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Read. Find authors whose work you respect, authors whom other people recommend to you as being really good at storytelling and prose, and read, read, read. Study what they do, and how and why they do it. If you particularly like a turn of phrase, ask yourself why. If there's a sentence that makes you laugh out loud, ask yourself why. Try writing a pastiche in their style, and see what you learn.

For example, Neil Gaiman is known for his lyrical prose and immediately gripping storytelling style.

I also got a lot of value out of Story Engineering by Larry Brooks. It breaks down the components of a story, and what makes stories work or not work, and gives you a lot of great foundational building blocks for how to tell a good (novel-length) tale.

As for improving a specific story in a specific fandom, you could try writing to other fanfic authors in that fandom and asking if they'd be willing to be beta readers, editors, or writing coaches for you. Make sure to tell them what you like about their work and why you think they'd be great at giving you tips and feedback.

Okay, so I'm not home so these are the few off the top of my head that I can remember I've read and loved.

• On Writing Well - this book was used for my Script Writing class in college - I loved it, and I still have it on my bookshelf.
  
  
• How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy - This book by Orson Scott Card is genre themed, but I really suggest it no matter what genre you write. It's just a great source to have all around.
  
  
• No Plot? No Problem - Somewhat humorous take on those of us who procrastinate and have lots of writers block.
  
  
• Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction - Okay, so I haven't read this yet, but it looks amazing and I might actually just pick it up myself.
  
  
• Book In A Month - Okay, so this isn't really in the same category, but it's incredibly hands-on, fun book that can really, really, really help with outlining. I always suggest this book to people who participate in NaNoWriMo, because it's just super helpful.
  
  I hope one of these can help out!

Advice from Jerry B. Jenkins, and Stephen King's On Writing

For the writing process: be consistent. Try to write every day, or almost every day. Try to write for a set time or reach a set word count each day. Try to do it in the same place each day. Make it a part of your life. And don't be hard on yourself if life happens, you can always adjust and customize, but establishing those habits now will help yourself be more disciplined for professional writing.

As far as constructing the story, most writers start with some kind of a plan, whether it's doing all of the detailed outlines and research first, or just jotting down a few ideas to get started, or something in between. ALL professional writers then create the first draft, get the whole thing out of their head, then go back and revise it. They may do all of that differently, but the important part is that the first version of a story is never perfect, and you'll need to look it over for more than just spelling errors and such.

If this is truly an interest, just start writing. As others have said, it's going to take a while to learn "how to write," as well as to develop your own writing voice and style. It'll come with time, and it'll change over the course of your life.

For advice: an idea is not a story. That's why jotting down notes can be so useful, you can turn it from an abstract thought to concrete words and figure out what the actual story is, or if it's just an element to use in a story. Especially with fanfiction.

Don't get too attached to your prose, because sometimes you'll write the most amazingest scene ever, but it doesn't add squat to the story so it'll need to be pruned out. You can stick it in a folder somewhere "to use later" if you must, just accept that not all the words will make it to the final version.

When in doubt, look it up. There's a whole frikkin internet and so many people don't use it.

Check out the other /writing subs too. Writing prompts and challenges are a fun way to get in a little practice. There's also NaNoWriMo each November, and come to think of it Camp NaNoWriMo starts today.

Get a mug. Writers have a mug, sometimes for beverage and sometimes just for pencils or something.

And don't forget to stand up and stretch now and then. It's good for both body and mind.

Oh, and the old computer mantra: save often and back up your work. Flash drives are cheap and awesome.

Many years of reading, along with a few terrible fics that I learned a lot from, but never saw the light of day. I did read this book, and I strongly recommend it to anyone. Although it helps that it's super cheap. If you have any questions about it, I love to talk about it.



For grammar and technical stuff, I use Ellen Brock's blog. I also like the writing excuses podcast. I think it helps a lot with staying productive even when I can't be writing.


Granted my writing ethic itself is pretty terrible and inconsistent. Oops.

Edit: ^And ^thank ^you ^so ^much ^I'm ^squeeing ^inside ^right ^now.

Off the top of my head, I tend to refer to these four the most:

Self-Editing For Fiction Writers -- When it comes to editing, this book is what helped me break things down and showed me how to get the most out of my writing in a way that clicked.

Alan Moore's writing for Comics -- Nifty if you're really into comics or want to write your own. Spotted this in a thrift store. Best $1.00 I ever spent.

On Writing Horror -- Writer's Digest has quite a few of books on writing. And they all have exercises and excerpts, but out of the small collection that I have this one is my favorite. Kind of gave me an idea of what to watch out for. It's like reading bits of advice from different authors.

The negative Trait Thesaurus -- Actually, I love the entire series as a resource. The kindle has to be good for something. (Much cheaper) But it helps keep my traits together and my character's reactions from getting stale. Out of everything I'm always pulling these books out.

*Started with three, but I really had to mention the trait thesauruses.

This is undoubtedly far more wonky than you're looking for, but it's an interesting read and speaks in interesting generalities about various parts of the US: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.

There are definitely regional differences, but I think there are a lot of similarities as well, and you're probably not going to write the peculiarities of a place as well as someone who's lived there so agonizing over it will only bring you headache and frustration. Otherwise, I agree with someone else somewhere on this thread. Pick a town. You can wikipedia pretty much any town and find out its size, the primary thing it produces, geographic density, local flora/fauna, etc. You don't have to say you're writing that specific town. Just use it as a blueprint. You can google image it to get pictures of what the countryside looks like, and even describe interesting features about whatever town it is without embedding it too much in an actual town. Relying too much on stereotypes regarding the state or city might turn it into a caricature.

I haven't watched SU since Season 3, but as I recall it was mostly tongue-in-cheek rather than Isaac Asimov style hard sci-fi.

This might sound weird, but I think this book could help you: A Space Child's Mother Goose. It's probably available in libraries and seems pretty cheap used.

I recommend it because it has some of the best, most poetic technobabble I've read, and best yet, it's all based on real science. While I don't own it, one I remember is,

>The colloid and the crystalloid were fighting just in jest

>The colloid called the crystalloid a pseudo-anapest

>Some called them physical; some called them chemic,

>And some thought the whole affair was less than academic."

(Based on "The Lion and the Unicorn.")

Just a thought.

Novels as a device were actually originally targeted at women and considered low brow trash. Because women. If you've ever read Northanger Abbey there's a line where Jane Austen actually addresses this:

>“It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language”

People of substance read histories and philosophy and things to "better" themselves, and you wouldn't dare let a gentleman catch you doing anything as untoward as novel reading, heaven forfend!

There's an ebook called "Dangerous Books for Girls" that actually really gets into this.

Jenkins' Textual Poachers is a classic. For a general history I'm fond of Jamieson's Fic: Why Fan Fiction is Taking Over the World. This is an anthology of variable quality, which somehow seems appropriate for fan fiction studies. Worth it for the intro chapters on the history of derivative works, and the Sherlock Holmes fandom as an longstanding case study.

The bigger question here is what do you mean by "literary genre"? One of the whole points of fan fiction is that it exists independently of the publishing industry's power structure and literary fads. Plus there's a huge range of motivations in writing it, and hence the final product varies wildly in topic, tone, and writing quality. About the only thing we all have in common is cribbing off the source material for characterization; with the rise of radical AU not even the canon setting is a common factor anymore. Is this enough to qualify as a coherent "literary genre," or maybe it's a collection of many different genres?

Side note: I loathed Fangasm. May as well title it: "Two Otherwise Intelligent People Lose Their Minds in Pursuit of Celebrity Crushes." One of the authors is an actual professor (media studies?) that published a fan studies textbook, so a compare and contrast of what she says academically vs. what was marketed to SPN fans would be interesting.

That's fair enough :-) I'm certainly not in the business of trying to tell people what to like or dislike.

To dig a little deeper: have you read many scripts or fanfic scripts? The argument from our side would be that they are an entertainment medium in their own right, hence why people buy books like the Serenity visual companion, the bulk of which is the script for the movie. A script, just like a novel, paints a picture. It just does so in fewer words. Certainly, most of the fanfic scripts I've read don't have camera directions or things like that. It's just a more sparse, punchy version of prose. Is it the camera directions that stop you being immersed? The formatting? Or just the general lack of description in the prose?

This is an excellent history of the area.

https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Real-Story-Hillbilly-Real/dp/B001B186ZS