Advice for aspiring writers... Read, Write, and Dream

At Comic Con last year I had a few aspiring writers ask me for advice. Of course, my first thought was, I dunno- go ask a big author like Terry Brooks or Brandon Sanderson. I'm just a little guy.

However, I realized in the next instant that I did have an answer.

Read, write, and dream. (Not always in that order...)



Read
Reading should be a given. It will enhance your techniques as you study not only the plot elements of a good story, but also the mechanical skills different writers employ. As you read with a writer's eye, you will have little "ah-ha!" moments where you see a skill you have been lacking, but can develop to improve your writing.



As a minor example. I first read Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind while I was in my first year of college. I found that within that 1,000 page book, Goodkind did something that not all authors are great at (though most certainly try to some extent). Whatever he introduces in the story, whether on page twenty or two hundred and twenty, ends up playing a role later on. His foreshadowing technique was superb. He could inform you about something without taking you out of the story or having the passage feel clunky, and then deliver on that foreshadow as many as seven hundred pages later and still have it create a good impact. Even if he only introduced the idea, character, or event with a single sentence, it always worked. Furthermore, there were no "dead" foreshadowing moments. Meaning everything that was foreshadowed, actually developed into something more. A lot of authors will foreshadow ten things, but then only deliver on seven.

Write
Writing is the most important part. You have to actually sit down and write. Some people have a goal of writing 1,000 words a day. I find as with other things, these goals can and should be increased in accordance with your skill. For example, when you first walk into a gym, you might only lift the bar without extra weight. But you certainly don't want to stay at that level forever. You increase your goals. 1,000 words a day was a great goal while I had another full-time job. It was something I could almost always hit on my lunch hour. Now, however, I can drop around 2,200 words an hour, consistently over the course of a day. Always stretch yourself.

A good way to improve this skill set is to time your work. Whether you are a "plotter" who uses up 300 3x5 cards before writing your first word, or a "pantser" who jumps into the story without even knowing where you want to be in chapter 2- time yourself. I write in word because I can easily calculate totla words and total time spent on the project. This gives me not only a daily progress report, but shows me how consistent I am over time. 

As an example of flexing your writing muscles- The Dragon's Champion took me a total of 117 hours to write, including rewrites and completing edits from my editor. I averaged less than 1,000 words an hour. Then I look at book 6 in that series, and even though it is almost 10,000 words longer, I completed that novel in 54 hours. Part of that is how familiar I was with the characters by then, of course, but a huge part was timing myself. I found that I not only increased my writing speed as I practiced, but timing my work periods also meant I spent less time on distractions like social media.

Dream
Dreaming is very important for a fiction writer. Without dreams and questions of what if- then what will we ever be able to produce? Take time to daydream, to make up your own endings to books, movies, video games, etc. Don't lose the 12 year old version of you that used to stare out the window and fight in epic battles while the teacher was blathering on about some subject you weren't passionate about. You should still look out the window and dream -- it's just a balancing act of finding the appropriate time to do it as you age ;) 

Now obviously I am not Terry Brooks or Brandon Sanderson. So, odds are they will have even better advice for aspiring writers, but if I had to hit three top things, this is what I would talk about.