Writing 101 - Word Count

Munky makes a good point.

As with any art form, you do get better over time the more you work at it.

Last year, when I took an advance creative writing class in college, and had three months to hit that magic 50,000 word count. I failed. I couldnt do it. I've tried and failed NaNo more then once (More like NaNOPE)

Now I can blow through 10-20k in a week if the spirit moves me. Chapter 6 of FF was 13k. And I did that within a week of finishing the 10k 5th chapter.

And my earlier works? (which man, I dont even wanna go back to read my old stuff. I bet its like looking at old art)

My last attempt at a novel fanfiction, had an average word count of 5570. And I havent touched it since july 2014.
And my last one shot collection was 3678, and before that, (where talking 2010/2009 here now) it was 390.

390 vs 8945 average per chapter.

So whats daunting now, might not be daunting later.

So.. I'm gonna come in here as the token scrub

I have zero formal training, classes or otherwise (however, I have enjoyed the benefit of some fantastic lectures that gave me some helpful insights, and I highly recommend that if you find you like an author, scour the intarwebz for them - you may find interviews, seminars, advice etc).

I have found a multitude of creative writing classes available locally, and online. Munky actually has a fantastic repetoire of these stored up, and it may be worth starting a new thread just for her and everyone else to share these sorts of resources.

That being said, I've intentionally avoided all of these.

Why?

I needed to find what works for me, and for what I want to accomplish creatively, without outside influence. I had to meet my own inner wordsmith, without trying to conjure it up in a seance of someone else's ritual.

This is not me saying that any of these resources are bad or unhelpful in any way. Not at all! I think these things can be worth their weight in gold. It's just that for me, personally, not speaking for anyone else at all - what I found to be worth its weight in gold was Aromatherapy, Alcatraz, and Music (long story).

Writing fanfiction is fantastic. It's like being given a 1,000 piece Lego set - here are the pieces; now make what you want, son.

And you do. You take the pieces and you make them into countless different dioramas, each uniquely comprising some or all of those magical little blocks that came in the box. You learn how to build components of a world around your vision, inserting those little yellow-headed people in new places, with new (or not) companions by their sides. You give them new adventures - or you give a reader insight into their heads while a known canon adventures occurs, changing perspective entirely. You make massive worlds, using every single block in some way, or you make just a small, yet complete structure only using the pieces you need. Sometimes you'll even expand the set by bringing in entirely new pieces, pieces you have crafted yourself to fit within the slots, which can give it all an entirely new shape.

In my humble opinion, there is little else more valuable to a writer than starting off writing fanfiction. No, it's not required, but it will give you one hell of an advantage.

And when (if) you decide you want to take the next step and create your own sandbox, well, that's like sitting at the plastic vats at the Lego factory - you need to create the moulds for your own blocks before you can do anything. Every single one of them. And only after you do that can you start playing the architect again, fitting the pieces you have painstakingly handcrafted together into a brand new set the world hasn't seen before.

It's simultaneously the most intimidating and liberating thing in the world, sitting in the blank corner of a 'verse you will have complete control over. I went through nearly a year of complete writer's apathy (actually it wasn't just writer's apathy, it was kind of 'everything' apathy, but the writer's portion is what we'll discuss here) before unexpectedly breaking through that. Once I did, I found that what worked for me was actually backwards from what I did with fanfiction - in fanfiction, you start with the characters and their goals/interactions, and then work outwards to the rest of the broader world and how it will facilitate that story.

But without someone else's set of Legos, I've found I have to do it the other way around: start with the world, a piece of the world, however small. Focus on that, explain the how and the why of it, answer your own questions about it and create lore in the process. Little by little, all of these disparate pieces will reveal the world they are contained in, burning away the fog of war. And the more of the big picture you see, the more you understand the way things connect to each other.

After you understand the world, then you know what kind of people are living in it. You know why they live the way they do, in every single corner of it. And with those factions in your mind.. you zoom in, with the eye of God, going from macro level to micro, and you find a few individual people within each. You squint, looking for what makes them stand out from the rest of the masses that surround them. When you finally find that...

Well damn. You have a character.

All that's left is to make them fucked up each in their own special ways, and set them in each other's paths.

Or, that's the idea, anyways. I've only just started on the block-moulding process, and fully expect to stay in that mode for quite some time.

This may not be helpful to anyone else, but if at any point it starts cranking the gears in someone else's mind, whether writing fanfic or OF, then it is entirely worth it.

(I know this started as a thread on wordcount, but it's starting to encompass writing philosophy in general, so...)

Also, this may seem like a no-brainer, but it's actually really important-

If you want to Git Gud at Writingz, Read More.

Read as many genres as you can that interest you, and as much variety within those genres as possible. I am putting this notation here as much for myself as anyone else, because I will be the first to admit I do not read nearly as much as I should. And there's no real excuse for it. Munky, who is probably one of the busiest people I have ever met, combats a lack of reading time by playing audible books on her daily commutes. With libraries full of free goods, and entire websites dedicated to -ahem- 'sharing' if you are more a digital reading type, there is no one who ever has to go without a book, ever, if they want to read.

If you feed your love for reading, it'll naturally help to hone your skills with writing.

The new board has been created exactly for this very interesting topic! Thank you all for the heads up~

Eyyy, I think that's a great thing!