/lit/ - Literature

start with the greeks

Read lots of high IQ writing. Don't make the mistake that I (and many brainlets, think Live, Laugh, Love types + genre-tards who follow booktubers) did and think that writing is some skill you can just grind and improve. To understand how to write, you must first investigate what writing really means. It is essentially a projection of your own spirit and mind, selling yourself to the reader consciously or not. So by reading great literature, you will improve your thoughts, and after a while you might have a soul worth someone's time.

This is what big brain authors mean when they say "just read lol." Reading constantly will make much of the technique of writing intuitive, and after that it just becomes a matter of the unique spin you desire to put on it. Of course there is value in seriously studying grammar etc. so that you don't make dumbass blunders but that's a very distant concern compared to having great thoughts to need that grammar in the first place.

the blackpill here is you will never be some 19th century grand polymath wizard who wrote novels that will eternally take a heaping shit on your entire pea-brained existence, so why even bother. now i just write because it's a good practice but publishing is pointless

>>16651233
BOOBA
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>>16651302
50 iq take

>>16651326
the learn writing by osmosis meme is real. studying hack retards who peddle cheap literary tricks will get you nowhere but the bargain bin of retards at barnes & noble, but you won't even get that far because the game is so rigged.

fuck she's hot as fuck

>>16651338
>the learn writing by osmosis meme is real
no it's not, and certainly not without any practice
the idea that you're just going to read and suddenly gain enough insight to write a good novel is a fucking joke
but anon already admitted he has no real interest in writing at all
>> now i just write because it's a good practice but publishing is pointless
so there's really no point in even continuing with the discussion
if you want to learn as a craft and a profession and make money out of writing, then you better learn how to write effectively
if not then you're just a deluded retard
and the two are by no means either or. you can specialize in a type of writing and write consistently and have mastery over it and simultaneously develop yourself as a person by reading literature, philosophy, history, etc.
but guess what no amount of reading past authors will ever help you're a void that has no inspiration and a zero that has no writing experience or career to speak of

>>16651366
tl;dr any loser in here working a job at the irs or their daddy's bank thinking they're better than the slut living a comfy live writing young adult and going to conventions to meet her genuine fans is only living on massive amounts of copium that are get more deadly over time and ultimately result in a untimely but well deserved suicide
if you're in this thread and you're legitimately serious about writing, do not wait for you to get some amazing idea or reach some mysterious level because it's never going to fucking happen
good literature is largely a result of interesting times and life experiences, not of reading the literature that came before, which is why there's amazing literature written by actual brainlets that were incapable of doing anything else of worth, just like there are iconic songs that define a generation composed by people that are complete schizos without any semblance of grasp on reality

>>16651354
too bad she's a fattie

>>16651233
Are horizontal stripes or vertical stripes better for emphasising the size of one’s bust?

>>16651366
tl;dr lol

my point wasn't that you shouldn't write a lot, it's the opposite. I used to have trouble writing back when I was a smoothbrain young lad who read genre crap, but now that I read real literature I can shit out ~10k words daily easily if I want because my approach to writing isn't some stupid externalized approach to following writing rules. the fact that you should write a lot goes without saying, but as I said, that's a distant concern to having something worth saying in the first place.

So is writing flash fiction/short stories the best way to efficiently improve story telling ability, or is jumping right into writing a novel, even though it is gonna suck, the best way? And how long should each piece be? I know I am gonna suck but I feel as though logically I can improve better writing short stories for a decade before attempting a novel so that I can nail down character development, prose and plotting.

>>16651443
nice backpedaling, but anyway
>that's a distant concern to having something worth saying in the first place.
which isn't solved in any case by reading literature, so what's your point? some refugee from yemen that's only finished a few years in grade school and never read a book has more to say than you ever will after decades of reading shitty literature
no amount of reading will even take away the fact that what you're a void with no noteworthy experiences that would be sublimated into literature
but really, this is stupidity that you started with, because the OP only asked how to get good at writing
the vast majority of writing and certainly writing that gets published and sold is not "literature"
this is like a guy asking how to start working out and you answering with
>no point if you weren't born with god tier genetics
he never asked you how to write highbrow literature that will by circlejerked by smoothbrains in fifty years
he asked how to write, and ultimately, that's a skill that can be learned, and not primarily from literature

>>16651233
>don't be a coward and gather interesting real life experiences
>develop a taste for the literature that you like
>write every single day
and try to find a good editor

>>16651302
>>16651326

Just to reply to some of the already posted takes I think that as with any art, there's a required degree of prior reading/familiarity of current voices (i.e. writers). So yeah you have to read excellent literature to get a sense of style, greatness, whatever you may wish to define the merits of those works as.

BUT there is still a practice element to this. Even if you spend 10 years reading Goethe, Balzac, Joyce, WHOEVER, your first piece of work will probably be lacking in some areas. You need practice in the process of creating and self-editing. The development is still a thing, you just start from a better position.

>>16651570
Writing short stories is actually far more technically difficult than writing a novel or novella -- this is because you're working to try and tell or at least give a look into a fully-formed world/story within an incredibly small window. This is also why they're the best way to practice writing initially, and if you can, you should try and write quite a few of them.

I personally don't believe in the quantity over quality approach though -- you should write a bunch of short stories, but if you just focus on churning them out, you might miss opportunities to pinpoint themes and character archetypes and the general tone/voice of your writing and the ability to hone it. Ideally, build a rep of at least ten to twenty, pick the ones you like, and whittle them down into something you think is worthwhile.

After this, try to write a longer version of one, or a new story altogether, into a novella. That way you can practice longer-form storytelling without the pressure and time expense of a full-length novel.

Remember though -- none of it means anything if you can't figure out what you want to say in each story and with your work overall. You should have some thematic or aesthetic goal, some idea you want to communicate, or some place you want to bring into form through the craft, that you'll pursue and hopefully manifest to some degree in your writing. You've got to pick a point on the horizon and walk towards it, day after day, in some way or another. You can't just aimlessly walk around and hope to make progress.

>>16651856
i didn't backpedal, you missed the point.

>which isn't solved in any case by reading literature, so what's your point?

being poorly read = having dumbass takes = writing trash. life experience matters only in that it can make you smarter and wiser, but being some adventurous stereotype means nothing if you've missed out on the ideas of the last two millenia

but whatever, i can tell from your needlessly combative tone that you're emotionally invested in this trite idea of being a commercial author, so speaking of life experience: spend another ten years pursuing this pipe dream then you'll see how clueless you were. incidentally, there are more professional athletes in the united states than people who make a living writing mostly novels and short stories. and this industry is not a meritocracy.

>>16651233
Just start writing stuff. Pick a random topic every day and spend an hour or two writing. Practice different types of writing; write descriptions of people, descriptions of places, dialog sequences, short stories. Just keep writing something every day until it becomes a habit. Then focus on reviewing what you're writing after the fact; try and make your writing flow.

Then once you're reasonably comfortable with just writing prose, try and write some short stories. They're all going to suck at first, just keep going and they'll get better. Then eventually just give up