Allow me to preface this post by saying Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and happy new year. The new year is a time for renewal, for resolutions, and so I think this is the perfect time to write this post, or rather, this series of posts, which will set out some guidelines for actually becoming a successful novelist.
Allow me also to apologize. For whatever reason, every time that I answer a question on Quora, it is now automatically collapsed, and I don’t believe the public is allowed to see it, but they have yet to squelch my Quora blog, from where this post was born. Should Quora eventually do so, you can still find these posts right here. I’m also going to be moving the Q and A’s I’ve done on Quora here, so stay tuned for all that.
Now, to get on with it:
How does one become a successful writer? There are so many of you out there asking this question, so I want to provide you with a series of posts, which will help to outline the process that can lead to your success.
These posts are in no way a perfect manual; however, if you follow them closely, you will eventually become successful. Why am I so sure? Because the only guaranteed method for achieving long term success is to continuously release quality content, and that’s what I want to help you accomplish.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but if you write, edit, and release decent stories on a regular and continuous basis, you will eventually be the successful writer you’ve wanted to be.
Unfortunately, many people ask the following:
I want to be a great writer, and I like to write, but I can’t come up with an idea. How do I find a great idea to write about?
I’m gonna’ let you guys in on a little secret, actually a few secrets.
One! There are no original ideas, only original presentations. Lord of the Rings? That’s just good versus evil, combined with a little the underdog fights against insurmountable odds, and a hint of Germanic folklore. Shawshank Redemption? That’s just the trial of a man overcoming great obstacles with a touch of righteous injustice.
Mankind has been around for a long, long time, and throughout most of its existence, mankind has passed along stories in one form or another. Did you know that Sumerians had scifi? Well, maybe it wasn’t quite scifi, but there’s a tale of King Gilgamesh, before he was king, and a mechanical man fell from the sky and wrestled with him; that machine became his friend, Enkidu. Together, they journeyed to an island where they fought some other kind of machine that fired off blasts of energy. I don’t recall the lesson behind the tale, nor did I actually lay my eyes upon the story cylinder, but according to some anthropologists, such was one of many Sumerian stories.
No story today has an original idea, only an original presentation.
Two! An interesting, complex, consuming, convoluted idea with numerous plot twists and turns isn’t what makes a story great. In fact, such things often ruin a story. There is an elegance to simplicity, and if you’re a novice writer, or someone who has never written, stick with the simplest idea possible.
Many great stories, or many successful writers, start first with a very simple idea. There is no doubt that Stephen King is successful, whether you like his work or not, but he did not begin his career with a complex idea. He first practiced by writing short stories—and we’ll get to that—and then moved on to Carrie. He even threw away his first draft and rewrote the whole thing from scratch!
The point is that King started his career with simple ideas that he happened to present very well and in an authentic manner, and we’ll discuss how to become authentic later on.
Three! Every idea, no matter how small, how seemingly insignificant, can become a story.
I have written stories based on people getting sick, based on friendship, based on love, sex, money, inner silence, the most asinine imagery imaginable, I have written stories based on a one-liner I jotted while watching television, playing video games, watching movies, looking at pictures, or listening to a song.
This leads us to the answer—you don’t need to come up with an idea. The ideas are there; they are all around you. An idea is just that, an idea, you must then write everything you can about that idea, and then tie that into other related ideas, but perhaps you aren’t imaginative, you aren’t creative; That’s okay. It really doesn’t matter. One just needs to present a series of ideas to an audience in an entertaining fashion, but let’s get back to the idea.
Find somewhere quiet. Find a place with few distractions. Close your eyes—after reading this post, obviously—take a deep breath, and exhale.
Daydream. Do what you used to do when you were a tyke. Play make-believe; pretend that you are a knight, a cowboy, a soldier, a spaceman, that’s all writing is, unless you want to write non-fiction, in which case you don’t need to try to come up with an idea, what you need to do is find a topic about which you care, and then do a great deal of research and experimentation, but I don’t really deal with non-fiction too much, at least not outside of editing, and we’ll discuss editing later on.
Now, maybe you want to write poetry, and that’s a little different, but the plus side to poetry is that you never need to worry over the technical aspects of literature and composition; you just write according to cadence, a rhythm, whatever. The important thing to consider when writing poetry is imagery, sound, etc., and that leads us into the next piece of advice.
For now, just start watching your favorite movies, watch television, read books you like, play video games; it doesn’t matter because you’ll find ideas in the things that you enjoy.
Obviously, you don’t want to plagiarize, but that’s not really an issue at this moment. In fact, think about your favorite show; if you know it inside and out, you should be able to imagine what the characters will do, how they’ll solve a problem, how they act, react, and interact. All you have to do is imagine a new problem for them, and then think about it day in and day out until you see your idea come to life.
If you want, you can try writing fanfiction. There’s nothing wrong with that. Lot’s of successful writers started out writing fanfiction. In fact, most screen writers started their careers by writing an episode of their favorite show, submitting it to the production company, and bang; they became screen writers just by writing fanfiction.
Isn’t that how 50 Shades of Grey got started?
The ideas are there, guys. All you need to do is relax, and think about the idea over and over again until it slowly becomes you. Then, start writing pieces of it down. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a beginning. It doesn’t matter if there’s no middle, or characters, or problems, or resolutions; all that comes later.
People today, they want to start writing a novel from the very beginning all the way through to the end on their first attempt, but that isn’t how it works.
Imagine building a house. You don’t just buy all the supplies and build the house. First, you have to find a piece of land. Then, you have to level the land. Next, comes your foundation, and then, brick-by-brick, you build walls, place the roof, designate rooms, run electricity, pipes, finish the drywall, paint, decorate, and then, finally, you bring people inside to live out a tale. Writing a novel is the same.
Imagine sculpting a horse from marble. You don’t just start chipping away and sculpt a perfect rendition of a horse on your first attempt. You stare at the horse. You stare at the marble. You stare at the horse again. Then, you chisel a small chunk out from the corner of the marble block; it’s a process with a learning curve, and it starts simply with an idea, an image, a scene, something that fascinates or enthralls you.
Some people, once they have an inkling of an idea, they write an outline or do some kind of brainstorming. I am not a visual person. None of that works for me; time spent on that crap is time better spent writing for me. Try out different methods. Something will work for you.
For me, I just write out what I want to write:
There’s a guy named Jake, and he’s tasked with taking soil samples from a polluted lake. When he returns to the lab, he finds something strange; it turns out to be a new life form.
The above sample is literally how I start my stories. Then, I add until I feel I have something worth writing. So you want an idea? Close your eyes, and pay attention to the world around you; the scents, the sounds, the feel. Your idea is somewhere amidst the things you do. Then, you just jot it down.
Writing is just the transfer of thoughts to paper. They don’t have to be perfect, logical, ordered, or anything. Just write down a related series of events. Once your story is down, you can do with it what you want; it isn’t etched in stone; it isn’t a published title out to the public.
Think about a picture, like, drawing a picture. You want to draw a picture of your house, so how do you start it? You sit down, and look at your house. Then, you start to draw the lines, affect the shading to provide a perspective of depth, and when you mess up, and you will mess up, what do you do? You erase, and fix it over and over again until you’re satisfied with your picture.
I think too many people try too hard and are discouraged too easily because they set themselves up for failure. So, with this first post about becoming a successful writer, I just want you guys to relax, and think about different ideas. If you find some that interest you, write them down.
I have numerous, an overabundance, of ideas that I will never use. That’s just the way it is. Everything, to me, is interesting and can become a story for a novel, a novella, a short story, a poem. Once you have an idea you like, writing is the easy part, and we’ll pick up there in the next post of this series.
Thank you very much for reading. If you’ve already started writing, and you need some help cleaning up your story, visit my Editing Tab. I want to help you guys out as much as possible, but I want you to understand that what I’m proposing isn’t free. You want free help? Keep tuning in to this blog.
You want in depth assistance? Maybe, you just need some light proofing, or maybe you need some comprehensive editing; in either event, contact me, and we can discuss what kind of help you need. If you haven’t begun writing yet, now is a great time to mull over your idea, and talk to your friends, family members, and coworkers about the idea; let them know you want to start writing. Make it an interesting process for you, and stay tuned for more posts.