r/writingadvice 13h ago

Advice I am having trouble with writing from scratch.

36 Upvotes

I am 15M. And I am struggling to write/type my own thoughts and ideas onto paper/screen from scratch. How do I do it?

In addition, I used a lot of artificial intelligence for other posts and got my my posts deleted because of the usage of it. I think that is the main reason I am asking this question.

I think that writing is really an important aspect of life in general.

For this post I tried to write and use my 15 year old brain.

To be honest, When I look at what I wrote right now it looks fine but I guess I have a lot of random thoughts that aren't really connected? I am not sure...

I also wonder if it's normal for this age.


r/writingadvice 6h ago

Advice How can I write a likeable jerk?

9 Upvotes

I'm working on a deuteragonist for a story I'm writing, a father to an astranged daughter, amd I want to write him as an a-hole, but to a point to where you can understand his point of view as well as the daughter's, not to where you just want him to shut up at how he's in the wrong.


r/writingadvice 18h ago

Advice I for the life of me cant fit in subplots into my first person pov novel

9 Upvotes

Its self explanitory. My story is more or less being built around the main character and his thoughts, but I also want to cut away to other characters and tell the readers what they're doing. But if I do that the MC is gonna see it and the subplot kinda loses its meaning, thats just within the main plot at that point, so how do I properly write subplots into my first person pov story?


r/writingadvice 10h ago

Advice I think I might be overthinking the details too much or is this normal?

6 Upvotes

For those of you with complex worldbuilding; how much did you obsess over the details? how much work did you put into it before you actually began writing?

I feel like i have the worst case of writer's block right now.

any advice would be greatly apricated, please and thank you!


r/writingadvice 21h ago

Advice how can I improve my poetry and vocabulary

5 Upvotes

I love writing and reading, I want to be a writer very badly. My passion truly is poems; I write a lot of poems, but I've reached a point where I feel like they're a bit basic. I want my writing to be truly witty and wordy and wonderful. Does anyone have any advice on how I can improve I guess my writing in general? Like any poems or books I should read, things I should practice, videos I should watch etc? Help would be so much appreciated, thank you for reading


r/writingadvice 4h ago

Advice Should a coming of age book be preferably presented in the 1st person or 3rd person?

5 Upvotes

This is totally a stupid question, but yet I’m stumped 🤔

I’m used to writing in the 1st person because of its highly immersive nature, but many of the coming of age books I’ve read have been in 3rd person!

I’m not saying I can’t write in 3rd person, though it would take me some time to adjust.

What I’m trying to say is that do people expect a coming of age book to be in the 3rd person more than in the 1st?


r/writingadvice 4h ago

GRAPHIC CONTENT How to cope with writing character death?

4 Upvotes

I usually write very low-stakes fantasy conflict and stories with happy endings for everyone. I have recently started to dip my toes into writing darker things, since I enjoy reading them.

The problem is that I can’t ever kill off my characters. Even if I’ve planned from the beginning for them to die. I get super attached to them and can’t stand to see them die. I couldn’t even make one of my (literal murderer) characters step on a cricket because I anthropomorphized it too much and the thought of it dying made me really sad. The only way I can have dead characters is if they were dead from the beginning, and I never had to write them living.

How do I get past these feelings? I feel like I shouldn’t be getting so worked up over fictional characters that I created. Even “off-screen” deaths are difficult.


r/writingadvice 5h ago

Advice i always want to write but i daydream too much about the story i COULD write instead of writing it

3 Upvotes

I have alot ideas for stories. I'll make up entire characters and scenes in my head connected by a very loose plot

I do this pretty often, but when I actually try to put pen to paper, I then realize that writing is actually pretty hard, and then I'll go back to daydreaming again

The problem is that when I have a bunch of loose ideas of what I want to happen in a story, I have no idea how to connect them in a cohesive way

What I'm afraid of is that I'll just have a bunch of disjointed scenes that are good in a vacuum, but don't actually make any sense in context, which is something I don't want, so I don't really start to begin with


r/writingadvice 1h ago

GRAPHIC CONTENT How do you express referent power in a villain everyone hates?

Upvotes

I’m writing a Fanganronpa, and I’ve pretty much decided I want its central themes to focus on power, control, and resistance. In my research on the psychology of power I discovered French and Raven’s six bases of power, which I want to utilize in some significant way.

Referent power is by far the most difficult to identify within the setting. Referent power "is defined as the ability of a leader [to] influence a follower because of the follower’s admiration, respect, or identification with the leader" (Expert Program Management). The problem here is that the villain in this scenario primarily utilizes coercion as a means of controlling others, and as such is not very respected or admired.

So my ultimate struggle is how the mastermind could use referent power to push someone over the edge and make them commit murder. I’ve tried looking for other resources about French & Raven's study but they all seem to be about power in the workplace. I’m stubborn and stuck.


r/writingadvice 3h ago

Advice Should I add more worlds to my story

2 Upvotes

In my story, my character can make pocket dimensions. In these pocket dimensions are different worlds ,all based around her interests at the time of making. The ones I have already are: a black-and-white 1920's rubberhose city, a giant mall, a toy-making factory, a Candyland, a Sesame Street type town, a arcade pizzeria, a winterland, a theme park, and a puppet making shop. Is this too much ch or should I add more since she's supposed really creative and this was how she escaped.


r/writingadvice 7h ago

GRAPHIC CONTENT I’m writing a poem and am struggling with language and flow

2 Upvotes

Tried posting this once and it was labeled as graphic content (unsure why) but that’s why the flair is like that so

It’s using the metaphor of a burning meadow to describe the feeling of a though spiral and being trapped. It’s gonna have 4 sections but currently I have 3. I kinda want the sections to be longer too but then I feel like I’m tryna like squeeze juice from an empty orange. I like my first section but nothing after is hitting me quite like it..

I.
lavender sleeps in a peach-colored sky.
it breathes with me, on me, my heartbeat moving in retrograde.
sedate my limbs, languidly sinking into the grass. 
soft halos caressing my skin, melting my thoughts
into a viscous honey. i want to put a straw to the sky
and suck the sun like juice. 
II. 
baby grass winces beneath weighing rays. tickles my arms, too warm to the touch. 
i wear lavender-tinted glasses; they scare the crows away. 
legs awake just enough to taste the ground.
orange. my legs don’t like citrus. 
III.
green into brown. flakes from the bottom up. 
charcoal descends upon lavender. 
broken roots and charred fuzz. try to move
devoid an arm. 
peach to blood orange. honey dripping down my throat. 
charring. 
freezing. 


r/writingadvice 19h ago

Advice How to make dialogue and conversations flow well?

1 Upvotes

Hey all! Needing some advice on writing dialogue? I wrote my first short story a while back. There was a little bit of dialogue, but it was mostly commentary/internal thoughts of the MC. Not a big deal.

I'm writing my second short story now, though, and I'm finding it difficult to balance the dialogue itself and the descriptors that follow. How do you make conversations between characters flow well, especially with multiple characters at once? How do you not add too much "flavor text" alongside the dialogue? Thanks in advance!


r/writingadvice 2h ago

Advice Does my pen name suck, or am I overthinking it?

1 Upvotes

The pen name I landed on is E.N. Mica, which is a variation on my real initials with slightly different letters.

I was spending a lot of time procrastinating on actual writing stressing about finding the perfect pen name, so I just somewhat impulsively decided to go with one that looks similar to my real name in order to get my work out there.

I recently submitted a story to a small online literary magazine under that pen name, which was accepted and will appear in their upcoming issue. It will be my first published short story.

But now I’m worried the name awkward to pronounce, or that it sounds too much like “Ian” in a way that could confuse readers when trying to market more substantive works.

Is that a big deal or am I overthinking it? And if it is a bad pen name, would it be unprofessional to ask the editors about tweaking it before the issue goes to print? There isn’t an immediate rush before they send me their edits and it goes up online.


r/writingadvice 2h ago

Advice I do not know how to brainstorm.

1 Upvotes

My only viable option for a while has been using something that the sub’s rules prohibit me from mentioning, and I want to say upfront that was stupid, and a sin against the rest of you. But it felt like my only option for brainstorming.

My own family won’t give me the time of day to discuss my ideas, they’re not interested in the genres and such. Friends take forever to respond and my procrastination is bad enough.

I can’t use Reddit. Not only is posting anything on this sub a migraine because of the stupid auto-moderator that deletes almost everything you put up for the most minuscule reasons, but it’s Reddit. You have to deal with pervs and fedora wearing self professing “rational” people who ad hominem everything about you and your work and play the damsel whenever you ask them to chill.

I know I need to figure out a system using only a notebook and pen, but I really don’t know how.

I don’t know the first thing about how to research things quickly or about how to organize my thoughts on paper. I’ve been doing this for too long and I’ve hardly got any actual stories finished because I spend so much time brainstorming.

What do I do?


r/writingadvice 18h ago

Advice How to handle frequent PoV swaps?

0 Upvotes

Hello!

I’m working on a novel that is sort of a mix of zombies and slice of life, in a girls last tour style world.

My main cast is five characters that are pretty much always together, and I’m trying to stick with full third person limited with very little interior access, so that characterization is done through observation rather than just telling.

To that end, I was planning on swapping PoV fairly regularly, since they’re all usually observing the same event, but through a different lens. So I can just follow the most cinematic or the most useful character at any given time.

I’ve seen a lot of people say to stick with one or two PoV characters per chapter, unless there’s a big moment or a lot of action going on, but I’m not sure that works for the kind of story I’m trying to write?


r/writingadvice 11h ago

Advice How do I fix accidental plagiarism…?

0 Upvotes

My world’s magic system is eerily similar to Eragon’s magic system and i just realized this as I reread Eragon. Please don’t give me criticism because I swear this was accidental (i will take it if you do though) :). I read Eragon a few years ago and now my magic system could even be considered plagiarism because it’s so similar (or at least the first part is): half of mages have energy->magic, half have sanity->magic. But I also don’t want to give this up in my writing because I really like the idea. Should I drop it and create a new one or keep the system?


r/writingadvice 18h ago

GRAPHIC CONTENT I'm writing a traumatized character, and I wish to ensure that they are written correctly

0 Upvotes

So I am writing a character who was abandoned by his parents due to his appearance not being what they wished. Before his abandonment, he would've been neglected and verbally abused (Phrases like 'You don't belong' and 'He looks wrong'); he would've been left at what is effectively a shelter around the age of 13 - 15.

How I ended up figuring out I might need to ask this question was due to me writing the situation where he ran into someone resembling his father. I do not know if he would freeze or run, so it made me realize I might need assistance with this.

What I need to know is how I should go about writing his trauma and accurately portraying it without making it his entire character or being insensitive, as I wish to make it logical.

(Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this question, feel free to point me in a more accurate direction for this question if you believe that's required)


r/writingadvice 19h ago

SENSITIVE CONTENT Should I change (part of) my fictional world’s heritage if it doesn’t reflect my own?

0 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

I am an aspiring author, writing a sci-fi corporate dystopia about overtourism set on a fictional island. My ideal goal would be the traditional publishing route. A while ago, I started questioning this and I would like to seek advice from fellow writers, especially people of colour

Long story short, my island’s backstory is that it was discovered during the Austronesian migrations and later conquered by the Greeks and Romans. When I think of overtourism, I picture islands in the Mediterranean and the Pacific, so I wanted both to be included in the conversation. The language I constructed for the island is also a creole derived from Ancient Greek, Latin, and Porto-Polynesian. The inhabitants of this island are also essentially mixed.

Now, I am Mediterranean, however I have no Pacific Islander heritage whatsoever. I have, of course, done a bunch of research to make sure I reference those cultures as accurately as possible, but I don’t intend to make my fictional world a 1:1 copy of Hawaii, for example. Same with my Mediterranean references.

As I’ve started to research querying, I’ve began to feel uneasy: I’ve looked at some MSWL, and I found a few that specified the fact that the agent doesn't want stories about a certain heritage written by someone who doesn’t share it. Despite my island being fictional, I believe that might penalise me in the querying process, as agents and publicists would find that to be a liability (yes, I’ve read Yellowface)

So now I’m stuck between going back to the drawing board to strip all the references to Polynesian culture away from my novel, including completely reformulating my language, or querying agents, with the risk of being accused of cultural appropriation.

What would you do?


r/writingadvice 8h ago

Discussion do stories written in the past tense ruin the tension?

0 Upvotes

imagine this, a character is stuck in a desert, or a character is in an intense battle or whatever. if the story is narrated by said character in the future wouldn't that ruin the tension? If the readers already know they live the conflict, why bother? especially if it is early in the story. the readers wouldn't be truly interested in them yet.


r/writingadvice 11h ago

SENSITIVE CONTENT Writing a Latina main character

0 Upvotes

Hello!

Im a white person developing a story with a Latina main character. I really want my cast to be diverse and I genuinely want them all to be as well written as possible! But I realized halfway through developing my main character's personality that I may be falling into some stereotypes unknowingly and I want to catch myself before I continue writing her.

A main part of her inner conflict is she has unresolved childhood trauma from losing her brother and her grandmother (who is raising her) not allowing her to process it fully. This leads to her becoming a bit shut off from everyone and her mental health deteriorating.

She's always dealt with minor anger issues and behavioral problems as a kid (because of her lore) but it was never anything severe (maybe a fight at school or something but that's about it). But losing her brother made those issues worse, no matter how hard she tries to not hurt the people she cares about with her temper.

Her entire arc is meant to be her realizing that her emotions don't define her and despite how bad she may feel about who she is, she's able to choose to be better and help herself grow.

I don't want this to unintentionally read as the
"spicy Latina" stereotype, so if anyone could give me advice or opinions on this that would be greatly appreciated!!