Advice for young writers?

Horacio Quiroga's famous advice for short stories: When you write, don't think in your friends, or in the impression the story will make on them. Narrate as if your story were only of interest for the small environment of your characters, one of whom could be yourself.

All of the above.

General advice for those who are "creative artists" in any field or medium: realize God in you is the Creator and the Source, and your patterning of such infinite creativity is the truth.

Related: "Creation: Artistic and Spiritual."

"Shakespeare's Window into the Soul;"

"Understanding Yourself" by Mark Prophet.

I've posted this lots of times. Never hurts to do it once more.

Beginners at every level of writing ability might benefit from applying these tips:

--Spell check and grammar check as the very last things you do before showing or submitting your writing.

--Worry less about names and appearance than you do about character and plot.

--For anything longer than a short story, complete a master plan before you begin writing. ‘Free writing’ to see where it takes you can waste tens of thousands of words and untold hours of writing time if it leads to a dead end. Few inexperienced writers complete works done without a plan.

--Your first draft is not your best draft, even if it’s damned good. Don’t try to market it unless you’ve edited, revised, and/or rewritten it until cannot be improved in any way.

--Display sites where others comment on your writing are worthless unless writing will never be more than a hobby. The feedback is rarely valuable. It uses first publication rights, and second rights sales are rare.

--Sharing your work when you know it contains errors wastes the time of the people who could give you meaningful critique. Never share work until you cannot improve it.

--Don’t even think about sales as a goal. If you want to write mainly as a way to earn money, you’ll probably end up bitterly disappointed.

--Master writing mechanics, from punctuation to sentence construction to vocabulary. Agents and editors *will* reject a work with mistakes, guaranteed.

--“It’s” stands for ‘it is’ or ‘it has,’ and is never, ever a possessive.

--Minimize italics and exclamation points, and use few or no ellipses. Well-written text will guide the reader to ‘hear’ the words as you do.

--Read, in your genre to see what the competition’s doing, and outside your genre to be well-rounded. Read what interests you, read what’s popular, read what challenges you. Read more than you watch TV, game, goof around online, use social media, etc.

--Seek and destroy unnecessary adverbs. Start by searching for "ly" then for common ones like "very," “even,” and “just.” A stronger verb is better than an okay verb and an adverb, every time.

--Only one character’s actions or thoughts can go in the same paragraph as his dialogue. If James says anything, then only James’s actions, thoughts, etc. can be in the same paragraph. Start a new paragraph for another character’s actions, reactions, dialogue, thoughts, etc.

--Master point of view. A novel (or a chapter, or a scene) is general told through the experiences of a single character, so you write only what that character sees, hears, thinks, remembers, wishes, fears, etc.

--Get rid of weak verbs: is, look, see, have, get, go, start, begin, try, make, play, take, wonder, seem, appear, etc.

--Avoid things readers hate, among them omniscient point of view, prologues, cliches, info-dumps, and for some readers, first-person narration and present tense.

--Include all five senses for the point of view character. This isn’t a movie.

--Aim for a 50:50 ratio of dialogue to exposition. If it tips to 60:40 either direction, you’re still fine.

--Teach yourself to write ‘lean,’ using as few words as possible. To practice, take a longish paragraph you have written and rewrite it in 2/3 as many words without leaving out any content. [<--33 words.] [16 words-->]Write lean, teaching yourself by reducing the word count of a longish paragraph by a third.

Copyright everything, even if you never sell. If you have any other questions, feel free to e-mail me.

https://www.wattpad.com/708063218-catch-a-falling-...

Enjoy the process and learn everything you can about writing. Don't be in a rush to get published if that's your goal. Take the time to learn, grow, and improve as a writer.

Not a writer but I am I songwriter and music producer. 1. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid), meaning don't overthink every detail...simplicity works. 2. You will create more bad content than you will good. 3. Let everybody read it and give input, they are your customers after all (hopefully). 4. Stay motivated, it is easy to get discouraged so do all the little things that keep you focused.

Yes, don't show what you write to ANYONE until you're certain it's as good as it can possibly be, and this includes spelling, punctuation and grammar.