I've been wanting to put myself out there and begin writing stories, publishing them and getting my work out there. It's my goal to be a good story teller, I have many stories in mind and have been addicted to sharing my work and improving on my writing. Trouble is, I don't know where or how. I know it's a random or perhaps obscure thing to ask, and that this may not be the best place to ask this, but it's the only website I write in and any other site would be foreign to me. Any and all advice helps greatly, thanks.
I'm not sure exactly what aspect of 'being a writer' you're concerned about, so I'll just dump everything. I'm going to assume you mean you want to be an officially published author. In that case, I should make it clear that I haven't really gotten that far myself, outside of a couple of short stories in anthologies. I'm partly regurgitating what I've read from authors like Mercedes Lackey and C.S. Friedman (no relation to the real Friedman). Firstly, you need to improve your writing. This isn't an insult; I can see you're actually one of the better writers on CHYOA, based on your latest chapters, but there's still a long way to go. Take a look at the top ten stories on the site - none of them are anywhere near good enough to be commercialised. Every single one of them would be rejected by an editor purely based on their opening paragraph. Your mission is to do better. In that light, I'll start with the first paragraph of the latest chapter you published. Good quality, at least for CHYOA. Your ability to convey a fairly abstract scene is strong. However, your sentence structure is poor, you misuse repetition, and you use far too many commas where there should be periods. I would cut the initial I can't see. Something is wrong, something feels wrong is redundant and should be replaced; your writing should convey the sense of wrongness to the reader without ever needing to tell them, that is, show, don't tell. My legs, they walk without my say is a very strange way of structuring and wording that sentence, and it would be better as My legs walk without being told. with the comma dropped. my body moves on its own has the same show-don't-tell issue, although you already did the showing, so these six words essentially tell the reader something they already know (and should be removed). I'm not sure what the phrase I am left feeling lost from my own even means, exactly. Do you mean 'my own body'? In that case, I'd phrase it as I feel separate from my own body.. The word scream is redundant. That sentence is otherwise fine up until , my body won't listen to me, which creates a run-on sentence, conveys no new information, and should be cut. I am not me is just the worse of the two halves of that last sentence and should be removed. With that, you're left with: I'd consider that an improvement. There are no more run-on sentences or redundant clauses. The shorter, choppier sentences also convey the narrator's internal panic a little better. But, you could still rearrange the sentences to flow into each other better, and I'd elaborate on the first sentence - what does the narrator mean, exactly, by seeing inside their head? - and some of the word choices aren't ideal, and I would replace 'myself' with the narrator's name, if possible, for extra impact... My point is, imagine every single sentence in your story is picked apart like that, because this is exactly what editors will do, and most readers will subconsciously pick up on at least a couple of these imperfections. A story has to be really, really good to be worth publishing. Before you look too far into publishing, you need to first reach the level at which you can see all of those ways to improve for yourself. Published writing is very much not something you learn on the job; you need to practice it for hundreds of hours before you publish. Judging by the fact that your stories consistently rank among the longest on CHYOA, you should be far better equipped than most to actually finish a manuscript - that is, assuming you're looking at writing a novel. When you finish your first draft, you then need to start over and edit every single sentence from the beginning. Every published author does this, and unless you're a highly accomplished and experienced writer, you'll need to do this several times. It's also a good idea to read books in the same genre as yours regularly, if you don't already, and I mean books, not anything on the Internet. There's only so much you can learn from those you intend to surpass. Then you need someone else to read your manuscript and suggest changes. Friends and family are fine for now. If it's too sexual for your or their comfort, I'm sure there would be some willing CHYOA users. Weigh up their criticisms, remembering that they're not experts; the point of this is just to get another perspective. Once you've editted your manuscript even further, you get another person to read and offer their opinions. This time, you want someone reasonably qualified. Perhaps your friend has an English degree, or perhaps you know someone who's already published their own work before. Worst case, you can always hire a professional editor. (And, either way, you'll probably want to pay back anyone who does this for you, friend or not, as it's a big ask.) By this point, you will hopefully be far beyond Mt. Dunning-Kreuger, enough that you know when your manuscript is ready. If you intend to publish erotica, specifically, then self-publishing an e-book on Amazon or something is likely your best route. Erotica (and romance in general) is, to my knowledge, a very high-supply, high-demand genre. Take my opinion on this with a grain of salt, but I think you'd actually have a better chance finding your own audience of paying readers than you would finding an appropriate and willing publisher. Just remember that self-publishing has its own pitfalls, most notably on CHYOA that you may be legally responsible for your own work if, for example, it includes underage characters. Otherwise, you will want to do some research on potential publishers. Self-publishing is still possible, but most e-book demand seems to be in romance; you'll need to do all the promotion yourself, and don't expect to see a single cent back for your first book. Many publishers do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. If so, don't send them your manuscript. Not only will they hate you forever, they'll tell all their friends about how much you suck. These publishers usually publish through agents, instead. You could try getting an agent if you want; I have no idea what lies down that path. Many publishers only publish particular kinds of books. Make sure you only contact those for which your book would be a good fit, or you'll come off as incompetent. Before you send your manuscript to a publisher, read their style guide very, very carefully. From their perspective, if you can't do something as basic as change your story to a certain font and add double line spacing, you're not worth publishing. From there... well, if you make it that far, you'll be far beyond the level of needing advice from strangers on CHYOA. I could probably learn a thing or two from you.
This is a lot to take in, and I am honest grateful for that. I've actually been wanting a response like this, someone who would analyze my writing and help me improve on any imperfections. I appreciate any compliments I receive on my story, but finding criticism which hold merit and are aimed to help me improve is incredibly rare to find. Of course, it's Chyoa so I shouldn't expect that. It's clear that I have a very long ways to go should I aim to improve and better my writing/grammar. I have my issues, my setbacks and my obstacles of course. However, I still want to pursue my opportunity in writing, and your response has helped me distinguish what I should look towards doing next, one step at a time. Slightly unrelated but are my stories actually ranked among some of the longest on this site? Does that involve the number of chapters written or the total word count? I'm curious as I never thought my stories would qualify for that! That's a pleasant surprise.
Over the last year that I have been writing on Chyoa, I have also become interested in advancing my writing skills, seeking out resources on grammar, style, critique, and maybe in the far future, publishing work. I’d love to hear other people’s recommendations for resources. Here are a few things I have found: Podcasts: Writing Excuses - A panel of professional writers talk about the craft and navigating the industry. Grammar Girl - A grammarian explores rules, quirks, and history of the english language. Writing Teardown - Short tips on technique with suggested exercises. Lectures: Building Great Sentences - A Great Courses lecture series focusing on a few versatile sentence structures that help develop style in writing. It also mentions many authors and books that have weighed in on the topic of writing styles. The lectures are also on Audible. Other: Writing clubs - Try to find a small group to discuss and critique each other’s work. It takes time to find the right group of people. Read great books carefully!
Hit the magnifying glass in the search box without entering anything to search all stories. Sort by Chapter Depth. You have two stories in the top fifty - 26th and 39th - plus you're an author on A Special Hell, which is 19th. Not especially notable on their own, but you (and brev) have done it multiple times. It's just an armchair theory, but I'm guessing you don't easily abandon projects out of boredom, which is something I've seen hold back wannabe novelists before.
There are university MOOC courses, some of them for free such as https://www.coursera.org/specializations/creative-writing? at Wesleyan University online. Just a few hours a week but I expect it would help. (I havent done this one but have done other free MOOCs on other topics and theyre generally pretty good quality).
