Topic: The Creative Writing/Literature Topic

Well I've noticed there has been a bit of talking about writing from snooping through a few of the threads. If you couldn't tell from my in depths reviews in the "Games You've Beat" topic that I quite enjoy it as a pastime besides gaming.

I "practice" creative writing on a daily basis as I've been running a fantasy roleplay for the past year on another website 😅

It can vary between a maybe post or two a day to 200-300 over the course of a week with me creating a whole world, characters and the likes with plenty of improv on my part to boot.

I'm not that great (at least I don't think so, my puncuation is honestly pretty bad) but I figured it'd be neat for there to be a topic no matter how small it is to maybe share examples, tips & ideas, how you plan and the likes!

Course if this violates anything feel free to lock the topic mods! I just figured it'd be too specific to just post about writing in the chit-chat topic!

I find writing contests and on-line magazines very useful: they give you those directions that help you writing, while otherwise one can lose himself in the attempt of creating the "perfect-but-never-ended" novel.
Thanks to some contests I've been invited to prize-giving cerimonies which are always a good way to build your confidence, to meet new people, to visit new cities and especially to have an offered dinner. 😂

So... I don't know where to begin lol

As I said in the opening post/statement that I've created (Well still at it really) a whole world and it's easier said then done. In fact I haven't even come up with the days of the week yet :')

Religion/belief systems, Political Values + Rulership, The level of technology, infrastructure, towns + regions, countries + landmasses, characters + jobs, wildlife + fauna etc...

... You really need a little pad or notebook to dedicate entirely to your world & it's notes to keep track of everything. Plus as I've seemed to find you can always stand to fine tune things or completely change others as you go along!

It can be pretty rewarding though when it finally starts coming together!

A way that helped me to get to grips with developing something on such a large scale (My creation has 10 different races, 5 main continents and countries, and a whole bunch of characters. I think I have a good 100 or so) was to start small with a single character and their room and go from there.

Even just what their bed is like, what's on the walls or across the shelves can say so much about your character's personality and or interests to kickstart things off!

After that you can move on to other members ofbthat characters family or the next door neighbour and carry on from there.

I'll happily provide an example of a character description of mine later on if anyone is interested!

I've attempted writing a story but it just hasn't worked for me so far @andreoni79 . Doing the roleplay or tandem story writing has helped me get better with it as I'm constantly being engaged with and kept on my toes as I never know what she's going to do with her character!

You sound like a much better writer then me though... fancy contests and free dinners lol! 😂

Though I mainly do it for fun, hence why I'm not too bothered about my skill level

Networking and writing circles and specialty communities and whatnot are all well and dandy, but the truth is that there is no magic pill you can take to help you write better, and, more often than not, "helpful tips" are usually just one person speaking out about their own habits as if they're universally applicable to everyone.

The secret to writing better is to read a lot and to write a lot. Scrutiny from an impartial third party is helpful, too. That means someone who writes for a living and isn't your buddy. Certainly don't ask you mom or someone to critique your writing.

That's not at all necessary, though. Learning to articulate your own thoughts in a cogent manner is, and there's no replacement for practice.

I guess if I had "tips" to offer, I'd say:
1) Write what you enjoy, as a hobby. You'll be more motivated if you don't treat it like an obligation.
2) Public accountability tools can be helpful. A lot of social websites have "magic spreadsheet" groups where people will record their daily number of words written (either with regard to specific exercises, such as crafting short fiction, but even forum posts and blogs can count if that's more what you're going for) and try to aim for a monthly number of total words written. When people think they're being observed or judged, they tend not to goof off as much. That's why you wait until your boyfriend or whatever is asleep before you sneak downstairs for that piece of cake that has been calling your name all day.
3) Read widely. If language is your business, so to speak, you want to have a lot of exposure to it. That often means opening yourself up to stuff outside of your comfort zone. For me, that's popular fiction, technical manuals, foreign languages, and poetry (which I tend to dislike, aside from my beloved senpai T.S. Eliot's classic work)

I use this freeware: http://ostorybook.tuxfamily.org/index.php?lng=en
It's very useful since it helps you organize characters, scenes, locations, chronology etc.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Interesting topic! And not just because I'm starting a new chapter (ba-dum-tssh) of my life in which I hope to become a published author. The one constant since my teenage years has been my enjoyment of creative writing, whether it be fan fiction or original ideas, and I thought it was about flippin' time I started chasing a career in what I actually like. There's a little bit of fear in that (as @Ralizah warns, turning a hobby into a profession risks adding stress and pressure to my writing process, a danger which would make its quality suffer) but for me, nothing beats dragging a story out of a blank sheet of paper... and besides, when I'm writing fiction, I'm in charge.

PushSquare has been an amazing help for me, not only in terms of social interaction (writing can be quite an isolating process) but also in terms of writing practice. Even if I'm just thinking up a witty comment on a news story, a sentence if that, I'm using that same part of my brain. I didn't write for a long time and when I tried to start cold, it was just... no.

But that's quite journalistic and conversational and so, in the same way you're using your fantasy roleplay, I'm currently writing a fan fiction project that I might (or might not) post up on some relevant forums someday. Once that's complete, or once I simply feel ready to, I'll make a proper start on my original novel. It's an idea I've had since I was a teenager, an idea I've barely written anything down for, even in note form, but my brain can see almost every detail of it.

Anywho, long story short? I'll always read anything you feel like sharing and, if you're happy to on such a public forum, would give any level of feedback you think might be helpful. Same goes for anybody!

I have always enjoyed creative writing. I find it cathartic. I’m not much for the spoken word; I feel more at ease expressing myself in the written form. When I speak, I’m too prone to stick my foot in my mouth.

I have toyed with the idea of trying to get published, but I haven’t taken the time and effort to really perfect my craft. Maybe one day...

I would be happy to peruse anyone’s writings and give feedback though, as uneducated as that feedback might be.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy can you give me / us an example how your world works please? I'm unsure how this works.

Do you for instance come up with a place like Middle Earth / Tatooine / Springfield in your own imagination and then work out the inhabitants etc and that is then the subject matter for creative writing?

That's a great idea.

@themcnoisy What trophy are you after this time?! 🤣

Thanks @andreoni79 for the link to that free tool. I'm sure it'll be very useful to me and anyone else here!

[Contains a tip in my first proper post. Also had some cake last night whilst my partner was asleep]

Oh crumbs @Ralizah hope that didn't come off as me being a bit of a... cotton-headed-ninny-muggins :')

I'll admit @RogerRoger it was seeing that comment in the work topic that inspired me to start this topic up! I hope it goes well for you and I'd be happy to read anything you write... like @Th3solution says though it probably wouldn't be the most constructive or educated of comments as I mainly just write for fun. But whatever helps!

Sure @themcnoisy I'd be happy to!

So as I said it's a Roleplay or you could call it a tandem story writing excercise so there's another person involved and it constantly goes back and forth between us.

I gave her the basics of what I had in my head first. A really rough outline of the five main landmasses and the races that inhabit them.

She chose the country we'd start in and then came up with the Main Character for our little ditty.

Hunter Yaina-Lavellan.

Hunter's a Hyena Beastperson (Think like a cat girl/bunny girl with just hyena ears and a tail but otherwise normal human looking rather then an anthropomorphised animal) & High Elf.

So first I had to come up with Hunter's parents.

Hunter's mother ended up becoming the Hyena part and her father being the Elf.

Then I had to figure out the backstory on they how they ended up getting together.

The backstory being a "simple" opposites attract story with Hunter's mother being a blue blood and member of high society whilst Hunter's dad became a mercenary, jovial and mischievous but falling head over heels for Hunter's mom the moment they saw her.

Course then I had to come up with a mercenary group for Hunter's dad to be part of and how they'd actually meet Hunter's mom.

The group "Hunter's Folly" (Hunter now being named after the group) was born consisting of six main members and were hired by Annette's (Hunter's mom's name) father for a job and was how the two met and eventually the pair eloped, Annette joined the mercenary group for a small time before she settled down in the small town they now reside in with Hunter's dad being away for weeks/months at a time.

And yeah... things just keep snowballing from there as I kept slowly building the details up as I made Hunter's friends, the small 500 person town they live in (Having rough ideas for about 20 or so characters) and kick starting the plot off with Hunter's dad taking Hunter to the capital to train her into becoming a mercenary.

Again there's another person involved who controls Hunter's actions, whilst I control everyone and everything else. So it's very reactionary where i may have an idea on what to do next, only for her and Hunter to completely quash it.

So if Hunter ends up swiping a biscuit from a bakery for example, maybe I'll set the guards on the scamp and there'll be a chase through the city and we'll see if Hunter evades them or gets caught with me having rough ideas for multiple little scenario's.

There's a bunch of off the fly improv on my end that somehow works.

You could consider it almost like a written version of a game of D&D if that helps you understand my thought process and developing this works for me.

Hope that's a good enough explanation, sorry if i waffled on a bit, feel free to ask any more questions!

I'm about a third of the way through writing a book. It's going well, I think. Hoping to have the first draft done by Christmas-ish. It's the first time I've committed myself to writing a full-blown book. I've written various bits and pieces down the years, for local newspapers and websites, but never anything like this.

It's amazing how quickly you can veer between "Hey this is pretty good" to "This isn't working at all, it's terrible". I don't know if it's even possible to give advice since everyone is so different, as @Ralizah mentioned. Ralizah's tips are spot on and are pretty much what I'd say as well.

I'd also add that if you're struggling or stuck, just power through. Write something that is vaguely like what you wanted for the part you're stuck on, and then come back to it later. I've always found that it's all in the second and third drafts, and I'm hoping that will be the case with writing a book as well. If it's not then I'm screwed.

Oh that's pretty awesome @Gremio108 ! What type of book is it might I ask? And I hope it goes well of course!

... Also might as well say it here but in the 1442 PS3 games topic I'd already picked Shivering Isles and Roger picked Hitman HD trilogy.

Dunno if we can do that this time around 😅

I honestly can’t even write creatively enough to articulate why I don’t think I can write very creatively :/

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I don't know really. Thriller? Crime? Romance? It doesn't really fit into any of those categories really, although it has elements of each. I had intended it to be funny, but it's coming out with a more serious tone. I'm just letting it happen, it could all change in the later drafts anyway.

Also thanks for the 1442 heads up!

@kyleforrester87 You say that, but that sentence right there displays a mastery of the English language.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy

That's the best kind of feedback, though. People who proclaim themselves to be professional writers with all the answers are just talking nonsense; writing is a form of creative art. No matter how "good" or "bad" somebody's work may be deemed, it obviously meant something to the author and I'm sure it'll mean something to at least one other person out there in the big, wide world. If you can find that person, then it's all worthwhile... heck, it's worthwhile even if you can't because at least as an author, you've pursued something creative that feeds your soul in whatever way.

Kinda why I wrote / write fan fiction as practice. You're tapping into an engaged audience who'll do quite a bit of the heavy lifting for you (don't need to describe things in nauseating detail, people already know what the established world looks like) and you can focus on narrative areas you feel unsure about. By writing an episodic story with my own original characters, I've been able to gain experience with slices of romance, thriller, sci-fi, action, political drama, etc. whilst honing my overall understanding of pacing, cliffhangers, character motivations, inner monologues, flashbacks and a bunch of other tools I can use in crafting future stories. I got feedback on all of those things, even if it was simply "I really liked this!" or "Never really connected with this character, sorry!" because sometimes that's all it takes to go back and see something from a different perspective.

And besides, given the impressive attention to detail and logical narrative thought you've subsequently displayed in your roleplay's outline, I'd say you've got this whole writing thing down.

@Gremio108 Congratulations on getting underway with your novel. It's often making a start that's the hardest part, although I also know what you mean when you talk about sudden fluctuations between "I like what I'm writing" and "this is a hot mess" and fully agree that if you can put down something, anything, on paper then it's a victory. It'll either give you something to edit later (don't worry if every single word ends up changing) or it'll inadvertently point you in another, better direction.

That makes me think of another tip; don't be afraid to change the plan. I've had entire character arcs mapped out in my head before and then, as I've been writing, it just hasn't felt right, or I've stumbled across possibilities (or plot holes) I hadn't considered before. One time I had a particularly-beloved character and I accidentally wrote them into a corner, so I killed them and it really, really worked. Everybody hated me for it, but it served the story far better in the long run.

Sounds pretty awesome to me @Gremio108 either way! Wish you luck on your ThrillCri-Romancedy (It's too hard to mash those words up into one 😂)

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy @RogerRoger Cheers guys. I'll let you know how I get on. I've got the entire thing mapped out, so it's just a case of actually doing it now.

"One time I had a particularly-beloved character and I accidentally wrote them into a corner, so I killed them and it really, really worked." - This is brilliantly brutal!

That's actually really great advice. At bottom, the practice of writing fiction is sort of like cleaning a particularly messy room or chiseling a statue out of a block of marble: it's imposing order on the raw meaninglessness of the noumenal world. In all those scenarios, and probably in almost any endeavor that involves the creation of discreet pieces of art, you can't properly get a sense of what the fine details should look like until the underlying structure is in order. And getting that sense for structure requires bold, aggressive steps to limit the scope of chaos on your piece. So as tempting as it is to try and get a sentence just right as you come to a certain section of a story, article, etc. it's best just to roughly fill it in and move on.

Geniuses can probably write something properly on their first go with minimal to no editing required. For the rest of us, passable literature isn't written, it's rewritten.

I've actually sort've ended up doing the same @RogerRoger

It was surprisingly quite emotional for a character who for the most part was fairly cruel (She was an assassin and she used illusion magic at one point to make Hunter think she was dying from being stabbed by her... When really she was just eating soup nowhere near her 😅)