Advice for Aspiring Writer

[DiscipleofBob]

For several years now, I've been looking into writing my own original fantasy and sci-fi works, crafting characters, world building, coming up with reasonable conflicts, etc.

Would you recommend someone like me to post some of their ideas online for critique, feedback, and suggestions? Or would it be a bad idea to expose story concepts I intend to hopefully publish one day online where anyone can see them?

I'm not asking for legal advice, since I know that's against forum rules. Just general opinions on whether this is a good idea or not.

If you were in my shoes, would you, say, post your planned setting in the Worldbuilding forum or here?

[Talion]

Your best bet is to speak vaguely if you intend to publish something. Keep your questions specific enough to get the answer you need, but open ended enough that people aren't able to tell exactly what you're doing at a later point. Leave them questioning and wanting more, not with a fully detailed explanation of every little thing at once.

The world building thread here is a good place to get help on setting things, whereas I would recommend a more writing oriented site, such as NaNoWriMo for actual writing assistance in regards to grammar mechanics, overarching plots, and publishing recommendations. It's also good for finding people to give critiques if you don't have anyone who can do that for you in real life. Remember you can also send just samples or sections that you're worried about. Critique can be your friend, but you'll want to take a lot of it with a grain of salt. Good, constructive criticism will improve your writing and stories and drive you to continue, bad criticism will steer you towards stopping. The basic gist will be if they offer suggestions on how to improve it, and explain why, it's probably good criticism, even if they say it's not very good right now. However, if they tell you its awful and can't tell you anything more than that, then you've got a bad reviewer.

[Sha'uri]

Talion gave some very good advice, especially when it comes to the constructive criticism. Also, if you have a facebook account, there are several communities for writers. I'm actually part quite a few of them myself. In them you can ask for advice and get a slew of answers from both newbie writers and well seasoned writers.

I wish you much luck in your writing. Welcome to the club! :smallbiggrin: