Struggling Authors

Hi everyone, I'm currently in the process of writing my first book and to be honest i'm struggling! I've never written anything much before and to be brutally honest I can hardly be described as educated lol. I'm writing about urban life in uk cities and council estates, following a week in the life of one young man and how his desisions affect and determine his outcome and those of others around him. I would appreciate any advice I can get on the whole writing aspect and I'm willing to share what i have written so far for it to be scrutinised and hopefully improved with a little (or alot) of help. the actual subject matter and events in the story arent an issue as its all very close to the life i know growing up in some of the worst areas of nottingham, but i find my grammar sucks at the best of time and i'm not sure about things like back story how detailed i need to be with characters and hows to describe surroundings etc as i'm not a very poetic person these things can be difficult. Please help me in anyway you can i would really appreciate it. Yours hopefully th1dood xx

Hiya
Welcome to our site. I'm the Mad One lol.
If I can help with setting out storylines etc. I am more than willing too.

hi mad thankyou very much any help is very welcome should i post what i have on here or do you have an e-mail i should send it to?

Hi
click on the ... PM .... link at the bottom of any reply and this will bring up a private message box. Talk to me there.
This helps to maintain our privacy on the site if we wish it.

ok i think i did it not sure if it worked let me know lol

Hello everyone
Well James is an amazing person and i was able to help him out here and there.

Heya, welcome to the boards . I don't have much advice to give but the one thing I will say is don't worry too much about your grammar to begin with - if you've got a good story then concentrate on getting that down and making it the best it can be, and go back and sort out any grammatical problems later.

P.S. I've moved this topic into the 'How Do I' section

Hey Dood, well as far as advice goes I'm crap.
However, I would like to wish you all the best with your endeavour.
It's a big step to write a book from scratch so if I were you, I'd follow Sammi's advice and just get the story down first.
Don't be afraid to erase stuff if it isn't working or is in the way of the story and think about the plot constantly. Whenever you've got a moment to yourself, think about how you can improve your character, his relationship to the story and blah blah fishcakes, you know what I'm getting at, lol.
Grammar and the likes can come later, because let's face it, you'll go over 6000 times before you send it off anyway.
I know I did.

The main thing is to write and keep writing. Don't worry to much about spelling Grammar, although your computer will sort most of that out and you can always get a friend to check.

Two books I would recommend are:Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande and The Idiots Guide To Writing a Novel and Getting published.


All the very best

Yes, I agree, keep writing - the more you do the better you'll get. I have my hubby and a couple of trusted friends who read stuff and then, at my request, are brutally honest about it!

While a publisher won't like writing that's too rough, all my books have been signed with just a proposal and chapter breakdown, so you'd have plenty of time to whip it into shape! The most important thing is to have an idea they'll like.
Jenny