Hello! So... this is my first time posting here on these Forums I believe... At least it is within the past, well since I can remember.

I sure hope this is in the right place, I wasn't sure where else to post this.
I'm sorry if this is not the right place to post!

Well, I am wanting to become a writer. Many famous authors have helped inspire me, and my grandfathers kind comments and support about it is what drove me to give it a try. I've tried numerous times to write a book, even a short story, all to no avail. Each time I try, it's incredibly difficult for me because at first, I am able to connect with each of my stories. I'm able to imagine I was there at each event, watching as if it were a movie, and I've been able to describe it as such. The difficulty is, after a while, I lose that "connection" with the characters... It starts feeling emotionless and cold. As you can imagine, it gets very challenging and boring to continue writing a story you have no feeling for. It makes me no longer care about what I'm writing, and I know that if I don't care about what I'm writing, those who read it won't either.

It's just... Everything starts going downhill. I seem to be able to think of plenty of plot twists and interesting aspects of a story, but the characters themselves... It's like they have no background, no emotion... It's like they are just there, having a story wrapped around things that they did.

Another thing I seem to be having major issues with is genre and style. Each of my pieces do have a certain feel to them, which I believe that's what makes it my own in a sense. But I seem to be on this borderline of Scifi and just your normal, everyday situations. I have quite a few ideas for both, and they keep getting mashed together even though I try to keep them separate.

Really what I am asking is are there any things I am doing wrong?
Should I keep trying?
Is there any advice you would give to a newbie writer?

And last, but not least, what aspects do you like seeing in a story? What makes it interesting for you? I certainly don't want to write something that only appeals to me.

Any help and/or advice would be greatly appreciated, more so than you could imagine.

Hello there. First of all Yes you should!!

Write what YOU want to write. If you're writing a genre/story you're not invested in yourself, it'll show in the story. There's a market for even the most niche things, especially with the internet and self publishing, so don't worry. A mix of scifi and slice-of-life sounds really cool, and you shouldn't keep those two genres seperated. Don't be afraid of mixing genres. A story doesn't have to only fit one genre, and most of my favorite books, movies and series are those who doesn't restrict themselves to a single genre.

As for writing believable characters, I've found this to be very helpful: http://www.miniworld.com/adnd/100Th...BackGround.html It's a questionaire of 100 questions you can fill out for your characters. A lot of the questions will probably be about things that never gets brought up in the story, but it still helps you get a clearer image of who your characters are, and why they act and react the way they do. Let's say you have a character who has a hard time trusting people. If you know the reason why (they were betrayed by a lover or a best friend, for instance) you will most likely be able to write them more convincingly, even if your readers will never know that reason.
Of course you shouldn't have to necessarily fill out ALL questions for each character. And generally speaking, the less important a character is, the more flaw they're allowed to be.
Here are some other resources that might be of use:
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/www/wwwfull.html
http://www.novel-writing-help.com/c...characters.html
http://www.writerstreasure.com/creative-writing-101/

If you want to, you could send me some of the things you've written. I'm not some great writer genius myself, but I may be able to give you a few tips.

Thank you for such a thorough response!
I will have to give all of those links a look at. And, as cheesy as it is, I did write up to 'chapter 2' of a quite simple story... I had some really big plans for it, but this I used as a general, sort-of-detailed draft one/story outline that I planned to rewrite later to add in more details.
I originally posted it as a story on The Sims 3, and honestly it got quite a bit of feedback, though nobody seemed to be brutally honest with me. It was all just "That's awesome" or "I like it." Encouraging, yes, but not entirely helpful.

Anyways here's both chapter one and two, they are quite short.
I called the story 'Legacy' at the time, though I planned to change the title to 'The Start of a Legacy' at a later date. Also, as a side note, I purposefully did not add that much detail because the original has some screen-shots with it. :lovestruc



That's all I have so far. I had actually written up to chapter 14, though I lost my notes... (I blame my dog for that one.)
I mean, I really like the storyline itself, though I really feel like the characters are kind of... Emotionless.

I sort of get the feeling that you're more trying to tell the reader everything that happens, instead of showing it through words. There can be a thin line between those two, but think to yourself that if the actual story sounds like "I'm just gonna give you a plot overlook", then you're telling more than showing.

Just to take an example, the whole first chapter sounds more like a prologue or a "voiceover", in the sense of "this has happened, and I'm setting a baseline for the story." Kind of like those lengthy voiceovers you get on films. It's very easy to slip into this way of writing, and I'm not saying it's wrong, but it can be done a whole lot more interesting. You don't even have to tell everything. Slip the info in where it is important throughout the rest of the writing. Think through what the reader needs to know now, and what they don't need to know until later. Perhaps write from her perspective, and jump directly into something that happens, and later on make her look at a picture of him, or remember him in some other way, and let the backstory slowly reveal itself throughout the first chapter. That keeps the reader intrigued. If you give all the information at once, there's not much left to be intrigued by. To give an example, I recently almost skipped a great book series because it started with one of those lengthy, prologue-like chapters that goes like "this is where the setting is, and this has already happened, and you need to know all of this before you can read on". It gave me the impression that the writer was inexperienced (it was a first-time publisher), and that this was the tone he sat for the rest of the series. Thankfuly it wasn't.

Think of how most films start. Already during the 10 first minutes, you get to know the main characters, the setting, and the start of the plot. This is to capture the viewer. They don't do long voiceovers where everything is revealed. They usually jump into just a little bit before the plot starts unfolding.

As for chapter 2 it looks quite good. Maybe shorten down the long bit at the beginning of the chapter, and weave it more into the action? Also make it clear who's perspective you're using. If you jump from one to the other almost in the same sentence, things become confusing.

I'd agree that what you've written here sounds more like telling than showing. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the way you do it seems quite rushed, sort of like you're - well - a sims player who watches from the corner of the lot and spends lots of time on speed 3. Of course sometimes you need or want to fast forward through a long but not very exciting period of time, but it's still good to add a bit more richness and depth to individual scenes: the way you've done it, you haven't really conveyed any sense of who Shana is on a personal level. I'm reading a book at the minute that's a really good example of writing done in that style, but in a way that's very engrossing and emotionally impactful - The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden, by Jonas Jonasson - which could maybe give you some ideas. Going deeper into her thoughts and feelings, exposing some conflict in how she feels, and having her think or say unexpected things, is more important, really, than providing details about her work or days out. You might find that writing some passages entirely in first person would be good practise for that: seeing the world through the character's eyes, and having her describe it, not in the way she would when talking to other people, but through her own spontaneous thoughts - which tend to be a lot less considered, a lot more irrational at times, and a lot more extreme than what we say out loud.

This line, for instance: "Her nerves were going haywire. What would she name the baby? Is it a boy or a girl? What if she wasn't parent material?" - that could easily be a five hour worry session for most people . So I'd go into a bit more detail... not knowing how you want Shana to think, this is all rough and probably nothing like what you actually want (and also you probably swear less than I do), but I might write (quickly and shoddily) something like this:

I didn't intend to write nearly that much .

I hope you don't mind me tweaking the context there - adding actual contractions just makes it more dramatic, and makes it easy to use the Smeagol Effect, which is a neat trick for conveying conflicting emotions in a character, if you can pull it off. I guess I would say the biggest differences between your version and mine are:

• Immediacy - because you're getting detail, you feel like you're right there with Shana, in the scene. With the brevity of your writing, I often feel like as soon as I learn what's happening, it's over. Dwelling in a scene can make it much more involving, and gives you time to expand on what your characters are doing, saying, thinking and feeling.
• Specificity - The questions you asked - "What if she wasn't parent material?" etc. - are good questions, but the way you phrase them sounds a bit cliché, sort of like they've come out of a "So you're going to be a single parent" leaflet. My version of Shana asks the same questions, but in a more specific and individual way, which gives you more of an insight into her character - she's worrying about things; she's a bit prone to panicking and letting her imagination run away with her regarding highly unlikely what-ifs; she feels very vulnerable and unprepared, even though she's been acting sensibly to make plans; but although she's freaking the fuck out, she's not dwelling on Marcus - she doesn't feel like she can't cope without him, more that she just can't cope in general; and when it matters, she can pull herself together and do the practical thing. That gives you lots more info about her character, mostly because I wrote a lot more about her. :D
• Drama - Because of both the contractions (yay! hurting your characters!) and the really visible rising panic, you (hopefully) end up feeling quite sorry for Shana, and you start to get that emotional connection of wanting things to get better for her. Obviously, not every scene is going to be omg!dramatic, but a little bit of drama here and there can really help bond the reader to your characters, much like what happens in military units or Stockholm Syndrome. It's also not usually a good idea to skim over really dramatic events in a character's storyline - like labour and delivery - because it leaves the reader feeling like they've missed out on a really big part of the character's life, and like they don't know the character as well as they wanted to any more. Some authors do skip really dramatic scenes and make it work as a literary device, but god damn is it hard to pull that off in a way which works out to the benefit of the suspense and/or character development. :P

About characters in general, I find that the best way to improve a writing skill I suck at is pretty much just to run headfirst into it. A good story needs plot planning skills, and it's great that you have those; they're not skills you're ever gonna lose. So, I would probably start a project - knowing it's not ever going to be an epic saga, just a bit of writing practise - in which you drop all of that and just focus on characters, or even just one character. I'd try to conjure up an impression of a character in my head, and then write down everything I could about them. If I wrote any stories about them, the stories would follow on from the character, not the other way round - taking TotallyJW's example, if I had decided that my character mistrusted people, I might draw that together with other aspects of him (what's his background? What's his job? Is he social, or a loner? etc.) and try to only come up with stories which work to integrate all of those aspects and make the character make sense.

A few more things that I try to bear in mind to keep my characters from getting bland or flat: make them flawed. Not superficial-flaws-but-they're-really-heroes-underneath, serious fundamental flaws which get in the way of them fulfilling their role in the story. Not just sympathetic flaws, either - "is seriously limited in their life by the after-effects of past trauma" can provide great plot points, but it doesn't make you want to punch the character in the face. "Is more interested in moping about her dead wife and being broody and independent than in using her unique knowledge and skills to save the city's homeless from being systematically poisoned by religious zealots" does, and thus makes the character far more captivating, even if you end up liking her a lot less.
If, like me, you end up loving your characters to bits, write lists of all the awful things you don't ever want to happen to them, and make them happen. There's a reason why George R. R. Martin is so successful.



Finally, I see lots and lots of authors whose main bit of writing advice is "read as much as you possibly can" and, actually... yeah, I do find that I deliberately draw on style and method from stuff I've read to improve my own writing. So that's probably good advice.

Read as much as you possibly can is very good advice. So is doing writing exercises. Reading various styles and genres from various writers makes you see tons of new ways to form your story, while writing exercises makes you get to know your characters or their environment, or plain old helps with your writing skills. Plus, reading and writing is fun! It's much better for your brain to read than to watch a movie. You have to make up the scene and the characters in your own head, instead of getting it all served on a silver plate. You also get into the head of the characters in a very different way than just watching them on a screen.

Thank you guys for such helpful advice!
So, taking as much as I possibly could into consideration, here's a rewrite of some of the paragraphs from "Legacy".
This is more of the way I was originally intending to write it, as what I shared was more of a kind of draft/concept/quick write... thing... I have no idea what it would be considered. Lol BUT, I had only thought of a few of the above mentioned things, a majority of them I hadn't even thought of. Extremely helpful!!


Sorry, it's not as great as I would have liked. I'm in between classes at the moment, so I only have a few minutes. Lol I'll try refining the scene a little more, and adding soem much needed details.

Well, life sort of caught up to me. Sorry it's been so long since I've posted here. :O Time sure goes by quickly.
Anyways, I haven't had much luck with that scene from legacy, as I have absolutely NO IDEA what it would be like to be in labor... So... yeah...
I am, however, working on another story. This is from the draft portion, I just wrote it today. So far things are going well, but this is more like how my "real" writing is, not just a quick skimming of a story through under-detailed, rushed words.

I honestly feel like this is one of my better pieces of writing, though I'm not sure if that's saying much. Hahahaha
A little bit of a description of the scene here : Emily and her parents had a dispute, and they did some things that made her feel embarrassed, and eventually the entire town disrespected Emily and brought up her shortcomings. That is what drove her out of town.