I follow a couple of writer’s groups on Facebook, and I find some of the questions a little strange. (Yes, we are back on those wacky writers and their funny ways.)
“Should I write in 1st or 3rd? Past or present? Close POV or can I have a narrator? What genre should I write in? What plot should I use? How many pages in a chapter? How many chapters in a book? Do I have to include diversity? Can I still write about vampires? Can I have a prologue? What should I name the character? Am I required to have a map?”
It just seems strange to even be asking these kinds of questions of other writers, as if there is a strict structure for storytelling. All of these questions get answered by YOUR STORY, as it gets told by YOU!
Stop asking questions and WRITE! If you are new and haven’t finished a story, JUST WRITE! Finish! And when you do, shelve that story and write another. When you finish the second, pull the first off the shelf and compare them. Did you get better? Is the first story salvageable or should it be hidden in a drawer? Does it need a different POV or style? Is it YOUR style? Is it worth the effort to revise it until it’s publishable? Are you happy with it? Can you do better?
No matter what you decide, start the next story, and write more, and repeat…
Asking other writers their opinions isn’t doing the work. It’s just collecting opinions, and writers have opinions like they have obsessions; in numbers that frighten mental health care professionals.
Do the work. Discover yourself. Your style. Your faults. Your strengths. Your voice. Words are tools; learn to use them. Do the work.
Even people whose jobs require the use of words; journalists, scientific or technical paper writers, editors, etc… complain about how hard fiction writing is.
It’s not easy, Cupcake. It is a painful, tedious slog, but you do it IF you are a writer, because you are a self-absorbed, narcissistic, masochistic, sociopath with delusions of fame. Nobody will write it for you (unless you pay them). Get to work, dammit!
Danae Wulfe thinks... 
Brilliant! And true! It’s YOUR story, figure it out. What does it need? If you don’t know, no one does. (Did I mention it’s your story?)
Keep nudging us, Danae!
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Thank you! I just needed to rant a bit (while also yelling at myself). Back to the writing!
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“What genre should I write in? What plot should I use?”
How does someone even decide they want to write a story without already having a plot in mind?
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You know, I’m not sure. My stories burn their way out of my head, with little I can do to control tone or style, let alone plot or how the characters want to be. Maybe these proto-writers have just wandered into the group out of curiosity.
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Do the work….discover yourself….love it. Thanks for the blog. Ada,
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