Advice for Aspiring Authors

[jireh the provider]

Ahh, I see. Just place suggestive music as an option on the Start or end of the story, not in the middle. Well, That helps.

[ChaosCaptain]

I'm still pretty new to writing in a non-academic setting but I have learned a few useful things:

Names: There's nothing wrong with ordinary names but I usually try to find names that fit the character, I've even made some up (IE: Aven from my mystery dungeon story, I made her name from a latin root)

Music: try writing to orchestral music, it helps to accent the mood. (I suggest Hans Zimmer)

Character: It may sound corny but your characters shold feel like people (or pokemon) that you could have convesations with. Don't make someones sole charcteristic a keen sense of sarcasm or a kind heart, make them layered and complex.

[Maveox]

I'm not sure if anyone checks this anymore, but I have a few questions I was hoping experienced authors could answer.

1) How long should each chapter be (roughly) in Microsoft Word?

2) How thoroughly do you plan out the story? Anywhere from having a detailed plan of each chapter to having a basic outline of the plot.

3) Do you post chapters as soon as you finish them, or do you wait until you are a certain number of chapters ahead?

4) Any pre-writing tips for me? I have the basic plot done, but what techniques do you use to brainstorm?

Thanks a bunch to whomever answers this!

[Liz Azzimagica]

I'm not sure if anyone checks this anymore, but I have a few questions I was hoping experienced authors could answer.

1) How long should each chapter be (roughly) in Microsoft Word?

2) How thoroughly do you plan out the story? Anywhere from having a detailed plan of each chapter to having a basic outline of the plot.

3) Do you post chapters as soon as you finish them, or do you wait until you are a certain number of chapters ahead?

4) Any pre-writing tips for me? I have the basic plot done, but what techniques do you use to brainstorm?

Thanks a bunch to whomever answers this!

Well this is what I learned as I improved my writing with my fanfic:

1. How long each chapter is is depentant of the story, but I recomine 10-20 pages

2. I tend to think out the basic plot then try to draw inspiration from others around me when it comes to details, even if you have the basic plot, it never hurts to draw new ideas from talking to people that are interested in what your writing.

3. I tend to post chapters soon as I finish them because with all the detail I get into, it can take a week or more per chapter. remember, writing is an art form so it's something that cannot be rushed if you want your ideas to flow together.

4. Again with brainstorming...sometimes you can draw your inspiration just from talking to people and while it's not a pre-writing tip...my ultiment tip is never second guess yourself (unless your sure wth conviction the idea won't work) and if you run into writter's block...walk away and take a walk outside. that walk helps to clear your head and possibly draw new ideas. O and one last thing...don't be scared to act out parts of your story because if they can't come alive for you, how will they for the reader?

[SpyroxPikachu]

Just a small question, when writing which of the three points of view is the most powerful? First Person, Second person, or third person?

[Phoenixsong]

The short answer is that there is no "most powerful" point of view when talking about writing in general. Different points of view work best for different stories and different methods of storytelling. How much information do you want the reader to know about what's going on, especially if it's something they might potentially learn about before it happens to the characters? Who are the characters in the story, and who should the reader know the most about or identify the most closely with? Whose story are you telling in the first place? All of these things go into choosing a point of view, and because the answers are different for each story it means that the most "powerful" way to tell one may not be the most "powerful" way to tell another.

Most people will tell you to avoid second person, generally because it tends to be the most difficult of the three to write appropriately. That's not to say that it can't be done—there are some very moving and well-executed fics that were written in second person POV. Second-person stories use the pronoun "you", so you're implying that the reader is the one going through the events of the story. On the one hand you could almost say that this makes second person the most powerful POV of the three, because it more or less means that your reader "is" the one having the argument or "is" the one experiencing a painful loss. It's arguably the quickest way to attempt to punch someone right in the feels, to oversimplify it. On the other hand, however, you generally have to write extremely well to make your reader feel that involved with what's going on as opposed to just confused, and to make the reader feel like they could actually be this person even though they're not. If the main character deals with his problem by drinking himself into a stupor but your reader would never touch alcohol, they're not going to feel any real connection to your hard-drinking protag and the effect is lost—the story is supposed to be "about them", but "they" just did something that they would never do. (For that matter, even seemingly small issues like the character's gender being different from the reader's can cause that disconnect and thus make second person POV less effective.) It takes a bit of work to really overcome a hurdle like that, and simply put it may not be worth trying if it's not critical for the reader get that deep into the character's head. Certainly the reader won't feel so awkward about the drinking character if they're just observing him as opposed to being him.

Someone else may want to come in and elaborate with some examples of effective uses of each viewpoint; I'm tired and really ought to be heading off to bed now. The upshot really is that it does depend on the story in question, though. Rather than looking for a blanket "best" POV for all stories you'll ever write, you should consider which POV will best serve your purposes for this one story now.

[IJuggler]

I'm not sure if anyone checks this anymore, but I have a few questions I was hoping experienced authors could answer.

1) How long should each chapter be (roughly) in Microsoft Word?

2) How thoroughly do you plan out the story? Anywhere from having a detailed plan of each chapter to having a basic outline of the plot.

3) Do you post chapters as soon as you finish them, or do you wait until you are a certain number of chapters ahead?

4) Any pre-writing tips for me? I have the basic plot done, but what techniques do you use to brainstorm?

Thanks a bunch to whomever answers this!

Chapters can be as long as the story needs, though Serebii has a reasonable minimum of at least 2 pages.

I've written a story with very little planning and only some vague thoughts of the ending, and it turned out fairly well. It really depends on the type of story you're writing, though; if you're trying to make an intriguing mystery, it would definitely help to know who the villain is, and if you're writing shorter piece you may want to know all the details before putting in too many empty words.

But really, the most important characteristic of planning I find is to nail down the characters. If you know what each character is like and is going to respond to a situation, you could take the story into many different directions.

After I finish a chapter I tend to wait about a week, maybe more, just to revise and reread and get a good feeling on it. I'm trying to put across certain emotions subtly, and if I'm not careful I end up stepping on those, or making silly mistakes like having a cool autumn breeze turn into a stifling summer day later on.

Pre-writing tips? I've got two, actually.
1) Type up a word. After that, put another one after it.
2)Repeat step 1-2 until story is complete.

For me, I find the biggest problem is just sitting down and doing it. Sometimes I'll find myself wasting half an hour to an hour just looking up tips on how to write well...not the most productive use of writing time, I think. Good luck!

[JX Valentine]

1) How long should each chapter be (roughly) in Microsoft Word?

However long it takes for you to get everything you want to get done in a chapter done. Sometimes, you might take twenty pages to do that. Sometimes, you might only need four. Focus on the specific scenes you want your chapter to cover, and remember that you don't necessarily have to aim for a set number of pages every single time.

But yeah, as IJuggler said, so long as you write more than two pages, you're good to go. (And even then, the mods will make an exception for you if the chapter in question is awesomely written.)

2) How thoroughly do you plan out the story? Anywhere from having a detailed plan of each chapter to having a basic outline of the plot.

Depends on your comfort level. Lots of people don't really do much planning, but then you've got others who know every detail of their story. Every writer works differently, so experiment with planning and rolling with whatever idea pops into your head to see which one works best for you.

As for myself, it depends. Some fics, I don't plan. Others, I do. I know how my main fic ends; I don't know how my parody fic does. It just feels right to do what I do for both stories.

3) Do you post chapters as soon as you finish them, or do you wait until you are a certain number of chapters ahead?

Personally? Post as I finish.

However! There's a lot to be said about waiting too, and some authors on this site have done that. You have more of a cushion if you hold off on posting, so you're more likely to maintain a reliable update schedule, which readers will appreciate thoroughly. On the other hand, if you work too far ahead, you're also less flexible. Say a good number of reviewers give you comments that say your plot makes no sense or your dialogue is punctuated completely wrong. In order to make the changes that will keep people from deciding they don't want to follow your fic anymore, you'd have to make changes to all of the chapters you've written in advance, not just the one you just posted and your WIP next chapter.

So what you want to do really depends on what you're going for. If you want more of a cushion in order to maintain a good update schedule (which itself will attract readers), go with waiting to post chapters. If you really want feedback and the ability to develop your story, go with posting them as soon as you finish proofreading them the first time.

4) Any pre-writing tips for me? I have the basic plot done, but what techniques do you use to brainstorm?

Keep a separate word processing document for any notes, lines, or scenes that pop into your head as you write, even if you're going to be one of those folks who don't plan out their stories in detail. It's easier to keep things organized for longer fics.

Also?

Pre-writing tips? I've got two, actually.
1) Type up a word. After that, put another one after it.
2)Repeat step 1-2 until story is complete.

Yeeeeep.



Can't really add to Phoenix's post about POVs because she's spot-on about how there's no such thing as a stronger or weaker POV in general. It's really dependent on your story.

If it helps, here's a run-down of all the POV possibilities and what they do.

    Spoiler:- Spoiler: There's more than three ways to tell a story.:

Show Spoiler

 
First Person
What It Is: You tell the story from the perspective of a character in your fic. Any character. Doesn't even have to be the main hero. (Sherlock Holmes, anyone?) Either way, the most prominent pronouns are first-person ones. I, me, my.
Pros: It connects you to a character and evokes the sense of being talked to. Not only do you get a better view of who that character is by being presented their voice at all times, but you also feel like you're in a conversation with them or like they're old-timey storytellers who are passing along their adventures via some oral narration magic.
Cons: You're severely limited in what you can say. Think of it like this: a person is telling you a story. Sometimes, they subconsciously let their opinions of a person or situation color their stories. (Have you ever told a story, and the events you talked about were worse or more exciting than they actually were? Same phenomenon.) While this is actually a great way to develop a character (because you could have them sing praises for another character or outright become an unreliable narrator if you wanted), ultimately, it means you have to be careful with your characterization of that single character at all times, rather than just when they show up. Moreover, it's impossible to convey events or information that the narrator hasn't experienced or doesn't know unless that character happens to be God or god-like. Y'know. Pretty obvious. But that means you have to either switch to another person (which can be jarring and tends to mark you down as an amateur, especially if you do it mid-chapter) or switch to another point of view (which can also jarring).
Examples: Any Sherlock Holmes story actually written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (non-canon stories are usually written in third person). The Hunger Games.

Second Person
What It Does: Either of two things. It keeps the gender of the main character ambiguous (if there's a plot-related reason for it), or it puts you, the reader, in the shoes of the main character. Prominent pronouns are you and yours.
Pros: It's difficult to pull off but well worth it if you do. Stories done in second person feel more interactive to a reader, and they achieve higher levels of that "being talked to" feeling than first person gets across. In either case, it relies on both ambiguity and detail at the same time. Your main goal, especially with the latter purpose (putting the reader in the shoes of the main character) is to make that reader feel like they're experiencing the story. For that reason, while you can develop a character out of this, you'll ultimately need to keep personal details about the character they're assuming to a minimum. Even divulging whether that character is male or female should only be done if it's absolutely plot-relevant. Otherwise, your focus is more on conveying a lot of feelings and sensations so that the reader can imagine what it's like to be in the story, so it turns into a challenge in terms of the balancing act between too much and too little detail that's appropriate for your story, if that makes sense.
Cons: Ambiguity is a difficult thing to master, especially if you're used to any of the other modes. Moreover, like I said, it's a difficult point of view to work with. There's a lot of ways you can fall flat on your face, just because your story isn't developed enough to enable a reader to experience it without feeling as if the story is being forced. Phoenix pretty much summed it up better than I can here.
Examples: Oh, The Places You'll Go (by Dr. Seuss). Any choose-your-own adventure story. Homestuck (the first acts).

Third Person Omniscient
What It Is: The narrator is God. They're a nameless, invisible participant in the story in that they're everywhere and can see everything all at once. There's no focus on any particular character; you get every character's thoughts, backstory, reactions, and so forth. Prominent pronouns are he, she, it, they, and their variants.
Pros: There's a reason why a lot of writing does it. You aren't bound to a particular character, so it's the most flexible to work with. This doesn't mean it's the weakest point of view by default. It means that you have to exercise restraint and choose which details you should convey and which you shouldn't. Besides, it enables you to worry less about how you're going to get information across (because you have all channels open and at the ready) and more about building a tone and atmosphere.
Cons: It's very easy to mistake third person omniscient for third person limited. You'll have to remember that omniscient doesn't focus on any particular character; it focuses on every single one of them at the same time. On the other hand, this confusion (i.e., the fact that everyone makes this mistake and struggles with IDing the difference) also allows you to slide into limited seamlessly, so that's not much of a con. What is, though, is remembering that subtlety is the key. It's never a good thing to convey everything all at once. That seems like a no-duh situation, but tons of writers make the mistake of saying more than they actually need to say.
Examples: Practically every novel in existence. The older, the more likely to be omniscient. I'd highly recommend Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina or George Eliot's Middlemarch, although that's not so much because they're fantastic examples of omniscient but more because they're fantastic novels, period.

Third Person Limited (or Subjective)
What It Is: The narrator is God, and God plays favorites. It chooses a single character and focuses on them, filtering out all the thoughts and details of all the characters around them. In other words, it's a lot like telling a story in first person, only you're using he/she/it/they instead.
Pros: In a lot of ways, it gives you the best of both third person omniscient and first person POV. You get the character development of first person (because you're hanging out with a single character a lot), but you also enable the reader to feel like they're watching, rather than being talked to. This can sometimes make a reader feel more like they're right there in the scene with a character, rather than sitting down with them after the fact. That means it can be more immersive than first person and more intimate than third omniscient.
Cons: It suffers from the same problem as omniscient (in that lots of people can't really tell the difference between omniscient and limited), but unlike omniscient, that con can actually hurt your effectiveness with limited. The whole aim of this game is to focus on one character at a time. That's it. Once you branch out and cover two or more in a single scene or chapter, you end up switching back to omniscient, and the point shifts from the character to the plot. In other words, you have to be conscious of who your narrator is focusing on. Shifting away from them to the grand scheme of things or to different characters within the same scene causes your story to be less about a character acting through a plot and more a plot acting on the characters. Or in short, you end up defeating the purpose of the point of view if you shift.
Examples: A Song of Ice and Fire (chapter-based limited). Most fairy tales.

Third Person Objective
What It Is: The narrator is a nameless invisible bystander who is not God. Unlike the other two breeds of third person POV, this does not give you a character's thoughts or feelings. It's an objective view of events, much like a report or a newspaper article. As such, it's removed from all of the characters, and it uses he/she/it as well.
Pros: Another tough one to work with, but it's worth it if you can pull it off. As the opposite end of the spectrum to omniscient, objective provides the facts of the story without coloring it with a character's voice or opinions. Because of that, it can actually provide a rather dramatic view of events by removing the readers from the characters and allowing them to draw their own conclusions. Not to mention it's frequently used to create a starker tone to a story because readers are watching characters all at once, rather than jumping in and out of their heads at any given moment. It's also fantastic at producing subtlety because effective use of third person objective means you're limited in what information you can convey because you're not omniscient. (See the example for this idea in action.)
Cons: Try telling a story without getting into the heads of your characters. It's not that easy. That's why you'd need to be careful about your details, and you'd probably benefit from being a pretty good writer in the first place. Either way, while the boundaries between it and both omniscient and limited are far clearer than the boundaries between omniscient and limited themselves, a lot of the challenge with writing in third person objective hinges on your ability to resist the temptation to switch to any other third-person POV.
Examples: Hemingway does this a lot, but the go-to example for objective POV tends to be his short story, Hills Like White Elephants.

To be fair, the last three (i.e., all three third person POV entries) are technically under one category, and the difference is in the narrative voice, rather than the POV itself. In other words, the above list is a lot like saying, "birds, cats, Great Danes, poodles, and collies." On the other hand, they're also extremely distinct from one another, so I'm just going to go ahead and leave them that way. You get the idea anyway.

There's also epistolary work (which tells a story through documents, a la Dracula) and works that just plain alternate between narrative modes, but let's face it. They're usually one of the above five possible points of view. Just covering this base because someone's probably going to go to Wikipedia at some point.

And for shiz and giggles, one more because it's getting popular!

Script
What It Is: You tell a story through script. Technically, there is no narrator except via stage directions (which are typically objective point of view because thoughts are told in first person by the acting characters) because you're cutting out practically everything but dialogue.
Pros: If done well, it can make a work seem more dynamic. A reader isn't just reading through a scene; they're also watching it in motion.
Cons: Very few people do it well. No, before anyone offers the recent batch of script fics as examples, they wouldn't count. In any case, it's difficult to work with because lots of people mistake this mode for the easy route. They think that by cutting out everything but dialogue, they'll come up with an effective script. Except that's not true. You have to exert a lot of effort in order to pull a script fic off. You need to know how much detail you should convey without going overboard (hint: it's more detail than one would think), and you have to ensure your characters are well-developed because you're relying on them to tell your story. Every step of the way, you'll also have to remember that scripts are meant to be acted out, so you're constantly asking yourself whether or not the actors can perform the scene with exactly what you're giving them.
Examples: Try any script that's been at one point professionally acted. (Scripts from TV shows, movies, stage plays, and so forth.) Do not use scripts written by amateurs (especially script fics) as the examples you refer to, and don't limit yourself to Shakespeare.
 

So, yeah. Each has their own pros, their own cons, and their own reasons for being used. There's no particular one that's stronger than another because they're all so very different in terms of how they tell a story and what kinds of information they can present. There's just different levels of challenge in handling one instead of another. However! As a writer, you should be up for challenges anyway, so don't feel intimidated or that you need to avoid one point of view when it's actually the best mode to use for telling your story.

[Maveox]

For me, I find the biggest problem is just sitting down and doing it. Sometimes I'll find myself wasting half an hour to an hour just looking up tips on how to write well...not the most productive use of writing time, I think. Good luck!

I definitely understand this. In the past, I've had problems with fics of mine dying out, and I really wanted to make sure the one that I'm working on will have some staying power, ya know? But I'll make sure to think about overthinking... I think.

Liz and JX, thanks a bunch. Just needed a few pointers to make sure I was going in the "write" direction.
..... that might have been my worst pun ever.

[Liz Azzimagica]

Liz and JX, thanks a bunch. Just needed a few pointers to make sure I was going in the "write" direction.
..... that might have been my worst pun ever.

haha, that pun made my night :P but yeah, glad we could help you out, best of luck to you and your writting. O one last tip: music can be a powerful writing tool cause if you listen to a song/instermental music then you can better invision your story