I originally had an introduction very similar to the synopsis you have likely already read to start this off. Since it would be redundant now, I am replacing it with this. For those of you who are finding this by a method other than the link I have posted in the forum,

 

Early training: Edit A LOT.

 

8 years ago, I was a C- English literature student at best, and I really could not write well at all. The thing that changed this in the space of a single 10 week writing class, and changed it so fast that I got a solid A+ in that class since this advice fixed my writing immediately from the very beginning of the class, is just a little something the instructor said on the first day.

 

"A good writer does not simply sit down and produce a fantastic piece of writing. A good writer writes a rough draft, and then they edit it over and over and over again, often re-writing the entire thing from scratch, until finally they have polished it into something good."

 

It is also important to note that before each edit, you need to get some separation from what you wrote. You need to at least wait over night before each attempt at editing, and it is actually better if you have a full day's worth of separation from it. In other words, edit 2 days after you write it. Then, wait another 2 days before editing it again into the 3rd draft. That separation makes it easier for you to catch your errors, because if you try to edit immediately after you just got done writing then you are still in the same mind-set you were in when you wrote it and everything will look fine to you.

 

It is also helpful to have someone else look at your work and point out your errors, and possibly offer tips on how you can improve. Especially early on when you are starting off, you will not be so aware of the errors you tend to make, and you will also not be as aware of ways that you can use to fix those issues. Getting outside advice is very helpful.

 

There are circumstances where you will not be able to spare the time and effort to edit to this level. All truly great works of literature have been through a very thorough editing process as described above. However, all the writers who actually get paid well for their work are capable of directly defying all the advice above and simply sitting down on their own to write an excellent piece of work in a single writing session, maybe going over it once immediately after they have written it in order to catch a few minor errors or places that can be improved slightly. However, these highly skilled writers did not simply have some inborn talent. They nurtured this skill by going through the process described above several times over a course of years until they gained the ability to be so aware of the errors they typically made and then managed to fix their habits to not make those errors in the first place. It really does take some SERIOUS training as a writer in order to reach that level.

 

Just write, A LOT.

​

As I mentioned before, my journey into going from a C- English student to the writer I am now happened over the course of 8 years. After my experience in that class, I became quite enthusiastic about writing. Since then, writing has been a bit of a hobby or pass-time for me, something I just do because I enjoy it. The story I released on this site is the first time I have tried to do something serious, but I have been writing stuff quite regularly over the 8 years since I discovered this passion.

 

For a rough estimate, I have probably written about 2,000 words a day, every day, for the past 8 years. Now, it was not literally every day, but the days I was writing about that much or more were more frequent than the days I did not write anything. Furthermore, this is only counting creations of fictional writing. I do not count a single forum post or social media message in those 2,000 words since the entire mind-set and writing process is very very different.

 

After thinking about this process, here are some tips to reproduce the effect I got from this practice.

-Only count formal writings, either in the form of persuasive essays, the likes of which would be assigned writings for a class, or works of fiction such as the stories on this site.

-Be passionate about your writing.

-Be consistent, skipping a day or two is fine but never go an entire week without writing anything.

-Write publicly, such as on a writing forum. This gets you feedback, and also forces you to keep a consistently good quality to your writing.

-Always be challenging yourself to write better.

-Always look to what other writers are doing and any tips they can offer you.

-You are your own harshest critic, so critique yourself. Keep improving your writing until you have finally satisfied that harsh critic.

 

In regards to the 4th item on the list, posting to a public forum, I actually did the bulk of my writing during the past 8 years in erotica (No, I will not give you the pen name I was using at the time.) Erotica has a certain quality to it that is very beneficial to a writer in training. That is, it has a much much lower barrier to entry than other forms of writing, and it is a lot easier to get positive feedback. It may sound a little vain, but that positive feedback really helps to give you the motivation to keep going. It also causes something of a virtuous cycle as once you become known for your writing, you are not going to keep getting praised for keeping the same level of work. So, you are actually locked into a cycle where if you want to keep getting that praise you need to keep improving and writing better than you did in your last work.

 

Don't take this as me saying that writing erotica IS the method that you SHOULD use. Take this one as more of a tip and saying what worked for me. I'm quite certain it won't be for everybody. (The mere fact I'm unwilling to share my former pen-name and the site I posted on should be plenty of evidence for that.)

 

Read what other writers have written... A LOT

 

You are going to want to completely immerse yourself in the writing of others, particularly those who write in the same genre you want to write in. It is also good to study some of the people hailed as the greatest writers of the golden age of any given genre. I would personally recommend writers of the Sci-Fi genre, such as Frank Herbert and Larry Nevin. There is a lot that can be learned from them that you can carry on to any genre, especially because they perfectly execute the next factor I will go over after this one.

 

Reading what other writers have written does a few very very useful things for you in improving your ability to write.

 

1. It teaches you the rules. There are actually some very strict rules for writing, and these rules are not arbitrary. They are really more like laws of the universe, such as gravity. They are not dictated, they are observed. These are the rules that dictate what appeals to an audience and what does not. Some writers try to write down these rules as they observe them. Pixar's 22 rules of storytelling is an excellent example of this, and there are several other writing rules you will learn in various literature classes or from other sources. You do not have to follow these rules, but you need to know them and you need to know why they are there. And, if you choose to break them, you need to have a very good reason for doing so.

   Despite being effectively laws of the universe, every single rule of writing also has conditions under which it can be broken and actually gain you greater success rather than the failure it would bring most other people. This is because, while the rules are quite concrete and merciless, they are also very complex and the form in which humans have chosen to write them down are more like observations on what the rules might be rather than what they actually are, and none of them take the form of an absolute "always do this" or "never do that" in their true form. A writer who has experienced the rules with their intuition born from endless reading of dozens of written works can get a better idea of where these holes in the absolute form of the rules are, and thus how to break the crude form of them humans wrote down safely.

   It should also be noted that seeing someone who broke one of the rules poorly can be more informative than seeing someone who broke it successfully, this can give you a far better idea of where the boundaries actually are. In other words, reading someone else's bad writing can be even more informative than reading good writing. (so long as you are not ONLY reading bad writing)

 

2. It helps to form your preferences and style. Other writers can inspire you, and they can give you excellent material for your own writing. As you get used to seeing other successful writers, you will also be absorbing some of their ideas and writing tendencies. This can give you a good basis as you start to write your own stuff.

 

3. It shows you what does not work. There is no bad premise for a story. However, there can be DISASTROUSLY bad implementations of a premise. This, again, is where reading bad works can also help you. When you read something that is poorly written and not enjoyable, you should not just stop at thinking that it's bad. Another writer's bad writing can be an even more valuable teacher for you than the works of a good writer. You should be constantly asking yourself, as you read it, WHY is it bad? WHAT are they doing wrong? and HOW can it be improved?

 

4. It helps you identify holes in the genre which you can capitalize on. Have you ever found yourself looking for a new series to read and said to yourself "I would really like to read a series in which X happens," or "has X as its premise." Well, if you are thinking that, and you keep looking but you cannot find something that satisfies that itch you have for a story with that kind of content, that's a hole in the market, and that is an opportunity. If you are looking to make a good showing as you start to write a new series, those holes in the market for your preferred genre are going to be what makes your story a success. If possible, try to fill multiple holes at once, this will further increase both the sense of uniqueness to your writings, and also give you a better chance to draw a crowd of people who also had the same desires as you to see a story with that content in it.

 

 

Educate yourself on certain key subjects.​

 

A writer who sounds like they know what they are talking about is several levels of magnitude more interesting to read than a writer who's just spouting some superficial crap. Having a sense of depth in your writing is something that captures a reader's interest and pulls them in deeper. It gives your writing more of a sense of mystery, and actually makes the reader eager to keep coming back to see what you are going to say next in your story. All the more so if the reader feels like they are learning something. Humans are a creature that really likes to learn, and if they feel they are being given interesting new information in what they are reading then it will greatly enhance their enjoyment.

 

There are a number of background subjects that will help EVERY writer regardless of genre or writing style. Being educated in any, or preferably, ALL of the background subjects that can help writers will absolutely help you as a writer even if you are not using it directly or focusing on this subject in your writing. This is what I was referring to when I mentioned the greats of the Sci-Fi genre in the last subject. Every single one of the great Sci-Fi writers of the 70s and 80s was incredibly well versed in every single one of the background subjects, and they also had some form of technology as a focus subject in addition to that.

 

Your focus subject is different from the background subjects. Your focus subject can be absolutely anything, it is completely up to you what to make the focus subject you want to interest your readers with. In my case, it is martial arts which I use, as well as some medical knowledge I have learned in my attempts to get into the nursing program. However, a lot of other people use things like cooking or archetecture as their focus subject in their writing. There are some focus subjects that are more useful and versatile than others, but if you are very well educated on this subject then it likely means that you are passionate about it and you inevitably will find some way to include it in your story in order to make it improve the story.

 

 

Background subjects: The list.​

 

The list of the background educational subjects, as mentioned in the section above, is not small and each subject has its own way in which it benefits you as a writer. As such, each one needs to be gone into with detail. The subjects are listed from most important to least important. It will benefit you to have some form of background in all of them, but if you are going to start picking them up from scratch then I recommend you start from the top and work your way down.

 

 

Psychology: Behavioral Science.

 

The entire field of psychology is useful for an author to be well versed in, but behavioral science is worth calling out in particular. Knowing about how real humans behave under various given circumstances, what makes them tick in terms of producing this behavior, and what is normal and abnormal human behavior are all things that will make your characters more believable. It can be very immersion breaking to have a character just go and do something that you just know instinctively no real person would ever do. Having a degree of background knowledge in behavioral science, whether learned scholastically or self-taught, will help you to make your characters behave in a more believable way that avoids this pitfall, and also results in them substituting these shoe-horned actions for far more interesting actions that may even produce more interesting or difficult situations for your protagonist to deal with.

 

 

Psychology: General studies

 

The entire rest of the field of psychology can also be quite useful to your writing. Behavioral science in particular is important to the point it ought to be focused on, but if you can focus more generally on what exactly is going through a character's head, it can improve your writing. The more interesting thing you will learn in general psychology that is different from behavioral science though is how people can think wrong. A character who's thinking gets derailed and they begin having thoughts that are incorrect but still perfectly within how a real person would behave in the given circumstances can be a lot more interesting than a flawless character. General psychology helps you to come up with better character flaws to give a character that are more believable and natural feeling.

 

(In my own story, I heavily apply this principal to a character named Eirlathion, who my readers have commented several times that they have to re-evaluate their opinions of as I reveal more about him. His entire character was set from the beginning, not a single thing about him has changed, but as he demonstrates his responses to more situations the readers discover more about him and are frequently finding that they had the wrong image of him all along. Surprises like this are only possible if you write a very firm character informed by a basis in psychology.)

 

 

Civics and Sociology

 

Civics is the study of statecraft, and Sociology is the study of social issues. One could also sum these two up as being "politics," which is defined as the processes by which a leader of the country is selected, but if I just said to study politics then you might make the mistake of thinking that a political science class would be valuable to any writer. This is not the case. It is not politics as a complete entity that is worthy of the #3 most important spot for a writer to know, it is the 2 legs that make it up. In a way, Sociology, particularly as it relates to civics, can be thought of as psychology on a mass scale. You will realize, these universally valuable subjects almost always seem to keep coming back down to psychology on some level or another.

 

In terms of Civics, you should be educating yourself on various forms of political structures, not just democratic ones. Sociology is a more interesting subject for the psychological component it contributes in the context of a democratic government, since these issues have a larger ability to influence politics in a democratic society, but it is also incredibly valuable to get into how political structures like a monarchy change the sociological issues of the system and how the people react.

 

 

Anthropology

 

This one is actually almost the same level in value as Civics and Sociology for its importance. Anthropology is the study of culture, often ignoring who happens to be in power or, if someone in power is mentioned, then it is in terms of a small tribal government with the chief as the highest political position Anthropology really ever studies. Anthropology does not only study tribal cultures though (although that is the version of anthropology most talked about.) Anthropologists will also study modern cultural enclaves, such as sports culture, drug culture, or video game culture. If you have the opportunity, actually taking an Anthropology class at a college can be very helpful in terms of being more aware of how different groups of people in your fictional world you are building will interact with each other, and also how it might feel for a character who is an outsider in this culture. More importantly, it helps you to be able to better construct cultures that are different from your own, and also how to better describe your own culture and what makes it distinct.

 

 

Current politics

 

Before when I mentioned civics and sociology, I mentioned that together these two subjects more or less make up politics, but that something the likes of political science was more or less worthless unless you are going to use it as a focus subject for your story. Well, being apprised of current events in IRL politics is an entirely different issue. It is best to have a firm backing in sociology before delving too deep into the political weeds, but when you are informed by sociology following political events and the psychology that underlies them can, on a superficial level, give you more that can create a resonance with your readers.

 

Let me be clear, it is a very VERY bad idea to insert your own political opinion into your writing. You will only be alienating those who have a different stance, and even the people who agree with you will feel it is very immersion breaking and cheap. However, if you can avoid inserting your opinion, pushing an agenda, or sounding preachy in your writing, you can use your awareness of the current political environment to structure something similar in your own world. This has the dual benefit of creating a realistic political environment for your characters to interact with, and also looks like something that will be more familiar to your readers that can resonate with them. If done right, this can really enhance almost any fictional world, especially in the case of more small-scale stories where the characters do not have the power on their own to really change anything about the political environment.

 

If your story is larger scale, it becomes inevitable that your characters may have some kind of influence on the political environment of your world, and you have to be very careful if it comes to this to avoid the trap of hand-fistedly inserting your political opinion on a matter of real world politics. You will have to exercise a lot of caution in this case. However, on the smaller scale, it can give you just the thing you need to make your world feel more lived in and realistic.

 

 

History

 

Knowing a lot of real world history can greatly enhance your understanding of politics both in the real world, and also in terms of what it does for your fictional world. History is not a subject lacking in importance. Rather, the reason it is last on the list here is because it is not quite as strong in terms of what it will do for your story on its own, but when taken in combination with almost any one of the subjects above it will synergize very well and enhance almost every single one of the other general subjects that can help a writer.

 

History can also help you by allowing you to use the real world as a model from which you can base your fictional world on and, similar to politics, make your world feel more lived in and real. This also can give you several subjects in terms of what real people did in the past that you can be inspired by to build up your fictional world or create scenarios that mirror a little known part of history. Just like with behavioral science and psychology, your story will be enhanced by having the behaviors of your characters be believable. So, what's more believable than something that actually happened in the real world?

 

There is a caution on the subject of history however. Just like with how it's very bad to insert your own political opinion, you have to know a historical subject VERY well before you start portraying parallels to actual historical events in your story. A bad reading of history is every single bit as much of a bomb in your story as becoming preachy or inserting your own political opinion into your story, especially since a bad reading of history can easily become a back door for your political opinion to work its way in.

 

 

Seek out tips from successful authors​

 

Finally, especially when you are starting off, you should be looking for tips from other authors. This one is pretty self explanatory, but the importance cannot be emphasized enough. Other writers who are further down the road than you and who have had to deal with their own hard lessons and who have already discovered the things that work and the things that don't work and can advise you on what pitfalls to avoid are really invaluable to keeping you on the right path.

 

 

Conclusions and salutations​

 

Well, that's it. I really hope this helps some people. I have been really enjoying writing on this site and appreciate the love I have been getting, and I really wanted to participate and start giving something back to hopefully help some other writers. Well then, good luck, and keep writing y'all.