Writers' Bloc

mooderino:

When you first come up with an idea for a story, you don’t have to think too hard about what it is you like about the story. Something catches your interest. One idea follows another and you’re off and running.

Later, when you’re deep in the belly of the beast, maybe stuck in the middle of the first draft, or struggling with the umpteenth rewrite, the very point of writing as a use of your time comes into question. You liked the idea as an idea, but this sprawling mess in front of you doesn’t seem to be that thing at all.

Why are you even bothering? Who is going to read this? Aren’t there already a thousand stories like this? What’s on TV?

You have to be able to hold onto the thing that made you want to write this particular story. When the going gets tough (and it will) you need that thing to get you through. But first you need to work out what thing is.

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Hey look, we actually made a video for once! This is partially in association with a flurry of comments and asks on the Yeah Write Tumblr, talking about Twilight. Thought we’d toss our literary voice into the fray. 

This time, we’re talking about Twilight, and what makes it a good series. You read that properly. And no, this video is not sarcastic. 

We’re brainstorming for new episodes! But we make videos for you folks, so we want to answer your questions! Give us as many as you can think of?

This would be the lovely creation of Girls with Slingshots. Good to see they care about some proper writing. :P

Humans acclimate themselves to the tastes of food. If you eat lots of delicately balanced and exquisitely cooked meals, you will begin to distinguish subtle tastes, textures, and flavours in these dishes. If you chomp down at McDonald’s every week, you’ll dull your senses of taste with poorly prepared meals.

Likewise, readers and writers acclimate to the literature they surround themselves with. If you expose yourself to a great breadth of literary works - historical, modernist; sci-fi, realist, post-modern - from a wide range of authors, you’ll begin to detect the discreet uses of grammar, of plot construction, of narrative devices that may seem invisible to most. If the extent of your literary consumption is a few episodes of CSI and that one favouritenoveleveromg, you’ll be depriving yourself of the differentiation involved in acquiring taste. 

And while “acquiring taste” might sound a bit lofty and pompous, think of it this way: would you want a politician to govern you if they were not well read on matters of politics and law? Would you want a doctor to cut your body open without having dedicated a healthy portion of their life to studying how to cut you open without killing you? No, that’s silly. On the same note, would you be a skilled writer or reader if you were not well read in a wide array of literary stylings? Answer: no. 

You grow with every book that you read. So read constantly, and read diversely. 

brfiction:

fuckyeahfanficflamingo:

[CAN’T WORK OUT THE DETAILS OF NEW ‘VERSE (Fanfic Flamingo) WRITE AS SERIES OF DRABBLES]

Well, we all have to start somewhere…