When someone asks me about writing · 9:17pm Jan 20th, 2017
This has actually happened! More than once! 
Me being asked for advice on writing. Who would've thought? 
So a new chapter, and as of the moment of writing this: twenty one upvotes, three downvotes. It's better than when I got up this morning, but still, tut tut. Seven to one? Can’t have that. Gotta step up my game for the next chapter 
It might be a while though. My everyday is keeping me off balance. I have a new job and I'm moving to a new apartment soon, and with commuting-time I'm away from home around 11-13 hours per day. My days never seem to slow down enough for me to relax, gather my thoughts, and get into the right mindset to write. I'm not burning out, but I just never have the time, since I'm not the kind of person who can squeeze in some writing on the train or while waiting for the microwave to finish.
So when I got to 9k words with the latest chapter, I decided to try and sprint for the finish while running on fumes. This was a bad idea, and it cannot be overstated that my editors really helped save the chapter. Thank again to Eckaji, Snuffy, and Themaskedferret.
So yes, I have plans for the next chapter, but i think I'm gonna take my sweet time writing it, letting the ideas ferment and then triple-distill them. They sound like great fun, so they deserve the time. They're pretty balls-to-wall though, so let's hope I can pull it off 
Anyway, user dargonax asked me for some input on his blog post, and ever craving recognition, I obviously jumped at the chance to share my thoughts. When I started sharing my thoughts, it pretty quickly turned into a small essay. When I asked, dargonax said he was fine with getting a small essay in response, and so here we are. My tips on writing:
Now, we all know the general tips: Beware the Mary Sue, kill your darlings, show-don't-tell. I find a lot of general tips to be misguided or easily misinterpreted, they're often advice that a lot of people seems to have confused with rules. They're often not rules, simply reminders and tricks that may or may not be helpful when starting out. I wrote these from the perspective of writing and reading, but this extends to all forms of media I can think of.
There are a few that I can only see as being helpful, regardless of skill, experience, age, or disposition. They're all pretty much the same advice, really, but here goes:
— Read!
It goes without saying, and I'm not insulting anyone's intelligence, but the point is that you want to know what you're doing, and seeing other doing it, either failing or succeeding, helps. So, read stuff. Read good stuff, read bad stuff. Read exciting stuff, read calm stuff. Adventure, drama, slice of life, dry prose, poetic prose, etc, etc. It might sound like you need to barricade yourself in a library and read the greatest works of fiction in the history of mankind before you’re ready to start with a simple fanfiction. Not true, because it’s also about what you take away from the reading, which leads us to the next advice: When you're reading–
— Pay attention, and ask questions.
Just generally pay attention, there're always things to learn. What should you pay attention to? That can be the difficult part, our brain-capacity is limited after all, but lemme see if I can get the ball rolling in your mind, and you can expand from there: When you read something and find that you like it, let the story roll around in your head afterwards. What was it that you liked? Try finding answers that goes deeper than ‘it was awesome!’ or ‘it was emotional’. What was awesome about it? How did the writer pull it off?
Conversely, also pay attention when you find that something don't work for you. Why didn’t it work for you? Do you normally like this stuff and this was an exception? If so, why? If this is the kind of stuff you normally don’t like, could there be anything about it that you’re missing? Do you care to find out?
Try paying attention to the whole picture when you’re asking yourself these questions. Ask followup-questions.
Picture this: A story where something happened to a character and you found it absolutely gripping. Why did it affect you? Do you like this character? If so, why and in what way? Are they relatable? Charismatic? Some other reason? Why did you find them to be these things? Was the character not really what made it work? Was it something else? What was that something?
I assume that most people do all these things already, but a lot of what you read online often make me doubt that. And these aren’t the only questions, and they might not be the most important ones either, but I hope you can get a good indication of the mindset I think could work for you when you’re prepping your brain for creating art.
Now, this all may sound a bit daunting, but don’t misunderstand me here. I’m merely telling you to think. I’m not telling you to think in the correct way right off the bat, or to always reach an insightful conclusion from every trail of thought. I don’t*, and I don’t think anyone else does either. If you always think in the right way from the start, I’m guessing this type of advice is beneath you.
*Personal examples: Judging from how witty and intelligent the author is, how much time and effort he spent on it, and so on, I should’ve been obsessed by The Kingkiller Chronicles, but I… liked it. It was good.
Summary of my feelings when playing Final Fantasy X: [Starting up the game: New Final Fantasy! — 1% into the game: I don't like this guy 
— 20% into the game: Seriously, please leave the game, I'll forgive it if you do 
— 50% into the game: Am I playing this because of a sense of obligation? 
80 % into the game: … ZZzzzz 
— 99.7% into the game: Hey... what the!? I suddenly care! ... for some reason. Why? 
]
I haven't been able to fully figure these out.
— Try and apply these questions to your own writing.
Why do you want to write what you plan on writing? What sorts of emotions do you want to evoke in the reader? How do you accomplish this? What kind of emotions are there to evoke?
It’s just like Jack Sparrow says: It’s all about what you can do, and what you cannot do. If you plan on writing a fic about a soldier going to Equestria with full combat-gear and… do something (I’ve started reading a few of these but I’ve never read any long enough to find out what actually happens beside the protagonist seeing the ponies in the distance, being good at surviving in the wilds, and perhaps killing an Everfree-critter or two), ask yourself questions like the previous point: I have no doubt that you can write about a man with an assault-rifle in the Everfree, but where can it go from there? Do you want to make it exciting? How can that happen? What’s your goal? Would anyone care? Of not, how can you make them care?
Sounds like discouraging questions, but don’t let that fool you. This is just prep-work. You don't need to have all the answers, but it certainly can't hurt thinking about these things.
— Feel free to be a bit skeptical when reading advice on writing (in fact, feel free to be a bit critical when reading any blanket-statement).
That includes the stuff I’m writing here, because I’m certain that what I’ve written is sound, but still, try and pick it apart. What’s wrong with a Mary Sue? What is it even? Do you always have to ‘show’ and never ‘tell’?
— Form a pact with your readers:
Have an unspoken agreement with them about what they’re supposed to feel from reading your story, and what it's gonna contain. This might sound a bit weird, but bear with me.
Readers read stuff because they want to feel things. At least that’s why I read stuff, and I assume that it’s why others read as well. I don’t mean that you should make everything super-obvious, you can keep your readers delighted with constant surprises if you want, just be careful when pulling the rug out from underneath them. This whole topic very much has to do with tone.
Let’s have an old movie as an example, less risk of spoilers. In The Terminator, the character of Kyle dies near the end. It’s a powerful scene, he’s one of our protagonists, and he and his co-protagonist, Sarah, are both in love. He’s kept Sarah safe from the unstoppable threat of the terminator, and when he dies, she’s vulnerable. Not to mention that they were so close to getting away with both of their lives. It’s a really good scene when he bites the dust. It’s a thrilling story, where death is supposed to be a very real risk for the characters, and this scene cashed in on that aspect.
The audience is totally fine with this tragic development. Death and violence were a big part of the story, and the movie put them in the mindset to appreciate it.
What mindset will you put your readers in with your story? What will they be okay with happening in it?
Be very careful when deviating from this mindset. Would you be okay with Sunset Shimmer dying in the next movie? Yeah, probably not. It might be dramatic, and have an impact on the viewers, but that impact would likely be shock, disappointment, and disgust. Probably not what you’re going for.
— Excitement doesn’t have to mean action, and emotion doesn’t have to mean tears.
Seriously
That’s what I have to say about writing. I hope I'm not just mumbling into my nightcap here, and that it was somewhat insightful, or at least a fairly interesting read.
Hey man thanks for the shout out. You've given me a bit to think about I already have an ide a of where I want to go and how I want to feel and I want to thank you for your honest imput. Seriously thank you for the help I can't thank you enough.
4390421 You're welcome, and I thank you in turn for confirming that I'm not just mumbling nonsense like a senile person in the corner of a rest-home lounge
If you want my thoughts on more specific aspects of your story, do share. I admit that it can be a bit tricky when coaxing out feedback from me when it comes to plans and ideas, but that's because I don't like expressing views on things I'm not certain about
I would add a few things that are not exactly writing tips, just my personal feelings. Some I just wrote about on Navas blog, but probably worth repeating.
—Listen to the people that makes sense and not what the majority tell you.
Example: People want you to add a pony-gryphon war in your light-hearted action comedy, but if they can't convincingly argue why it's a good idea to do so, then you should be sceptical about following such advice. I often groan whenever an author does a strawpoll, because most who vote are readers—not writers, and most likely won't take into consideration if their preferences will work in your story or not. She is wise, and changing that is like reversing the personalities of the M6.
—Don't be contrived or OOC. Be smart.
Celestia is often a target of this, because they need her to be to make the story work. The problem is, Celestia isn't a jerk or a dumbass. I don't care how much you criticize her decisions in the show, because it's obvious that the people who made MLP don't see her as such.
Still want Celestia to be a antagonist? Sure, there are ways to do that. Machinations in the Dark and Under the Sun's Wings are good examples. The latter is probably the best: Where the author knew that Celestia wouldn't fit the authoritarian role that he wanted her to fill, so what was the solution? Change her gender! Prince Solaris would still be Celestia, but could act more like king would.
Some people are better at blanket information rather than making points...
If you know what I mean.
I feel as though I can come to an understanding about people through the way that they talk or write and I feel as though I have gotten pretty good at it.
This leads me to think that your a person that knows what advice to give, but maybe your not sure about how to give it... Sometimes.
Again thank you for the help I think it really helped solidify what I want to do.
4390446
Sounds legit. It might sounds from one of my tips that you should listen to your audience like this, but it's also well known that people rarely know what they want.
People want creativity and originality, and not the same things over and over, but as Neil Gaiman put it, "People want the last thing they read and they liked. They read something you wrote, they liked it... they would like another one of those, please."
Sounds a bit contradictory. It is the great joy and the great frustration of it all: art isn't logical, there is not absolute truth in it. The closest thing to an absolute truth that I can think of is that you want to entertain.
I haven't read Under the Sun's Wings, but as you'll know, I'll agree that Machinations is great.
4390451
Perhaps
When someone tells me an idea, just a basic idea, I rarely feel anything, and I'm often dubious to it. I don't act on impulse when I respond though, because I don't have the big picture. It's like a scientist when they hear someone say 'polar bear numbers are increasing, climate change must be a hoax!'
No
More information is required. Go get it.
Happy to help