10 REAL writing advice without sugar-coating

[Hayka]

their Tapas profile only has one with less than 50 subs

yeah that's my first book as Hayka. I've written under my own name and the name Alice Quill for a while on wattpad. I'm not gonna mention my real name but I did make a rather popular series on wattpad. And no I never called what author says "BS" I said "inspirational BS" I have read great advice from great writers and I do love Gaiman. He makes a lot of witty dialogue, which I really love. wait did I even mention writing guides from popular authors in that point? oh naaah. of course art is objective, but I just said don't use that as an excuse to stop improving my work. If I believed that I would've been stuck with my "good and bad" series which was honestly just badly-written. But I kept calling it "crap" instead of "art is objective" and improved it and turned it into a huge series.

most of them are unhelpful jibber jabber.

If you're talking about this, well yeah I still do believe this. You see, the writing advice an author gives is something applicable to THEM. That was how THEY got the recognition. So yeah they are unhelpful, although I've read some amazing ones "kickass writer" is an example of a REALLY GOOD writing book in which even the author explicitly states that most of it will be unhelpful jibber jabber because thats the way THE AUTHOR does it, and it shouldn't be YOUR method. So I respect that book. If you wanna read only one writing book, it should be that one. Recommended
Well anyway, I just recently started pro-writing and left the ones I did for fun. I'll rewrite them once I'm finished with my first series, or I might just do them while writing my main series little by little. So to answer your question, no I havent accomplished much if we ignore the GL series I did in wattpad which got pretty popular back in 2019. But yeah, I still won't take back anything I said because it was my honest opinion and I was ready for people not liking it.

[Hayka]

*(I'll admit that I also don't use 'said,'

can relate. SAID is tough. And my current novel is 70% important dialogue so its really tough.

is where it sounds like the author used a thesaurus for every other word

oh I did say to not take it seriously, this is a thing from the past and for traditional pubbing; nowadays people are looking for a good story; and yeah I do read dictionaries and use thesaurus. But not for "all words" I mean, I do have to improve my writing style. Even if simplicity does work best, It doesnt mean I should stick to it. If you read my current novel, you realize how weird the writing style is, which is just for that series because the whole series is weird. If I wanted to write a normal one, I would've used simple words.

I'm not looking forward to it happening to my own work

happened to me. Didnt like it

"a mystery novel that just happened to have two women in love,"

oh that's what it was. The GL was not a major focus

[Hayka]

yeaaaah sorry for sounding cocky. I'm really not

[Hayka]

yeah...again...sorry about that.

[Hayka]

yes. I do agree. Still doesnt justify not improving, in any way. I never said "only use sophisticated" I said improve vocab and writing style as you go. its more relevant to point 7

[Hayka]

unless you want to be a dictator author

hmmmm....I like that
but all jokes aside, I had more reasons than just fans noticing unimportant stuff, but that kinda made me lose heart and just let go for a while. I'll rewrite the series some time.

[Hayka]

I would’ve failed if I followed some of these points haha.

-_- dayum...sounds like some terrible advice I got. I'll make sure to do another part :3 lets see how it goes.

Read any big novel on tapas and most don’t use all that flowery fluff to make a novel “smarter.”

yes yes thats exactly why I said "don't take it seriously." it's an old belief that I have, and that's it

[CarltonIsaac]

I'd advise you alter your Topic header so it won't be as misleading. Cheers.

[Hayka]

oh wow so many feisty comments...you guys sure are energetic today. Did something good happen?
so what was your experiences with writing? I'm mostly curious about my third point.
if you want to do smth and someone called it a ripoff, what would be your reaction?

[Hayka]

hmmm? no
that was actual honest advice. If you don't like it doesnt mean I should adapt what I say to your taste. Sorry if my advice is trash. Its MY advice. Just like how any other authers advice won't work on other people because its a personal thing THEY did, mine is also mine. if you don't like smth then simply do not do it ://
what exactly will "me changing header" do here?

[DasIstWunderblyat]

Yes try to rewrite and do a different approach, ot might give you a new perspective and even develop into something different.

I think if we were somehow able to transfer what pictured in our minds faithfully into readers', many will still cherrypick parts they like the most or getting the things wrong. That is a bold choice if someone want to police what readers should think or do, but it may not go well.

[NellieVP318]

While I agree with some of the advice like 1 and 2, I do think the rest of the advice can be subjective according to each person. This is more of a each to it's own advice guideline.

The whole representation thing is mixed bag. I get there is a lot of bad writing surrounding representation. But if I learn one thing is that you can't really control what readers ship. That's why I got into the mindset that any readers can ship your characters whether you like it or not. I don't care much if people ship my characters for whatever reason, but that's just me. It's apart of the whole sharing your story and putting it out there with the whole culture around fandoms and fanfiction in all.

Don't get me wrong, it does get annoying when people focus on around shipping whether it is LGBTQ or not. I would take it to allow the whole shipping thing to happen just as long your readers don't demand for your story to focus around that. While I have some LGBTQ characters, I have yet to make a novel focused around them since in the current story. They don't have a huge focus enough for me to justify tagging the story.

[Hayka]

that's exactly me. It wasn't an LGBT novel. it was a mystery novel with 2 girls that end up together.

hmmm...what about point 3? have you experienced it before?

[NellieVP318]

Point 3? I can see the point about the ripoff thing. I used to write a story about magical girls because when I was younger, I was into the magical girls genre. That genre has have a lot of 'ripoff' but each magical girl story was different on its own way. But I know people get bored of rip offs a lot.

Therefore, I totally get people complaints about things being unoriginal as I used to be into that mindset with another long time writer friend of mine. We used to get frustrated about any of our stories or characters having the same ideas as other creators. We really wanted our creations to be special so when you have someone that almost the same idea or concept as you. It does get frustrating because you really want to stand out from the crowd. Nowadays, I'm mostly over that because it's literally impossible to have a complete original story or character these days.

So my whole point is writers should just focus on the execution of the story rather than trying to be "original". But I know the aim of trying to original is a mindset that it's hard for any creative to get out of. There is no shame for at least trying to stand out from the works a bit so I don't blame these creators for trying to be original.

[Freemints30]

Then I wouldn't call that harsh or decent writing advise. Like at all. I would call it more crippling yourself in an attempt at. ... Something. Reddit upvotes maybe?

Maybe.. the huge plot twist that changed everything in your most popular series you deleted... Wasnt that good and the cute girls part was the better written part. If that's literally all what the commenters was talking about. Food for thought.

Honestly its more immature especially dropping an entire work cus people """didnt focus on what you like""". Thats all series, fans like to focus on cute stuff. Straight ships, friendships, characters that they can see themselves in POCs, LGBTQ, disabled ect. Thats every series if you cant handle that then... you may not be cut out as a creator or a bigger creator

Honestly this less a writing advise thread and more "here's my takes" i dont recommend people following half of these if they are serious about writing.

Forced diversity isnt a thing...

[abigaillmartin]

Why do people assume it’s just forced diversity when they see LGBTQ, people of color and such?

[BoomerZ]

Forced diversity is diversity that doesn't fit the situation.

[bloodstained.skies]

FINALLY! FINALLY someone posted something that makes sense. You said everything I was saying for years. 100% agree. I suppose this will p*ss off many people but people just hate hearing the truth

[aqua03]

At the risk of sounding like "That guy" i think when most (sane) people mention "Forced Diversity" they mean when say it's inserted in a way that doesn't service the themes or story the writer is trying get at if that makes sense.

Like say for example if I did something like Peanuts and had the white kids just hanging with other kids of different ethnicities like it's no big deal. That's not forced diversity, that's just how things be. Now if say every time said characters showed up, I grind the plot to a halt to sit the audience down for a lecture about how "racism's bad, mmkay?" even if the rest of the story wasn't about racism or the like. Then that would be considered "forced".

Now if say I was writing a story about how bigotry and racism hurt people, then it would be more okay to have lectures like that if that makes sense (though in a way that's natural to the story and not like I'm just sitting the audience down for a class lecture on the themes of the story)

Anyways, that's my thoughts on the subject anyways.

[abigaillmartin]

Of course! Like it’s forced if it doesn’t have to do anything with the story or the characters, that’s what I believe.