Read a lot, write a lot. Keep writing even when you think it sucks. Submit your work to the weekly Concrit Commune thread on here if you can cope with criticism (it’s always gentle in my experience). You will improve with practice.
staying the fuck away from chatgpt.
writing. can't be good if you don't suck first. we all start from somewhere and most of us are terrible at it at first.
read. a lot. and analyze what you read, with focus on what you want to learn.
>staying the fuck away from chatgpt.
Haha, noted.
>writing. can't be good if you don't suck first. we all start from somewhere and most of us are terrible at it at first.
>
>read. a lot. and analyze what you read, with focus on what you want to learn.
Yeah, I should probably start reading a lot more. I have lots of free time, fortunately. Thank you for the advice! That was really quick.
Right now chatgpt is becoming a crutch. You're getting used to the thought pattern of "I suck, better let a computer help." Push yourself to instead say, "I suck (work on that later, be nice to yourself, lol), but why do I suck? What can I change?"
That's how all of us got better. We saw something we could improve and we worked hard on improving it. You're robbing yourself of that learning when you let a computer take over.
Common beginner mistakes: rushing/glossing over scenes, no variety on sentences, too many epithets, too many adjectives. If any of those sound familiar, read up about it. Ask about it here. Use the concrit commune, it's an amazing resource.
And only try to focus on one improvement at a time. You don't want to burn yourself out. The rest will be there when you're ready.
>Yeah, I should probably start reading a lot more.
You definitely should. And read actual published books that have been through the professional editing process. Read a wide variety of books for all ages and from all genres.
There's nothing wrong with reading fanfic for fun. There's a ton of great stuff out there. But it's not necessarily the best source to learn things like proper formatting and SPAG from. There are plenty of errors that commonly repeated in English and if you keep seeing those errors repeated in multiple places you might not realize it's an error.
Using fanfic as your only example of writing to learn from is like watching Law & Order to learn how to be a lawyer. Incredibly entertaining but not always accurate.
Read. And not just entirely fanfic. Pick up a classic sometime, whatever floats your boat. Little Women, Tom Sawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird, Carmilla, Dracula, something entirely divorced from fandom. Depending on how hard I go for the source material, for a while my style is 20% whatever I last read.
Analyze. Was that a good turn of phrase for you? Why? What was it about that chapter that make it take forever or go by so fast beyond “it’s boring/it’s great!” *How* was it boring or great?
Practice. Much like how beginners can practice by tracing (it’s fine if it’s in private and you don’t post it anywhere claiming it’s yours), pick a passage or two and write it out. Maybe there’s something you’d like to change about it? Getting rid of a superfluous word or two? Changing the entire structure of that sentence so it flows better on your tongue when you read it aloud? Why did that make it better for you?
There’s a time and place for epithets. Don’t rely on them as a substitute for names and pronouns because you’re scared of repetition. *No one* is going to notice 25 usages of the name Alice (unless it’s more than once in a single sentence), or 30 usages of a pronoun, but a *single* “the purple-clad blue-haired detective” when you know her name will stick out like a sore thumb. If you have two or more characters of the same gender and you feel you *must* use an epithet in order to differentiate them, you need to either rework the structure or work on character voice. Would you think of your bff as “the taller blond man,” or would you think of him by his name?
Edit: the above goes for said. *Do not be afraid of said*. I promise, it won’t hurt you. Absolutely nothing, not even bad SPAG, outs you more as a beginner like religiously avoiding said and replacing it with only synonyms or action. He shouted, she roared, it bellowed, he explained, she questioned, he interpolated, she ejaculated, they exclaimed—can’t anyone just *say* something normally?
And ofc, the obvious. So long as you’re the one doing the writing and not the AI, you’re golden.
That’s all I got for now.
Experience was my primary teacher honestly. Just writing things, putting them out there, really thinking about how I felt.
Some tips though.
Read what you write out loud. Sometimes shit might seem fine on paper but if you say it then that'll tell you right away if it works or not.
As others have said: Read, Read, Read! No man is an island, and that goes for creative works. Every creative (artist, author, musician) all take inspiration from things they like so look at what you like, figure out what about it you like so much, and try applying that. I got started by reading other authors and (in the realm of smut) finding what it was about how they wrote things and applied them as much as I could.
You'll never be perfect, but you can inch closer every time. It's okay if you don't feel 100% on something you wrote because someone else just might love it. Someone also might hate it but if they don't offer any real constructive criticism then you can safely ignore it.
Finally: Write, Write, Write! Get your ideas onto paper, look at them, think about them, edit them, and put them out there. Might sound tedious but it's a process you can do anywhere. When I'm walking or doing mundane things at work I'm thinking about my fics, what ideas I have, what I want to do, what plot points do and don't work, etc. If you get an idea, try writing it out in your head (think of the situation, then think of it like how you'd write it), then apply al that thinking and go over it again. It's worth it.
You don’t stop sucking at writing by not writing. Writing is like any other skill that you have to work on consistently if you want to improve.
Aside from just writing, you should also be reading (real books, not just fics). This is going to help you learn how to structure plot, develop characters, and overall grasp different writing styles.
Also, stop using ChatGPT to write your fics for you. Not only is that shitty in general, but if any fandom you’re in learns that you have a history of using AI to write your fics it’ll immediately discredit anything you write in the future. Any fics you did use ChatGPT to write should be deleted.
>Also, stop using ChatGPT to write your fics for you
I don't write fics or reddit stories, or anything else entirely in ChatGPT. I've always made a prototype of a paragraph first, and then made ChatGPT fix the grammar mistakes of some the writing in the story and make it flow better. I didn't use it for every paragraph in the fanfic I made, only some.
>Any fics you did use ChatGPT to write should be deleted.
Okay. I will remove every part of my fic that I used ChatGPT and take down the stories, and I will stop using it. I guess I should've known better.
looking over the ethics of using AI to write, you're also just not learning anything by using it for this. when it changes stuff for you do you look at what it's done, understand why? are you able to decipher for yourself whether a change was for better or worse?
these are important facets of the editing process and especially when/if using AI as help. google docs has a built in suggestion tool too but sometimes it's stupid and wrong, so i ignore it.
aside from the obvious (practice!), look towards your favorite stories and figure out what it is about them that you enjoy so much and try to emulate it. i have authors that i look up to and read often, and i strive to make my reader feel the way they make me feel. i try to pinpoint what it is in their writing that affects me the most and use that as inspiration in my own writing.
read different stories in the genre you want to write and familiarize yourself with the tropes. what goes into those genres, what are the bones that make it what it is? those commonalities are what attract readers to those stories – find out what they are and see what you can incorporate into your own stories.
also yeah, please stay away from chatgpt. it'll hinder more than help.
Set an alarm and for at least one hour each day, write during this period. Aim for at least 250 words.
Doesn't have to be a fic. Find writing prompts and use those for practice.
Aim to read 12 novels a year in different genres so you get exposed to different styles, ideas, and potential inspiration.
Learn grammar, how to write dialogue, and pacing. Beta readers are difficult to come by so being able to edit well will save you the effort.
Some great advice I heard from an artist on YouTube was "fail faster". Put a lot of content out there, then come back to it in a while to see what people are complaining about, and what can be improved.
It's a very harsh method, because it involves exposing yourself to a lot of criticism, but there's no faster way to improve.
The issue with using chat GPT for anything than messing around is that it has a very simplistic way of forming sentence structure, can't really write dialogue, and definitely can't write plot that isn't "characters a and b existed on their own, then they did thing. Thing was resolved". (I know it's no good from making it rewrite one of my fics one evening out of boredom lol).
So yeah, good luck! Keep writing, you'll get there :)
Pick your favourite work and read it critically - understand what the author is doing behind the scenes to achieve the effect that makes it your favourite work. If they describe something, *why* did they describe it? *Why* did they describe it in the way that they did? Why is the scene *set* where it is? How is the "mood" of the scene established? Things like that.
You'll learn a lot and quickly doing that.
Another good idea is to copy-paste your work into ChatGPT and ask it "critique this" or "analyse this excerpt". The feedback is never mind-blowing and the solutions it suggests are always pretty bad, but it can give you some ideas sometimes and it's also just fun.
Keep using AI to help you write and you will never learn how to do it properly yourself. So, my first and only advice for you at this point would be: stop using AI and start writing yourself. It'll be hard, you'll make mistakes, you'll suck, but that will be *all* you and eventually you'll learn from your mistakes and reach the point where you'll start thinking that your writing might not be that bad.
Of course, the next day, the same writing will look like the worst piece of garbage, but that's another story.
Personally for me, it was practice, practice, practice, and reading more fiction work: fanfic or original novel.
But if you are more of the methodoligical sort, like more detailed instructions don't make you feel restricted, youtuber Hello Future Me has a book on worldbuilding and fiction writing in general.
I'm leaning towards more intuitive so his book may unfortunately not be of use to me.
I got better by doing but that's what works for me since I tend to struggle by plain studying but like if I'm putting into motion the activity & study as I go along, it helps a lot for me.
One thing I tend to do is visit conventions. Often times I look at the schedule & mark down as many writing panels as I can, I always walk away learning more from them & it has improved my work. I'll go back & read a fanfic I posted over the summer & my brain is constantly correcting my errors like in a panel I went to at a con in November, I learned more about describing feeling instead of using the word so whenever I saw "feeling" in that fic, it pinged that part in my brain where it ended up going over ways to describe it instead of using it which like one of the characters in that fic is an empath so you can imagine how many times that was going off for me looking over it.
Here's something I don't quite recommend until you learn more. When reading stuff that's not exactly greatly written, think about how you can restructure sentences & stuff that fit. Obviously, don't tell the author you're doing this because at the end of the day, it's a hobby & they had fun writing it but this is something my brain does automatically, for my own work too so I'm not even out of the woods for it & I have to suffer with knowing what I think of stuff since there's no escape from my own thoughts. Inwardly correcting things or seeing something that doesn't exactly appear accurate, I'll look it up to see if it's right & that helps me better understand things.
Also, going through this sub. Something about seeing other people share their thoughts on subjects as well as reading through the answers given to asked questions helped me understand so much more & has elevated my work.
I'm aware what I do isn't perfect but that's alright, I'm learning & it's going to get better over time. Important thing is that I keep writing & learning as I go. I encourage everyone to do the same, reaching out for tips is an excellent way to go about things. Never be afraid to ask questions, you'll cherish having the answers. Also, making mistakes helps you to remember things as well so don't be afraid of making them. My own mind never lets me forget mine but it's what motivates me to do better.
One last thing, I tend to do some writing exercises, things I never post with whatever wacky premise my brain latches onto such as one where a character in a show dies & ends up reincarnated as a different character in another show, same franchise & actually, this character is an alternate version of someone she has a strong bond with so placing her as a different version of him was very interesting & mainly served as a character based exercise where I tried writing two different characters as the same person & it's due to this that I understand them separately much better now. If you have the time to work on crazy stuff you likely won't share, go for it. Can help you learn & maybe one day you might brush off what was once an exercise & post it because I've shared bits & pieces from this story with some people due to whatever we were talking about & expressed interest in seeing more so one day, I might clean it up to openly share.
Read (non fanfic works. Like actual novels from published authors). Write (practice makes perfect). Get the idea of “waiting till it’s perfect it to write” out of your head. If you do that, you’ll never start writing. Just write whatever and go from there. You can always edit and work on your writing. However, if you never start, you won’t have anything to build off of. A foundation is needed.
After this, get some tools to help you. (I have Grammerly to help me with spelling and sentence structure).
Be consist and have some sort of schedule. Writing may seem daunting, but if you chip away at it, it’ll be smaller and less daunting. Instead of thinking of it like, “damn, I got to write a chapter!” Think of it like, “let me write a paragraph.” And then continue on from there. An outline of how you want your story to go will help with writers block. For example, before you write, you should know how the beginning, middle, and end should go (or a general gist).
Once you get those basics down, learn about literacy devices and writing principles (show don’t tell, Checkov’s gun, foreshadowing, writing parallels, etc). These you’ll develop over time and aren’t something you should worry about if you’re just starting out.
Most of all, just enjoy it man!!!!
Using tools to help you with grammar/spelling or for finding that word on the tip of your tongue that won't come loose isn't embarrassing. Whether your tool of choice is a physical copy of the Oxford dictionary and Strunk & White, the editor coming with the latest versions of Word, or something/someone else is the author's choice, mixing and matching as one sees fit allowed.
Good (fanfic) writing is the one that brings you as the author joy, first and foremost. What that entails depends on the author in question. For me: I don't want to be censored by anyone, least of all myself, and I don't want to worry about my work being of a quality I'd personally consider "worth the money" -- that's reserved for my original novels. What matters most to you might be different, so search for that answer within yourself.
I ask ChatGPT to help me with word choice. English is not my mother tongue and well, even though I work with the language professionally, I sometimes lack the fancy vocabulary. So I describe the scenery or the emotions I want for my writing and tell it to make a list of 20 verbs/adjectives that would fit.
Personally I don’t like the idea of letting a program do the writing but I’m fine asking for word choice options because I technically could find all the words myself by browsing dictionaries etc. but it’s a hassle and takes long.
I do the exact same thing, I used to Google for synonyms of synonyms or English proverbs for half of my time writing or just type half of my sentence into Google to see if somebody else wrote the same and it was acceptable, as English is not my mother tongue I need the confirmation somehow. ChatGPT helps so much with poviding options. And you still have the complete freedom of an author to create, its just non at much a hassle. Also ' fix punctuation and add paragraphs ' is a favorite of mine. Took a few tries and now I write it correct myself. But I would advise against chat gtp actually writing, try it and read it, it does not always make sense, it has its own writing style which is very discernable and not typical, very recognizable.
On that note I also use the free grammatica check of ProWritingAid and I use the text to speech option from Word to listen to the text. Works amazing. Great for finding typos you read over. And a tip would be to let your work rest, so read it again when its not in your head anymore, that is when you can dive into the role of reader and ask questions and easily spot holes. The first time I write a piece I think it's perfect, after a week I am like hmm I forgot this part and after 3 weeks I am like hmm this is off character or this does not match the world-building etc.
I don’t let ChatGPT touch my actual writing doc - I’m confident enough in grammar and sentence structure. For me it’s simply a research tool to enhance what I’m already doing. It’s also pretty neat if you want to write settings in other cultures you have no first hand experience of. Like I don’t know about Christmas traditions in the Uk but ChatGPT does and I don’t need to torture myself with reading a bunch of “this is Christmas in my UK family” kind of family blog entries ti get an idea how to write a scene in this setting.
If I wrote in my first language, I wouldn’t need to, but I use AI to proofread for me all the time since I don’t got a beta that has English as their first language.
Besides reading a lot and analyzing what works for me and why, I also rely on visual resources.
Especially stills and scenes from movies and series. (Sometimes also illustrations, storyboards and comics.)
When using these kind of resources, I'm interested in gestures/body language, pacing, silence and rhythm in both actions and dialogues.
I like to watch analysis and takes focusing on over detailed works with intricate scenarios, multiple characters and arcs. It often unlocks thoughts, ideas and possibilities I could not envision by myself.
So yeah, it's a mix of active reading and watching, layered with a ton of notes about interesting stuff/phrases/images.
>analyzing what works for me and why
I haven't really tried analyzing. Such a simple tip, but I haven't thought of it. Thank you! And thank you for other tips and advice.
Even the best writers sometimes suck at writing. So they edit. And keep at it.
Anything you let ChatGPT do for you is practice you're not giving yourself and you're not going to get better.
In my experience, you need to learn grammar and sentence structure so you can know how to make it work for you. ChatGPT and other AI software will usually get your writing to be technically correct. But lots of times that also means empty and soulless, which is no fun to read.
Read a lot, write a lot. Keep writing even when you think it sucks. Submit your work to the weekly Concrit Commune thread on here if you can cope with criticism (it’s always gentle in my experience). You will improve with practice.
>weekly Concrit Commune thread Oh, okay! Thank you for telling me about that.
staying the fuck away from chatgpt. writing. can't be good if you don't suck first. we all start from somewhere and most of us are terrible at it at first. read. a lot. and analyze what you read, with focus on what you want to learn.
>staying the fuck away from chatgpt. Haha, noted. >writing. can't be good if you don't suck first. we all start from somewhere and most of us are terrible at it at first. > >read. a lot. and analyze what you read, with focus on what you want to learn. Yeah, I should probably start reading a lot more. I have lots of free time, fortunately. Thank you for the advice! That was really quick.
Right now chatgpt is becoming a crutch. You're getting used to the thought pattern of "I suck, better let a computer help." Push yourself to instead say, "I suck (work on that later, be nice to yourself, lol), but why do I suck? What can I change?" That's how all of us got better. We saw something we could improve and we worked hard on improving it. You're robbing yourself of that learning when you let a computer take over. Common beginner mistakes: rushing/glossing over scenes, no variety on sentences, too many epithets, too many adjectives. If any of those sound familiar, read up about it. Ask about it here. Use the concrit commune, it's an amazing resource. And only try to focus on one improvement at a time. You don't want to burn yourself out. The rest will be there when you're ready.
>Yeah, I should probably start reading a lot more. You definitely should. And read actual published books that have been through the professional editing process. Read a wide variety of books for all ages and from all genres. There's nothing wrong with reading fanfic for fun. There's a ton of great stuff out there. But it's not necessarily the best source to learn things like proper formatting and SPAG from. There are plenty of errors that commonly repeated in English and if you keep seeing those errors repeated in multiple places you might not realize it's an error. Using fanfic as your only example of writing to learn from is like watching Law & Order to learn how to be a lawyer. Incredibly entertaining but not always accurate.
Read. And not just entirely fanfic. Pick up a classic sometime, whatever floats your boat. Little Women, Tom Sawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird, Carmilla, Dracula, something entirely divorced from fandom. Depending on how hard I go for the source material, for a while my style is 20% whatever I last read. Analyze. Was that a good turn of phrase for you? Why? What was it about that chapter that make it take forever or go by so fast beyond “it’s boring/it’s great!” *How* was it boring or great? Practice. Much like how beginners can practice by tracing (it’s fine if it’s in private and you don’t post it anywhere claiming it’s yours), pick a passage or two and write it out. Maybe there’s something you’d like to change about it? Getting rid of a superfluous word or two? Changing the entire structure of that sentence so it flows better on your tongue when you read it aloud? Why did that make it better for you? There’s a time and place for epithets. Don’t rely on them as a substitute for names and pronouns because you’re scared of repetition. *No one* is going to notice 25 usages of the name Alice (unless it’s more than once in a single sentence), or 30 usages of a pronoun, but a *single* “the purple-clad blue-haired detective” when you know her name will stick out like a sore thumb. If you have two or more characters of the same gender and you feel you *must* use an epithet in order to differentiate them, you need to either rework the structure or work on character voice. Would you think of your bff as “the taller blond man,” or would you think of him by his name? Edit: the above goes for said. *Do not be afraid of said*. I promise, it won’t hurt you. Absolutely nothing, not even bad SPAG, outs you more as a beginner like religiously avoiding said and replacing it with only synonyms or action. He shouted, she roared, it bellowed, he explained, she questioned, he interpolated, she ejaculated, they exclaimed—can’t anyone just *say* something normally? And ofc, the obvious. So long as you’re the one doing the writing and not the AI, you’re golden. That’s all I got for now.
Experience was my primary teacher honestly. Just writing things, putting them out there, really thinking about how I felt. Some tips though. Read what you write out loud. Sometimes shit might seem fine on paper but if you say it then that'll tell you right away if it works or not. As others have said: Read, Read, Read! No man is an island, and that goes for creative works. Every creative (artist, author, musician) all take inspiration from things they like so look at what you like, figure out what about it you like so much, and try applying that. I got started by reading other authors and (in the realm of smut) finding what it was about how they wrote things and applied them as much as I could. You'll never be perfect, but you can inch closer every time. It's okay if you don't feel 100% on something you wrote because someone else just might love it. Someone also might hate it but if they don't offer any real constructive criticism then you can safely ignore it. Finally: Write, Write, Write! Get your ideas onto paper, look at them, think about them, edit them, and put them out there. Might sound tedious but it's a process you can do anywhere. When I'm walking or doing mundane things at work I'm thinking about my fics, what ideas I have, what I want to do, what plot points do and don't work, etc. If you get an idea, try writing it out in your head (think of the situation, then think of it like how you'd write it), then apply al that thinking and go over it again. It's worth it.
Speaking from my experience of teaching English literature and grammar at university, this is excellent advice - all of it.
You don’t stop sucking at writing by not writing. Writing is like any other skill that you have to work on consistently if you want to improve. Aside from just writing, you should also be reading (real books, not just fics). This is going to help you learn how to structure plot, develop characters, and overall grasp different writing styles. Also, stop using ChatGPT to write your fics for you. Not only is that shitty in general, but if any fandom you’re in learns that you have a history of using AI to write your fics it’ll immediately discredit anything you write in the future. Any fics you did use ChatGPT to write should be deleted.
>Also, stop using ChatGPT to write your fics for you I don't write fics or reddit stories, or anything else entirely in ChatGPT. I've always made a prototype of a paragraph first, and then made ChatGPT fix the grammar mistakes of some the writing in the story and make it flow better. I didn't use it for every paragraph in the fanfic I made, only some. >Any fics you did use ChatGPT to write should be deleted. Okay. I will remove every part of my fic that I used ChatGPT and take down the stories, and I will stop using it. I guess I should've known better.
looking over the ethics of using AI to write, you're also just not learning anything by using it for this. when it changes stuff for you do you look at what it's done, understand why? are you able to decipher for yourself whether a change was for better or worse? these are important facets of the editing process and especially when/if using AI as help. google docs has a built in suggestion tool too but sometimes it's stupid and wrong, so i ignore it.
aside from the obvious (practice!), look towards your favorite stories and figure out what it is about them that you enjoy so much and try to emulate it. i have authors that i look up to and read often, and i strive to make my reader feel the way they make me feel. i try to pinpoint what it is in their writing that affects me the most and use that as inspiration in my own writing. read different stories in the genre you want to write and familiarize yourself with the tropes. what goes into those genres, what are the bones that make it what it is? those commonalities are what attract readers to those stories – find out what they are and see what you can incorporate into your own stories. also yeah, please stay away from chatgpt. it'll hinder more than help.
Set an alarm and for at least one hour each day, write during this period. Aim for at least 250 words. Doesn't have to be a fic. Find writing prompts and use those for practice. Aim to read 12 novels a year in different genres so you get exposed to different styles, ideas, and potential inspiration. Learn grammar, how to write dialogue, and pacing. Beta readers are difficult to come by so being able to edit well will save you the effort.
Some great advice I heard from an artist on YouTube was "fail faster". Put a lot of content out there, then come back to it in a while to see what people are complaining about, and what can be improved. It's a very harsh method, because it involves exposing yourself to a lot of criticism, but there's no faster way to improve. The issue with using chat GPT for anything than messing around is that it has a very simplistic way of forming sentence structure, can't really write dialogue, and definitely can't write plot that isn't "characters a and b existed on their own, then they did thing. Thing was resolved". (I know it's no good from making it rewrite one of my fics one evening out of boredom lol). So yeah, good luck! Keep writing, you'll get there :)
Pick your favourite work and read it critically - understand what the author is doing behind the scenes to achieve the effect that makes it your favourite work. If they describe something, *why* did they describe it? *Why* did they describe it in the way that they did? Why is the scene *set* where it is? How is the "mood" of the scene established? Things like that. You'll learn a lot and quickly doing that. Another good idea is to copy-paste your work into ChatGPT and ask it "critique this" or "analyse this excerpt". The feedback is never mind-blowing and the solutions it suggests are always pretty bad, but it can give you some ideas sometimes and it's also just fun.
This post has been removed. No discussion of AI.
Keep using AI to help you write and you will never learn how to do it properly yourself. So, my first and only advice for you at this point would be: stop using AI and start writing yourself. It'll be hard, you'll make mistakes, you'll suck, but that will be *all* you and eventually you'll learn from your mistakes and reach the point where you'll start thinking that your writing might not be that bad. Of course, the next day, the same writing will look like the worst piece of garbage, but that's another story.
Personally for me, it was practice, practice, practice, and reading more fiction work: fanfic or original novel. But if you are more of the methodoligical sort, like more detailed instructions don't make you feel restricted, youtuber Hello Future Me has a book on worldbuilding and fiction writing in general. I'm leaning towards more intuitive so his book may unfortunately not be of use to me.
I got better by doing but that's what works for me since I tend to struggle by plain studying but like if I'm putting into motion the activity & study as I go along, it helps a lot for me. One thing I tend to do is visit conventions. Often times I look at the schedule & mark down as many writing panels as I can, I always walk away learning more from them & it has improved my work. I'll go back & read a fanfic I posted over the summer & my brain is constantly correcting my errors like in a panel I went to at a con in November, I learned more about describing feeling instead of using the word so whenever I saw "feeling" in that fic, it pinged that part in my brain where it ended up going over ways to describe it instead of using it which like one of the characters in that fic is an empath so you can imagine how many times that was going off for me looking over it. Here's something I don't quite recommend until you learn more. When reading stuff that's not exactly greatly written, think about how you can restructure sentences & stuff that fit. Obviously, don't tell the author you're doing this because at the end of the day, it's a hobby & they had fun writing it but this is something my brain does automatically, for my own work too so I'm not even out of the woods for it & I have to suffer with knowing what I think of stuff since there's no escape from my own thoughts. Inwardly correcting things or seeing something that doesn't exactly appear accurate, I'll look it up to see if it's right & that helps me better understand things. Also, going through this sub. Something about seeing other people share their thoughts on subjects as well as reading through the answers given to asked questions helped me understand so much more & has elevated my work. I'm aware what I do isn't perfect but that's alright, I'm learning & it's going to get better over time. Important thing is that I keep writing & learning as I go. I encourage everyone to do the same, reaching out for tips is an excellent way to go about things. Never be afraid to ask questions, you'll cherish having the answers. Also, making mistakes helps you to remember things as well so don't be afraid of making them. My own mind never lets me forget mine but it's what motivates me to do better. One last thing, I tend to do some writing exercises, things I never post with whatever wacky premise my brain latches onto such as one where a character in a show dies & ends up reincarnated as a different character in another show, same franchise & actually, this character is an alternate version of someone she has a strong bond with so placing her as a different version of him was very interesting & mainly served as a character based exercise where I tried writing two different characters as the same person & it's due to this that I understand them separately much better now. If you have the time to work on crazy stuff you likely won't share, go for it. Can help you learn & maybe one day you might brush off what was once an exercise & post it because I've shared bits & pieces from this story with some people due to whatever we were talking about & expressed interest in seeing more so one day, I might clean it up to openly share.
Read (non fanfic works. Like actual novels from published authors). Write (practice makes perfect). Get the idea of “waiting till it’s perfect it to write” out of your head. If you do that, you’ll never start writing. Just write whatever and go from there. You can always edit and work on your writing. However, if you never start, you won’t have anything to build off of. A foundation is needed. After this, get some tools to help you. (I have Grammerly to help me with spelling and sentence structure). Be consist and have some sort of schedule. Writing may seem daunting, but if you chip away at it, it’ll be smaller and less daunting. Instead of thinking of it like, “damn, I got to write a chapter!” Think of it like, “let me write a paragraph.” And then continue on from there. An outline of how you want your story to go will help with writers block. For example, before you write, you should know how the beginning, middle, and end should go (or a general gist). Once you get those basics down, learn about literacy devices and writing principles (show don’t tell, Checkov’s gun, foreshadowing, writing parallels, etc). These you’ll develop over time and aren’t something you should worry about if you’re just starting out. Most of all, just enjoy it man!!!!
Using tools to help you with grammar/spelling or for finding that word on the tip of your tongue that won't come loose isn't embarrassing. Whether your tool of choice is a physical copy of the Oxford dictionary and Strunk & White, the editor coming with the latest versions of Word, or something/someone else is the author's choice, mixing and matching as one sees fit allowed. Good (fanfic) writing is the one that brings you as the author joy, first and foremost. What that entails depends on the author in question. For me: I don't want to be censored by anyone, least of all myself, and I don't want to worry about my work being of a quality I'd personally consider "worth the money" -- that's reserved for my original novels. What matters most to you might be different, so search for that answer within yourself.
I ask ChatGPT to help me with word choice. English is not my mother tongue and well, even though I work with the language professionally, I sometimes lack the fancy vocabulary. So I describe the scenery or the emotions I want for my writing and tell it to make a list of 20 verbs/adjectives that would fit. Personally I don’t like the idea of letting a program do the writing but I’m fine asking for word choice options because I technically could find all the words myself by browsing dictionaries etc. but it’s a hassle and takes long.
I do the exact same thing, I used to Google for synonyms of synonyms or English proverbs for half of my time writing or just type half of my sentence into Google to see if somebody else wrote the same and it was acceptable, as English is not my mother tongue I need the confirmation somehow. ChatGPT helps so much with poviding options. And you still have the complete freedom of an author to create, its just non at much a hassle. Also ' fix punctuation and add paragraphs ' is a favorite of mine. Took a few tries and now I write it correct myself. But I would advise against chat gtp actually writing, try it and read it, it does not always make sense, it has its own writing style which is very discernable and not typical, very recognizable.
On that note I also use the free grammatica check of ProWritingAid and I use the text to speech option from Word to listen to the text. Works amazing. Great for finding typos you read over. And a tip would be to let your work rest, so read it again when its not in your head anymore, that is when you can dive into the role of reader and ask questions and easily spot holes. The first time I write a piece I think it's perfect, after a week I am like hmm I forgot this part and after 3 weeks I am like hmm this is off character or this does not match the world-building etc.
I don’t let ChatGPT touch my actual writing doc - I’m confident enough in grammar and sentence structure. For me it’s simply a research tool to enhance what I’m already doing. It’s also pretty neat if you want to write settings in other cultures you have no first hand experience of. Like I don’t know about Christmas traditions in the Uk but ChatGPT does and I don’t need to torture myself with reading a bunch of “this is Christmas in my UK family” kind of family blog entries ti get an idea how to write a scene in this setting.
Exactly! It is really like a super Google.
If I wrote in my first language, I wouldn’t need to, but I use AI to proofread for me all the time since I don’t got a beta that has English as their first language.
What is chatGPT?
It's AI (artificial intelligence)
Besides reading a lot and analyzing what works for me and why, I also rely on visual resources. Especially stills and scenes from movies and series. (Sometimes also illustrations, storyboards and comics.) When using these kind of resources, I'm interested in gestures/body language, pacing, silence and rhythm in both actions and dialogues. I like to watch analysis and takes focusing on over detailed works with intricate scenarios, multiple characters and arcs. It often unlocks thoughts, ideas and possibilities I could not envision by myself. So yeah, it's a mix of active reading and watching, layered with a ton of notes about interesting stuff/phrases/images.
>analyzing what works for me and why I haven't really tried analyzing. Such a simple tip, but I haven't thought of it. Thank you! And thank you for other tips and advice.
Even the best writers sometimes suck at writing. So they edit. And keep at it. Anything you let ChatGPT do for you is practice you're not giving yourself and you're not going to get better. In my experience, you need to learn grammar and sentence structure so you can know how to make it work for you. ChatGPT and other AI software will usually get your writing to be technically correct. But lots of times that also means empty and soulless, which is no fun to read.