Kitsura

Hello, My name is Kitsura, at the very least that’s what I’m called on this site. I generally keep a low profile, but I decided to write this as a note to myself and perhaps to give a helping hand to new authors on this site. In terms of credentials I think I'm popular enough that I can at least speak to how you can write better.

In a lot of ways, I think that people here don’t realize that writing is as much an art form as much as drawing art is. I see too many authors who think there is a formula to being successful on scribblehub, and while I will admit that this website appeals to certain demographics that is not why your webnovel is failing.

This will be covered in depth later in another chapter, so I want to shift the focus to “writing”. The esoteric concept it is. As mentioned above writing is an art. The difference between a competent amateur like myself and a literary powerhouse like Toni Morrison is night and day. Good writing sings, not only figuratively but literally. There’s a reason why Shakespeare is so relevant today, his writing is filled with wit and done to a literal tune (look up iambic pentameter).

Let’s take this art analogy forward. Many artists must spend a lot of time learning the basics of drawing, making shapes, drawing a straight line, proportions, and shading. To learn an art form, you have to learn the basics fundamentals. Writing is much the same way, to be able to write you need the requisite grammatical skills and the ability to format your writing properly. While you think this is easy many aspiring web novelists fail at this step.

Ok, so now you know how to use the basics of the English language. Congratulations you have beaten out 50 percent of your competition. I’m dead serious by the way, most people cannot use a comma or a period to save their life. Don’t worry, it’s hard I know. While I’m not an expert on English grammar. I would say I know enough to be passably readable.

Great, you can write a sentence. What now?

I could talk for an inordinate amount of time about what is needed to make a good story, but those will be covered in later chapters.

I will be honest; your first writings are going to be terrible. Your first “book” aka the first 80,000 words you write will be trash. I am no exception although my novel, Reincarnated as a… Completely Average Person? is fairly popular I loath reading my earlier chapters. The pacing is wrong, character actions are all over the place and you can see that in the criticism of the comment sections and many of my earlier reviews.

I have made my peace with the problems in the novel, but the funny part is that it’s not even my first attempt at writing. The novel I had planned to post was a series called the Web of Fate a low fantasy Anime + Percy Jackson-esque webnovel.

I know this sounds disheartening but there is an upside. If writing was easy, everybody would be J.K. Rowling. The fact that writing is hard is proof that you are undertaking an action that many people would quit at.

Writing is an exercise in persistence. Brandon Sanderson wrote around 14 books before he sold Elantris, which by the way, wasn’t even popular or a hit when it came out. A study showed that it takes the average published author 10 years to get published. Writing, as stated earlier is an art form and you only get better at art through persistent practices.

So how to practice?

I won’t give you any sort of exercises. I think most of them are contrived. Here is an example from my writing textbook.

“He/She/They were about to _____ but then_____”

While prompts like these are useful for some people, they are problematic from a teaching standpoint. These prompts don’t force you to consider narrative, broader plot structure, and only hone the “writing” part of writing.

For aspiring writers they are a good place to start but I think it’s better to overwhelm yourself and force yourself to write through discipline.

What do you want to write? Is it screenplay, a short story, flash fiction, poetry? Regardless these are all creative outlets and let you write stories. Being able to complete a story no matter how short is important. It teaches you how to write, and the structure of plot. I don’t care what you write but if you want to be successful promise me this.

1,000 words a day.

This is what I would consider the bare minimum length for a webnovel chapter. Going a little under or over is fine but there is no secret ingredient to writing besides getting all the crap words out of you. Writers are sort of like wine, we get better with age and there is a reason. We get more practice, and our prose becomes more refined.

Honestly, I would prefer if you wrote 2k words per day but for some people I know, that is not feasible. I am a fast writer, in a little under an hour I can pop out 1k words. Being a fast drafter is a useful skill especially for writing webnovel but depending on release schedule you don’t need to write nearly as much as I do.

I know some people are far slower than me. That is fine, but I want people to write that much to get rid of the indecision that emerges in new writers. I want you to know that everything is just practice right now, there is no teacher grading you. Just write stories that you enjoy, and you will improve your writing “muscles” so to speak.

Moving forward, I want to touch on one last point, Pantsing vs Outliners. AKA people who plan a story out before writing(Outliners) or people who simply write and go with the flow(Pansting)

Most of the writing advice you see online says that most writers fall into these two camps. In truth, it’s a spectrum. I would fall heavily in the pantsing section but that doesn’t mean I don’t outline or plan my stories from time to time. I think that pantsing allows me to develop stories more organically but I know it’s crippling for some people to write without an outline.

If you're that sort of person, then do it. As one of my coaches used to say, “practice how you play” Short stories need outlines sometimes too, do what your normal process would be with writing.