4/25 Blog Post

Three Ideas for my audience to consider:

1. Starting out is the hardest
2. Research is a must
3. Writers live on Feedback

4/20 They Say, I Say

Chase Wilson

Perspectives

Becker

4/19/17

Fiction Writing “Rules”

Any site a person looks up for how to write a novel will have things like “NO PROLOGUES BECAUSE THEY’RE BORING” (Writer’s Digest) or “ADVERBS ARE A MORTAL SIN” (The Guardian). It turns out, a lot of people want to be thrown into the story head first, but as a person who likes prologues (both reading and writing them) this opinion doesn’t sit well with me. In the past, I have gotten nothing but positive feedback from my prologues, so maybe the people who hate them haven’t read the right ones? No matter the opinion, in my 20-time project, I decided to try to not write a prologue.

Novel-Writing-Help.com was a mostly unbiased site that I chose to look at more closely. It contained advice from famous and successful writers that readers could get inspiration and ideas from. Within the advice from famous authors was a quote by Stephen King, “When asked, ‘How do you write?’, I invariably answer, ‘One word at a time’.” You can ask 100 writers how to start writing, and you’ll get 100 different answers. Despite all the “rules” that people make up, there is no one right way to write something. It all depends on what you want to read, and it will show in your writing.

I agree that writing is different for everyone, but I am also affected by the strong opinions of many people saying what they don’t like in literature. For the most part, I say you get what you get and don’t throw a fit but I won’t straight up ignore a mass opinion. Ultimately I am writing how and what I want to write, all the while incorporating the “rules” of writing.

http://www.novel-writing-help.com/how-to-write-a-novel.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/how-to-write-a-novel-7-tips-everyone-can-use

4/17 blog 6

(The attached link goes to a google doc with a screen shot of the correspondence between myself and my Composition professor at Kirkwood.)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17GVmPuIT78gD_XkCnD_ihFNhTk19mLI7tc0NBasMpKw/edit?usp=sharing

The tomorrow Ben is referring to is 4/18/17, which was the date for a writing conference I scheduled a while ago for this project. I can not update on how the conference was, for it has not happened, but I am very excited for it because Ben's advice has helped me so much for other papers in other classes. Because it is not an academic paper, I feel the conversation can be more open and ideas can flow more freely. I can always discuss this later too. Ben is an honorable mention anyway (he's such a cool person) so I will definitely mention him in my final video project because he has already influenced my writing through the semester.