A nameless song, a nameless book, a nameless god

Try for consistency—as in, a couple sentences a day—but don’t get too hung up on it. Sometimes I go through long periods of reading only or doing other kinds of art. Making yourself anxious about it doesn’t help.

Take a walk if you can’t think of what you want to say.

I’m an outliner. I need to have a rough idea of what I’m doing with a story.

I’m also prone to underwriting, so I’m always trying to add details and emotional beats. It’s not the worst thing in the world to be sparse with your prose, but I also really admire people with vivid and lush writing styles; I think I struggle to let scenes breathe. Speaking of which:

Get a beta reader, ideally one who isn’t afraid to whack you. There is no faster way to improve than to work through edits and constructive criticism. Not everyone cares about that, which is fine; everyone has a different process or goals or whatever.

Beta read for other people. If you can read someone else’s work and pick out moments that don’t land, sentence rhythms that fall flat, pacing that drags, that will help you notice the same in your own work.

Beta reading is critical reading, which I also recommend and do a lot of. I often read books with a highlighter and pencil in my hand. The same goes for fics I really like—if I love something, I often download it and re-read it while annotating. Unfortunately now I’m just describing putting yourself through a creative writing class.

I’m a big believer in Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style: “Vigorous writing is concise.” This is true in every field (believe it or not, I get paid to write op-eds and policy papers, which is where I learned most of the fundamentals of writing), and it also applies to fanfic. Many fics are too long. SORRY! They are. As S&W say, “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.” Your words can tell something other than pure plot advancement, but they have to serve some sort of purpose. S&W have all sorts of tips that are incredibly useful in fiction. At any moment, the easiest decision a reader can make is to stop reading. The worst thing a fic can be is boring. You are trying to tell a story to your reader. Get their attention and hold it!

Along these lines, I’ve found that if something is boring me to write, it’s probably because the scene is unnecessary or could be shorter. This advice comes from the inimitable susiecarter IIRC.

Also, Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is incredible even for fanfic writing. And I’m slowly working through Steering the Craft (thanks Freya for the suggestion!). Orwell, critiquing political writing, says that “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.” I really do think this is true of fic too. Avoid turns of phrase that are fanfic staples. Don’t be pretentious in writing unless your style calls for it. Be concrete.

Read the types of stories you want to write and write the types of stories you want to read.

Part of putting your work out there is that people are going to have opinions about it. Nothing is for everyone. It’s your art; stand behind it. In other words, stop caring what strangers online think unless you are specifically soliciting concrit.

If you are writing from close third, everything on the page should be filtered through the character’s POV. If your character wouldn’t notice the high ceilings, don’t write about them.

Especially in kink or darkfic, you have to commit to the bit (another Freya tip). What is the meat of it? What makes it sexy? What’s interesting? Get grosser and more perverted and more honest. If you as the writer are flinching away from what you actually find iddy, why should the reader be interested? Why are you writing it if it doesn’t turn you on/make you sick/excite you/make you laugh/make you cry? Don’t let shame keep you from writing something real.

Read, a lot.