/lit/ - Literature

>>4863574

>>4765044
Yes, but it's crap.
Most /lit lists need to be fixed

This is the only one I can think of.

They're bullshit, but some are much more bullshit than others. For example. Stephanie Evanovitch has one that's not much more that a cash-grab. Whereas Stephen King's gives you a little help.
Then you get those that get into the real guts of putting together a narrative and the mechanics of conveying meaning. Probably the best is "200 Mistakes, How Not to Write a Novel" Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" one is good too, but most of learning to write is through reading and practicing. I wouldn't tell you to avoid writing books, since its always useful to learn not only from your mistakes but from the mistakes of others as well, but when you pick up a writing book, look through a few chapters and see if it's offering specific advice or if it is just screwing around.

Disclaimer: This isn't a list of the best books on writing, just a list of recommendations from the last thread. Literally /lit on Writing. Quality and usefulness are not guaranteed.

This list may help you.

I know you probably won't take this sincerely, but you really don't want to do this. It's not going to short-cut you past making shitty writing mistakes. It's better to study writing overall and learn from the mistakes of everyone, than to wait to make a mistake and try and have it corrected by other amateurs. Read books, study what the authors are saying and how they are conveying what they are saying. Read books on writing, because they'll generally cover all the basics, And practice, practice, practice, and look over your own writing, because you'll be able to see when something isn't working a lot of the time.

/lit/ will tolerate critique threads, especially if they all occur in the same thread (don't start a thread for just critiquing your piece, start a general critique thread) and especially if they are short, and you probably won't need a large sample for someone to determine what problems you are having.

pic related, these books won't waste your time (like a lot of writing books will) but neither are they a requirement.

The most important thing is to practice writing a lot and learning to cut away everything that isn't helping convey the story.

Oh, and get used to outlining and brainstorming, they usually help immensely

1. Keep a common notebook handy so you can write down your ideas when you get them.
2. Watch movies, read books, (a wide variety and an unbelievable amount) so that you can have ideas and get a feel for the structure.
3. After you have a couple ideas, find one bit that you think is good, and form a story around it, it can be an event, a setting, a piece of dialogue, anything, it's called the story seed.
4. Brainstorm a bunch of things that can result from or lead up to the story seed, Think of how people could be affected, and for every strong way in which someone could get affected, you have a character.
5. Make an outline.
5. Make an outline.
5. Make an outline. (Repeating this for emphasis, you're not going to be able to keep all of this stuff in your head and if you try to write the whole novel by starting with a blank page saying "Chapter 1" You will screw it up.
Your whole novel will be bent around the first chapters, and working to service them, when the opening is supposed to be working to support the main body of the novel, the entire middle and the climax, You can change things from your outline if you want, but have an outline to change.)
6. Write out a rough first draft.
7. proof-read it polish it, fix errors, see where it's weak, move things around,
8. Write another draft
9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 until it stops being shit, make no mistake, it will be shit on the first draft. But that's what rewriting is for.

>>3600736
And again, one without the gradient, I know what you mean about the lower case L on /lit, but my ocd flared.