/lit/ - Literature

Books with volcanoes

Thanks to those who gave their advice before. I'm still just up to 2000 words but that's 2000 more than yesterday. The problem seems to be just sitting down, clearing distractions, and getting started. I realize I've messed myself up bad with my attention span and this website when I do nothing but constantly shift between tabs. Some advice I got:

>Broad details like that are the easiest part of the story, the low-hanging fruit, putting it into words is labor and you need to forget about nice paragraphs dropping fully-formed from your imagination until you put the work and practice into learning the trade. Write a bunch of trash, figure out what about it made it trash, take notes while you're reading other things of what worked and what didn't. I'm talking surface-level stuff, what they start their paragraphs with, how often they use characters' names rather than pronouns. Respect writing, it's a different thing than plotting and you need to give to get.
>Besides outlining you also need to stop fucking around with minor characters and shit to focus on a main character and their desire/goal. A strong first chapter will start with a good opening line, a strong image, or conflict. Don't begin with backstory or weather. There's lots of resources for beginning writers: books, podcasts, classes. The ones about screenwriting have the same principals as those on novels.
>>/sffg/, i keep feeling like im not writing my characters correctly, like im either ignoring their personality traits or apeing them. how do I write them better? “Write out a fictional interview for them: what they want, why they want it etc etc “
>Its also important to keep in mind that you are telling a story, not info dumping so even if you have every aspect of the world planed out its better to show bits of it in appropriate places or if all else fails add a world bible along with the text, instead of killing pacing by going on long or clumsy info dumps. If characters feelings or thinking can be shown in a dialogue (for example would X be willing to open up to Y about this, if yes write a dialogue) in other words avoid internal monologue as much as possible

Like everyone else I've wanted to write a novel my whole life, but I have no idea how to get started. I can spend hours thinking about the setting and miscellaneous characters or plothooks, but when it comes down to actually putting it to words I can't even get a paragraph in

Advice?