December 2019—the month and year that I thought about writing on Episode. I wrote out a few characters with no sort of planning whatsoever. Then in March of 2020, I decided to start making this dream episode story of mine into a mn actual book, and just leaving my imaginary characters to look like Episode characters. But again, I never fully planned out my characters and the plot. Now it’s February 6, 2021 and I’m now doing step 1 before step 3, and it’s going horribly. This character planning is hard, and it’s taking away time that I want to spend on actually writing the third draft of my story. I want to do step 2 (which is planning out my plot), but again, I’m struggling with step 1, and I honestly don’t know what to do. Even thought Episode inspired me to write, I’m more so thinking about turning my story into a book, so let’s forget about Episode for a moment. I had no idea that the writing process would be this hard, and I honestly think that I’m moving too fast.
Okay, honestly, besides the hard planning, I also lack the energy and motivation to continue planning and writing too.
How did you get into writing?
Where did you start? With poems, short stories—what?
Do you think I should forget about this book plan (that I obviously didn’t plan out just because I only had the thought of writing and nothing else) and start small, from writing short stories first?
I heard that staring out with writing fanfiction helps a lot with writing. Do you believe so? Why or why not?
I would say go with what you are most comfortable with. I don’t plan my story out, I just write as it comes to me.
To answer your other questions, I started writing going on three years ago after reading some stories on a small fetish site. I got the idea to write my own, so I wrote a one chapter story and didn’t post it. Then I started writing a prequel to it, posted that after a lot of pushing from a member I showed it to and people really liked it. So, I kept writing and posting. I have now branched out to non fetish stories (the site has an off topic tag) which are going over well, too.
I don’t know if writing fanfiction would help, but you have nothing to lose to try it if you want to. Good luck with it!
okay i’m a little late but
if you do feel like you’re moving too fast, then i’d suggest you to take a step back and check what you have vs what you need and organise things before getting back to work
however, as Jayda said, do what you’re most comfortable with, there’s no “one-fits-all” writing formula, after all
if you want help with writing, i’d suggest you trying the website Shannii suggested in this post of hers and i’ve liked it a lot since i tried it out
for your questions
honestly i’ve written since i remember so i don’t know how i got into it
i started taking writing semi-seriously at 12, though (so 10 years ago) and started by… well by talking a lot to my lit teachers and just trying to write some things out myself, just testing the waters for whatever i was aiming for
short stories!
well, kid me wrote a lot of poems but kdjbvdf when i began considering “hey, maybe i have a future writing” it was with short stories
… one of them became a very long story tho ksdbvhf
if you don’t wanna continue with it, or don’t know how, i’d suggest you archiving it for a while, leaving it in the back-burner, then go revisit it when you feel up to it
but don’t be afraid of branching out and trying new things with your writing
honestly, writing fic helps, not only with starting out but with writing in general
it’s really useful in the sense that you may already have an universe everything’s set in, and defined characters, so you can practice writing different characters and staying in-character, it helps you having an idea of how defined characters feel like when writing
also, it (usually) doesn’t require as much worldbuilding as an original story (i say, while planning a huge AU fanfic and having spent quite some time in worldbuilding)
also it’s just… really nice to write? you’re writing about something that interests you / makes you feel things already so there’s that, it’s really fun imo
and tbh fanfics can be just as good and enjoyable (if not better) as original content sometimes so if you wanna give it a try, then go ahead