Advice for writers: a serious relationship with literature. What should an aspiring writer know? Practical advice Advice for a beginning writer from writers

  • 20.06.2019
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  1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you often see on paper.
  2. Never use a long one where you can get by with a short one.
  3. If you can throw away a word, always get rid of it.
  4. Never use passive voice, if you can use active.
  5. Never use borrowed words, scientific or professional terms if they can be replaced with vocabulary from everyday language.
  6. It's better to break any of these rules than to write something downright barbaric.

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  1. Make the most of your time stranger so that it does not seem to him wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one hero for whom you want to root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it's just a glass of water.
  4. Each sentence should serve one of two purposes: to reveal the character or to move events forward.
  5. Start as close to the end as possible.
  6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your main characters are, treat them horribly; the reader needs to see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please only one person. If you open the window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will catch pneumonia.

Modern British writer, very popular among fantasy fans. Moorcock's key work is the multi-volume series about Elric of Melnibone.

  1. I borrowed my first rule from Terence Hanbury White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other works about King Arthur. It was like this: read. Read everything you can get your hands on. I always advise people who want to write fantasy, or science, or romance novels, stop reading these genres and pick up everything else: from John Bunyan to Antonia Byatt.
  2. Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy his plots and characters for your own story. Be an artist who imitates a master to learn how to draw.
  3. If you're writing plot-driven prose, introduce the main characters and major themes in the first third. You can call it an introduction.
  4. Develop themes and characters in the second third - the development of the work.
  5. Complete themes, reveal secrets, etc. in the final third - the denouement.
  6. Whenever possible, accompany the introductions to the characters and their philosophizing with various activities. This helps maintain dramatic tension.
  7. Carrot and Stick: Heroes must be haunted (by obsession or villain) and pursue (ideas, objects, personalities, secrets).

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American writer of the 20th century. He became famous for such scandalous works for his time as “Tropic of Cancer”, “Tropic of Capricorn” and “Black Spring”.

  1. Work on one thing at a time until you finish.
  2. Do not be nervous. Work calmly and joyfully in whatever you do.
  3. Act according to plan, not according to your mood. Stop at the appointed time.
  4. When, work.
  5. Cement a little each day instead of adding more fertilizer.
  6. Stay human! Meet people, go places, have drinks if you want.
  7. Don't become a draft horse! Work only with pleasure.
  8. Depart from the plan if you need to, but come back to it the next day. Focus. Be specific. Eliminate.
  9. Forget about the books you want to write. Think only about what you are writing.
  10. Write quickly and always. Drawing, music, friends, cinema - all this after work.

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One of famous science fiction writers our time. From his pen came such works as “American Gods” and “ Star dust" However, they filmed it.

  1. Write.
  2. Add word by word. Find the right word and write it down.
  3. Finish what you are writing. Whatever it costs you, finish what you start.
  4. Put your notes aside. Read them as if you were doing it for the first time. Show your work to friends who like something similar and whose opinion you respect.
  5. Remember: when people say something is wrong or doesn't work, they are almost always right. When they explain what exactly is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
  6. Correct the mistakes. Remember: you have to let go of the job before it's perfect and start the next one. - this is a pursuit of the horizon. Move on.
  7. Laugh at your own jokes.
  8. The cardinal rule of writing is that if you create with enough self-confidence, you can do anything. This can also be a rule throughout life. But for writing it is best suited.

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A master of short prose and a classic of Russian literature who hardly needs any introduction.

  1. It is assumed that the writer, in addition to ordinary mental abilities, must have experience behind him. Most highest fee receive people who have gone through fire, water and copper pipes, the lowest - natures untouched and unspoiled.
  2. Becoming a writer is very easy. There is no freak who has not found a mate, and there is no nonsense that has not found a suitable reader. Therefore, do not be timid... Place the paper in front of you, pick up a pen and, irritating the captive thought, write.
  3. Becoming a writer who is published and read is very difficult. For this: be and have a talent at least the size of a lentil grain. Due to the lack of great talents, small ones are expensive.
  4. If you want to write, then do so. Choose a topic first. Here you are given complete freedom. You can use arbitrariness and even arbitrariness. But, so as not to discover America a second time and not to invent gunpowder a second time, avoid topics that have long been worn out.
  5. Giving free rein to your imagination, hold your hand. Don't let her chase the number of lines. The shorter and less often you write, the more and more often you are published. Brevity does not spoil matters at all. A stretched eraser erases a pencil no better than an unstretched one.

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  1. If you are still a child, make sure that. Spend more time on this than on anything else.
  2. If you are an adult, try to read your work as a stranger would. Or better yet, how your enemy would read them.
  3. Don't exalt your "calling". You can either write good propositions, or not. There is no such thing as a “writer’s lifestyle.” The only thing that matters is what you leave on the page.
  4. Take significant breaks between writing and editing.
  5. Write on a computer that is not connected to the Internet.
  6. Protect work time and space. Even from the people who matter most to you.
  7. Don't confuse honors and achievements.

Any person can write a book; authors are not born. The only question is how good a writer you are, or more precisely, how good a storyteller you are.

It may be that a person has created a unique story idea that can win Nobel Prize in literature, but if this story is made up of meager sentences and undeveloped dialogues of the main characters, such a writer is worthless. How to give birth to an author within yourself who beautifully expresses your thoughts, how to give birth to ideas for your stories, and in general, how do real writers work? Read all about it below.

Work time

Surely many aspiring authors have encountered such a great feeling as Inspiration; it covers a person completely, and he is full of emotions, capable of constructing a literary text of several dozen standard pages in one evening without taking smoke breaks or running to the toilet. Here, at the so-called Great Inspiration, lies the pitfall of any aspiring writer.

Remember once and for all - professional writer uses a rush of creative inspiration only to create the idea itself, the concept of the future text, and not, like Stakhanovsky, hammering the text into the text all night on emotions.

A professional writer literally squeezes the text out of himself every day, little by little. He writes for himself and only for himself. The goal is to create a story that he himself would like to read with pleasure. It is possible to write from inspiration to inspiration, only poetry in three columns, but not like novels.

Ideas for creativity

The truth of any outstanding literary figure boils down to the following law: “To become a writer, you must first become a reader.” Indeed, reading refreshes the storyteller's thought process, making his train of thought more structured with a greater range of vocabulary. This is especially noticeable these days, when the average person reads one and a half books a year. And so, when this person (unexpectedly for his loved one) picks up a book and reads it for an hour a day for a week, he begins to notice how positive side his dreams have changed, in them he begins to see more colors, people and events. His speech has also changed significantly; the “new” reading person, through his own example, feels how his consciousness has begun to work much more efficiently, as if it were a newly oiled clockwork. That’s right, fresh thoughts gleaned from books act catalytically in a person’s brain, giving birth to his own unique thoughts and ideas.

Your book will be a success among readers not because of the writer’s “light pen”, but solely thanks to fresh, unique ideas, implemented in the form literary text. Write about things that no one has written about before, and you may become not just a “genius of the pen,” but also the creator of new ones. literary genres. Absorb at least 40 pages of text a day, and you will have a real chance of becoming a real writer.

Who is narrating?

You can write from the perspective of the main character, from the author, from the hero and a number of other characters, from the author and the hero, etc. Which option is better, you ask? Good story is capable, no, he must, he is obliged to evoke emotions in the reader, the easiest way to achieve this is by narrating on behalf of the hero of the story. However, it is quite possible to be a successful writer by distributing the roles of narrators between the author and the hero or the author and the heroes.

How to create an idea?

Writers are divided into two conditional categories in terms of drawing up ideas for a future work. Some (I want to note that this is done by a minority) at the very beginning of writing a text, they work out in detail the plan for the course of the story of the story, carefully select in advance all the characters, places of action... in general, they do everything to ensure that the story is created from beginning to end according to a strictly worked out plan. Others write without any plan, they have only a preliminary plan at their disposal, and everything that follows is simply invented by the writer as he writes. Which category to classify yourself in is a matter for each person personally.

In what volumes do they write?

Professional writers, for whom such work is the main source of income, work almost every day, some write from 5 to 15 pages a day, and the most hardworking ones quite realistically manage to compose up to 30 pages in one day. Books consist of 150-2000 pages (meaning 1 standard page is equal to 1800 characters without spaces). Amateur authors, at the very beginning of their careers, write short stories ranging from 5 to 20 pages, they usually complete their stories in one or two days. At the beginning of your activity, it is much more rational to master small volumes of text before moving on to literary volumes.

Today there are no problems with publication: almost everyone can find a publishing house, of which there are a great many, and publish their work. But publishing a work is the final, but far from the main part of the process.

Remember that the answer to the question of how to write a book lies in the talent and abilities of each author. If he has them, then you can count on the success of the work. Moreover, in addition to this, you also need a desire to write and learn how to correctly formulate your thoughts into the “written word.” After all, our emotions and ideas cannot always be expressed correctly. literary language: This requires some knowledge and skills.

As a rule, if a beginning writer doesn’t know where to start writing a book, things don’t go beyond the idea. The desire to learn and the ability to find the necessary information are some of the keys to getting things moving. We will try to help you with this.

First of all, decide what your story will be about and what genre it should be written in. Perhaps you are interested in poetic or prose form, perhaps your idea will be adequately interpreted in the form of diary entries, essays, or even an entire novel. Very important issue, which is directly related to the success of your work among readers, is the relevance of your chosen topic.

Of course, the answer to the question of how to write a book is not limited to just choosing the topic and form of the work. The author must be well versed in the topic he is going to cover. In order to decide on this, you can choose several topics that you would like to cover, and from them - the one that you like best. Moreover, knowledge in this area should be as thorough as possible.

In addition, you must clearly understand the potential audience that may be interested in your work. The fact is that the set goal and the circle of intended readers shape the style of the book and its direction as a whole. You know that popular science literature is very different from children's or fiction. The reader is your addressee, and he should understand the language of presentation.

Remember that when it comes to learning how to write books, you should not rush into choosing a title and structure. As a rule, during the creation of a work many new thoughts, ideas, even storylines. Writer - creative person, after all, it’s not for nothing that Leo Tolstoy wrote about his novel “Anna Karenina” (approximate quote): “Imagine, my Anna threw herself under the train.” The hero's line or the plot as a whole develops independently and suggests to the author the logical ending of the work.

Remember that the title of a work is a very important element, because it attracts the reader and “provokes” him to read or not read the book. Therefore, you need to be very responsible when choosing a title and postpone it until a later date, when the entire text is ready.

The main focus here is on the issue of creating the main content of the work. You shouldn’t limit yourself to any deadlines: it often takes more time than you initially expect. Flights of fancy have no limits, so it’s impossible to predict how long it will take you to write a book. It's better to plan with a reserve.

As you may have noticed, the creation literary work- a very complex and lengthy process that requires a lot of effort and knowledge. Therefore, an aspiring writer needs not only to know how to write a book, but also to correctly use the information received.

For an aspiring writer- 17 secrets of success:

1. Never leave your best for last. Open yourself up immediately and then see what happens. How better start, the better the continuation.

2. Opening a paragraph, sentence, line, phrase, word, heading is the beginning of the most important part of your work. This sets the tone and lets the reader know that you are a commanding writer.

3. The first duty of a writer is to entertain. Readers lose interest with descriptions and abstract philosophy. They want entertainment. But they feel cheated if they learn nothing while having fun.

4. Show, don’t tell or present tendentiously.

6. The work is much more important than anything. Readers (and publishers) care less about skill than content. The question they ask is not “How did you become a writer?” but “How well is the writing?”

7. These rules are quite contradictory. This is the nature of rules in art.

8. All entries create conflict. Give quality attention to the opposition and good lines. The power of the antagonists should be equal to the power of the main characters.

9. Switch frequently. Try different sentence structures and types. Create a good mix of narration, description, exposition, and dialogue.

10. Be careful with your words. One word, like a drop of iodine in a gallon of water, can change the color of your manuscript.

11. Provide the reader with closure. The last sentences of the story echo something that happened earlier. Life is going round. “If there is a gun in your first chapter, then the book ends with a gun” (En Rule)

12. By the end of the work, the conflict should reach some resolution. Not necessarily a happy ending.

13. Correct, correct. You'll never get good result on the first try.

14. Avoid excessive use of adjectives and adverbs; trust the accuracy of your nouns and verbs. Verb form: the shorter the better. Avoid passive forms, clichés and hackneyed phrases.

15. Be interested in every offer. Be concise. Hemingway's first editor at the Kansas City Star gave him following rules: “Use short sentences. Use short paragraphs. Use decisive English. Be positive.” Hemingway later said about this advice: “This best rules writing skills that I have ever known."

16. If you can be misinterpreted, you will.

17. There are no rules for writing well. The one who successfully breaks the rules is a true artist. But: first, study the rules, practice, bring your skill to mastery. “You can't get over what you don't know.” - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaja.