Paige's Writing Guide

1: GETTING STARTED

PART 1: GETTING STARTED

Every story starts with an idea. However, not all ideas become books. It is your choice to make you ideas happen. Make it happen!

But first...

How to have ideas?

1. Seriously, bruh?

2. If there's really nothing that comes into mind, just read. Reading gives birth to inspiration.

3. Ideas come from everywhere. Expose yourself to activities, places, people, everything!

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The following are pretty useful, too.

1. Do writing prompts.

There are so many writing prompts available on internet. Not all of them will be useful for you. But who knows? Maybe one of them can inspire you to write something. Some people just pick a writing prompt and work on it. It's a matter of preference.

Are you the type who use inspiration as a spark to weave words together? Or are you one of those who can work on that one working sentence and transform it to paragraphs?

Either way, writing prompts could also work as a good warm up before you start working on your own ideas.

2. Use a freaking story generator.

There are apps and websites that randomizes phrases to be put together in thousands of possibilities. Some are called idea generator, plot generator or any other generator, basically they're all the same thing. Maybe some of you used it. It works similar to writing prompts, for me. Just click random until you find something workable.

3. Writing Challenges

There are groups which held regular writing challenges. Many could be found on wattpad, other writing website and apps. Many could also be found in facebook. They held it, usually in weekly intervals and there would be a winner for each challenge. You can try and visit some groups that you can find and see if it suits you.

4. Others

This is my favorite. Why? Because it can refer to anything! It covers other options that I did not mention. Comment here how you make your own ideas. What works for you? Those who loves reading comments may just reap an unexpected harvest.

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Making it happen.

1. Start it.

Just put words together until they make sense.

2. Write! Write! Write!

Forget editing! Forget revising! That's for later. If you do it as you start, you won't finish anything.

Enjoy the freedom of writing while you have one.

3. Stick with it.

This is the hardest. Many ideas come and go. You start many things but you don't finish it all. Most of the time, you don't finish anything at all. Remember that draft you left sitting for few years now? It could have been a great story, but it's under a pile of dust.

4. Revise. Edit. Revise. Edit again.

Congratulations sticking with it! Don't celebrate. Maybe what you wrote was complete garbage. Garbage. Leaves a bitter taste to your tongue, right?

Revise. Look for loopholes. Maybe some scenes don't make sense. This part has no significance to the story. It will be better if I do it like this. In any case, revise it. If you want.

Edit. Check for grammatical errors and all those technical stuff. Little things matter! It improves reader experience. You don't have to do it yourself. You can hire an editor or maybe you have a friend who is willing to do it for you.

Revise. Edit. It's a cycle. Do it as you see fit until you are satisfied with your work.

Here, you make your work an acceptable garbage.

5. Publish it!

Wattpad. Webnovel. ScribbleHub. Dreame.

There are many online platforms! Oh, there's also traditional publishing.

Each has their own type of readers. Choose where your target readers are. And... just publish it! You know it's written to be read. :)

How to rake many reads, votes and comments? I will make a guide in another time.

Don't forget to vote and comment!