[BrumBall]

Originally Posted by longliving

That's it i've had enough! I'm not listening to all you smart arse writers out there, tonight it begins! Tonight i carry on from where I left off at 9 years old and I go back and start writing. I'm gonna write the best book ever written, I'm gonna be rich. Fifty Shades of Grey? My wallet will be full of £50 notes, you'll all be messaging me, oh sir can we can get a copy of your book, can you send us an autographed copy, mr longliving can you tell us your inspirations.


Oh yeah things are changing. *rubs hands*

That's the spirit!

[Smithy1204]

This thread is sort of making me want to try and write again (purely for pleasure, not publishing!)

I used to write stories a lot when I was younger, but mainly for school so when I started to hate anybody seeing what I was writing, I stopped writing. I do enjoy writing though, it would be nice to try it again. It's just thinking of what to write that's the problem in getting started!

[eluf38]

Originally Posted by Smithy1204

This thread is sort of making me want to try and write again (purely for pleasure, not publishing!)

I used to write stories a lot when I was younger, but mainly for school so when I started to hate anybody seeing what I was writing, I stopped writing. I do enjoy writing though, it would be nice to try it again. It's just thinking of what to write that's the problem in getting started!

Go for it!

Start small - concentrate on a character, a situation and don't worry about trying to make it into a novel or a finished text. Start with an idea and see where it takes you - and enjoy writing.

The story I'm currently working on started life like this:
Imagine a situation where you've been in conflict with someone at some point in your life, but have not been able to say what you really want to say to them. If you could tell them exactly what you think of them, what would it be? What would be the implications? What sort of trouble would it cause?
In my case it was: "Shut the f*ck up. Hie, get thee to a sex shop, buy a gimp mask and keep it zipped because I cannot stand listening to your whining and bitching one second longer!"
The idea of a calm, seemingly mild-mannered person exploding in fury and subsequently turning her world upside down made for a good story. Three months later I'm still trying to unravel the damage she did to herself by her outburst. Working out where that temper came from lead to me developing a complete back story for her. I won't do anything with the story, but it's been fun writing it.

[frightlever]

I used to hang around the Friday Flash crowd, the aim being to blog a piece of flash fiction (under 1000 words) every Friday.

http://fridayflash.org/press/about-fridayflash/

Now, it's a fine incentive and it encourages you to hit a target every week, but I would caution anyone that gets involved to not take it too seriously. By the time I was finished with it I was paranoid about how many people were reading me, how many comments I was getting and lastly whether what I was writing was any good - see the problem?

Easiest way to start writing if you have no ideas of your own is to take a story you like and re-write it from another character's point of view - which is how EL James started let's not forget. Ideas will soon start flowing.

[longliving]

One thing that baffles me to this day and don't get me wrong, I know he didn't write them all on his own and some were just rewrites of stories already written but Rod Serling's mind was just amazing. To write nearly 100 of those Twilight Zone scripts was just amazing, some fantastic little stories and to think it took them 3 days to film 1 episode and i'm sure most of you know how many episodes of the Twilight Zone there are, just a brilliant brilliant mind to do all that on his own. I'd like to do stories like that, just short stories but make every character mean something, have a beginning, middle and end.

[JonathanHill]

I started writing short stories recently and have just published my first ebook. My aim was to write a range of genres in the same book so it catered for everyone. You can find it here:

Eclectic: Ten Very Different Tales

The good thing about short stories is that you can dip into them and read one in a sitting when you don't want to get too involved in a big novel. I read Roald Dahl's Completely Unexpected Tales recently and they were just great. I really recommend them!