some advice for a novice writer

[vyperspit]

I'm writing a book this summer. I can't give out all the details, because it is personal. All I can say is that it is a fantasy/adventure story about a noble king who needs to fight off an evil darkness. I thought I could ask the experts. What are the steps to making a full story book?

[Shauntron]

Take community college classes in traditional writing skills and don't argue with the teacher :)

[TomSuperman]

go to how to make a novel in a 100 days or less

[Mel]

I'm not even a writer (well, except for the needed scientific writing), but I got a book by Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird (http://www.authorsontheweb.com/features/bird-by-bird.asp) that was incredibly good. It gives advice on the technical aspects of writing but also about the mental aspects of writing (procrastination, writers block, etc.).

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/birdbybird/

[ShaggE]

I've found that the best way to do it is just write. Don't worry about mistakes and whatnot, leave those for a later draft. Just let it flow.

Also, and this is a common mistake, never pad your story to make it longer. If you can reach the end of the story in, say, 50-something pages, then leave it as a short. In fact, you should probably focus on writing some short stories first. Submit them to magazines and digests. It's the best way to get your foot in the door.

In my opinion, those are the only rules. Everything else is up to you. Just don't give up. It's hard as hell to write successful fiction, but it is worth it.

[Derwin]

The only advice I can give is that if you are having trouble keeping track of character information, storylines, and the like, or if you would like to be able to move around scenes easily after writing them, try yWriter4. It is a free book authoring software a guy wrote for his own use, but I have found it interesting to try out for myself. You may find that you would rather just type in notepad or Word, but this software is worth a try.

http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter4.html

[TrogLlama]

Well, one of my pet peeves when I'm reading something and one of the things I do my best to avoid is unrealistic dialouge. It's odd, but it's something I notice a lot, at least in amateur writing. I find that it's best to reread everything and change it if it strikes you as awkward. If you've got a character similar to yourself or someone you know, ask yourself "What would I/he/she/it say in this situation?"

[Urban Nerdo]

Try not to make everything cliche, like a lot of the Video Game fanfics on fanfiction.net (they even have Sam & Max there! Those are even more cliche. Another great example are the MMBN fanfics. Oyy.) Stick with something original, like instead of that king of sorts winning or dieing, try to put a spin on it like, I dunno, he's happy but he forgot one thing?

[xChri5x]

Make you're 100% into the idea. It sometimes can take a year to write a book and if you find yourself losing interest overtime you'll never finish.

[Mel]

A timely comic. Just what you needed in your quest for meaningful advice. :p

http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-1265.png