Creative writing for dummies
 

This part of the forum seems pretty dead in comparison to the rest, which is a shame.

So, let's try and give it a kick up the arse.

I am wanting to start writing fiction for my own amusement, is anybody else writing their own work? I am curious to learn how people get their ideas and how they start. I've started reading 'creative writing for dummies' i'm not very far into it yet, but one of the tips they give is to take a news headline as a starting point and take it in your own direction. Are there other ways people approach it?

Been a long time since I wrote any fiction, but when I did, it tended to be focused around the MMORPG game worlds I played in. A nice way of building my own character's back story and also storying up in-game events.

These days my creative writing tends mainly to be poetry. I have to do too much writing in my day to day work, so never really want to spend my leisure time doing it. I have been mulling over an idea for a children's story though: set in the Napoleonic wars. Life in an army camp type thing. I was thinking a girl and a lad as the central characters, both army brats :)

Sounds great, Dana. I love the whole idea of creating your own world and characters. I don't really have any specific ideas at the moment though.

I like PC games, but I don't really play them enough to have considered that as a route to take, but its certainly an interesting idea.

I love to write Hermit. I write articles and short stories.

I wrote a nativity on here once, featuring tibb people, it was light hearted and I tried to make it funny. :D

Haven't written any fiction for a while, might have a go at something seeing as tibb has a lot of new members for material lol.

Cool, go for it Kate! I'm thinking of using your unintentional double entendres as inspiration, you're like the Trigger of TiBB :joker:

I'd love to start writing, might give it a go at some point

I have tonnes of projects laying around in my documents.

I'm writing a story at the moment, it's not going too well though.

I only ever used the massively multiplayer worlds as the basis, though. It started out as a way of explaining and exploring my roleplay character, but people liked my stories so I started writing up events that went on in the rp world, incorporating their gaming adventures and guild wars/politics etc.


It was good fun :)

I wrote a lot of fanfic in the last about 7 months and either got ideas from what was happening in the fandom, inspriation from stuff like tv shows and books or what randomly popped into my head.

Thing with writing is the same with everything, practice practice practice and read loads. I'm actually attempting to write a book at the moment, I've only got a few thousand words and my characters and a bare plot but still it's something.

I'm forever starting ideas or having random phrases pop into my head and not doing anything more with them. I liked that thread Scott posted in Chat and Games about two line horror stories where you just write creepy beginnings to stories. You could apply that to any genre. Write two lines and see where you could take it from there.

I read this not long ago, I thought it was very helpful:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-writin...more-creative/

..Dezzy, I really hope you'll keep up with it because having read the Darkwood Isles, I think you have great writing skills and I can just tell by the way you post and say things as well, it's very unique but I think fabulous..:lovedup:..it is quite a talent...but at the same time, if you're struggling, what I find is not to try and force it become too anxious about it because that can only make it worse..maybe have a break from it for a while and even write some silly stuff or just your thoughts/observations in general which might not be connected to your story in any way but might just 'loosen' it all up and get things flowing and clear your thoughts a bit..?...anyway, more than anything else, I hope you do keep on writing..:hug:...

Oh you know what's helpful too, getting a writing notebook and writing down any little phrases or dialogue or ideas that pop into your head, I swear just owning one means I write more down than I would have done.

In terms of tips, it does not hurt to do background research.

When I had more time to devote to my Mystical Realms series, I did quite a lot. For my season seven, I did quite a lot of research on the Soviet space programme. I also studied about the FBI and the NSA for my season eight. For my tales I researched the American school system, and I spent quite a bit of time with Google maps and street view for roads in the US.

I wasn't aware we had an Author in our ranks. That's awesome. Are they available as ebooks or online somewhere?

The research part, to me is the appealing part.

I did them in this very section on this very forum.

This part of one of my websites of mine points to them and has downloadable version.

Note it will contain spoilers, so you may want to look at the downloadable to put into the search engine here. I have noticed my website does not have reference to season twelve.

Season thirteen is still being written, but is taking me longer than I expected, and if I can complete it, I will probably make it my last one.

I did them in this very section on this very forum.

This part of one of my websites of mine points to them and has downloadable version.

Note it will contain spoilers, so you may want to look at the downloadable to put into the search engine here. I have noticed my website does not have reference to season twelve.

Season thirteen is still being written, but is taking me longer than I expected, and if I can complete it, I will probably make it my last one.

Cool, i'm going to give them a read. That's a lot of work you've put in!

I've had quite a lot of stuff published, it helped finance me through Uni, along with table-waiting and a raft of other jobs. I've written mostly non-fiction articles but I've written a bit of fiction too. I have a couple of novels on the go, one is finished but really needs some attention. I still write on a freelance basis.

Which do you enjoy more - non-fiction or fiction?

I like non-fiction because I enjoy researching something I might not know a lot about. But with fiction you make the rules and I much prefer giving my imagination a free reign rather than double-checking that what I'm saying is correct.

edit: and I forgot to mention, non-fiction has so far paid a lot more.