Writing a book can seem like a daunting task. Depending on your genre and target age-group, this could mean writing between 50,000 to 110,000 words of stuff. Double that, realistically, since you’ll end up revising sections and editing the whole darn thing. If you’re lucky enough to have done writing programs or if you were/are a prolific writer in high school (or even younger!), then you may have the confidence to tackle that sort of project head on.
I didn’t.
So I tried other approaches instead, and I’ll show you how they gave me the confidence to begin writing full-length manuscripts and drastically improved my craft. They are:
- Reading amazing books
- Writing competitions
- Short story submissions
Let’s tackle them one at a time! If you’re already good to go, skip to the end and see what else I’ve got planned for future chapters.
I’m going to focus specifically on a sub-forum that I’m a huge fan of: /r/WritingPrompts. Every day, users from across the world post prompts for stories that they want to read. Here’s an example:
[WP] You’re trapped in a gymnasium but there is only one way out. However, between you and the exit are two 7 ft tall pigeons with rabies. Your only weapon… a single stone.
Heh. I thought it was amusing. That was the second prompt that I responded to. Here’s another:
[WP] Every 15-16 years, some kid is labeled as The Chosen One and is sent to fight The Dragon Lord and his armies. They always fail, but they do a little bit better each time. The Dragon Lord is getting nervous.
When I responded to this one, my story blew up and was the top post of WritingPrompts for over a day. Cool, right?
“But Jesse,” you say. “I don’t know what to write. How do you get the inspiration to write a story from just the prompt?”
Great question. Well, there’s a few different ways. One is to read stories that other people have posted and examine how they interpreted the prompt. Another is to keep looking through prompts until one sparks inspiration. Once you’ve seen a few, try to create a story. Have fun with it! You don’t have to post it if you’re not comfortable. And you don’t have to go to WritingPrompts either – other subreddits like /r/nosleep can serve a similar function, albeit with less direct prompts.
Your first stories might suck. So what? Who cares? The goal here is not to provide you with a few magical words of advice that will make you write flawless stories. My objective is to provide you with a structure that will build you up to that point.
So write a story. It doesn’t have to be long; think 500 to 1000 word range. Do it again. And again. Take a break, and write another. You don’t need to do much in a single day – I made it a habit to post at least one story daily for over three months. Sometimes I posted multiple times a day or wrote extra for weekly events that the subreddit hosted. Whatever habit fits your schedule, stick to it. Consistency is key.
Let me repeat that. Consistency is key.
The critical thing is to train your brain to not think of it as work. Write short stories that you enjoy! Once the process of searching for a prompt, thinking up a story, and executing on it has been ingrained into your life, it becomes effortless. And here’s where the magic comes in.
Over time, through seeing so many other stories and writing so many of your own, you’ll improve in a few key areas. One is idea generation. You’ll have an incredible variety of source material to look back on. Everything that you came up with or pulled from some media that you’ve seen. Another is prose. Maybe your first few stories will be a little rough on the grammar side. Don’t give up! Over time, you’ll slowly get a better grasp of where to put commas and semicolons and question marks.
But the most important one of all is intuition. That’s your feel for writing, your grasp of language and dialogue and what sounds right and what feels blah. It’s your sense of what makes a good story, what has worked for you in terms of narrative style and what hasn’t. Good luck!
Read Amazing Books
I know what you’re thinking. “No shit, Sherlock,” you say, and I politely remind you that my name is, in fact, Jesse. This is not new advice. Most people will tell you that reading is crucial for learning how to write. So I won’t spend too long on this point. I’ll briefly explain why, in my opinion, it’s so important that it’s worth harping on and then give you a few pointers for picking which books to read.
Books can be quite long. You don’t have much time. Why am I taking away from your precious writing hours by asking you to read someone else’s 80,000 word novel?
Simple. Did Mozart or Beethoven compose their symphonies in a vacuum? Did [insert famous sports athlete here] become the best of their generation playing by themselves? No. And the same is true for writers. We learn from reading each others’ works. We see what we like and what we don’t, and we improvise on it, get inspired by it, and make it our own.
You should too. If you don’t read, you’re handicapping yourself.
“But Jesse,” you say, “Sometimes I try but I’m just so tired after work and you’re already asking me to write stories.”
True! It’s not easy. But you don’t need to read much. One chapter a day. You’ll be surprised how much progress you can make if you just set aside a little bit of time on a regular basis. Give it a try.
But which books should we read? This point is a little trickier, as it’s going to vary person by person. It’s going to depend on what you like, what type of book you’re trying to write, and countless other things. Look for books in your genre. If you’re trying to write epic fantasy, see if Brandon Sanderson’s ideas interest you. If you’re looking for immersive first person, I can recommend Naomi Novik’s work as full of strong voice. If want to learn how to write beautiful prose, you should check out All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr or The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin.
Again, these are just personal recommendations that I’ve enjoyed. I am not you. There are tens of thousands of others. Look in your genre, look for famous authors, but do not read past the 1/5 point of the book (or the chapter previews available online) if you’re not learning from it in some way. Don’t force it. If you find that you’re not interested or it’s a hard read, do not shackle yourself.
Pay particular attention to what resonates with you. Were there really cool plot twists? Look for foreshadowing and how the author set it up in a satisfying way. Do the characters really call out to you? Study how the author built sympathy and made them likeable. Do you find yourself turning the pages to find out what happens next? Take a moment and breathe, and examine how the author built tension and kept it high.
Writing Competitions
There are countless writing competitions. I personally entered the ones hosted by NYC Midnight, and there are several to choose from based on word-count/story length. But why this? Why is this helpful from a writing growth standpoint?
Revisions. Feedback.
That’s it. While reading and writing short stories help you with volume, writing competitions give you focused practice on taking a single story and refining it as much as possible. It’s a breadth vs. depth situation, and the better we get at editing, the easier you’ll find revising your work and spotting possible problems.
Better yet, NYC Midnight judges give feedback on every story that you submit. Crazy!
What I’ve found particularly helpful is having a group to do writing competitions with. Maintain ethicality, sure, but there’s nothing wrong and everything right with getting feedback from friends or other writers in the community. Help each and polish your works. Grow together. I personally connected with other writers on the WritingPrompts discord group since a lot of us entered the NYC Midnight competitions together.
It’s a fun experience. You get exposure to excellent stories. You get feedback and elevate your writing/revising skills. What’s not to love?
I don’t have too much experience with other writing competitions, but the key thing is to use the opportunity for growth. Winning is irrelevant. Placements are irrelevant. The key is to use that competition/deadline structure to hone your intuition for what can be improved, what language/characters are weak, and how best to use a limited number of words to tell a memorable story.
Short Story Submissions
Now we arrive at the final stage that brings it all together. There are magazines and anthologies that call for short story submissions. Google them. I can’t list them here because they’re constantly changing/adding new calls/asking for different things. But they’re easy to find. And you should at least attempt these, because:
This combines everything we’ve learned above. All three sections (writing many small segments, reading a bunch of good quality stuff, and entering competitions) have prepared us for this. Depending on the submission, you may be submitting a much longer story on the scale of several thousand words.
Don’t be intimidated! It’s a new learning experience, as you’ll have more space to work with now. You’ll be able to slowly piece together how to pace different plot sections, how to linger on important moments, how to fully develop characters and send them off on adventures.
Again, the result is not important. If you’re lucky, you’ll get accepted and be published! But even if you don’t, remember that this is not a reflection of you and your talent. There can be hundreds, if not thousands of submissions. Sometimes editors are looking for a certain style or a particular type of story. Regardless, it’s not a waste.
Let me repeat that. None of this is a waste. All of it builds your writing skill, your craft, and that will come in handy once you start writing a full-length novel. Handy? What an understatement.
It will save your ass.
Consider that if you start writing with less experience, you might write an entire novel without consciously thinking about certain things. Your plot might go down a path that doesn’t fully satisfy the promises that you made to the reader early on. Your characters might not grow in the way you wanted them to in the context of their archetype. You may not even have high enough stakes!
All of these can result in massive revisions or rewrites. Why learn those hard lessons in the context of a 100,000 word+ project? Why not learn them in small microcosms like short story submissions?
That doesn’t mean that you should just put your novel on hold while you try what I’m suggesting. Try it in parallel for a period of time. See if it helps you.
I’m not saying you won’t make mistakes. I’m saying you’ll catch more of them. You’ll save yourself time in the long run by building yourself up in these small, simple ways that don’t take as much commitment or time as writing an entire manuscript.
Conclusion
I started from nothing. No writing degree, barely any academic writing classes. Now I have two full manuscripts, another on the way, and two incredibly supportive agents. In one year, I earned 40,000 reddit karma, am being published in an anthology, placed 6th out of 7,600 entrants in a writing competition, and have hundreds of short stories floating in the web.
Most importantly, I had fun!
What I’ve done may not work for you. But I would be remiss if I didn’t at least share my experiences and hope you can can glean a bit of useful information out of it.
If you’re not convinced, no worries! I hope to impress you in future blog posts. Coming up next:
- The Setup: Before You Begin Your Novel
- Getting an Agent: Query and Synopsis Advice
- Writing Conferences – Worth the Money?
- …and much more!
What other things would you like to see? Contact me or leave it in the comments below.
Wherever you are in your writing journey, I wish you the best of luck. See you next time 🙂
