Need help to write a fic please :)

[Berry Cupcake 8]

Hi everypony ! 

So I've been writing stories for the longest time (since like 7 years old or something) and I thought "Hey ! You love ponies, why don't you write pony stuff ?" But the fact is that I have two main problems :

- My main language (for the moment) is french and I am not used to English literature so I am afraid I will lack vocabulary and do grammatical mistakes.

- I never ended any story. I have started AT LEAST a hundred but I never finished them What do you do to be motivated and don't stop writing ?

I actually have 4 ideas of completely different stories in my head that are ready to be written down , what should I do ? 

Thank you  

[PlunderSteed 1,252]

Hi everypony !

So I've been writing stories for the longest time (since like 7 years old or something) and I thought "Hey ! You love ponies, why don't you write pony stuff ?" But the fact is that I have two main problems :

- My main language (for the moment) is french and I am not used to English literature so I am afraid I will lack vocabulary and do grammatical mistakes.

- I never ended any story. I have started AT LEAST a hundred but I never finished them What do you do to be motivated and don't stop writing ?

I actually have 4 ideas of completely different stories in my head that are ready to be written down , what should I do ?

Thank you

One way to make sure you can finish a story is to have the entire thing mapped out before you begin. A lot of writers just make up as they go along, but this only makes the story sloppy and disjointed.

[Berry Cupcake 8]

One way to make sure you can finish a story is to have the entire thing mapped out before you begin. A lot of writers just make up as they go along, but this only makes the story sloppy and disjointed.

Thanks ! I'm gonna try this one the one I'm writing right now

[SFyr 1,982]

I've heard that some people 'do' work okay basically just going along with it, but it seems to be the dramatically infrequent case, and I think it's more that they adjust their mental long-term plan when they come up with better paths earlier on in the writing progress.

Though, I can't speak from personal experience, as I haven't finished any of my own stories yet.

Regardless... Yeah, I think planning things out would help a lot, especially if you're having trouble finishing stories. As I've said, it seems that those who get it done without planning ahead are a rare case. There's always going to be room for adjustments and tangents of course, but a plot skeleton is great to have set up ahead of time. If nothing else, it lets you see about where you're at in the whole sequence of events.

You may also want to focus on why you're writing the story, the scene, or what you want to achieve with it. It may help reaffirm in your mind what is at the story/scene's roots, or what drives your characters, making them easier to write about.

 

For example, I wanted to introduce my 'villain' before anything else. At the time I wrote it because it just seemed to be a good introduction... but as I thought about it, I also wanted to set the tone of the story as a whole before looking at how things were before everything went south, AND give the reader an idea that something is happening elsewhere in the world; on top of that, I also wanted to portray the villain as sympathetic. Those are things I'm going to try to keep clear when revising, and play off of as I write more--It gave me an idea of how I want to go about scenes with her in the future, instead of fulfilling some "move plot forward" quota.

 

Also, theoretically telling people you're doing something is a good way to keep yourself to doing it.

If you tell someone you may be writing it, you can back out pressure free.

If you tell someone you're doing it, and saying it like the truth, you yourself should believe in it. Plus, you now have someone who knows about it, which makes you accountable.

Edited March 25, 2014 by SFyr

[IceBeerG 55]

Basicly that was said - you have to have the begining and the end of the story at your head before you actually sit on for it.

But I am here on another behalf. You pointed that your native language isn't english, and, since i've faced the same wall, i am suggesting for you to find proof-reader to work step-by-step. Vocabulary hardly will be an issue, if you have a good range of french, but it can become the real trouble to find somepony willing to go through all mistakes, that you are going to do by your ignorance.

[Berry Cupcake 8]

Thanks ! So I'm definitively going to plan my story. And try to find myself a proof-reader. 

I so love the bronies for this - good answers to all questions !

[PlunderSteed 1,252]

Basicly that was said - you have to have the begining and the end of the story at your head before you actually sit on for it.

 

But I am here on another behalf. You pointed that your native language isn't english, and, since i've faced the same wall, i am suggesting for you to find proof-reader to work step-by-step. Vocabulary hardly will be an issue, if you have a good range of french, but it can become the real trouble to find somepony willing to go through all mistakes, that you are going to do by your ignorance.

 

This -- along with an apparent track record of not finishing stories -- makes me strongly recommend you keep your next story short: a couple thousand words, perhaps.  It will be hard to find a proof-reader willing to slough through a 50,000 novella if they're faced with the prospect of tweaking every single paragraph.  Keep it short and sweet, with a clearly defined idea upfront, and you'll be done before you know it.