How to write........ a story, a poem, etc.

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I thought I would make this thread to help people to write, whether it be a story, a poem, or anything like that. Anyone can contribute advice on how to do so, but first, my issues.
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I tend to think of lots of stories, the trouble is, I rarely get to transcribe them onto a computer due to 1) lack of time, 2) no idea on how to develop a story, to name a few. What can possibly be done? Hmm......

the way to write a story or poem is to have fully fledged ideas about what one sees, and to either relate them in an articulate and ordinary way, or to think of rhyming verse that can suggest indirectly what one sees.
here is a rhyme (i am not romantic and i see everything literally, so i am not gifted in producing poetry) that i thought of to answer this thread.

how can i say just what it takes,
to write a valid rhyme?
if i say what i say intuitively, it is boring every time.

rhymes.. are the sweeteners
to the taste of what i say.
and if i can say a succulent dish
of what they wish to convey,
then they will ask no questions, and i'll be allowed to finish my day,
with everybody happy,
and go calmly on my way.

and lay in the hay..........

instrumental


whatever. i will probably delete this tomorrow when i read it.

i have a very primitive chip to think with, so do not be distraught if i have not answered your question, but be happy i tried to.

Write.

And write and write and write.

Some people seem to work best with a solid outline of the story they intend to write. In this style of writing, I imagine breaking down the action into discrete scenes and tackling them one at a time can be a good way to reduce a large project into manageable segments.

My process tends to be rather exploratory. I rarely have any idea what I am writing when I start. In fact all the stories I posted in the "Write A Random Short Story" were written with only the opening sentence in mind.

Write A Random Short Story

Very often I start to write and find out where it takes me. The results can be fairly spotty and they still need a second draft, although I was pretty happy with a couple of them here. I too, do not write as often as I should and as a result am often out of practice. If I wrote on a daily basis, I suspect the quality of my writing would improve quite a bit.

So, I take it I have to write it 'segementally' speaking, right? I like doing things all at once.

You can do an outline if you wish, it's kind of like a map for your story. Be sure to use a lot of descriptive language, and try not to make every sentence boring.

Which would you rather read?

1. The car drove away really fast.
2. Suddenly, the car accelerated quickly, and was gone in a few seconds.

Ironically, in my attempt to provide writing advice, I did not express myself clearly or well. So bare that in mind with any advice I might give... It's entirely possible I have no idea what I'm talking about.

What I was trying to say is that SOME writers work well by breaking a story down into manageable chunks, but this certainly isn't the only way to write. Like you, I generally write things all in one sitting. For that reason, I tend to prefer fairly short stories.

But I can get away with this method of writing because I don't do it professionally nor do I have aspirations of being a successful writer. A professional writer must be able to write even when they are not in the mood. They must be able to find the story and find a way to express it well.

Any kind of good writing requires taste, intelligence and creativity. But To be successful as a professional writer, you also need skills in time management and the discipline to work every day. To write longer pieces; novels, longs stories, non-fiction books, in depth articles etc, it is useful (I suspect necessary) to divide the story into blocks that can each be tackled as a single piece.

That way you can write a longer piece and yet break it up into segments that you can write all at once. It would be difficult to write an entire novel in a single sitting, but by breaking it up into chapters, and perhaps breaking those chapters into smaller conceptual blocks, you can write an entire segment all at once and yet eventually build that into a longer piece.

If you have any familiarity with programming, it's a bit like writing a subroutine. It's a smaller part of a larger program that just does one small thing. By using subroutines in a program, you don't have to keep the logic and all the variables that make up the entire program in your head all at once... All you have to worry about is what is going on in that one small part of the program.

The analogy doesn't hold up that well when applied to telling stories, but hopefully you get the point. You can focus on one set of characters for a while to the exclusion of anything else in the story. You'll have to make sure there are no inconsistencies, but that's another side of the job of the writer.

Currently I am reading "Our Mutual Friend" by Charles Dickens. My understanding is that he mapped out the relationships between characters and the structure of the story before he set out writing it. But when he writes a scene, he seems to be so deeply focused on that scene that I can seem like it's own isolated story until it later links up with the rest of the book. He knew what the scene had to do for the rest of the story so he was able to set aside any worries about how it would all connect together and he was able to focus only on that scene.

That doesn't fully cover what I planned to write here, but I've been interrupted so often while writing this that I might was well just post it now...

Poetry......... are there any rules to the game on that? I should do something there.

I have this habit of writing stories on the fly......... I never know why I can never get them onto the keyboard.

OK, so I have written some things; they can be seen on the Writing Showcase. I try my best.

Pick up your pen or prepare your keyboard and write. Just write. If it's crap, keep writing. Eventually, you'll find your style, and then you can get good at it.

It seems like I have writer's block as of late.....