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So how do you write prose? Any good books you know on the subject? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I got made fun of as a child by a parent for doing art and just... never did any ever afterwards. I primarily hang around artists tho and would like to relate to them more, but none of them do creative writing. I've read numerous grammar books, so that won't be a problem, but none really go in to how to construct a sentence, paragraph, page, chapter, plot, etc. I'll happily take any advice on the subject, really anything you can think for someone with actually zero experience.

Good advice I've gotten so far is to just write basically whatever. Also, people who are visual artists and creative writers, which was "easier" for you to become fluent?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Depends on your material conditions, but a tutor is an option if you can afford it.

Also how old is too old? There’s no age limit for schooling, it can just be a course or two that you take, I think formal training holds your feet to the fire to learn. The overwhelming majority of people that self teach do it when they’re motivated but give up anytime one of life’s little difficulties hit them or they learn poorly since they lack professional feedback.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Initially I was going to disagree and say there are other routes, writing classes, etc. But you and @[email protected] are convincing me.

With enough time, most people could teach themselves anything nowadays. But how much time do you want to spend? And how much time do you want to spend learning how to optimise the learning process? If a reputable course is an option, it could speed things up.

Whether one takes a course or self-teaches, one will need to do a combination of the following at some point in their journey:

read a lot
read widely, prose and poetry, fiction and non-fiction
write a lot
experiment
find a method and software that works for them
learn and attend to grammar, plot, structure, characterisation
learn and attend to function (if it's different to the previous point), which means thinking about what a sentence, paragraph, chapter, etc is supposed to do, then working out how to do that, so that everything written has a purpose
get feedback
learn to respond to and action feedback
get used to rejection
develop a style