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How does writing influence your writing?

Earlier today I was writing a paper for a class. In that paper I was describing the fate of a national land use planning bill in the United States Congress. The bill didn't pass. Common parlance is that the bill was either killed or it died. When describing the ultimate fate of this bill I almost wrote the phrase "The halls of Congress became the bill's sepulcher." Or something similar to that. As I read through the preceding section I realized that my novel writing, particularly when telling a factual story, has helped my academic writing.

Later I went on to edit one of my novels. As I was editing, I realized that my prose became more succinct and less purple. As such, it is has made my prose far clearer and easier to understand. It was then that I realized something I should have long ago. Writing, any writing, if done right helps make me better.

Realizing this, I was curious if any of you learned lessons from other writing that you can apply to fantasy writing in general.

So I ask, got any neat stories?
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I've been working in online customer support for the past nine years. I don't do phone calls. All of my communication with customers is through chat or mail.
Then, about two years ago, I started writing for fun. First short stories, and then a novel. My work didn't help me at all as a storyteller, but I believe it's helped me a lot when it comes to writing accessible and easily understandable text.
Many of the customers I interact with on a daily basis do not have English as their native language, and some of them barely understand it at all. Through necessity I've had to learn how to make express myself in writing in as simple a way as possible. I've learned to shy away from long and complicated words, from formality and complexity.
I write simple.
Okay, I don't do it all the time, but it's something I've learned the value of. It could be that my prose comes across as blunt and simple to those used to more advanced wordcrafting, but I believe a reader can take pleasure in that too.

Spending a lot of time chatting with customers, I think I've also learned quite a bit about writing spoken sentences. After all, in a way, it's what I do for a living. I feel like I've been able to benefit greatly from this when writing conversation - and my novel has a LOT of conversation.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
You might not think academic writing would help much, since most people classify all academic writing as boring, almost by definition. It has benefited me in a few ways, though. I had to learn proper grammar. I wrote a master's thesis and then a dissertation, so I know I can write a long work (~300-400 pages). I've had papers go through peer review, so I know what it feels like to get critiqued by professionals.

Most important of all is this. As a historian, my job is to take something the readers knows little or nothing about, find out what is significant or important about that, and communicate that significance clearly and persuasively. That's valuable.

No rotten help at all with dialog, though!
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
I took a business communications course in college, and I think that helped me learn to get to the point. I took logic courses that helped me learn how to develop the points. I took philosophy courses that helped me twist my mind to see things from different POVs and understand why people think the things they do.

As Skip said above, writing, any writing, gains you practice with grammar, and well, that's pretty important.

One word of caution though, scientific writing can be counter productive to writing fiction. The lab reports I had to write in university had to all be in passive voice, understandable since you're supposed to be completely emotionless and objective.

Overall, I think if you write in various fields and can easily switch from one to the other, it's very helpful. You become more conscious of language and how to communicate a message. Also with all the knowledge in the different fields you gain, you learn what's fluff, what's substance, and how to mine for more substance if you don't have enough.
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
I don't have a story to share, but I am a firm believer in the idea that any writing, undertaken in earnest, is never wasted.

Writing well is thinking clearly. Like any endeavor, the more we practice, the better we become. The more we write, the better we recognize and understand clarity issues. This understanding enables the writer to think differently...to think with clarity as the primary concern, and clarity is king.
 

Reilith

Sage
The only story I could share is quite simple and possibly sad. Since English is not my first language and I tend to do all of my writing in English and read most prose in English, I've found that I've started forgetting some words in my own language. Often enough I can remember it in English, or even Japanese (since that's what I study in uni) but it becomes completely elusive to me in my own mother tongue. Once a friend asked me why I write in English and read in English so much with such a beautiful and colorful language I was born to - the only answer was that I simply love to write in English and I get to do many things that way that I wouldn't be able to if I wrote in Serbian - I have more access to books and forums and research; I can get more coverage and readers when I'm done, and I am constantly improving my English skills - to the point that it blurs the lines between my main and my secondary language. Maybe it's not much of a story, more of an experience sharing.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Be of good cheer, Reilith. One of my favorite authors, Joseph Conrad, was a Pole, but who wrote in English. I don't recall him ever speaking (or writing) about loss of his native language. But he learned several others to compensate!
 

Reilith

Sage
Be of good cheer, Reilith. One of my favorite authors, Joseph Conrad, was a Pole, but who wrote in English. I don't recall him ever speaking (or writing) about loss of his native language. But he learned several others to compensate!

Many thanks skip.knox. I don't necessarily view it as a fault, just a daily annoyance. I also study various languages, as being a polyglot is one of my goals. As for writing, English simply fits me well. :)
 

Bluesboy

Dreamer
English is not my first language, but I adore it incredibly (to the point where I read and research the history of it, the origin of words and so on, most of the time finding myself more comfortable with speaking English than my native language) and also have a degree from a university in the UK, so I wrote my fair share of 3,500 word essays and an 18,000 word master's dissertation.

What I usually do, as a non-native speaker, is that what I write has to "taste" good when it rolls off my tongue. It's like giving a speech. You want it to be compelling, to suck the reader into the world and for that, it has to sound good. Academic writing taught me to write like this, because when you're doing your research, reading the articles from scientific journals is far too often a painfully boring thing to do, because the academics can't express themselves properly. I didn't want to come off to my professors as boring, so I tried to write the essays like speeches. It paid off.

It can be used in exposition monologues where you have to explain the lore or something and this method can keep it from being boring.
 

DannyLewis

New Member
I do copywriting for a living and I'm even building a business around that and my web design skills. That being said, I am 22 years old now and I haven't attempted to write stories or for fun for a few years now. I started work on a new novel a few days ago and I have found that since I have been writing professionally, my story writing has improved dramatically as well and my ideas seem to flow a bit better.

I put it down to my ability to plan and link ideas being better than it was before I began professional writing.
 

eposic

Dreamer
I write a lot of emails in my job. What I've discovered over the years is that you only have one or two sentences in which to capture your reader's attention, or the email is deleted without being read in full. You have to lead with the main point. Even if the reader gets past the first two sentences, they may only skim the remainder of the email. Any details you really want your reader to see have to stand out in some way, either highlighted or with bullets. Or sent in a second email.

With all the competition for the eyes of readers today, competitive fiction has to be written in much the same way. Fantasy authors today may have more than two sentences to hook a reader, but I'd never start a novel with a lengthy description of my world setting. I wouldn't start it with a big action scene either, because as a reader I don't care for action scenes when I know nothing about the characters. So I try to start my stories with a scene that gives an idea of who the/a main character is and a compelling reason why their story is worth the reader's time. Finding the right starting scene is not always easy.

Since it's not a good practice to use highlights or bullets in a novel, I think the closest equivalent is writing relatively short chapters, or breaking longer chapters into demarcated scenes. I find that as a reader, I feel like I'm making faster progress through a novel when it is broken into shorter chapters. Given two books of equal length and equal recommendation, with the conditions that I could only read one of them and had to choose with no other information available, I'd choose the book with more chapters. I like seeing that little bar at the bottom of my keyboard Kindle getting closer to the next chapter mark for each page I read.

Another tip on writing emails, that doesn't pertain to novels: Don't put any important words in an image without also putting them in the text. Some email readers block images by default. Not everyone will go to the trouble to display images before they hit Delete.
 

Antaus

Minstrel
I've actually read through the published works of other fantasy authors specifically to see how they write and describe things, then try to incorporate parts of it into my own work. Mind you I'm not trying to copy their style or work, I'm simply looking to those who've got books out there for tips. Personally what I do is take these works and use them to try to better refine my own 'literary voice' as some might say. Mind you this is coming from someone who's never had any formal writing education or taken classes. I literally sat down about five years ago and decided to start writing stories. I have improved in that time, but I've still got a ways to go before I'm of publishing quality.
 
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