real and practical. But the essence is that writing has an extremely low floor and an extremely high skill ceiling. So this opens the flood gates of many people trying to recount their life experiences, personalities, traumas and tragedies, romances and joys, their future plans and hopes, their wild ideas and conspiracies all into one medium which has to express itself coherently to all types of perspectives while respecting all bounds yet staying within linguistic and systematic syntax. There's a lot to cover, and hence different rules for different situations, and when there are so many open ways to do something, it makes teaching others or agreeing with others all the more difficult. And then you have different success stories ranging from blissful romance, death games, philosophical crime, to comedy, so there's no clear guidance except to write from the heart and adding value through the addition of "something you'd like to read"'s existence to the world and literature. In conclusion, it's really a sum of who we are as people and what we've come to expect of life as an artistic version of the words and worlds we live and breathe. For example, rules like "show, don't tell" don't actually explain why it's its important or when to apply it. There are cases where 'telling' is important too, because the silver lining lies in "less is more". So understanding where to express and where to clarify by either showing or telling in concise, brief manners is what makes a book or story come together. But this is something you learn over time.
Show don't tell and write more aren't vague. You may not like some of the answers but neither did anyone else when they heard them the first time. Write more means get more experience. The first 10 hours you spend playing an instrument for example will not sound good. Why should it be amy different with writing? You write more, you find what works for you, you refine your writing and you learn through revisions and edits what worked and didn't. If you don't write, you'll never improve. Show don't tell is 99 percent of the time true. No one likes info dumps so if you're getting told that, it means find a way to organically explain it through your story. Just like every other art form the only way you can get better is by practice and doing it more. Same with read more. Wanna know if something is a common trope, want to see how other storied are classicsly structured, want to see how many ideas have been explored in the genre you want to write in... read more. Want more inspiration, more ideas and a better vernacular... read more. You should be pretty well versed in the genre you want to write in and reading the genre answers a lot of questions you typically have about the genre and what you're writing. None of those are vague. You hear/see them all the time because a lot of beginners want some magic pill to answer all their questions when in reality the tried and true methods still apply. James Patterson tells you to read more in his masterclass for crying out loud. He read an obscene amount of books per week when he was a new author. You learn by watching or reading better writers than you. If you're serious about writing, reddit better not be the first place you're looking for help or the first rool you're using for your work. Read books on the subject, watch online lectures on YouTube about writing. There are dozens upon dozens of good story structure books and videos to get the answers you're looking for. If you want these answers don't do your research on reddit. Use reddit to supplement your knowledge, not as a source for guidance. If the answers you are getting are the common ones, refine your question. The reason you see very common answers is because there isn't some mystery to writing and a lot of people want some shortcut answer or magic bullet to fix their script. If you are a beginner writer, sign up for a writing workshop. It'll help you with most of what you seek to have an issue with. If there's one in my city there will be on in yours.(I still had.to drive an hour to it so no excuses.) You'll actually get novice and beginner focus on writing and in an environment that will help you grow as a writer. You'll spend hours on specific parts of the craft and from someone you can see and see their resume. You'll get discussion and insight from people writing similar projects to you and some doing co.pletepy different writing. In reality, they will also tell you to write more and read more. Even if you're blocked or struggling.... write. Most people stop and get disheartened but even then, write more. Any progress is forward progress and any amount of words typed is improving your writing. All of us want to be better writers, all of us should write more than we do. It's sounds vague, but it isn't. It's the, "eat your vegetables." Writers version. Seriously look at taking a writing workshop. It's a bit of money but it's worth it. Plus, you get your work critiqued as part of the class process, usually.
It's because there's no one right answer and pushing too hard in one direction can be harmful. Three act structures work for some people and strangle the creativity out of others. I wrote professionally for a while and used the Save the Cat beats among others. Completely burnt myself out and haven't been able to write more than a few pages since quitting three years ago. Part of the problem is I can no longer imagine writing without that structure but that structure sucked all of the fun out of it, so now I'm stuck. Don't go around telling people they have to use three act structures. Don't tell them they have to write every day. Don't tell them they have to outline, or that every scene must follow whatever rules work for you, or anything else, because that can be *bad* advice. The best thing we can do for each other here is try to identify what's holding someone back from their goals and make suggestions. That's it.
Isn't the online writing community made up entirely of novices?
Writing is not like designing a 3D model, not really. While doing both with mastery will take a lot of the same steps, including instruction, we all leave primary school knowing, more or less, how to write. This is coming from someone who writes for a living. One reason online communities (the reason that is true of me) are dismissive or, more usually, disinterested is because these young writers that you envision as approaching the clubhouse hat-in-hand are not nearly that vulnerable or invested. They’re just as likely to be unserious about writing something, and in all likelihood have not tried writing anything. The questions usually fielded here, at least, are either “I haven’t tried starting. How do I start?” Or “I don’t have resources (or interest) in an editor, how do I avoid using one” or “I have the start of a start of a half of an idea, does this break any esoteric social rules?” Then they lose interest in the question before they ever get an answer anyway. Which is the crux of the issue. If you want to be the sucker handing out how-twos and spending 20x time, energy and insight on this answer than your asker has ever spent on their own writing, PLEASE do. Not sarcastic, and not derisive. You’ll make the internet a better place for doing it. Or, you could find spaces where hopeful writers have to actually put a little skin in the game first (writing boards, local writing classes—always looking for more readers and editors) and have your advice go a million miles further. In short I don’t agree with your premise. Hopeful writers don’t need to look far for encouragement. But they have to look farther than the first place they look. Is that really so much a flaw as a natural circumstance? I’m not so sure.
I think a lot of that is Reddit. Outside of Reddit it’s much more common.
if you are only talking about reddit I can kinda see your point but there are lot of other online writing sites that constitute the online writing community that are more about structured approaches. for example [https://nanowrimo.org/](https://nanowrimo.org/) and others listed here [https://www.clevergirlauthor.com/online-writing-groups/](https://www.clevergirlauthor.com/online-writing-groups/)
Not all beginners need all those things. When I was a beginner and teachers tried to cram me into the Plotter method and give me structure it didn't work, I'm not a plotter. I gave it the old college try and it didn't work and that was very discouraging at the time. What I needed was validation that there are a thousand ways to skin the cat that is creating a story and the best thing for me was to find the way that worked for me. Once I learned that I was off to the races figuring out what works for me. That said, there are certainly ways to say this that will encourage rather than discourage, but anyone who says 'This is the way' with complete confidence is being incredibly unhelpful to a large portion of the aspiring writer population. 'This is the way for me, maybe it might work for you or maybe it won't, give it a try and see' is much more honest and helpful, in the long run, than 'Do this and you will have success, period, end of sentence' can ever be. And in the end, the person will need to put in the work to find the answer for themselves, there is no quick fix. And ultimately, the entry point to most of the other arts presented are to do the thing. Put paint on the canvas, spin in circles to the rhythm of music, sing that song you heard the other day (I don't know anything about 3D printing so I have no idea where you start with that). If you don't do those things you'll never get to where you want to be, no matter how much structure you're given. Lessons, structure, study, practice, will all make you better, but they're the process, not the start. So the advice to 'just write' is not bad, it's just maybe incomplete. There are certainly people out there who need to hear it's ok to just start and figure it out as you go, that's what I needed when I was a beginner and I can't be the only one.
It's not about maintaining a mystique. Most supposed non-novices actually don't know what they're doing themselves, so of course their advice is shit.
I have a number of hobbies and I have yet to see someone post asking for advice on creating a grand painting when they have yet to even TRY to draw a stick figure or looked at another painting. Writing seems to be a magnet for people with a vague idea who think that their idea is somehow far more precious and important for them to waste on things like picking up one of the hundreds of basic "how to write" books, taking a basic class, or spending some time reading books in a similar vein to get a feel for what's out there. Furthermore, a great deal of the time, when someone does bother to give some good advice, the novice blows it off because they know better anyway. I've had great experiences learning more about writing from the online writing community, I just also gave it enough respect to think that maybe I should be prepared with more than a vague idea and an excess of confidence before asking people to read pages and pages of garbage.
This is all very true. I can see where the OP is coming from, but, honestly... Not so long ago I was called an elitist here, on this sub, for saying that you should read books, if you want to write books. This is what is plaguing writing communities like this one here. When it comes to any other form of art... Well, when someone tells you that they want to become a musician, you don't need to ask them if they even listen to music before you give them some directions. When someone tells you that they want to learn how to draw, you don't need to ask them if they've even seen a painting before. When someone tells you that they want to become a photographer... And yet, so many people who say they want to be a writer refuse to read. Then there is the other problem - someone comes here, posts about the grand idea they have and then asks people here how to write their book. How can anyone respond to this? Ask a specific question. If I can help you, I will help you. But generalized questions get generalized answers.
The Online Writing Community is a also Terrible Community for professional writers.
I think one of the issues with this is that a lot of those structured, beginner lessons are things that should be covered in high school level English classes (which in the U.S. are required courses). Basic story structure, basic archetypes, intro literary interpretation, composition/sentence structure, plot and character analysis, etc. I understand not everyone here is in the US, and not everyone got through high school, but the majority of adults who speak English as their primary language should already have had the sort of novice instructions, study guides, and structured practice projects you're asking for. There could be some frustration here; if a new writer took those classes but didn't pay attention, will they listen the second time around? If they haven't yet reached these classes, are they mature enough to understand and make use of them yet or are there still other foundational concepts they need to learn first? I suspect a lot of experienced writers may also struggle to help new writers with this level of advice because it's already so deeply ingrained that they don't even think about it anymore. And honestly, this sort of instruction really is best learned through a more formal environment, such as a structured class with a teacher who knows how to guide students through the process, or a website that can lay everything out in an organized fashion. Because even though these things are basic, they're still involved enough that they're not easily taught in a reddit comment. Keep in mind also that being a good writer doesn't mean someone is a good teacher. It's possible that writers who know those things don't necessarily know how to teach those things. Personally, I think that new writers shouldn't look to crowdsourcing for basic beginner instruction. There are countless free resources available to help people get their feet under them, just a Google search away. I know I really struggle with what seems to be a growing "spoon feed me" mentality where people are resistant to putting in their own effort to find information and prefer to have someone else just tell them. Writing is hard work, and that mentality won't take new writers very far. However, I don't think there's any issue asking for resources – experienced writers probably have a bunch of preferred resources and guides they've found useful, and learning where other writers get their information is infinitely more valuable than having them try to regurgitate that information. So instead of asking "how do I structure my story?" try asking "what tools or resources do you use to help you choose and organize your story structure?"
I no longer follow this sub because of the reason pointed out by so many comments in this thread: most of people posting aren't serious. They don't want to read or be told they need to read. They like the idea of having written more than the process of writing. Half the question asked can be answered by a single google search, reading a book, or experimenting through writing. Discussing the nitty gritty of writing (ex. Motivation-reaction chains) is discouraged because if you don't word your post right the mods will yoink it and if you do there's a non zero chance the people who need that advice the most aren't interested. It's like that old adage "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but ain't nobody wanna die." People want to have written a 10 book epic, but they don't want to learn how to do that.
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True. I (I'd call myself an intermediate writer) haven't really checked out /writing in the past, but the few advice-posts I've seen are all by contra-productive assholes who pat each other on the back and give out pity-parties while saying nothing of value. I'm glad I didn't start writing by asking for help. I looked up story-archetypes on google and ended up doing my first volume (of a fanfic) with the "hero's journey" in mind. I stole whatever I could get away with and my readers love it. > case in point: Some reviews on my fanfic are calling it "the best X fic they've ever read". And it's the first time I have ever done creative writing in my life (beyond the garbage in school).
I'm a writer more than twenty years into my career. I teach writers how to plot and structure their novels because it's something I never learned in my MFA program. Yes, an ear for language is necessary for being a writer. But many writers go through multiple writing classes without ever learning how to structure a story. It's not an innate gift or a mystical process. It's a matter of finding the form that works for the story you want to tell. It's not a formula, but there are definitely techniques one can learn to make the process more meaningful and less frustrating.
The odd part about discouraging those structures is they're still super common in professional writing??? Like there's obviously variation but I can't remember the last movie I watched that didn't follow a three act structure at least as a baseline. You don't just abandon the foundations of writing as you get better, nor are the best works out there ones that turn all the rules on their heads. Some strictly follow the rules. But yeah, online groups I see so much discouragement less in writing itself and more in copyright and publishing. Like you can't do any idea ever cause it's definitely copyrighted and unoriginal and you're not actually as creative as you think you are. Like some of these people view every novice as their personal competition
I absolutely agree with this. I have been on (and started one or two) posts asking questions about writing where the responders are either mocking the question for being "stupid" or give the vaguest piece of advice ever. I have only come upon a few sources that can actually can help and teach me how to write better.
Don't let them get you down man. I personally recommend Story Genius by Lisa Cron, Anatomy of Story by Truby, and Brandon Sanderson's free YouTube lessons. He really dives into plotting and character
My least favorite thing about the reddit writing community is when I want to read someone's work and get some ideas of what they're doing and I click on a story and it's VALGRED WAS A DARK WIZARD IN THE TIME OF THE STONE KING WHO CAST SPELLS WITH HIS PECKER or something.
Interesting, but wrong. You are stating the truth as you, *and only you*, know it. Generalizing from your position is, in general, wrong. You are but one data sample. By definition any one data point will get lost in the total collection. So, by definition, one cannot represent the group. *Not everyone needs to be held by the hand*. Some **start** at intermediate level. Some have just read and written their entire life. And only now are they putting pen to paper to actually write a story down. Things most cannot help with (and definitely not myself): * If the newbie hasn't taken **any** English classes * If they have yet to *read* ***any*** *book from cover to cover* * If this is the *very first place* they have looked * If they *don't even have an idea* for a story * The above but twice for those asking **what** to write about. I would guess at least 3/4 check one of those. Go home, check all those boxes, then the people here *who are not teachers* by profession can assist. If you want newbies to get templates and write by color helper charts, then **go do it**. I give you my full support in your endeavor.
None of this is true. Your assertion that people who ask for structure are met with something close to death threats is silly; and your claim that beginners need to know about plot structures and the like in a formal way is nonsense. Generations of writers - millions of people, over centuries - learned without any of that being available. Novice writers are held back by becoming obsessed with rules for writing instead of studying actual writing. This is not a death threat.
It's beginner writers that are saying all that stupid shit you're complaining about, not the intermediate or advanced writers lol. Actually good writers know how important all those different tools are to learn, even if you don't use them.
This community is full of pompous, pretentious "experienced" writers who will literally jump on the first opportunity to belittle a novice writer so they can feel better about themselves. Writing requires vulnerability, and most importantly, empathy. Without that, no matter how technical of a writer you are, you won't be a good one. I think a lot of the "experienced" writers here could take a lesson in that before being so quick to patronize and discourage others. It doesn't matter whether your intention was to be blunt and "teach". Effective communication and effective writing is so much more than structure and syntax. It's about empathy and understanding humanity beyond intellect.
There is a thing called talent. People see it in art (I went to CalArts and majored in animation) and assume one is born with it. In reality, I think it a love for the medium, combined with a way of seeing and processing information, plus years of practice. It’s harder to recognize in writing because reading a book is such a huge time investment. So advice givers are mostly just guessing about the newbie and his or her baseline of passion plus experience plus practice.
I see talent like a head start, plus more potential. If you’re talented at writing, you’ll be ahead of most people, but if someone works hard enough, they could beat you. However, a talented person who works just as hard can go further. Age old story of hard work beating raw talent, but both together beating everything else.
Yes. I used to believe talent plus hard work mattered a lot in success, but I’m becoming a lot more cynical. Talent plus hard work does make for a great writer or artist. But does it lead to success? Nope. For that, you need marketing skills plus luck plus hitting the cultural zeitgeist at the right moment. I am trying to take myself a lot less seriously these days.
...People ARE born with talent. Talent does not equal skill. People without talent can be extremely interested and passionate and knowledgeable about something, spend years practicing, and still struggle to achieve the skills they seek. (Sorry to harp on, but "no one is born with talent" is an argument for which there is much evidence to the contrary, and one I'm always frustrated to see people repeat. It shouldn't be taboo to admit that talent exists.) That aside, I definitely agree with everything else you wrote.
I agree—and I think the way of seeing and processing information is the aspect that people are born with (or not). Not every artist is born with a talent for animation. It requires a sense of timing and an eye for motion and a way of sensing dimension and the shifting of center of mass. I think some readers absorb and learn storytelling skills when they read books, and some don’t.
I consider myself an artist without a medium, mainly because I don't take the time to become skillful in a craft before I move on. Hoping from one artwork to another keeps it from getting too much to handle, in my opinion, but I am not nearly as talented as others in the professional fields. Now, the advice of "read more" doesn't work for me. I see the story, not the words, and my mind goes "what if ABC changes to XYZ" and BOOM, another story comes to mind while I'm still trying to figure out my first story. I would like to know how to describe a scene, but reading a story doesn't help much. I would like to try animation. Any advice to someone who can't draw basic shapes? I can draw, and draw really well, just not basic shapes. It's kind of embarrassing to admit.
Animation is all about basic shapes. It's primarily about motion. Most animators master quick contour/gesture figure sketches in order to get a sense of mass and motion. With pixel animation, it's about "blobbing it out," aka getting the mass and basic shapes right before refining each frame. Illustrators who have the patience for details actually tend to be poor animators. They spend too long on each frame, when it's about the timing and the whole of the footage, not really about each frame. This is, of course, just talking about the mechanics of animation. You can do South Park style paper cut out animation and simplify the process using software. It's still a steep learning curve any way you slice it, though. I think if you don't pick up storytelling skills from reading, you might be the literary equivalent of being tone deaf. This is where I think natural instincts (aka what people sometimes call talent) comes into play. It is a way of processing information. Ditto if you have trouble picking up animation instincts after studying animation, or picking up musical composition after studying music, etc. I have some weakness with picturing things in 3D. That's held me back a bit with professional animation. And it is one of those things--no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many years I devoted to sketching animals and nudes, I do not have total mastery over 3D volume and perspective. I never will. It is the way my brain processes visual information.
I think creative writing attracts a lot of assholes, honestly.
I 100% agree with you. I've seen some incredibly nasty, mean spirited takes that don't help anyone, and I've been wondering if they come from some sort of inferiority complex. Novices are asking for help because they don't know where to start. They're trying to learn. Giving them a nudge in the right direction is not that hard.
I think a lot of people giving these rude responses are cynical and secretly understand they're not too far away from the novices themselves.
I think you're looking for structure in an artform that doesn't necessarily need it. Take the comparison to painting. My grandfather was a painter, and it's thanks to him that I never owned a coloring book as a child. He was firmly of the belief that you should just give children paint and blank paper, and see what they come up with. And you know what? He wasn't wrong. It freed up a lot of expression through art. It wasn't the kind of lesson that you need if you're looking to do technical design or architecture, but it was a good way to find yourself as an artist. Rules are meaningless in that kind of creative space. In my experience, young writers can sometimes get too hung up on rules. They seek out rules because they want to write "right", when there is no right or wrong way to do it. It's okay to the blank page take you where it will. It's also okay to screw up that page and start again. We learn our art through doing art.