まろ’s writing classroom: Lesson 1 [Preparation of homework] Adjustment of mood

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The author of this article まろ is the author of the light novel “Southern Cross”. He hopes to use his own experience to help more friends write good stories. Thank you for authorizing the “Content Hacker” website to reprint it. Thank you hereby.

Creation is a time-consuming job. Before we start writing, we might as well talk about the balance between writing and life.

Recently, netizens have been asking me about “how to write good novels”. Therefore, I organized my experience in writing light novels into 34 themes, divided into three stages: [Preparation Assignment], [Plot Process] and [Writing Management].

Whether you want to write a novel, a biography, or a business history, these articles can help you. No matter what your writing level is, I will help you complete a piece of work in the two stages of [preparation] and [plot flow], so let’s get started!

Everyone knows that creation is difficult, so good planning is needed to cope with long-term battles.

The above sentence has two meanings, depending on whether you are a practitioner. The practitioners I refer to generally refer to advertising marketers and amateur writers (if you are a professional writer, I dare not say what I can teach you, please forgive me). On the contrary, non-employees refer to office workers and students who do not make money through creation.

For practitioners, the so-called long-term battle mainly refers to superiors or editors who constantly criticize your work; for non-practitioners, the so-called long-term battle mainly refers to the questioning and persuasion of relatives and friends and the initial frustration.

In order to make your creative career go a long way, please throw away unreliable things like inspiration, luck, and talent. These things will become your bonus points, and will become your unique advantages after you complete the two stages of [preparation work] and [plot process]. But before that, put it down.

Don’t have the thought, “If I can’t write well, I must have no talent, so I’d better give up.”

Believe me, I did not graduate from a literature major, and I published a book as an amateur. I want to tell you:

Basic skills can be standardized. I believe it has nothing to do with talent, as long as you learn. But if your goal is a literary award, it may require talent. Because I haven’t gotten it either, I can’t give you a definite answer (laughs).

The next paragraph I want to write especially to non-practitioners. Because in the previous play sharing meeting, I was asked some questions. Interestingly, these problems have nothing to do with writing skills. It makes me feel that the most difficult thing in getting started is not the writing skills, but the change in mentality. It can even be said that it means jumping out of the comfort zone. Indeed, for students or office workers, if they want to move towards writing, it is basically the same as starting a business.

However, the sad thing is that in Taiwan, writers in general are treated very poorly. Unless you are a well-known figure, it is very unlikely that after selling through a channel, the purchase price will be calculated as 5 to 10% of the royalties (you can even check it on the Internet). I can’t say the proportion of the purchase price through the channel (I don’t want to offend the channel…), but it will definitely be lower than the amount you paid. In conclusion, if you don’t sell a few thousand copies every month, you won’t be able to reach the basic salary level.

At this point, you have to ask, what is your original intention in writing? “Your script is so bad that it sold as soon as you wrote it!” There is this passage in the book “100 Awesome Writing Strategies from a Hollywood Screenwriting Coach”:

Writing is not suitable for fragile minds. It requires a huge investment of effort and energy, and is extremely arduous. Do this job for a while and you’ll get hemorrhoids and back pain. If you only think about making money, there is absolutely no way you can survive the pain that goes deep into your bones during this long process. So, for God’s sake, you have to actually have something to say.

If even so, there is still a reason to support you to continue writing, I suggest you write it on a large piece of paper (at least A4 size), and take a look at it when you feel weak and tired.

This is not just to fool you, it has a psychological basis. Incidentally, I wrote pragmatic.

For you as a student, my advice is don’t tell your parents that you are writing a novel, let alone tell them that you are deteriorating in your studies because of writing novels. In any case, you have to sacrifice some other time to maintain your grades at a certain level, at least not to be delayed; as an ordinary office worker, I would say never quit your job to write a novel, especially if you have a family. What you need is a job that pays a decent salary and allows you to get off work on time, so that you can at least have time to continue to complete your work.

Non-professionals, since you don’t rely on writing to support yourself, I can only ask you to sacrifice your original fun time and, if necessary, the money you spend on fun to build your dreams. In the difficult process, only belief in yourself and strong original intention can help you survive. The most I can do is make you suffer a little less, and I can’t stop you from giving up.

Okay, back to the issues that apply to everyone. From my experience, the simpler and cleaner the creative environment, the better. It is not helpful to have books piled up in front of you. This also has a psychological basis. If possible, I would recommend that you disconnect from the Internet and turn off your mobile phone when writing to reduce interruptions to you.

A friend of mine said this, and I quite agree:

Collecting materials is what you should do before writing. After you start writing, you can only take out the finished product from your head.

Being able to focus on writing for four hours in a day is pretty good (if you work for an advertising agency, the remaining four hours of work…you know how). It’s good to concentrate on writing for 45 minutes at a time, then rest for 15 minutes before continuing. In a state of concentrated concentration, you should not feel the passage of time (I think it is similar to the Buddhist saying of entering concentration). No matter how favored you feel by the writing god at the moment, you still need to take a proper rest! I once wrote that I was sick and had a fever and was asked by the doctor to rest.

If you’re worried that the writing god will no longer be with you, you can open a file in Google Docs or Dropbox and jot down your inspirations roughly. It is recommended that you do not store this file on your computer, but store it on a cloud service that is easily accessible to you. In this way, you will have the psychological effect of “I can make changes at any time if I want to”, which will help reduce the anxiety of the work being unfinished.

Remember, to relieve the anxiety of “I really want to finish writing it all in one go”, you must quickly save the summary of the article in a convenient cloud service.

Another common problem for creators is that they are so excited that they cannot sleep after inspiration occurs. If you estimate that the inspiration can be written in an hour or two, then write it. On the contrary, after you finish the above-mentioned record summary or To Do List, you must relax your subconscious mind, otherwise you will either still not be able to sleep, or the inspiration will become a dream (usually a nightmare).

You can do this to relax your subconscious mind: turn off all the lights in the room, find a comfortable angle on the bed, and say silently in your mind, “Dear subconscious mind, thank you for your help, I have finished it. Now, we need to rest.”

Imagine you are floating on warm, soft water, gradually being surrounded by the water, losing weight and sinking to the bottom of the sea. The sun shining on the sea gradually moves away from you, and what greets you below is a quiet and safe shelter. Your creative friend, the subconscious mind, is waiting for you there.

I hope you can sleep like this until dawn…of course after reading this article. Hello! Wake up! All that’s left is the conclusion!

In the next unit, I will lead you to construct the soul of the story play. It’s not the characters or the worldview, it’s really the soul. After that, I will take you to complete the same story in first-person novel, third-person novel and biography. You don’t need to rush to buy rhetoric or writing skills. I will guide you to complete a complete work based on your current writing level.

Share with everyone Goethe’s famous saying:

As long as you start, your heart will boil and burn, as long as you persevere, you will be completed.

Finally, I want to say: Cut the big goal into small goals that you can accomplish, and continue to complete them. Your sense of accomplishment and motivation will not be extinguished easily.

I think Descartes would agree (laughs). If you have any thoughts and suggestions about this article, please feel free to write to maro.huang@hukaka.com and I will reply to you personally. See you in the next chapter [Lesson 2: Establishing Premise]! (Click to read)

If you are interested, the following is an extended reading list for this class:

• Finish your script in 21 days: I have a good story, but I can’t write it! Written like this, you can complete the script in your mind in one go

• Manipulate your subconscious mind and train yourself to be a better person! : Self-study at home can turn your thoughts into lessons and develop 90% of what you haven’t used yet

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Further reading

• Misaki’s Writing Classroom: Lesson 7 [Plot Process] Prologue (Part 2)
• Misaki’s Writing Classroom: Lesson 7 [Plot Process] Prologue (Part 2)
• Misaki’s Writing Classroom: Lesson 7 [Plot Process] Prologue (Part 1)

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