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I suspect most authors at least start out as pantsers. It's like riding a bike: you don't plan a long road trip your first try. You aim for reaching the end of the block without falling off, and try to decide if you really like doing this. It proves to be fun, you do it more and you get better. At some point you may find you have mastered the difficult skills involved in basic story telling (character, setting, action - resolution cycles, dialog, etc) and you want to take better control of the big picture stuff: theme and plot.

You also start thinking about the realities of making money doing this. That raises the question of efficiency. Ramming out 5,000 words a day sounds great, but if you have to rewrite it 7 times and cut 3,000 of those words, or worse yet, all 5,000 because you drove your plot into a dead end, then it isn't 5000 words, its about 10% of that. So outlining suddenly looks more productive.

How detailed? David Drake, a very prolific author, has posted the outline for one of his well-known Lt. Leary books because of all the requests. It's interesting to see how one pro does it: https://david-drake.com/2014/plot-outline/

On a personal side note, I'm switching from pantser to planner for two reasons: first, its easy for a plot run away from me. I've always got one more great idea or a cool plot twist. Suddenly, I'm trying down to edit a 240,000 word scifi novel. That editing is a lot less fun than writing it was.

The second reason I'm switching to planning is co-authoring. I'm working on a novel with another writer. We started by exchanging chapters. It became a contest over who controlled the plot and who could create the coolest characters. About the same time we discovered there are expectations from editors for plot arcs, and hard rules if you ever want to make it into a screen play. After 10 chapters we agreed we needed an outline. We followed "Structuring Your Novel" by Weiland, which gave us a model we could understand without too much study.

The proof of being a successful author is in SALES; whats the use of writing if you don't get read? I hate to admit it, but I've got almost a million words on paper in various projects, but none clean enough to sell. I blame pantsing for that; which is why I've switched to planning on everything new I start over 2500 words.

But however you choose to do it, don't feel trapped, just write on!

I'd recommend buying a book on writing.

I would suggest these as good places to start. If you wanted to pick just one on this list, I'd say go with James Scott Bell's Plot & Structure.

• Novelist's Essential Guide to Creating Plot by J. Madison Davis
  
  
• Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes by Raymond Obstfeld
  
  
• Write Great Fiction - Dialogue by Gloria Kempton
  
  
• Write Great Fiction - Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell
  
  
• Write Great Fiction - Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress
  
  
• Write Great Fiction - Revision & Self-Editing by James Scott Bell
  
  
• Write Great Fiction - Description & Setting by Ron Rozelle
  
  
• The Rhetoric of Fiction by Wayne C. Booth
  

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/31jbjs/comment/cq29yxz?st=JE1YBNFN&sh=6a6c092d

This comment by "feedthebirds" has a list of what are considered some of the best short stories. He has provided links to where most of them can be read online.

You might also look at some journalistic work as it sounds like your interest in writing may fall within non-fiction and journalism. There is some really fantastic, short written pieces by journalists. My personal favorite is a collection of newspaper writings by Rick Bragg He (and many other award winning journalists) are great at an important part of short writing which is getting the reader emotionally invested and then dropping a single line which reveals something unexpected that is usually revealing and emotional.

Figure out what kind of writer you are.

Are you a planner or a pantser (writing by the seat of your pants)?

Planner's love to write outlines before they get started. They plan every little detail and THEN write the story.

Pantsers are the opposite. They love to make things up as they go, but forcing a pantser to make an outline, and form the plot and all that stuff actually makes them less creative - and less likely to write the book. Conventional wisdom is that writers are supposed to write outlines before they get started, but that's not always true. Even George RR Martin said that when he writes a book, he's more like a pantser - knowing a few key plot points, but not everything before he writes it.

Read this book:
"How To Write Faster: Strategies for Planners and Pantsers."

https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Faster-Strategies-Planners/product-reviews/1507729057/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_btm?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=recent

It's got a lot of great strategies on how to make a good plot outline, as well as how to write for your writing style.

Just do it. Just put it out there. Some of the worst stuff I have written, that I still call "trash fiction", is the stuff people loved best. Some of the best stuff I have written has gotten the harshest critiques. The point, here, is to be careful of becoming "married" to things, that is, being unwilling to change it if someone has a valid critique.

Basically, take everything that is said to you about your work, process it as feedback rather than attack, and use it to help your writing get better. If someone took the time to critique your work, rather than defending the work, thank them for the criticism. Take the criticim, apply it, and see if it makes your work stronger. If it does, keep it, if not ignore it. Rough criticim has helped me immensely.

I also cannot emphasize how much a few writing classes and good books can help. Check out On Writing Well by William Zinsser, and Sin in Syntax by Constance Hale. Worth their weight in gold.

Feel free to inbox me with your stories. I promise to be thorough, yet non-douchy! Here's my online portfolio , if you want to check out my stuff. :)

EDIT: A comma.

Yeah, good point. I love writing; everything else, no so much. But guess that's how it is these days. Cool, yeah I'd be happy to share lessons learned if you are indeed curious down the road. The book is for sale on Amazon right now if you're curious to take a look. Cheers!

Myself. Why? Because I have read all his work, and all of it has been to my liking. He never insulted or alienated me on social media. He has the same tastes as I do. And finally because we all should be our own favorite authors. We write what we love, no one else will write "for us" as we do ourselves.

But. If you mean one who I would love even if I didn't write. One who is someone else. Well. I read this novel called GR2113: The Genetic Riots. I know the author. He's a pretty chill guy, and it is the first novel I have read which I could complete in less than a week.

Have a look at this chart.

This is the emotional course of a typical story. Like I said before, you don't have to follow this strictly but I found that it helps to get you moving in the right direction.

Take a look at the scenes and story ideas you already have and see where they fit in this chart. When I start a new story, in my head I always feel like I've got the whole thing figured out. Then when I start outlining I see that really only have maybe 25% of it.

So the work begins to figure out what's missing, scenes, characters, story arcs, etc... Who is your protagonist, antagonist, what do they want? What's stopping them from getting what they want?

A pretty good book I can recommend is The Writer's Journey.

Google Docs is definitely my best friend! It saves instantly, has offline mode if power goes down, and can be used on anything.

I also don't have a computer, so I invested in this keyboard:
https://www.amazon.com/Nulaxy-KM12-Bluetooth-Rechargeable-Compatible/dp/B00T7GDZXM

I got the backlit one and with shipping was $30 Canadian. It's bluetooth, so only one set up to link it (less than 20 seconds to do) and bam! I can write as easily as on a computer on my phone. It's been my go to lifesaver! Also works on literally everything else that has Bluetooth, including Ipads.

Edit: forgot to say yeah, watch the size of the doc on your phone. Docs starts to crash on me if I have a 350 page file. I tend to split up the stories if it starts going over 200 pages... around there I start a new doc.

i highly recommend The Artful Edit in addition to the beta readers. editing is about waaaaay more than the mechanics of grammar.

the last novel i wrote, i also compiled what screenwriters call a "beat sheet". take each section/chapter/whatever subdivisions you've used and just write down the main plot points for that section. do another pass for characters if you're having trouble keeping everybody in order. do another for thematic issues if need be, whatever you sense might be in trouble in the work. keeping it to the simplest moving parts helps you see where plot holes, or chronology errors, or etc are.

then you rewrite :-) and do the many many passes in The Artful Edit.

yes, it's a lot of work, but by the time you get all that down, your work is as error-free and as tight as you can make it. your agent will thank you. good luck!

https://www.amazon.com.au/Big-Bad-Wolf-THREE-CITIES-CHRONICLES-ebook/dp/B07HX3SDL4/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1555415640&refinements=p_27%3APhoenix+Wayfarer&s=digital-text&sr=1-1&text=Phoenix+Wayfarer

Link to my book. Just in case anybody is curious about it. If it's not your cup of tea, it's fine, have a nice day! And happy writing!

I've always wondered this too. I enjoy reading most zombie apocalypse stuff on Amazon, even the most amateur and self published. Some of those authors have thousands of reviews. A favorite is The Remaining series. https://www.amazon.com/Remaining-D-J-Molles/dp/0316404152 It's got over 2200 reviews which means he likely has sold 10s of thousands of copies. Does he make a living? I don't know!