Ghost eaters series1

[Red_web_city]

Ok so I decided to take CAAs advice, and put my Full Armor 7 on hold. I did stumble upon something else. Here's a sneak peak
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s279/sh/ ... a9fb12b8f8

[Mr. SmartyPants]

No no no no. Not only should you put Full Armor 7 on hold, you should put WRITING ANYTHING on hold. Full Armor 7 is a bad work of writing because *you* don't have any skills of being a competent writer yet. So it doesn't matter what you write. It'll all be crap.

You should read stuff instead. Like I said before. Give yourself like a minimum solid two years of just reading every sort of book out there (NOT MANGA; NOT COMICS). After that *THEN* take a stab at writing.

[Davidizer13]

I-

That's not-

Never mind. I heard you went to the library today, Red. What'd you find to read - anything good so far?

[Red_web_city]

Ok I skipped the library and am reading an apocalyptic book from "Amazing facts" and I liked the manga advice. Thank you soooo much for that one yes! I will. Amen.

[Davidizer13]

I'm gonna make this easy for you - there's this site called Project Gutenberg, where they've got thousands of books for free online or downloadable in any format you'd want. These are books whose copyrights have expired, so they're in the public domain, ready for the taking. Here is a list of the top 100 most downloaded - pick one at random, and you probably won't go wrong. Just glancing through the list, I see some of the greatest books of all time, ones that have stood the test of time. A lot were written hundreds of years ago but people still pick them up today and they're as great as they were when they were written. And hundreds of years in the future, I think most of them will still be the greatest books of all time. You've got mysteries, philosophy, romance, political strategy guides, poetry, sci-fi, nearly any genre you'd want.

What I want you to do is to pick five from that list that sound interesting, or maybe that you've heard of before, and read them. Don't write, just read those books, all the way through to the end. (I'll leave it up to you how you do that - you seem pretty computer savvy, and with the right app you can get them on your phone/e-reader.) When you're done, come back and give a report about what you read, what you liked, what you didn't, etc. The key thing is that you read. Get a feel for what people have liked in the past, and use that to build your own style, and become a better writer for it.

[Red_web_city]

Got it, ty

[Davidizer13]

Yo, Red. I'm not trying to be nosy or anything, but how's the reading coming along? Have you found anything you've really liked yet? I'm always interested in other peoples' takes on the classics.

[Red_web_city]

Sorry, I've been just building my anime characters, been told they're awesome & wonderful by several people in public star bucks... going to take it serious and pursue it. I've turned the droids into vampyre hunters & spiced up the story a bit. Will display it when I've had good reviews.. thanks againp

[Ante Bellum]

Uh, no. Bad. You're not supposed to do that. I'm going to be honest here.

You can't write. I have seen nothing you've done that is worth publishing. Just because a few people called them "awesome and wonderful" doesn't mean they are, and it doesn't mean they'd read your story. Did these people read anything connected to these characters? Do you even have any backstory for them? Why would the opinion of a few strangers matter more than our extensive reviews?
You only seem to be able to believe that your writing is good and worthy of praise, and you only listen to what you want to hear. That makes you sound delusional.

With that writing and that attitude, you are destined to go nowhere. You won't get published, you won't get a show, and you won't get merchandise.

[Davidizer13]

Sorry, I've been just building my anime characters, been told they're awesome & wonderful by several people in public star bucks...

That's called common courtesy. If someone comes up to me in public, shows me his drawings, and asks if they're good enough, I'll probably say something like "OK, yeah, that's all right," regardless of whether they're actually good or not, because someone doing that puts me in an awkward situation, and saying it's good is the best way to stop the awkward.

going to take it serious and pursue it. I've turned the droids into vampyre hunters

This is dumb. Changing the names on a couple different things isn't going to change the fact that your story still sucks. If you're really going to do this, at least read Dracula. It's a pretty breezy read - I thought this would be a slog to get through; turns out, I was wrong, and it still holds up really well! (Oh look, here's the full text of Dracula, for free, in any format you want!)

& spiced up the story a bit.

You're working with spoiled meat. Adding more spice isn't going to change the fact that it's going to taste rotten.

Will display it when I've had good reviews.. thanks againp

Nope. Super nope. This is really dumb. Your little ploy doesn't even work with the idiots on deviantArt, so what makes you think it's going to work here? How dumb do you think I am? Besides, this implies you're only here because you want someone to give you a cookie and tell you how great you are for writing things, not because you're trying to be a better writer. If you take this thing further and someone who has a bearing on its future, like an editor or agent, gives you negative feedback, what are you going to do then? Red, your profile says you're almost thirty, but honestly, you write like you're eleven and take criticism like you're five.

I know you're going to completely ignore all this and plow forward with your fingers-in-your-ears routine, but I'm going to give you a plan on how to become a Better Writer!

1. DELETE YOUR STORIES AND START OVER. OK. This one's going to be the nastiest to get over, but it's for your own good, I think. Time and time again, you've proven that you can't make any meaningful changes to one of your stories that would make it better. You've become addicted to the story as it stands now, so the best thing for you to do would to throw away your crack and start from scratch. You can keep the story ideas and maybe a character concept or two, though you might want to reconsider after some of these next few steps - hopefully you'll come up with something better!

2. WHY DO YOU WANT TO WRITE? Not what, why. Take a few days off from writing and do some soul-searching - what do you want to do with your writing? Are you doing it for the money? Is there an agenda you want to put into words, wrapped in a story - some sort of injustice or cause? Do you have a story idea that refuses to stay in your head? Is it a personal or spiritual calling of yours? Do some thinking and praying about it, research what it takes to become a writer, etc., and try to answer these questions. There's no right or wrong answer, so long as you have an reason that satisfies you. And if you don't find one, maybe you're not cut out to be a writer (yet).
But if you do finally decide it's for you...

3. READ BOOKS! Do it. Your writing deserves it. Find out what people have written and enjoyed in the past, and read those things! Build your own style from it. I want you to spend the next few months, up to the end of October, just reading. No writing, just reading books. Take one to work and plug through it on your lunch break if you can - I've found that this works really well for getting through things. Visit a public library once or twice a month to check books out - if a book gets printed and it's in the library, you can make a reasonable assumption that it's had to get through some sort of editing process until it was deemed good enough to spend a bunch of money on printing it, the same that any of your writing would have to go through in order to get published. (Not only that, but the librarians will probably have suggestions on what's good!) Join a book club, and participate in a discussion about a given book! Get the Kindle app on your phone and read wherever you want to. No matter how you do it, you must read books!

4. NANOWRIMO! This is going to be a pretty big step too. November is National Novel Writers' Month. Participants write (or type) 50,000 words (the minimum length a story has to be to be considered a novel) in the month, and most of them do it with only the vaguest outline of a story to begin from. I want you to go through it. Write a story, with a beginning, middle and maybe a suggestion of an ending, make it 50,000 words long. This'll give you the chance to come to grips with your new style, to write by the seat of your pants, fighting a deadline just like you might have in the real world... It's something every aspiring writer needs to go through. methinks. (Given your plans, I would've also suggested you check out Script Frenzy, which is the same concept applied to creating a 100-page script/play in April, but they seem to have ceased operations...)

If you can, I'd also suggest you get involved with your local NaNo group - the website will help you with that. (They often meet at libraries! Hint, hint.) Usually they'll do things like Writing Blitzes, where set up a space where you and other writers can just write for a few hours, and maybe bounce ideas off of each other if you get stuck. Some will even have published authors come in at the end of the month to skim through your manuscript, and maybe give you ideas on where to go next. I finished NaNo in 2011 (and made an abortive attempt in 2012), and the story I came out with was a horrific mess of words that I've never touched since - it was about this family coming to grips with a death in their midst, and I got so bogged down in subplots and characters that the one that was supposed to die never did! But that's not the point of NaNo; it's just to get the words flowing, to make something that you can beat into submission for the next few months through drastic edits and peer review. And speaking of which...

5. DRASTIC EDITING AND PEER REVIEW. By now, you should have completed NaNo, and you've got this blob of story, twitching and writhing on the table where you forged it. Now it's time to make it good. One of NaNo's taglines is "Editing is for December," and it's time to do that. Read through the story a few times, cringe where you had to sacrifice quality for the day's wordcount, proofread your grammatical oversights, chop out and/or add scenes as necessary. Give it to your friends, ask them to read through it. Find a writers' group and trade manuscripts with someone - you ought to be pretty well-read at this point, so you ought to do all right at this. A good place to look for these would be at your library, so start going early and going often.

So, yeah, it's a lot of work getting better. But that's what writing is. Get used to it. If you're not ready for it, you're not cut out for the biz.