Writing a Book!

[.Zi]

Hey, well i've decided to try and write a book, It has no name as of yet and I have no story line or plot. I'm going to make it up as I go along, see where I get, I started about 5 minutes ago, I don't want to show you everything I have yet so I'm only going to show you my starting paragraph, I might extend it later but yeh, its all I have of it so far.

It was cold, all I could hear was the sound of them behind me. I didn’t want to turn around; although as much as I did not want to, I knew I had to. My good friend Sean had become one of them, one of the Bad Guy Species Name, I hated myself for it, It was my fault, if I had grabbed him, instead of letting him fall down the side of the hill, into the hands of the King Bad Guys Species he would be here today, running with me. It was all in the past, I hated myself for it but I had to get over it, for it was him chasing me, which is why I did not stab him with my sharp curved dagger.

Still need a bad guy species if anyone has one, I was going to choose Vampires but I decided they were a bit to cmmon, anyway, rate and slate what I have so far!

[Misawa]

Don't share what you write. Keep it all to yourself and you finish it. It's much wiser to make a plan and actually know your story before you write, but if you wish to do it all on the fly, go ahead, it worked for me one time, but I don't advise it if it's the first thing you're ever writing.

[.Zi]

Don't share what you write. Keep it all to yourself and you finish it. It's much wiser to make a plan and actually know your story before you write, but if you wish to do it all on the fly, go ahead, it worked for me one time, but I don't advise it if it's the first thing you're ever writing.

Well, i just want to see where I get? I posted the first bit for people to get a bit of a taste, abit like a blurb :P

[Misawa]

Yup, that's all well and good, but you never know where a book will lead if you finish it, and there's an unfortunate abundance of low people who will steal your work.

[Pazza]

Well, if I read that, I wouldn't read on as it hasn't gripped me.

Okay, it's good. But you're just telling the reader what's happening, use more description, and don't give too much away!

[FlyingJesus]

Hey, well i've decided to try and write a book, It has no name as of yet and I have no story line or plot. I'm going to make it up as I go along, see where I get

This is really not a good idea for anything much other than possibly getting some stuff you can use for later material. Planning is key to any large writing task and if you don't even know your characters and scenes before you write, how can you expect your reader to know? Something that people so often overlook is the fact that reader have to identify with and like your characters (or at least one). If they don't care about the characters then they won't care about the story either, because exciting things happening to boring people become boring things.
That said, I'll go quickly through what you have written just for a small amount of critique.


It was cold, all I could hear was the sound of them behind me. I didn’t want to turn around; although as much as I did not want to, I knew I had to. My good friend Sean had become one of them, one of the Bad Guy Species Name, I hated myself for it, It was my fault, if I had grabbed him, instead of letting him fall down the side of the hill, into the hands of the King Bad Guys Species he would be here today, running with me. It was all in the past, I hated myself for it but I had to get over it, for it was him chasing me, which is why I did not stab him with my sharp curved dagger.

Firstly and fairly importantly you need to get your grammar sorted. It's not terrible and you can work without perfect grammar but it does take away something from a story if it's not being told in proper English.
There are far too many commas and not enough periods, full stops or whatever you want to call them. Arguably basic syntax and punctuation are the most important things to have a good grasp of when writing - you want your sentences to make sence and flow properly, otherwise you will be writing a pointless babble of words which a reader will want only to skip over.

What you also want to watch out for is not building up "info dumps". As I've said I strongly suggest planning your story well before writing anything, down to the very last detail, but these details shouldn't all come out in one lump. You wrote just four sentences and in that we already found out that
*Your character is being hunted
*Once you have a foe species we will know what it is right away
*There is a personal connection with them due to the friend
*We know exactly what happened to said friend
*Your character had had conflict with them earlier
*Your character has guilt issues
*Your character is armed
all in the first paragraph. It's easy to get excited by an idea and follow it through as the thoughts come, but you do need to slow down and let the reader work some things out for themselves. You stated that this is meant to end up as a book rather than a leaflet in which everything happens in 4 pages.

[Misawa]

And I don't know about you, but I'm tired of reading openings that start of with an unknown force chasing someone, too many people try this and now it's just uninteresting. Also, you shouldn't need to be "sharp curved dagger", everyone knows what a dagger looks like, if you want to describe its particular sharpness, you should use just one word that would fit.

[.Zi]

Well, I wanted it to b exiting, and I see what you mean by it says to much.

[Mrs.McCall]

I'm writing a book myself at the minute. It's non-fiction I guess but it is more my style. It's a special diary thing.

Very difficult.

[CJW93]

Watch them both fail

[Mrs.McCall]

Haha lovely.

Mine is definatly for a niche market so won't get big release if it does ever get published.

[.Zi]

I dont think it will get published, but my m8s liked it, so im writing it mostly for a few mates to read.

[VelvetClover]

Everyone talks so flippantly about getting published. You can't just write a random story stick it in an envelope and next week see your book on a shelf in WH Smith.
It's difficult - there are a thousand things to take into consideration.

[.Zi]

Everyone talks so flippantly about getting published. You can't just write a random story stick it in an envelope and next week see your book on a shelf in WH Smith.
It's difficult - there are a thousand things to take into consideration.

I know,,,, Lol, I know it wont be easy, thats why i said i probs wouldnt publish it.