Help me with my fail-writing

[ReservoirAngel]

I love to write. I really really do. If I had the choice of my perfect ideal career, it'd be as an author. When I'm not busy with something else, I'm normally just writing random spur-of-the-moment fiction.

Problem is, I've recently realised that...well, that I suck at it.

I've managed to identify two major problems with the way I write (unfortunately these combine to make almost EVERYTHING I write total garbage).

Problem Numero Uno: Writing from 1st person

I always tend to prefer writing from 1st person, but on matter how much I really try to, I can never seem to get the ammount of emotion right. It either ends up reading like someone just blandly recounting exactly what happened, without any sense of their own persoanl feelings towards it...OR it reads like some weirdo over-analysing everything. I can just never seem to get the balance right.

Problem Numero Dos: Writing action

This just goes horribly wrong. Essentially, my problem becomes the same as the 1st person issue I have. I either write not enough detail and it comes off as "this happened, then this happened, then this happened" OR I end up putting too much detail in and it just gets bogged down.

So yeah...I need help to, in some way, limit myself AND boost myself, so I put in MORE detail but not TOO MUCH detail.

P.S: I would post examples from stuff I've written, but my laptop is currently broken and out for repairs, and all my stuff I've written is on it.

 

[Heart of Darkness]

Best way to get better at writing? Practice, practice, practice.

Okay, fine, I'll bite harder. Read more books, both on creative writing theory and books that address what your main weaknesses are--i.e., go read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for an example of first-person narrative (if you can get past how completely dense it is), and try reading novels from the period you're trying to write about to try to understand how you write action scenes (fantasy for fantasy action, science fiction for far future stuff, whatever).

This is where I'd usually also give advice from my experiences, but sadly, I don't write fiction. The best I can give you is advice that I'd follow if I did start writing fiction, so hopefully that'll suffice until someone with actual experience can come and help. For the first person thing, you might want to consider approaching it from a different angle; write from first person preterit if you're having trouble writing in first person present, or vice versa. Try writing a section in first person subjunctive, just for teh lulz. Go through your day narrating your own actions and your thoughts on those actions to realize how you speak to yourself throughout the day: what you think, what you noticed, what you want to say to others, what you do say, what you don't notice until later, whatever.

As far as action is concerned, you should be focused on the actual action part, and only focus on descriptions when absolutely necessary. And pay attention to how each section of a novel flows; action sequences should only include the necessary details relevant to the actual action--don't go talking about how beautiful the scenery is when someone's losing his head in a bloody spectacle. It really is about finding balance, so be willing to edit everything you write and treat nothing as sacrosanct. My taste in books notwithstanding, you might want to go check out Christopher Paolini's Brisingr for an example of how to write action sequences in-between spurts of slower expository writing. Generally, though, you're going to want shorter sentences and a lot of action verbs instead of verbs like "think" and "feel" and adjectives. (Something I learned in English classes was to keep track of your verb:adjective ratio; generally, you;re going to want more verbs than adjectives, but play with it to see what's an acceptable level for your expository and action scenes.)

But really, though, the best advice I can give you is to practice, practice, practice, and write anything from a few short sentences to short stories to try to help you overcome your shortcomings. Make a game out of it, get others involved. Write a few sentences a day when you wake up. And just keep writing. Maybe go with a theme for a few days (let's say, "How I Died"), and write a few short, unrelated snippets from the first person telling how each person died.

Again, not a writer, so feel free to disregard whatever I've said that you don't agree with.

Spoiler: This isn't really related, but I kinda wanted to try the game I suggested. Feel free to disregard.

And as my opponent pinned me to the soft earth, I watched in horror as his dagger glinted in the sunlight as it plunged into my chest.

 

[stonethered]

Ha! I have exactly the opposite problems. I always write in a limited third-person and tend to forget details unless I'm talking about a fight.
I also suspect I write to much dialogue.

But Heart of Darkness is right; practice makes perfect. Just keep working at it, maybe take a few classes, and read a lot in the genre you want to write. You'll get there eventually.


And if you'd like, maybe we could compare notes sometime.

 

[Sonofadiddly]

The best way to fix this problem is probably to read. Study how other authors write about emotion and do action scenes in first person. Then, immitate. Try to write in their tone and style. Don't worry, everyone does it. These are the things I was taught in my writing classes, and I found them to be quite helpful.

 

[Mr Montmorency]

I'd say try different types of writing until you find one you have a natural skill for. Then all you have to do is read about the one you're most skilled with as much as possible to get a better grasp on conventions.

I'm a lazy bastard, so this was my solution, I wanted to write, but I wasn't bothered to write a novel, so I wrote non-fiction instead.

 

[Anah'ya]

I have a possible solution to both of your problems. First I will repeat what other folks already mentioned: Practice Though you seem to be willing to do this already, so it shouldn't be much of an issue. Now practice itself won't be improving your writing on its own. You need people to show you how to improve upon it; which will then lead to more practice.

And for that I would like to recommend The Critique Circle [http://www.critiquecircle.com/], a workshop for writers that has everything you will need. There is your good old fashioned critiquing, and tacked onto it a vivid and helpful community of like-minded folks.

Go there and enjoy.

Oh! Before I forget. Writing action scenes.... there's a trick to practising that. Pick up a graphical novel/comic book which features the sort of action you want. Flip to a page of your choice. Translate images to words. Comic books show just enough detail to combat that it won't choke your page with words, and they will help you get down the flow of a scene without getting lost or sidetracked along the way.

 

[Ziadaine_v1legacy]

(For a moment I thought you ment you had shody hand writing, I was hoping I wasn't the only one)

A problem I find with writing stories, Is you can get the plot done and Intro, but finding something to fill in the gaps needed is what makes it so hard. That's why I kept giving up on stories I used to write, and turned them into quick short-stories instead. A technique I find useful is to carry a small pen and notpad where-ever you go, so if you look at something and think of it into your story, you can write it down before you forget, or take a photograh of a object/landscape to help keep a visual to describe it again in said story.

 

[ReservoirAngel]

Thought I'd throw this in. Something I just wrote in the past, like, 10 minutes:

Spoiler

There was a fogstorm rolling in tonight. Well, that's if you believe the holocasts, and frankly I'd given up following those things after the Beta Prime disaster. Still, it boded well for me. I'd be working indoors for once, which was always easier. Outdoors was fine in decent weather, on decent planets. But this was Raxus. Notable shithole of the Allied Systems. Unfortunately, due to its less-than-reputable population, I ended up here more than I'd have liked. Still, a job's a job I suppose.

That's what I told myself as I stood in that dark inlet, dodging the admittedly weak light from the photon lamps strung haphazardly around on the tops of the spires. They weren't much good for lighting stuff up, but in general you'd be surprised how bright they can be when you don't want them to be.

"Huh, stupid bastard wouldn't let me in..." I caught a whisper of speech as a pair of Rax came slouching past, conversing in their own language, naturally. And unfortunately. The Rax on the left cast a quick eye in my direction, and I had to resist the urge to flip them their species' version of the bird.

I tracked their movement as they dissapeared into the gloomy darkness at the end of the block, cringing slightly as, with the last vision of them I could muster, I heard one of them mention "they never found all the pieces". Ironic that that would make me cringe, but I chose not to dwell on that. I had something to take care of after all.

Pretty sure the coast was clear I ducked my head out into the promenade, scanning it as best I could given the dark and the thin layer of fog slowly settling over the city. Huh, guess the holocast was right after all. It could either make this easier or more difficult.

Pros: indoors means better visibility, more corners, more inlets

Cons: more people around, tighter confines, no natural sound muffling.

Either way, this was going to very interesting indeed.

 

[Ossian]

I like it more detail than I manage in my writing. Though you don't always have to name specifics like "Photon lamps" simply "lamps" might do. Slip in later more about them. There is nothing wrong with the paragraph, do it too many times however, and they pile up like speed bumps.

One problem I always have is past and present tenses, I never know if I'm 'telling' a story or 'experiencing' it.

"He was" or "He is" etc That crap really gets onto me.

My two cents.

 

[Monadnock]

Something I do that helps me write is to edit--a lot. And the way that works best, for me anyway, is to write whatever scene, action or otherwise, and then go away from it. Write until you're done for that session, then come back the next day or even longer. By then you'll have a little distance that you can look at your writing with.

While you're writing something, you can see it in your mind, so the words you put down may miss some of the parts you really want to show, and you won't even know it because you have the scene in your mind. If you go away for a while, when you get back, you'll get a little closer to reading it like someone who doesn't have any idea what's in your mind. The differences between what you want to say and what you actually said will become more obvious. So, then you edit it, and then you go away and come back again until you are satisfied.

Oh, and if you get another person to criticize your writing, like someone said above. However you need to find the right person, someone who won't just praise you, someone who won't try to just rewrite everything for you, but will point out what bugs them. And if you do this, remember that the other person will not always be right. Either way though, defending your meanings or plot points or whatever might also help you sort out how best to convey them.

Your sample, there, by the way, looks pretty good to me. Had some quickly established atmosphere. I disagree with the poster above me about "photon lamps" being unnecessary, because you're placing the reader in a sci-fi setting there, so small details that are not hard to understand (like jargon or technobabble are--you say "photon lamp" and I know it's a sci-fi lamp, unlike, say "globular photon-emitting device" or whatever). If you were spamming out that sort of thing in there all over the place, I'd agree with toning it down, but I find that whole sentence pretty evocative , what with stuff being strung from spires and all. Definitely not garbage.

Have you ever read the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher? It's sort of... Harry Potter meets film noir with Spiderman's propensity for quips. Urban fantasy with a private-eye style wizard. And it's awesome (imho). All in first person. The first volume is Storm Front, and if you find that one merely okay, the rest only get better. Butcher has a lot of snark and a lot of action. Highly recommended, for your studying, hehe, and just for reading in general.