The East PacificBoard

Dreamersistan wrote:

I already taught u every single plot in existence. Plot is miniscule. Plot really doesn't matter.

Well, it does to YOU because u dont have em down by heart. But to a 30 year old writer, aint nothing interesting about plot.

It's all about character and narrative flow.

Writing character takes a long time to learn because, well, most good chars are based off real life so u'll actually have to go out and experience life. U dont have that luxury now.

Plot comes thru reading lots of books and watching lots of stories. Also, if ure ever friends with 2 or 3 bullsh***ers, the ones who perpetually lie and self-aggrandize, u'll learn TONS about plot. those guys are masters, even if they dont realize.

Your tiny 14 year old brain can learn 2 things, rn. How to write good fast flowing narrative, how to have a rich vocabulary with lots of specific and emotive words and phrases, how to use all the plots that have been used a gazillion times before, how to create ur own style.

Style is simply the mistakes or the changes we make from the dry norm of the language. It's like Michael Jordan doing things normal people want to do. But it's also Brian Scalabrine doing idiotic things no one wants to do. Anything that deviates from the average baseline is your style, and it'll come. You really don't have to push it. Look at my writing. People say my style is writing (ahem) <bunch of positive adjectives related to cleverness and flourish/collection of negative adjectives related to arrogance, snobbery and me generally being a ****>. Yet I never consciously thought about my style. I did always work on getting more vocabulary, using dialogue, using turns of phrase, literary techniques, symbols, motifs, etc. And all that has kinda morphed itself over 20 years into style.

You'll get better writing character, if you just observe life, talk to people, ask people question, are generally curious about people, why they do what they do. Heck, I'm a character that's been used umpteen times in all kinds of media. Short stories, novels, youtube videos. Lerasi unashamedly mimicks me live on RMB : )

So u'll get better with characters later in ur life. You'll get style with practice. The things u can really develop are plot and quality of language, perfection of grammar, flow of narrative, pace, turns of phrase, idioms, word choice, the poetic flourish of your writing.

If u just look back thru this post I wrote, none of which I've edited, you can find everything I told you about. There is a plot and structure to this very informal off-the-cuff non-fiction piece of english literature. You just need to practice and to listen to those who've done it before you. Like I did. It'll all come together. All of you that spend so much time here should have at least a book to ur name by the time you're 25.

Otherwise what the hell are u people doing here? : )

If Al can write, so can you