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Well I recently made the move to fiction and here's some stuff that might help you out --
First off, writing is like anything else, practice will help you develop it. You don't need to be an English major to be a good writer -- Chuck Palahniuk used to be a mechanic...
Writing is way too subjective, so just write what you are interested in and try to stretch it for a few hundred pages...if you've never written before, you might want to try some short stories...
Here's a very helpful tip I gleaned from a writing class I am taking this summer (I would suggest seeing if there is a writing group near you that you can join) -- you need to have "the thing and the other thing" -- I'll find the person who writes about this and psot his name later...
It's really a helpful technic. For instance, I recently read a short story called "The Celing" which is about a giant celing falling from the sky. So that was the thing. The sky is falling and the people are trying to deal with it. But the other thing is that the story is really about the failed relationship between the main character and his wife and the ceiling could easily be interpreted as their relationship and how it's crushing them and there are a lot of other elements that add to it. So you have a surface theme and a real theme -- I know this is hard to describe...but once you have the idea down, it's much easier to craft a story around it...
Well like the movie the Killer with Chow Yun Fat -- the thing is that he's a killer and goes around killing people, but the other thing is about honor in a lawless world -- even though he's a kiler he has a code of honor and this plays into the whole theme of the film...
You need to have interesting characters and don't spend too much time on details that do not contribute to the overall meaning of the story...like overdescribing a mailbox that someone walks by, unless it is in the story quite a lot and is important to the story...
But moslty, just write and then try to work with people who are writers and can help you along...I mean posting it on a message board or something is okay, but try to find a writers group where you can take a chapter each week, or once a month, and find out what people like and don't, what works and what doesn't...this is probably the best advice I can give you...or see ifa local college has some small writing courses -- what is beneficial about that is that you get varied opinions from people who have different writing and reading interests -- some may be into mainstream stuff like King, or more literary stuff, or more experimental, etc...
For now though, just write, write, write, and then worry about the next step once you atleast have a chapter or 2...
"50,000! You scored 50,000 points on Double Dragon?"
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