How To: Get Started Writing

Introduction:

I've gotten a lot of questions over the past year or so from people who tell me they want to get started writing, but they aren't quite sure where to start. And I think that's awesome! Fiction writing is a really fantastic art to get into, whether you want to do it as a hobby or professionally. But yes, it can also be--in my opinion--one of the steepest learning curves at the start.

This short(ish) guide is my attempt to consolidate my advice for brand new writers.

If you're new to my writing, or just wondering who the hell I am to tell you how to write: aside from this account here on Literotica, where I post fetish erotica stories on a weekly basis, I've also published a number of novels (primarily M/M romance) under another pen name, and I have a day job in nonfiction/technical writing for the financial industry. I've been writing in general for decades, and writing professionally for over 5 years.

But none of that makes me the Czar of Writing, and I'm not here to tell you how to write. This is just my advice, and it's based on my own experience. If anything here sounds wrong to you, or makes writing sound like a pain in the ass...then just toss that part of my advice out. Really! There is no one 'right' way to write, and that's not what I'm trying to teach here.

Now, before we launch into it, I am going to cover a quick checklist of what you need before you start writing:

1. A story idea.

2. A writing medium.

That's it. You do not need a degree in writing, you do not need to have taken a course on grammar, you do not need a 32-bullet-point outline.

We'll talk more about picking and developing story ideas further in, so don't worry if you don't have one yet; but I'm going to guess that if you're interested in writing, you probably have at least one idea kicking around in your head that you want to get on the page.

The writing medium can be anything you have to hand: the word processor on your computer; an app on your tablet or phone; a pen and a $5 notebook from the grocery store. Literally anything, as long as it lets you put word on the page.

Some writers don't write their first draft at all, but rather speak it into a voice recorder or a dictation program--that's an option, too, if you have those.

There are a lot of fancy specialized programs you can buy for writing, but you really do not need one. And it can be a poor investment in the beginning; many of these programs are specialized for particular writing workflows, and if you don't know what your workflow is yet, how will you know which one will work for you?

Personally, I am very attached to Scrivener these days...but I wrote my first full-length novel in Notepad (the basic Windows word processor).

I will, however, caution you about any option where you are typing into a browser or webpage.

I know it's very tempting to write directly into the text field of whatever site you plan to post to. I have definitely done it myself when I was younger! And...I lost a lot of those stories. Some of them right away, to technical glitches that forced a page refresh or caused a save/post error; others, I lost years later, when server issues on the site led to lost data, and I had no local back-up of the stories. So I can't stop you from doing it, and I definitely understand why you may want to (especially if you're writing erotica on a shared computer), but I hope you'll look at alternatives.

And when it comes to cloud-based word processors, like Google Docs, you should be aware that these services are not as private as many people would like to believe. Many of these services retain the right to train AI models on your files, and also are obligated to review files that trip certain flags to be sure they don't contain abusive materials, which means a real stranger might be reading your file--and might decide it needs to be removed from the cloud.

Also, if you use the service for anything else, like work or school, there's a real risk of someone accidentally seeing something you didn't want them to--either because of user error or because of file permission glitches. So my overall recommendation is that, if you're writing digitally, you try to find an option that will be saving locally, to your own computer.

Okay. So you have something to write with, and maybe you have a few story ideas to choose from. What next?

1. To write, you need to start writing.

Writing fiction is a skill that is primarily developed by practicing it. Ultimately, you just have to get in there.

I hear you saying, "It's not that easy"--and you're right! I agree, it's not easy. I'm asking you to do something you don't know how to do yet, to dive in without guidance. That's a method of learning that we use a lot as children, but mostly leave behind as we reach adulthood, and it can be hard to return to it.

It requires a certain measure of courage. That's actually a good thing, because writing well also requires its own courage: the more you practice at acting courageously, the greater capacity you will develop for growth as a writer.

Don't worry, I'm going to offer some more advice here beyond just "start writing". But my goal here is to always guide you towards the point where you decide to start putting words on the page; if you get a third of the way through reading my advice and say to yourself, "Enough of this, I'm going to go start a story write now", then I am happy with that outcome.

The number one thing you need to get into writing is a drive to write. Which brings me to our next point...

2. The best story to write is one that excites you.

This is a good rule in general, but it's especially true when you're first starting out.

Because you will be learning as you go, your earliest stories may be some of the most challenging for you, in terms of process. Why make it even harder by taking on a project that bores you? The momentum of working on a story that you love, that really jazzes you up--or one that just feels nice, a world you want to spend a lot of time with, a character that you enjoy thinking about--will help push you through the learning curve.

But not all excitement is created equal!

There are many good reasons to be excited to write a story. I would also argue that there are a few bad reasons. Beware of the following motives:

A) Writing a story in a genre or subgenre that you don't personally enjoy, just to prove to fans of that genre why it's silly or wrong or unrealistic. (Ex. "Erotica focused on incest is so gross...I know, I'll write an erotica story about the real consequences of incest!")

REASON: Do you really want to write a whole story just to pick a fight about something you don't enjoy? When you could be celebrating something that brings you joy instead? Fiction is a powerful communication tool, but you're not going to convince people to stop liking something, especially if you don't see why they like it in the first place.

B) Writing a story that you think other people will really like. (Ex. "Well...my friends are really enthusiastic about the idea of a kinky romance with a dominant woman, so if I write that, at least I know they'll like it?")

REASON: You are the one who is going to be putting your time and work into this story. That means that the story, first and foremost, has to be for you. As you get more experienced and writing becomes easier, you may get a sense of when you're ready to write stories that are more "for" other people, but I strongly recommend against falling into that trap as a new writer.

C) Writing a story because you think it will impress people. (Ex. "This twist is brilliant...everyone will see how clever I am!")

REASON: Everyone won't. And I'm not saying that because I think you're not clever, or because I think you're not a good writer. I'm saying this because there is no such thing as a universally loved story. (We'll talk about this more in another section.) If this is your goal, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

So if you have a few ideas in hand, and you're feeling out which one to start with: look for the one that most excites you, that makes you feel willing to sit down and spend some serious time and effort on it, because you like it that much.

But there's another factor to consider, too:

3. The next best story to write is one that's familiar to you.

Do you know how this story goes?

I don't mean, "Do you have it all plotted out?"--I actually don't recommend any formal plotting or outlining for your first story (this is another thing we'll get into more in another section).

What I mean is this: are you familiar with this type of story?

It will always be easier to write in genres and formats that you feel familiar with.

If you read a lot of thrillers, you will have more of an idea of what should happen in a good thriller. If you read short stories, you'll develop a natural feel for how a short story should progress.

There's a reason I put this after the excitement factor, though. It can be difficult--arguably impossible--to get genuinely excited about a story idea that you just aren't into. But it's totally possible to familiarize yourself with a genre or a writing style; all you have to do is read more of it.

If you have a really fun idea for a romance, you can go out right now and start looking for romances that you'd be interested in reading. If you want to try your hand at writing novel-length fiction, you can pick up some novels. You don't even have to spend money on it--there's libraries, and there are eBooks in the public domain.

It does take a time investment, though! So if you're just intending to write as a hobby, or you're just starting out, you may find it easiest to stick to genres and styles that you're most interested in--the kinds of stories that you naturally spend your time seeking out, that you already feel familiar with.

Conversely, as a professional author, reading in my genre is part of my job. I make time for it; not just reading stories that look interesting to me, but reading stories that I know my readers enjoy, and stories in adjacent genres that don't interest me as much but that I know influence my genre.

A few years back, I decided to write a mystery novel for the first time. Mysteries have a very structured history and lineage, and although I was familiar with some very early mysteries (especially the original Sherlock Holmes canon) and was a huge fan of modern mystery media like Knives Out, I realized I was entirely unfamiliar with a lot of genre-defining classics.

So I devoted several months to making myself familiar. I read Agatha Christie; I read some pre-genre mysteries, like Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue; I watched a bunch of mystery TV series that I hadn't previously seen, like Columbo and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. I read an analysis of the evolution of the genre by author Paul Tomlinson.

I just provide this as an example, because a lot of the time, when talking about professional writing, people will say "Read in your genre" but will not outline what that really looks like. This is what it looks like: making time, making a plan, and reading with a purpose. This is also, in my opinion, a good way to test my interest in a genre--because if I had come out of this hating mysteries, it would have been a really bad idea for me to write some.

(I actually turned myself and my sister into mystery fans, and we watch a lot of mystery series together now. I really recommend Poker Face with Natasha Lyonne, by the way. Season 2 is supposed to be coming in a few months...)

If this sounds like too much effort to you, then don't do it. But if the idea you want to write is in a genre you're interested in, and it's been a while since you engaged with that genre--maybe now is the time to get back into it! See what's out there! Pick up a book, find a show on your favorite streaming service.

Okay, so let's say you have a story that you're excited about and that you feel pretty familiar with. How do you know when you're actually ready to write it?

4. You probably won't ever feel ready, so just start writing.

You may have heard more experienced writers say a story "isn't ready yet". Or maybe you're thinking you need to make an outline first. As you get more experienced in writing, it's likely that you will develop a sense of when an idea is "ready", or you might find yourself gravitating towards the outline process.

But if you've never written a story before, you don't know how to write a story.

This means you don't know how to outline a story, either--and you don't know how to tell if an idea is ready to become a story, because you don't know what's required. Both of these skills require you knowing how to construct a story.

(It is possible that you have constructed a story before. Maybe you've run a tabletop RPG campaign, or you've roleplayed online, or you've made up a story to tell your kids at bedtime. Some of these skills will translate, but the structure of a story can differ significantly based on the form.)

The basic truth is that your story idea probably is not "ready" yet, not in the way that a more experienced writer would need before they begin to write. But you're not going to get it there without learning how to write a story first.

Most beginner writers will find that their first story idea evolves significantly in the process of writing. The longer your story is--short story vs. novella vs. novel--the more you can probably expect the story to change in the process of writing.

Now, the idea that you shouldn't be outlining may come as a surprise, because there are a lot of writing guides out there that will make it sound as if you absolutely must learn to outline before you start writing. So I'm going to go into a quick aside here to justify myself.

There are some less honest reasons for the ubiquity of outlines in writing advice (which I won't get into here but boil down to "outline templates are really easy to make"), but many writers, especially novelists, do vigorously recommend outlining to new writers with the best and most honest of intentions.

Here's how that happens:

A writer is struggling along, wading through the beginning stages of learning to write fiction. Their first novel takes so long and feels so difficult--they have no idea what they're doing! They don't know what comes next! They may need to stop and start over several times, or cut large parts of what they've written, which is not wasted time and effort but sure does feel like it.

Their second and third books go a bit easier, but are still a struggle. They're still learning a lot!

And then, all of a sudden--often around the fourth or fifth book--something clicks.

One of the outline templates they've seen a million times before suddenly makes sense, or maybe they come up with their own outline that works so much better than any of the ones they've tried. And it's so much easier. They're cruising right through this book. They're not getting stuck, they don't need to cut hours or days of work from their draft.

So they rush off to tell everyone about this brilliant outline technique that makes writing so much easier!

But is that what really happened? Was it the outlining process that suddenly made book four so easy and painless?

Well, the outline definitely helped. It's a tool! It's there to help. Not all authors use outlines, but those that do definitely benefit from them.

But...what else changed? How about the fact that they had three books under their belt already?

There's a huge difference in experience between someone who has never written a story before, and someone who has written and finished three stories. (This is true with stories of any length, although the difference may be more pronounced with novel-length stories.) But this experience can feel invisible, even to the writer themselves; it's very easy to attribute success to external or at least more visible factors, like a new outlining method or a new approach to editing.

So I'm not saying outlines are useless. Personally, I am not an outliner, but I know many writers who are. But they all developed their outlining process after they learned how to write a story, by writing a story. There may be someone out there who had success in outlining their first story before they started to write it--but I've never met them, and I've known a lot of beginning writers who spun their wheels a long time trying to make a working outline before they gave themselves permission to start writing.

Asking someone who has never written a story before to create an outline, is like asking someone who has never built a shelf before to write instructions on building a shelf. They might get something on paper, but to what end?

Regarding how to actually get through the process of writing that first story, I leave that largely up to you. I've already mentioned that you can expect it to be challenging. You should be having fun, too! I'm just not highlighting where the fun is, because that's going to be very individual to you--different people get something different out of writing, and following your own sense for what's fun about writing will help you guide yourself towards what kind of stories you want to write and what kind of writer you want to become.

I do typically suggest that, for a person's very first story, they try starting at the beginning and writing straight through to the end. I've known a lot of writers (including myself) who had success with this at the beginning, even if we later evolve into different writing patterns or strategies. I think this is easier to start with for many people because this is how we're used to understanding a story--when we read a book or watch a movie, we're typically starting at the beginning and ending at the end.

But that's not universally true. There are people who write their first story piecemeal, or who write the ending first and then go back to write the rest. (Some people read that way, too.) Again, follow your instincts on what feels right. Whatever allows you to get words on the page, to start writing and to keep writing until you have an entire story.

Okay. But what do you do once you have a story on the page? There's a next step to this writing thing, right?

5. Editing is a good idea, but it isn't always 100% necessary.

Yes, if your goal is to write professionally--you will need to, at some point, get comfortable with editing your work. Even if you plan to employ an editor, you don't want to be sending your naked rough draft through that process.

But if you're just starting to write, and you find that you really can't bear to go back and read your own work to edit it...your time might be better spent not doing that.

I said before that there's a big difference in experience between someone who has written zero stories and someone who has written three stories. When you first start writing, you are taking massive strides each time you successfully finish a story; it may not be immediately obvious to you, but it is absolutely true.

So it's very, very common for a new writer to finish their first story and have an aversion to going back over it.

They've learned so much as a writer over the course of finishing the story that it's too obvious to them what they should do differently next time. And, as well, there can be a shock to the system at having exposed one's vulnerabilities by attempting to write fiction in the first place. The challenges of editing, at this stage, can feel like a very high cost for potentially low return.