I recently had the opportunity to ask January’s featured member, Karsten, for advice on writing, and she was kind enough to provide me with five excellent tips for young writers. Thanks again for taking the time to help me out, Karsten!
• Finish what you start. You learn a ton from finishing a piece: how to write endings, how to revise a piece as a whole, how to move on to the next. Also, when you’ve finished one you know you can finish another. A track record of finishing projects gives you confidence and experience.
When I mentioned “learning how to write endings” to another writer, she thought it was “entirely ridiculous” of me to assume that she couldn’t write an ending. I wasn’t assuming she couldn’t write an ending; I was intending to stress the importance of knowing how to write an ending. Do you ever read stories, and the end feels like the author got bored of having you as their audience, and picked you up (with a back hoe) and dropped you over the side of a cliff?
How about when it feels like the ending is “tacked on”, as in it has a final rush of events that have had no prior hinting and are entirely unexpected and don’t fit the story at all. Or, maybe you’ve written a story and cannot find a good closing, and go for the anti climatic approach, and while it’s not a cliff hanger, it certainly doesn’t feel like you closed the story.
Finishing what you write is good practice for endings, as well as everything else. If you begin different works, you practice beginnings, (perhaps) middles, but no endings. You can’t expect someone to play the final note of Moonlight Sonata if they never practice it. You gain a “complete eye” when you finish, an eye that allows you to step back from your writing and dig under the surface for flaws.
• Take pride in small achievements. It’s easy to keep your eyes on the final goal (a book deal, for example) and forget to celebrate all the smaller stages of success. Finishing a chapter is important. Creating a new character is important. Learning to recognise show vs tell problems is important. Your final goal may be years and years away, so be proud of what you’ve accomplished today.
Work in stages — it’s easy to see your smaller accomplishments when you do. Writing is a long journey, not a one time deal where once the words are out, it takes a single read over, and it’s done. Reward yourself with breaks after you finish a chapter, so that when you return to writing, you approach it relaxed, with fresh interest, rather than what carried over from your previous chapter.
• Have realistic expectations. Don’t expect to write brilliantly during your first draft or your first ever story. Writing is a process: every new thing you write is (or should be) better than the last. So once you finish your novel, be proud, but also know that you now need to write another, better novel.
If you’re shooting for a book deal, then, tell yourself that the book deal can wait. More importantly, work on suiting your work so that it’s appreciated by peers, then reach for an outer audience. Take the process gradually, and it’s not about how fast you get there. If you move too fast, you’re bound to miss out some important part or another; take it like training for a race. You’ll crash midway if you don’t give yourself the time to train and prepare.
• Give back to the writing community. If somebody reviewed you, encouraged you or showed you how to improve, return the favour. SF writer Robert Heinlein suggested that you can’t always pay back the people who helped you when you were starting out, because they’re already a step ahead of you — in which case, pay it forward. Find a deserving person and help them the way you were helped.
Having others review you is one thing– they point out what they see in your writing, and you paying it forward to others lets you do the same. If you spot a common usage, mechanics, or grammar error in someone else’s writing, check your story for it. It’s easier to see a mistake when you realize someone else is making it, and it’s better to be safe than sorry later on.
• Learn to fish. You know the saying, give a man a fish and you’ve fed him for today, teach him to fish and you’ve fed him for a lifetime? You can’t constantly ask for fish (help and advice) from more experienced fishermen (writers). You have to learn to fish for yourself. The sea is full of fish if you know how to catch them. Learn to google. Track down writing resources like Holly Lisle’s excellent website for writers. Get writing books like Stephen King’s On Writing or Browne & King’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers out of the library. Educate yourself.
Facebook doesn’t have much to do with writing, but I’m pretty sure that anyone who reads this blog also has a Facebook account.
Now, a lot of people who use Facebook also like to use the applications associated with it. The most popular one going around right now is “Grade Your Parents” which gives your parents a grade based on the originality of your name. When you go to use “Grade Your Parents” or any other Facebook application, you get a message like this:
Most people hit ‘Allow’ without ever thinking about it. However, hitting ‘Allow’ gives that application access to all of your personal information. Many companies (such as the company behind Farmville) then sell that information to advertisers. Those advertisers then target you with specialized offers otherwise known as spam. Read more…
Writing a short story or novel with someone else is something that can not only be a lot of fun but is also a great learning experience. Over time, we develop a writing style and eventually we get trapped into that writing style. This has a lot of advantages, but it has some disadvantages too such as concealing from you another way to present information. When we write with a co-author, it forces us to get outside of our comfort zones and adapt to a new writing style.
But, I’m not here to talk about the advantages of having a co-author. I’m here to talk about your rights and duties as a co-author. For the most part, this is just meant to be educational; unless you realistically believe your novel will be published, you have nothing to worry about. I’m going to cover (1) what makes a co-author, (2) copyright, (3) rights of a co-author, and (4) duties of a co-author. Fun!
The Brits and Yanks don’t just differ on the spelling of certain words, but also on whether or not to place punctuation inside or outside of quotation marks. Take the following example:
The sign read, “Yield to Kangaroos.” (American Style) OR
The sign read, “Yield to Kangaroos”. (British Style)
The British Style is also called the Logical Style. Since the period isn’t part of the quoted material, it doesn’t make sense to place the period inside the quoted material. On the other hand, the American Style is the archaic British Style, which arose from printing press necessities. Due to the way a printing press works, the period and the comma are the most fragile elements and easily broken. Placing a period after the quotation mark and directly before a space increased the likelihood of it breaking. However, placing the period inside the quotation mark kept it safe and snug. Nowadays though, some people prefer the American Style for its aesthetic qualities: it simply looks cleaner.
This isn’t to say, though, that if you’re British you must use the British Style and if you’re American, you must use the American Style. Usage varies in both countries. BBC News frequently switches between styles, and in the USA, the British Style is preferred in technical and scientific writing.
Which one you follow is mostly up to you; just be consistent. I say mostly because you may have a teacher or an employer that prefers you use one style over the other, and in such instances, you should conform to what they want.
Fortunately, incidences of plagiarism don’t really pop up much on the Young Writers Society. When they do, it’s usually just a misunderstanding. For example, new members frequently confuse the Lyrics section as a place to post the lyrics of your favorite songs (as opposed to lyrics you write). As long as someone isn’t pretending to write something they didn’t, it’s not plagiarism. However, that still doesn’t mean it’s right. Even if it’s not plagiarism, it can still be a violation of copyright.
Every now and then though, I do get an e-mail from a writer saying someone on YWS has plagiarized their work. In the five years YWS has been operating, this has happened only three times. Each time, I complied with the author, but two of those instances weren’t plagiarism.
The first was a case where the YWS member copied a bunch of dictionary terms from another site. It was pretty clear where he copied them from, and the “author” said this was plagiarism. But, as that author merely copied those terms from a dictionary, that wasn’t plagiarism. Plagiarism is when you copy someone else’s original idea. Yet, even though it wasn’t plagiarism, the YWS member did violate the author’s copyright. That’s because it was pretty clear he copied them directly from the author, who in turn did copy them from the dictionary but still spent the time to group the particular terms together.
The second was a case where the YWS member copied a phrase. It was a short phrase (three words long), but very unique. In fact, the only two search results for it on Google were the poem written by the YWS member and the poem written by the author. That (along with a few other things) made it clear that the YWS member definitely copied it from the author. However, even though the phrase was original and unique, it wasn’t plagiarism. That’s because you can’t copyright short phrases to begin with. And since you can never copyright short phrases, you can’t ever commit plagiarism by copying a short phrase.
In the end, plagiarism can get confusing when you get into the details. But here’s a good rule of thumb: if you even have to ask yourself the question “Am I plagiarizing?”, then don’t do it. And if you ever have a question, use the “Contact Us” form on YWS (you’ll find it under the “About” link).
I think one of the hardest things for people to get over when they first join a writing site is the hesitance to critique someone else’s work. The reason behind the hesitance varies from person to person of course, but it’s there all the same. And for some of us, it may continue for quite some time.
Yet, it’s important to review. Not necessarily for the author’s benefit, but for your benefit. When you review, you’re actively breaking down the elements of a literary work in your mind. Your dissecting the work, and in that process, assimilating it on an advanced cognitive level. This is all driven by the conscious thought of, “Why do I like/dislike this piece?”.
Through reviewing, you become an active reader. That is, you’re actively reading the work for what works and what doesn’t work. Subsequently, you go on to (subconsciously) apply these lessons into your own work. Simply put, reviewing someone else’s work will improve your own work.
On the Young Writers Society, there is much focus on the length of the review rather than inherent quality. I’m not talking about new members who write long reviews in the hope of getting more points. Rather, I’m talking about old members who go on and on in their review.
What is the goal of reviewing? It is not to prop yourself up on a higher pedestal than the writer, much as some seem to believe. It is also not about tearing apart people. When you tear someone apart, you are not helping them whatsoever.
The goal of reviewing is to help. At the Young Writers Society, I don’t know of any active member who has a published book to their name. So in that regard, everyone on YWS is an amateur. As amateurs, our aim should be to help.
In pursuit of that goal, long reviews are not helpful. If your review is longer than the short story, something is wrong. With poetry, it’s different. Yet I routinely see reviews that are five times longer than the poem, which is ridiculous.
Keep your reviews concise. They don’t need to be necessarily short, but make sure you’re not droning on. Your review should concentrate on whether you liked the piece, and if you didn’t, why not. Critiquing the grammar isn’t really helpful (especially since I routinely see reviewers get grammar corrections wrong).
Lastly, keep in mind that the end goal is to encourage people to keep writing. No matter how good your review is, it’s not going to help the writer much. Rather, what helps the writer is simply “practice, practice, practice.” So if your review discourages the writer, then you have failed.
It’s an absurdity you’d expect Douglas Adams to mention as a quick aside in one of his books. That is, a First Grader from Newark, Delaware had to go before a character witness hearing last week at his school. Why? Because he brought an eating utensil that serves as a fork, spoon, and knife to lunch.
Unfortunately, I don’t think events like this one are isolated. After all, students regularly get suspended for offering classmates Tylenol. But, the Supreme Court long ago decided that the rights granted to all American citizens, regardless of age, don’t apply within the boundaries of a school, even though a school is government property. So while normally you’re innocent unless proven guilty, that axiom does not apply if you’re a student.
In any case, read more about the first grader in the New York Times.
Most people hit ‘Allow’ without ever thinking about it. However, hitting ‘Allow’ gives that application access to all of your personal information. Many companies (such as the company behind Farmville) then sell that information to advertisers. Those advertisers then target you with specialized offers otherwise known as spam. ![J31361_A4 Poster_J31361_A4 Poster[1]_tcm97-165910](http://www.writinggooder.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/20091202J31361_A4-Poster_J31361_A4-Poster1_tcm97-165910-300x292.jpg "J31361_A4 Poster_J31361_A4 Poster[1]_tcm97-165910")
