Need some help writing a book of my own.

[Laphtiya]

Hi everyone, bit of a strange one for you. I've decided I am going to try my hand at writing a book and I was hoping that some of you may be able to give me some advice. I am not going to post what it is about for obvious reasons (you never know if some one might steal a good idea ). But basically its based on a Nightmare I had a few weeks ago. When I told my girlfriend about it she said that it sounded like it would have been a good movie or a book, so I decided "why not".

I have a plot in mind expanded on the inital and very vivid dream (its not often I yell in my sleep ), I am working on the back story now, writing a brief overview of the whole story. I've build the background for the main character in for the book and will be adding some more as and when I start to actually write it. But at the moment like I said I am just outlining the plot getting some ideas down on paper. But I would really like some advice, if you have no experiance with writing I would love to know what makes a good story for you. It is a sci-fi crime novel with a slight twist, as in it is not very sci-fi at all in fact the sci-fi part of it is not really massivly key to the story if it wasn't mentioned you might not know it was there. Currently half way through the draft of the plot (about 6k words so far) plodding along nicely, but I could use a few pointers.

Again I don't really want to give away much, but any help you could give I would most appriciate it. And if it ever did get published you would all get a special thanks mentioned in it

So again;

What makes a good book in your opinion?
What style of writing do you like?
Do you have any advice on how to write a book?
What would you hate in a book?

Thanks in advance.

P.s. I have a feeling I already know how you will say NOT to write my book

[A Thing of Eternity]

What makes a good book in your opinion?

A good book is a book that has good characterization (most important of all IMO), good plot, good worldbuilding, interesting philosophy (but not beating the reader over the head with it), good dialogue, good prose.

Good everything. I know how you feel like you need advice, but it's kinda a silly question when you think about it, much too open ended and general. A good book is good.

What style of writing do you like?

What do you mean? Point of view, narrative style etc? This needs a lot of defining.

Do you have any advice on how to write a book?

No, mine is only about 1/10th done and I've been working on it for years, so obviously I am not a great candidate to give advice on the actual writing process. But - I would suggest revision revision revision. Never be afraid/too proud to go back and change something, even if that change is huge. As you write more and more, you'll see holes developing, and if you just ignore them you'll end up like KJA. There is a balance to be found between planning it out, and writing it on the fly, I suspect the best balance is different for every writer, but never settle for something that seems wrong, go back and fix it.

I've thrown away probably 50,000-100,000 words worth of backstory, worldbuilding, character development, and plot planning - Sometimes I've thrown away almost the entire backstory or plot, or an entire culture, just because of a 5 second realization I've had that components of my story just didn't line up.

Revision = improvement.

What would you hate in a book?

That's pretty general isn't it? I could write a novel on this subject.

Sorry for the vagueness, but vague questions yeild vague answers!

Also - as for someone stealing your idea, don't worry about it, seriously. It doesn't matter, because ideas are a dime a dozen, it's the execution that is everything. FH wrote a story about getting a piano onto a spaceship and made it riveting, KJA takes an idea as stunning as the Dune scenario and runs it into the ground.

If you're really paranoid, pick people you feel you can trust and give them the outline/whatever you have, and let them give you advice.

Asking for advice on a story you haven't shown us is like me asking your advice on a band's recording I'm mixing right now, but I'm not letting you listen to it!

[DuneFishUK]

Write, then keep writing and re-writing.

[Eyes High]

One advice I would give is: like what you are writing about. If you don't like then why expect others to like it? If you can really get into the story it may come easier to you. Have someone whom you trust and who won't just be a 'yes man' to proofread your work. Fresh eyes can catch little mistake that one might make and never notice.

I like action and intrigue in a story, but I don't want the action to be fake or forced into the story. Even if it's just a fantasy, I like for the story to be somewhat believable.

I believe that the hardest part about writting is finding that niche. People will like different things in the stories they read. One author will not appeal to everyone. My main advice, as I stated above, is to make sure you enjoy writing the story. If you really enjoy it then others might as well.

Good luck.

[Redstar]

I spout off my feelings towards good writing in LeGuille's Horror thread, so you might want to take a look over there. I get pretty passionate about what I think makes a good story.

Basically, know your direction. A book can be written in many ways, and depending on the form could take a radically different shape. For example, what if the Dune series was simply about ideas and places, but lacked real characters? The story would have to accommodate the lack of characterization by making the ideas more simplistic to carry the impact lost by the characters. Or what if The Wizard of Oz was written like Lord of the Rings? Instantly Dorothy would lose her place as the main character and share it with possibly dozens more characters. We also wouldn't just be shown strange and exciting new places: we'd be made to understand and care for those places. You need to ask yourself what the best way to tell the story is to impart the message you want.

I personally think a story is rarely good unless there's good characters. A character carries the story, and the story changes the character in the process, whom shifts the story because of it. It's the epicness of man vs man, vs world, vs society, vs self, and so on. There are billions of people on this planet, and have been many more in the past. Each one will have a different perspective unique to that story. Why should I as a reader care about this specific character? A good character wants change. They've had enough and are willing to work for that change. A good story has the character/s develop throughout the story and eventually get what they worked so hard for. (A brilliant story, by the way, has the character/s realize that they don't want what they worked for anymore; the process changed them so much they now realize what they really wanted)

Those are the two biggest parts of the storytelling process. If you can't effectively create worlds or characters, then you wont be able to write anything worth reading. But maybe you can. There are three types of writers: technical writers, who get all the commas and sentence structure right; prose writers, who can write like a poet and know when the best time to sacrifice technical writing is; and the kind of writers that do both.

Obviously prose is important. We want to read something written well. We want to be carried by the flow of words. Just the right word can evoke the most powerful of feelings. But on the other hand, without a firm knowledge of technical writing you can't do the above. The technical aspects of writing are the foundation of the very art. Without being adept in it, you run the risk of writing sentences that are so bloated with prose yet are organized poorly that they confuse the reader. Humans pick up on everything. You need to know how to balance and invoke the correct response.

Just write. You're not going to get better unless you write daily, and you most certainly wont accomplish a good book unless you dedicate some time to side-projects to keep your mind active.

[Laphtiya]

Thanks for the replies, I realise my questions were quite general perhaps I can clear a few of them up now.

Like A Thing of Eternity has already pointed out my first question is in deed a silly one, but with reason. There can be a million different answers to "What makes a good book in your opinion?" but thats kind of what I am after. Maybe I should have asked more on the lines of:

What in your opinion is the most important factor to a book?

Like Eternity has said good characterization is the most important in his opinion.

Again another general question "What style of writing do you like?" my appologies for this. But Eternity again hit on what I was getting at, do you prefer reading a book that is in the narrative style, point of view from one or many characters? A book that focuses more on the people and their actions and awareness of the world around them.

Again I am sorry for being so vague. Lets take it from this point of view, when reading a book what aspects bore you into skipping to the last pages to read the end or put it away completely? It is too much discription? 2d characters? A plot that you figure out within 4 chapters?

Asking for advice on a story you haven't shown us is like me asking your advice on a band's recording I'm mixing right now, but I'm not letting you listen to it!

Great point in deed rather stupid of me actually, if you don't mind then you'll be the first to get a completed outline once I finish it.

But to all who've replied thanks alot for your input.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Sounds good, I would take advice from any of us with a bucket of salt though, seeing as none of us are actually authors!

[SadisticCynic]

Sounds good, I would take advice from any of us with a bucket of salt though, seeing as none of us are actually authors!

13.a. "Only a writer can criticize the work of other writers!"

You sure about that, Thing?

[SandChigger]

(I kinda wondered 'bout that one, too. )

[Laphtiya]

Sounds good, I would take advice from any of us with a bucket of salt though, seeing as none of us are actually authors!

Thats true but if I want advice from an author I can read a book and see their styles and yeah I could probably find some freelance author for adive, but I think its good to have the opinion of other readers. I myself know what I like in a book but what the point of writing a book that would only appeal to myself? Apart from pure selfish satisfactory reasons

[SadisticCynic]

Apparently Tolkien wrote mostly to please himself, and look how that turned out.

[Freakzilla]

Advice on HOW TO WRITE might be better coming from a published author, but whether or not what has been written SUCKS can be determined by anyone with half a brain.

I can look at a painting and say it sucks and that might be a valid criticizm, but I might not know how the artist painted it.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Sounds good, I would take advice from any of us with a bucket of salt though, seeing as none of us are actually authors!

13.a. "Only a writer can criticize the work of other writers!"

You sure about that, Thing?

Totally different than what I said. I said take with salt, not discount. Anyone COULD have a totally valid opinion on fiction, but until you've seen them do something to PROVE they know what they're talking about you'd be foolish to take their advice as solid.

That said, one could easily say that our participation on sites like this one has proven we're qualified, without the need to actually be authors.

[SadisticCynic]

Sounds good, I would take advice from any of us with a bucket of salt though, seeing as none of us are actually authors!

13.a. "Only a writer can criticize the work of other writers!"

You sure about that, Thing?

Totally different than what I said. I said take with salt, not discount. Anyone COULD have a totally valid opinion on fiction, but until you've seen them do something to PROVE they know what they're talking about you'd be foolish to take their advice as solid.

That said, one could easily say that our participation on sites like this one has proven we're qualified, without the need to actually be authors.

Okay, I was only joking.

On topic, one of the things I enjoy in a book is elegant prose, and by that I don't mean flowery phrases but prose that manages to describe exactly what the author means e.g.

The thought hung in his mind like a sine wave.

Compared to a vinegar voice...

[A Thing of Eternity]

On topic, one of the things I enjoy in a book is elegant prose, and by that I don't mean flowery phrases but prose that manages to describe exactly what the author means e.g.

The thought hung in his mind like a sine wave.

Compared to a vinegar voice...

You know, I think FH might have meant "standing wave" instead of "sine wave" - sine waves don't hang around necessarily, unless they become standing waves (a wave reflected between two surfaces whose distance from eachother equals a multiple or even division (by halves) of the length of that sine wave's specific frequency).

Nit picking of course.

[SandChigger]

That would actually make a bit more sense, I suppose.

[SadisticCynic]

Might have a point there Thing; when I read it I thought of sine waves as in the sound from say, a tuning fork, a pure note (if that's even the right way to describe it). You know, when you strike a tuning fork the sound seems to cut through anything else.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Yes, a pure note is a fine way to say it, or just a single frequency (tuning forks do actually have overtones, only a machine can make true pure notes). Of course, all sound is sine waves, not just pure notes. It's they way he says "hung" that made me think he meant something other than just a simple sound, something like an echo or reverb, or better yet - standing wave.

Of course, pretty few people have heard of a standing wave.

[SadisticCynic]

Of course, all sound is sine waves, not just pure notes.

Really? I thought that sine waves only referred to the pretty waves that look perfect, whereas most sound waves (I imagine) are full of strange-looking peaks and troughs.

Educate me.

[Dune Nerd]

In acoustic wave theory the best approximation is a sine wave. This allows models to be made but the underlying primary assumption the wave theory that I have seen uses the sine wave as the most appropriate approximation of what the actual wave looks like. When a sound is heard as 'perfect' or just right it is closer to a sine wave where as the static from your tv without an input is not very close to a sine wave at all.

At least this is my understanding, more from a light wave propagation but it is the same principle.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Of course, all sound is sine waves, not just pure notes.

Really? I thought that sine waves only referred to the pretty waves that look perfect, whereas most sound waves (I imagine) are full of strange-looking peaks and troughs.

Educate me.

There are also squared waves etc, but the reason you see all those peaks and troughs is because you're seeing the volume fluctuate, most sounds are comprised of hundreds of overlapped frequencies (sine waves), and vary in volume as they attach, sustain, and decay. To actually see something that looks like a sine wave, you'd have to zoom in to the millisecond veiw - or it would have to be an extremely low frequency (well below the human hearing range).

Sine wave simply refers to a regular sound wave, then there can be modifications like the tops and bottoms of the wave could be squared due to distortion etc. This is all very hard to explain in a short post.

[A Thing of Eternity]

In acoustic wave theory the best approximation is a sine wave. This allows models to be made but the underlying primary assumption the wave theory that I have seen uses the sine wave as the most appropriate approximation of what the actual wave looks like. When a sound is heard as 'perfect' or just right it is closer to a sine wave where as the static from your tv without an input is not very close to a sine wave at all.

At least this is my understanding, more from a light wave propagation but it is the same principle.

You're right, the static on your tv is mostly squared waves (I still think of them as sinewaves though, just damaged ones).

[SwordMaster]

Laphtiya - My advice to you is write your book and write for yourself, never listen to those who would try to discourage you from following your passion. Good for you and I hope to see yoru name on a hard cover at chapters one day!

[Dune Nerd]

In acoustic wave theory the best approximation is a sine wave. This allows models to be made but the underlying primary assumption the wave theory that I have seen uses the sine wave as the most appropriate approximation of what the actual wave looks like. When a sound is heard as 'perfect' or just right it is closer to a sine wave where as the static from your tv without an input is not very close to a sine wave at all.

At least this is my understanding, more from a light wave propagation but it is the same principle.

You're right, the static on your tv is mostly squared waves (I still think of them as sinewaves though, just damaged ones).

Yea that is how I think of it. I deal more with waves in a mechanical and optical sense but I get the gist of your point. All makes sense to me

[Freakzilla]

In acoustic wave theory the best approximation is a sine wave. This allows models to be made but the underlying primary assumption the wave theory that I have seen uses the sine wave as the most appropriate approximation of what the actual wave looks like. When a sound is heard as 'perfect' or just right it is closer to a sine wave where as the static from your tv without an input is not very close to a sine wave at all.

At least this is my understanding, more from a light wave propagation but it is the same principle.

You're right, the static on your tv is mostly squared waves (I still think of them as sinewaves though, just damaged ones).

Yea that is how I think of it. I deal more with waves in a mechanical and optical sense but I get the gist of your point. All makes sense to me

Aren't the TV images square now too, since it's digital?