Learning From Your Writing Mistakes

Any writing mistakes that have really taught you what not to do and thus improved your craft?

I've learned that I shouldn't take fanfic too seriously-especially if it's so niche that I, the writer, am literally the only person in the target audience.

Never EVER use genjutsu for lemons. It just... ends badly.

Also, I can't write rape without it seeming too much like an H-manga. So now I just fade to black at the end of the chapter and let it happen off-screen. Actually, extend that to all of my sex scenes.

On final thought, I learned to take every single thing I wrote before the age of 18 with a grain of salt, and leave most of it as the Mary Sue-laden pile of tripe that it is.

At my first real fan-fic, I learned that thought to big, and with my current abilities I couldn't continue it. I'm trying to start small, but I keep thinking big. So many story ideas...

When I was younger, I took my fantasies of becoming a famous writer seriously. Now I take them for what they are. I'm happier now.

Don't give your protagonists in believable/Deconstructive works a Shounen style beginning. It's why I no longer like my first chapter, too much like a cliche Shounen work.

I learned quite a bit since I start out as a writer. I know how to write good characters, do a good theme and setting. I also learned to handle my bitterness when people feel lukewarm about my work — I can always find ways to improve.

I still need to come up with a goodly plot..

Big lessons I learned from the first thing I ever seriously worked on writing:

• If I'm going to parody something, for Crystal Dragon Jesus's sake, research it first!

• If I intend there to be any actual plot in a parody, try to have it make some amount of sense.

• And only parody things I like unless I want to get extremely angry Hate Fic. (A few Take Thats are okay, though).

Overuse of archaic and rare words coupled to flowery language and melodrama only very, very rarely can avoid triggering an armada of narm; ergo, unless you're aiming for that, steer clear of any conjunction of the three.

After my first few fic attempts (never published) I learned that, for now, I should stick to oneshots. Also, I've learned that only a few universes' characters are alive in my head and the rest I need to check up on every now and then to write. Oh, and my subconscious and my conscious don't always agree, and my subconscious will win (as I learned when I tried to write a Doctor Who/Buffy The Vampire Slayer crossover that seemed off until I switched the Doctor I was writing from 10 to 9, as The Doctor was being a little more angry at his companion (Dawn Summers) than 10 would be). Still haven't published that one, though.

edited 18th Apr '11 9:17:37 PM by HG131

It is very, very difficult to write a friendly and well-meaning character who has a lot of unearned power, put her alongside characters who've worked hard to get where they are, and not have her come off as a Mary Sue. If they resent her, it looks like I'm trying to make them look petty so she can look good by comparison, but if they just accept her, it seems like they ought to resent her. The solution I eventually stumbled across was to make her life hell as a result of that power, but for a while I just stumbled through Cursed with Awesome without really making her suffer.

Realism isn't everything, despite it being a useful tool, and neither is originality. And that there's a point where you should stop justifying and explaining shit, because sometimes superfluously spelling out that stuff is a bad way to go.

edited 18th Apr '11 11:47:34 PM by Dec

What I learned from my first ever story (which I'm working on right now) is that trying too hard to make each character have an "interesting" backstory can very easily result in a ridiculously angsty one.

Always plan out the plot in advance. Completely. I know that there are some people who don't need to do this, and I'd love to be one of them, but I have learned from experience that I'm really, really not.

There is a point where planning has to stop and writing must take place, otherwise you just have a bunch of ideas floating around that aren't going anywhere.

I will never write a perfect sentence the first time through, and probably not the third or fourth times, either. But there is a point where I have to stop editing, because the longer I edit, the worse the line gets.

It's okay to write bland, completely terrible scenes— because I can edit them to make them better. A half-good, half-crummy full scene is better than a good half-scene, because it actually exists and can be worked on.

Dialogue is an extension of the character— it doesn't just exist so things can move forward, it's an integral part of characterization.

Characters grow, but not spontaneously.

Writing makes me happy. I shouldn't put it off so much.

For the love of all that is good in this world never never NEVER write dark fic for the sake of being dark.

The Mary Sue Litmus test does actually have a point sometimes