-
Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!
Hi, from MistFox
- Thread starter MistFox
- Start date
Maker of Things Not Kings
Maester
Welcome to the Scribes site MistFox! I hope it will prove to be inspiring and helpful whenever you visit. 
joshua mcdermott
Sage
Like the name welcome and let us know how the writing is going and how we can help-
welcome and let us know how the writing is going and how we can help-- Thread starter
- #4
joshua mcdermott
Sage
everyone has a different process. and what works for some, or even during a specific time, may not work for others in a different period of their lives.
what works for me:
1. Decide that writing is your job, and you do your job even if you are not "inspired" or "in the mood" if your job is to write for an hour a day, you write for an hour a day. so just do it- no matter what you write- you do it.
2. Join a discord group that does "sprints" where there is a word count challenge to write for 20 minutes (or whatever time). this helps get you moving and writing over bumps that you can't get through. forced to write something.. anything.. can push you through to the next thing and get the ball roiling
3. focus on the highlights- the parts you really WANT to write first.. then begin to fill in the gaps- you may find that the gaps are less than you might think.
4. put on some inspiring music for each section- Like if its an epic emo-metal sword fantasy- Put on Rush. If its a love fantasy comedic girl crush, Ariana Grande. whatever you need.
what works for me:
1. Decide that writing is your job, and you do your job even if you are not "inspired" or "in the mood" if your job is to write for an hour a day, you write for an hour a day. so just do it- no matter what you write- you do it.
2. Join a discord group that does "sprints" where there is a word count challenge to write for 20 minutes (or whatever time). this helps get you moving and writing over bumps that you can't get through. forced to write something.. anything.. can push you through to the next thing and get the ball roiling
3. focus on the highlights- the parts you really WANT to write first.. then begin to fill in the gaps- you may find that the gaps are less than you might think.
4. put on some inspiring music for each section- Like if its an epic emo-metal sword fantasy- Put on Rush. If its a love fantasy comedic girl crush, Ariana Grande. whatever you need.
- Thread starter
- #6
Prince of Spires
Auror
Butt in chair, hands on keyboard is the only way a story gets written (or with a pen or dication device, the principle remains).
Determine why you want to write and what you want to get out of it. That answers the question. If you just want to play around with writing scenes then do that. Just pick a scene you like and write it down. Or if you want to write short stories every now and then, pick an hour here or there, sit down and write.
If you want to write a novel, then approach it a bit differently. If you write 500 words an hour, then it takes 100-200 hours to finish the first draft. At 1 hour per day that comes down to half a year to 1 year. Use that as a guideline. If you only write every other day and you have a 100k word epic, then you're looking at 2 years of writing. If you write 2 hours a day, every day, and manage 750 words per hour and only have a 50k word novel then you're done in 33 days.
It takes dedication to write a novel. But a lot of small steps get you there.
And if you want a carreer as an author, you need to do the above over and over again (as well as edit the book, market the book and sell the book).
As for how to actually start. Try a few approaches and see what works for you. What worked for me was trying NaNoWriMo (writing a 50k word novel in a month), and telling other people about it. This forced me to sit down and write, which taught me a lot about my writing proces.
For me, I like knowing where I'm going. Otherwise I run out of steam after two or three chapters. So, I plot my novel. I know (vaguely) how my story will end when I start writing. For others this doesn't work. But you only learn what works for you if you try different things.
Determine why you want to write and what you want to get out of it. That answers the question. If you just want to play around with writing scenes then do that. Just pick a scene you like and write it down. Or if you want to write short stories every now and then, pick an hour here or there, sit down and write.
If you want to write a novel, then approach it a bit differently. If you write 500 words an hour, then it takes 100-200 hours to finish the first draft. At 1 hour per day that comes down to half a year to 1 year. Use that as a guideline. If you only write every other day and you have a 100k word epic, then you're looking at 2 years of writing. If you write 2 hours a day, every day, and manage 750 words per hour and only have a 50k word novel then you're done in 33 days.
It takes dedication to write a novel. But a lot of small steps get you there.
And if you want a carreer as an author, you need to do the above over and over again (as well as edit the book, market the book and sell the book).
As for how to actually start. Try a few approaches and see what works for you. What worked for me was trying NaNoWriMo (writing a 50k word novel in a month), and telling other people about it. This forced me to sit down and write, which taught me a lot about my writing proces.
For me, I like knowing where I'm going. Otherwise I run out of steam after two or three chapters. So, I plot my novel. I know (vaguely) how my story will end when I start writing. For others this doesn't work. But you only learn what works for you if you try different things.