Writing Fiction

School Writing

First of all, a school writing assignment is boring. We all know it. It sucks when we have topics assigned to us. It seems like people are controlling what we write, and in a way, they are. In most classes, teachers tell us what topics we can choose and sometimes even how we should write it. And the only reason we do it is so we don’t fail the class, because if there’s anything worse than writing a school paper, it’s failing the class we need to write the paper for.

The only unique thing about writing school papers is the style each student writes in. I was always interested in reading other students’ papers when I was in high school, just to see what kind of style each student wrote in. I also compare their styles to mine. If I find anyone with a writing style close to mine, I try to change my style just slightly so my stories and poems and other papers remain unique.

While in school, I recommend taking some kind of Creative Writing class and to be very involved in the school magazine, if your school has one. Creative Writing class is usually the only class you can choose what you write about. Sometimes, however, the teacher might give you a handful of topics. My problem was keeping the stories school appropriate.

You see, I’m a horror author. Most of my stories involve a lot of blood, if not death. I got in trouble a few times for the terrifying content of my stories. I was forbidden to submit any stories my sophomore and junior years. Sophomore year they didn’t accept any stories because of the gory content of the stories. Junior year I toned down the gore so much it didn’t seem like I wrote the stories. I let some of my friends preview my stories that year and they actually complained about how much gore and violence I took out of my stories. (I promised them I would write really gory, violent stories after I graduated.) My problem during my junior year was my character’s names. I had used real names.

This brings me to my next point, never use actual names in or out of school. You could get in so much trouble, and trust me, you don’t want to be in THAT much trouble. In order to stay out of trouble, I recommend getting a character names book or even a baby name book. The character names book was sold out when I went to get one, so I was stuck with a baby name book. Amazingly, it worked as well or better than a character names book. I’ve been using the book since 2006. And it hasn’t messed with my story-telling ability at all. That was the one thing I was really scared about. When I write with real names, it makes me think the story is scarier. But never, I repeat, NEVER use real names in your stories. That’s the best advice I can give out right now.

Writing For Fun

Writing for fun is a lot better than writing for school by a LONG shot. First, you can write about anything you want. And I mean ANYTHING. You can write horror, drama, suspense, romance, western, anything. There are no limits to what you can write outside of school.

Also, you can get paid for your writing outside of school. You can submit your short stories and poems to magazines. Most magazines have a word limit and limit you to certain genres, but there is a magazine out there for anyone and everyone to submit their writings to.

There are also book publishers looking for new talent. Most book publishers require you to work with a literary agent, otherwise they won’t accept your work. Some publishers, however, will publish your novel without the help of an agent. I suggest trying to get your novel published with a publisher that doesn’t require you to work with an agent. That way, you can start publishing and making money AND get the attention of a bigger publishing company. As a beginning writer, you should work up from the very bottom and see how far up you can get.

There are a few publishers that won’t charge you anything to publish, but you have to write VERY well for them to accept it. Most publishers that will publish your writings without an agent charge anywhere from $299 to $1699.

You might also want to try to submit some stories into a short story contest. A handful of contests won’t charge a reading fee or any other kind of fee. Watch out for contests that charge more than $25 to enter. Yeah, the prizes seem great, but sometimes, these contests are scams. They take your money and maybe some relatives from the magazine that’s hosting the contest may win.

I hope the young writers out there get very inspired and try to publish ALL of their work. Remember, don’t get down if a magazine or publisher rejects your writing. Try sending it to another magazine or publisher. If you get three or four rejection notices, reread your writing and maybe try to rewrite a section.

Good luck with all of your future writings!