How do I be a good writer?

How do I write as good as Hidenori Hikuchi, or Kugane Maruyama?

A good place to start for pointers is How To Write Fan Fiction, which should maybe just be titled "How To Write."

Truthfully though, the answer to your question is "practice," and "learn the craft." Meaning: as much as we'd like to take shortcuts, you really do need a good understanding of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Best way to keep your understanding of those things fresh is to practice, which means you sit down and write (type, whatever). If you've got the idea, you've got the story. Sit down and do it. :)

If you gotta ask that question you better reconsider your profession.

Just write

Don't be bad.

@cbishop:

If you literally read a single paragraph anywhere at all in the "Vampire Hunter D" book, you will know what I mean when I say simply having good grammar, spelling, and punctuation isn't enough. I've already written what I thought was my first chapter of my story, but it's hopelessly tiny and has hardly any dialogue. I can show you if you want.

@xlr87t3: Well since you pointed to specific writers, I suppose you want to know more than just grammar, spelling, etc.

You have to develop your voice as a writer. Voice is kind of a complex idea, but it basically is what makes your writing unique in style, tone, character, etc. If you are serious, you should spend some money and pick up some writing books off of Amazon. James Scott Bell has a great book on voice. There is another book called "She sat He stood" that will show you some ways to make your characters feel more dynamic especially in dialogue scenes.

If you are working on your first story and it isn't very in depth, you might need to spend some more time outlining. Figure out what you want to happen in the story. You might also want to get to know your characters more; write a history or timeline for them. If you really want to get in their heads, there is an exercise where you interview your character.

But, really (once you know the basics of writing) the most important thing is to just write. Like any skill, writing requires practice. As you write, you should start to improve. I'm 35 thousand words into my first draft of my first novel and it seemed like a daunting task at first, but it comes really easily.

No, it's not enough- that's just "learning the craft." You have to know the mechanics before anyone will want to read more than a very short story. "Practice" is where all the other stuff comes in.

^^^And that's pretty much "practice." I spent years trying to figure out "the right way" to write, until after thousands of character notes, I decided to just write something. I found that even though I didn't know exactly what I was going to write, the story was there. Sometimes, it seems like the characters take over. Of course, it's just that I had put a lot of thought into my characters along the way, and when I started writing, my subconscious knew exactly what to do. I wouldn't have known that though unless I had started writing.

Eventually, when you have more than one or two fun scenes you want to write, you have to make a plan for your story. All those pages of notes and cards and bits of paper that you see when they show J.K. Rowling's creative process? That's her planning. It's not an overnight thing. It's a work in progress.

I had a very loose outline of my story, the main characters and a few big moments. The story was just drifting around in my mind for years, but I didn't have the confidence to put it to page. When I started writing, my brain just started filling in all the details as i went. Before I started writing, I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to put out enough material to make up a proper novel, and now I'm 35,000 words in and just finished the first act.

I did learn a lot from reading writing guides about avoiding basic mistakes and such (apparently you never start a book with a character waking up or a description of the weather) But yeah, just sitting down and writing was the best thing I could do to improve. Now, I'm reading books by professional writers and picking out their mistakes; if they can get published, then that makes me more confident in myself.

Try to write in-depth and maybe look at other rolemodels.

@rdclip: I read This Year You Write Your Novel, by Walter Mosley, because he is my favorite writer. Haaaaated it. The gist of the book was, "You have to get up and put time into it every day," and said little else in the way of solid writing tips. At least, nothing I didn't know already. It was also written like he was only talking to bored housewives which was kind of irritating. lol

The simplest answer is trial and error. Even the world's most talented writers didn't pen best sellers on their first shot. A little resilience goes a long way. It reminds me of a funny quote

"Assume that you have a million words inside you that are absolute rubbish and you need to get them out before you get to the good ones." -Neil Gaiman

Another bit of advise I'd reccomend is write about things that excite you, because if you aren't fascinated by your own story how can you expect anyone else to be?

Don't get too caught up on quotas or compare you daily/weekly goals to professionals. It'll only make you feel like you're falling behind. On days when you know you can't write, try to do something else that's related to your writing. Imagining new story elements, designing an outline, reading articles on writing, or just entertaining yourself with insperational material are all ways to keep your projects on your mind even when you're not writing.

Hopefully this helped you.

@xlr87t3:

Here's my tuppence...

Learn how a good story is structured. I made this for a friend a while back, it's a rough guide on the basic structure of a story:

Use the basic story structure to help remind you where to take the characters you have. It's more of a rule for visual media like Theatre, Movies and Graphic Novels, but Dan Brown, Agatha Christie and other easy read authors use these Shakespearean 3 Act concepts in their writing. It's not something you have to go strictly by, but it helps you know when to build your story up in certain ways to deliver an entertaining experience.

Create a world. People talk about developing backstories and attributes to characters before you start but that doesn't work for everyone. Sometimes those things and other specifics only come as the story goes on. For me personally, I'm not big on the backstory idea, I prefer the idea of knowing what type of person the character is and then adding things in later that suit that character. But creating a world is a different concept entirely. The type of world the character is dropped into will help dictate parts of your story.

So Stephen King for example, writes books that exist in a parallel universe which apart from certain oddities is more or less the same as our own. George RR Martin based A Song of Ice and Fire in Medievil England and based it on the historical War of the Roses. In both of these completely different worlds the author gave themselves a set of rules to help guide them in deciding how the characters may act. So I think world creation is a good thing, and knowing your settings and the types of people that are in the setting, and the types of characters you are dealing with is important, but not necessarily a backstory for each character.

When you have decided who your characters are, and what their personality is, try to act like your characters as if they are people you know. One danger in writing is coming up with a bunch of different characters that are more or less all the same person. They all speak the same way, use the same language and have the same types of mannerisms. MCU characters suffer from this a fair amount, in that discounting Thor and Bruce Banner as obvious exceptions, many of their male characters speak in similar ways and have similar sharp tongued quips to Tony Stark, which was their first big successful character and still their most popular. So when writing the actions and words of a certain character, try to act like them in your head so you can write their speech how they would say it, it's makes your characters more authentic and interesting for the reader. While you're at it, once you've created your characters personality and know who they are, dont force your characters to act in ways that go against what they'd do unless you have a very good reason for them to act out of character. Acting out of character is something readers spot a mile away and its a jolt that takes them out of the story.

I also think it's important, especially in writing a story to be read as opposed to visual stories, that you indulge your characters. Take your time with them. Dont be afraid to spend time on a particular scene or in a conversation. Quentin Tarantino has shown many times that an interesting conversation with a cause and a point can be very entertaining.

That said, try not to add anything to your story that you know wont go anywhere. Readers will remember storylines that dont go anywhere and if they're substantial enough, they'll be noticed and later be a complaint. So try and keep your story only about things that matter and will help with other parts of the story.

Lastly, my advice (and this is something I've adopted that others do the opposite of quite successfully) is to not know your ending. For me, knowing the ending traps me, and I end up making a character act out of character to get out of a situation. You should know your world, know your characters and their personalities, and know the curve ball you're going to throw them to get your story going. Let those things trap your characters but also help you come up with an answer of how they get out of those traps and into the next one.

I think thats what people mean when they say something like "The characters will tell you how to write the story". In essence, as the writer, you are simply deciding the timing that events happen.

EDIT:
I will also say that I've written and not completed many stories. But doing it and doing it some more really helps, because even if you've never done it before, you know what's corny, what's cheesy, whats boring. You've read boring cheesy corny stuff loads of times. If you're just starting out, you'll write some boring stuff, some cheesy stuff and some corny stuff, even though you know its bad. But eventually you'll do it less and less.

One piece of advice I once read to stop your story getting slow and boring is that when you feel like you're dragging things out, or if you've painted yourself into a corner, flip things on their head, make something unexpected happen. Like, I wrote this character once (who I may return to) who hated the way his boss was treating him and others and wanted to do something about it and was being talked into it more and more by another, but the conversation was getting a little stale and I felt I was retreading ground, so I made my character have an outburst and refuse to act against his boss, acknowledging all the crap he'd get if he did. It was a simple thing, but for that conversation it worked and it introduced a twist into the story of that character going too and fro in his mind on the issue as well as some strained relations with the other guy, and as I'm sure you've heard time and time again, stories are built on conflict, so it all helps.

@nemesisreloaded:

Wow, thanks man! I wanted to know if you can review my story's first "chapter". You know, constructive criticism.

@xlr87t3: Yeah sure. Either link me to it or send it in IM

@nemesisreloaded: Unfortunately you have been banned or you accidentally blocked me.

Consider your influences and roll with it. Just put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Write, friend!